depreciation of the Christian Sacraments. 483 Apostles have traced around the Font and the Altar, any more than we can deal thus lightly with the precious hopes and promises that are graven by the Divine Spirit upon the Cross. The Divinity of Christ warrants the realities of sacramental grace as truly as it warrants the cleansing virtue of the Atoning Blood. If it forbids our seeing in the Great Sacrifice for sin, nothing higher than a moral exemplar; it also forbids our degrading the august institutions of the Divine Redeemer to the level of the dead ceremonies of the ancient law. And conversely, belief in the reality of sacramental grace protects belief in a Christ Who is really Divine. Sacraments, if fully believed in, furnish outworks in the religious thought and in the daily habits of the Christian, which necessarily and jealously guard the prerogatives and honour of his adorable Lord. That depreciation of the Sacraments has often been followed by depreciation of our Lord's Eternal Person is a simple matter of history. True, there have been and are earnest believers in our Lord's Divinity who deny the realities of sacramental grace. But experience appears to shew that their position may be only a transitional one. History illustrates the tendency to Humanitarian declension even in cases where sacramental belief, although imperfect, has been far nearer to the truth than is the bare naturalism of Zwinglik. Many English Presbyterian congre k j Mill, University Sermons, p. 190; Gladstone on Church Principles, p. 185. * Zwingli de Verâ et Falsâ Relig. Op. iii. p. 263. n. A: 'Est ergo sive eucharistia sive synaxis, sive cœna dominica nihil aliud quam commemoratio, quâ ii, qui se Christi morte et sanguine firmiter credunt patri reconciliatos esse, hanc vitalem mortem annunciant, hoc est laudant, gratulantur et prædicant. Jam ergo sequitur, quod qui ad hunc usum aut festivitatem conveniunt mortem domini commemoraturi, hoc est annunciaturi, sese unius corporis esse membra, sese unum panem esse ipso facto testentur Qui ergo cum Christianis commeat, quum mortem domini annuntiant, qui simul symbolicum panem aut carnem edit, is nimirum posteà secundum Christi præscriptum vivere debet, nam experimentum dedit aliis, quod Christo fidat.' Here God does and gives nothing; the ceremony described is not a 'means of grace' but only and simply an act of man, a human ceremonial action, expressive of certain ideas and convictions, shared by those who take part in it. It is substantially the same account as that which is given in the formal documents of early Socinianism. (Cat. Rac. qu. 334, 335, 337.) It would be an extreme injustice to Calvin to identify his belief on the subject with these unspiritual errors. Calvin even says: Quicquid ad exprimendam veram substantialemque corporis ac sanguinis Domini communicationem, quæ sub sacris cœnæ symbolis fidelibus exhibetur, libenter recipio; atque ita ut non imaginatione duntaxat aut mentis intelligentiâ percipere, sed ut re ipsa frui in alimentum vitæ æternæ intelligantur.' Instit. iv. 17, 19. The force of this language was, however, practically destroyed by Calvin's doctrine of Divine decrees, which made 484 Sacraments preserve faith in Christ's Divinity. gations, founded by men who fell away from the Church in the seventeenth century, were, during the eighteenth, absorbed into Arianism or Socinianism1. The pulpit and the chair of Calvin are now filled by teachers who have, alas! much more in common with the Racovian Catechism than with the positive elements of the theology of the Institutesm. The restless mind of man cannot but at last press a principle to the real limit of its application, even although centuries should intervene between the premiss and the conclusion. If we imagine that the Sacraments are only picturesque memorials of an absent Christ, we are already in a fair way to believe that the Christ Who is thus commemorated as absent by a barren ceremony is Himself only and purely human. Certainly if Christ were not Divine, the efficacy of Sacraments as channels of graces that flow from His Manhood would be the wildest of fancies. Certainly if Sacraments are not thus channels of His grace, it is difficult to shew that they have any rightful place in a dispensation, from which the dead forms and profitless shadows of the synagogue have been banished, and where all that is authorized is instinct with the power of a heavenly life. The fact that such institutions as the Sacraments are lawful in such a religion as the Gospel, of itself implies their real efficacy: their efficacy points to the Godhead of their Founder. Instead of only reviving the thought of a distant past, they quicken all the powers of the Christian by sacramental grace wholly dependent upon the sense of election, that is to say, upon the subjective state, upon the feelings, of the believer, instead of upon the promise and word of Christ. Thus it happened that humble minds among Calvinists would naturally, in virtue of their very self-distrust, tend to adopt a Zwinglian estimate of the Eucharist: and, historically speaking, Calvinism has in this matter shewn a consistent disposition to degenerate in a Zwinglian direction. Belief in the reality of Sacramental grace is only secured, when men believe that such grace depends not on themselves but on the promise and words of their Saviour, in other words, that it is objective. And the objectivity of Sacramental grace implies of necessity an Omnipotent Saviour, Whose grace it is. St. Augustine's famous saying, 'Accedit verbum ad elementum, et fit Sacramentum,' is hopelessly unintelligible, unless He who institutes the Sacrament and warrants its abiding efficacy be indeed Divine. 1 See Bogue and Bennett's History of Dissenters, iii. 240, 319; iv. 319, 383; and the Law Magazine, vol. xv. (May, 1836,) p. 348. In our own country, other Calvinistic communions have in general been happily preserved from such a fall. But the case of English Presbyterianism finds parallels in Geneva, in Holland, in France, and in America. Such loss of truth by others can never give Churchmen any controversial' satisfaction; the more truth is held by Dissenters, the better both for them, and for the honour of Christ. But the subject may suggest warnings to ourselves. m Laing's Notes of a Traveller, pp. 324-5, quoted in Chr. Rem. July, 1863, p. 247. Priesthood and Royalty of the Divine Christ. 