controversies concerning the Sacrament of unity, or the Holy Eucharist.

That there is such a Sacrament or Rite is a point admitted on all hands. Thus far, though perhaps no farther, there is agreement. Now, according to Protestant principles, we must learn the meaning and practice of this rite by independent investigation of the Bible. What will be the result? I will quote a passage from Locke in answer, for he reasons logically from his principles, and admits the result candidly. He is pleading, not for unity, but for toleration of diversity, and this is his argument:

'Every Christian,' he says, 'is to partake of that bread and that cup which is the communion of the body and blood of Christ. And is not every sincere Christian indispensably obliged to endeavour to understand these words of our Saviour's institution, "This is My body, and this is My blood"? And if, upon his serious endeavour to do it, he understands them in a literal sense-that Christ meant that that was really His body and blood, and nothing else—must he not necessarily believe that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are changed really into His body and blood, though he doth not know how? Or if, having his mind set otherwise, he understands the bread and wine to be really the body and blood of Christ, without ceasing to be the true bread and wine; or else, if he understands them that the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed given and received in the Sacrament in a spiritual manner; or lastly, if he understands our Saviour to mean by those words the bread and wine to be only a representation of His body and blood-in which way soever of these four a Christian understands these words of our Saviour to be meant by Him, is he not obliged in that sense to believe them to be true, and assent to them? Or can he be a Christian and understand these words to be meant by our Saviour in one sense, and deny his assent to them as true in that sense? Would not this be to deny our Saviour's veracity, and consequently His being the Messiah sent from God?'

I see no flaw in this reasoning. If the method of individual search, which Locke presupposes, is once admitted; if contra

dictory conclusions necessarily result from that search, from whatever morally innocent cause-the nature of the truth, the structure of Scripture, or the 'set' of men's minds-then those contradictions must be accepted as the inevitable, innocent, and divinely-intended fruits of Christianity.

Yet in what a reductio ad absurdum are we landed! Jesus Christ is acknowledged to be the great Deliverer from error. Every follower of His is bound to use his best endeavours to ascertain his Teacher's meaning. But either Jesus Christ could not make His Apostles understand in what sense He gave His Body and Blood, or the Apostles, if they knew it, could not transmit their knowledge to their disciples. And thus, in the seventeenth century of Christianity, the meaning of one of its central institutions was still to be discovered, or rather never to be discovered with certainty, though always to be sought after with anxiety.

I have selected this example, not because of any eccentric opinions of Locke (for he does not state his own opinions), but because Locke, with a rare candour, prefers to vindicate for each man the right of private judgment, rather than to convince others of the fruits of his own private judgment. But I, for my part, will never believe of my Divine Master, that on the last evening of His life, while He was apparently providing a sacrament of union and of love, He was in reality casting among His disciples an apple of discord, an insoluble enigma, over which they might hopelessly quarrel till time should be no more. If this is the necessary result of the Protestant method of interpreting Scripture-and I do not see how, in the presence of three centuries of Protestant history, this can be denied-then that method must be an erroneous one. By means of it the cement of Christianity has been changed into a dissolvent; the bond of union has become the bone of contention. In the system of religion thus explained by Locke, the discovery of truth is a mere accident, while heresy or individual choice is a duty; and, by a climax of paradoxes, contradiction never rages more fiercely than around the central rite of unity and love.

Of course all this was foreseen by Jesus Christ, and in a certain sense willed by Him. It was willed as the punishment

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of those who should turn their backs upon His Church. God has so inspired the Holy Scriptures as that they shall be a mystery and a secret to the learning that scorns submission. He will not allow them to give up their meaning to those who have forsaken unity and broken charity. He gave the New Testament, a shrine containing an inestimable treasure, and He gave the key of Tradition wherewith to unlock it; but He will not suffer the lock to be picked, and the treasure to be possessed by those who reject the key.

If we now look for the source of the peculiar obscurity of the New Testament, both with regard to Doctrine and Ritual, it is not difficult to discover. It is this-that the New Testament, having been written for men well instructed in Christianity, naturally and providentially omits whatever it was superfluous to say to such men; and that, also providentially, there is absolutely no other means of supplying these omissions but by Christian Tradition.

When we examine a history, the first question to be settled is, whether it was written for men previously ignorant of the facts it professes to narrate, or conversant with them for to read a history correctly, we must read it with the eyes of those for whom it was written. If we discover that they were in ignorance of the facts narrated, we shall expect to find a full and precise information in the history. Our only preparation in such a case will be acquaintance with the language and with the tone of thought of the readers. If we can succeed in attaining to this, we shall read as they read, and obtain the same amount of information that they obtained—that is, a full and precise knowledge of the matter of the history.

If, on the other hand, we discover that the original readers were conversant with the facts, we shall expect to find the writer passing over many things of importance, dwelling on more recondite details, and dealing in hints and allusions. In such a case we may or may not be able to put ourselves in the place of the first readers; that is, we may or may not be able to attain to their previous knowledge, and so to read as they read. If some particular history we are examining is of this supplementary structure, we cannot seek from it alone the necessary

information; yet there may be many other histories or channels by which to supply deficiencies; or the subject-matter may be such that our familiarity with similar events may enable us to make many probable conjectures.

What is the case with the New Testament? It was certainly written for well-informed readers, conversant with the events it relates. It therefore naturally omits much that would have been set down had it been written to instruct the ignorant. It probably omits the most familiar points, which in this case would be the fundamental doctrines and daily practices. Can we supply this information? By Christian Tradition we certainly can. But without it there is no means whatever of doing this. The Gospels contain the only detailed record, besides Tradition, of the origin of Christianity. We can throw little light on their obscurities from conjecture; for in the whole history of the world there are no similar circumstances to give us any clue ; and God's ways are too mysterious for us to attempt to measure them by our own reasonings. Hence it is that if we reject the only key which God has provided, we may try to pick the lock, but it will resist all our efforts.

We need not be surprised at this peculiar structure of the New Testament. If Jesus Christ came on earth to establish a Church; if He wished that the members of that Church should be known to be His disciples by their union, then He would take the means to secure this union. Such means we find by experience to be a common faith delivered by a living authority, and the bonds of the same worship and sacraments. And we find, in fact, neither in the written nor in traditional records of our Lord's life, any other means appointed by Himself. The living Church is ever acting on the commission she received from Him previously to the recording of it in the Gospels. Go and teach all nations, baptising them.' Tradition and Ritual are the great features of her charter. The Scriptures she has received as a help to Tradition. In her hands alone are they intelligible and consistent.

But He who inspired them for the use of His Church has taken precautions to prevent His truth from falling into the hands of those who abandon unity. He has inspired, not

indeed a riddle, but a document that requires a key; and has intended that the vain efforts of talent and learning to dispense with the Church, and yet retain truth, should convince us still more of the value that He sets on humility and charity-that is, on submission to and communion with His Church.

SECTION III, BAPTISM AND COMMUNION.

IN the present section I shall confine myself to those two sacraments which are generally admitted by Protestants, Baptism and Communion: I shall put aside for the moment all the conjectures to which they have given rise, and the controversies of which they have been the subject. I shall ask my reader to suppose that he knows as yet nothing more of them than the name. I shall then invite him to turn to the New Testament, not merely as Protestants profess to do, to see what it says about these rites; but also to notice what it omits to say, and what was the intention of the writer either in statement or omission.

1. We will begin with Baptism.

A careful collation of the four Gospels would convince us that in the Christian religion there was to be some important practice called Baptism. But what more should we learn? We should conjecture that it was a ceremony, and an initiatory ceremony into the Christian Church; and we should be left in doubt and darkness as to its precise nature.

All the Evangelists relate that our Lord received baptism from John. John, however, contrasts his baptism of water with the baptism which Jesus should confer of the Holy Ghost and of fire.' We look for an account of this wondrous baptism. The water of John's baptism was figurative, but it was a material reality, not a metaphor. What is the 'fire' of the baptism of Jesus? Is it only a figure of speech, or is it the element so called? The Evangelists do not answer the question. We find that St. Luke and St. John do not even allude to the institution of Christian baptism. St. Mark barely mentions it in recording