485 union with a present and living Saviour; they assure us that Jesus of Nazareth is to us at this moment what He was to His first disciples eighteen centuries ago; they make us know and feel that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, unchanging in His human tenderness, because Himself the unchanging God. It is the doctrine of Christ's Divinity to which they point, and which in turn irradiates the perpetuity and the reality of their power. (8) It is unnecessary for us to dwell more at length upon the light which our Lord's Divinity sheds upon His Priestly office. We know that as His promise and presence make poor human words and simple elements the channels of His mercy, by taking them up into His kingdom and giving them a power which of themselves they have not, so it is His Divinity which makes His Intercession in Heaven so omnipotent a force. He intercedes above, by His very presence; He does not bend as a suppliant before the Sanctity of God; He is a Priest upon His Throne1. Nor may we linger over the bearings of His Divinity upon His Kingly office. The fact that He rules with a boundless power, may assure us that, whether willingly or by constraint, yet assuredly in the end, all moral beings shall be put under Him. But you do not question the legitimacy of this obvious inference. And time forbids us to linger upon the topic, suggestive and interesting as it is. We pass then to consider an objection which will have been taking shape in many minds during the course of the preceding discussion. III. You admit that the doctrine of Christ's Godhead illuminates the force of other doctrines in the Christian creed, and that it explains the importance attributed to her sacramental ordinances by the Christian Church. But you have the interests of morality at heart; and you are concerned lest this doctrine should not merely fail to stimulate the moral life of men, but should even deprive mankind of a powerful incentive to moral energy. The Humanitarian Christ is, you contend, the most precious treasure in the moral capital of the world. He is the Perfect Man; and men can really copy a life which a brother man has lived. But if Christ's Godhead be insisted on, you contend that His Human Life ceases to be of value as an n Zech. vi. 13. Christ's perpetual presentation of Himself before the Father is that which constitutes His Intercession. It lasts until the Judgment, as the enduring antitype to the High Priest's presentation of the victim's blood in the Holy of Holies. Heb. viii. 3; ix. 24. • I Cor. xv. 25; Heb. ii. 8. 486 Objection to Christ's Divinity on moral grounds. ethical model for humanity. An example must be in some sense upon a level with those who essay to imitate it. A model being, the conditions of whose existence are absolutely distinct from the conditions which surround his imitators, will be deemed to be beyond the reach of any serious imitation. If then the dogma of Christ's Godhead does illuminate and support other doctrines, this result is, in your judgment, purchased at the cost of practical interests. A merely human saviour would at least be imitable; and he would thus better respond to the immediate moral necessities of man. For man is, after all, the child of common sense; and before he embarks upon a serious enterprise, he desires to be reasonably satisfied that he is not aiming at the impracticable. 1. Now this objection is of an essentially à priori character. It contends that, if Christ is God, His Manhood must be out of the reach of human imitation. It does not deny the fact that He has been most closely imitated by those who have believed most entirely in His true Divinity. In fact it seems to leave out of sight two very pertinent considerations. (a) The objector appears to forget, on the one hand, that according to the terms of the Catholic doctrine, our Lord is truly and literally Man, and that it is His Human Nature which is proposed to our imitation. His Divinity does not destroy the reality of His Manhood, by overshadowing or absorbing it. Certainly the Divine attributes of Jesus are beyond our imitation; we can but adore a boundless Intelligence or a resistless Will. But the province of the imitable in the Life of Jesus is not indistinctly traced. As the Friend of publicans and sinners, as the Consoler of those who suffer, and as the Helper of those who want, Jesus Christ is at home among us. We can copy Him, not merely in the outward activities of charity, but in its inward temper; we can copy the tenderness, the meekness, the patience, the courage, which shine forth from His Perfect Manhood. His Human Perfections constitute indeed a faultless Ideal of Beauty, which, as moral artists, we are bound to keep in view. What the true and highest model of a human life is, has been decided for us Christians by the appearance of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Others may endeavour to reopen that question. For us it is settled, and settled irrevocably. Nor are Christ's Human Perfections other than human; they are not, after the manner of Divine attributes, out of our reach they are not designed only to remind us of what human nature should, but cannot, be. We can approximate to them, even Christ's Manhoodimitable, but only through Grace.487 indefinitely. That in our present state of imperfection we should reproduce them in their fulness is indeed impossible; but it is certain that a close imitation of Jesus of Nazareth is at once our duty and our privilege. For God has 'predestinated us to be conformed' by that which we do, not less than by that which we endure, to the Human Image of His Blessed Son, 'that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren P.' (B) Nor, on the other hand, may it be forgotten that if we can thus copy our Lord, it is not in the strength of our fallen nature. Vain indeed would be the effort, if in a spirit of Pelagian self-reliance, we should endeavour to reproduce in our own lives the likeness of Christ. Our nature left to itself, enfeebled and depraved, cannot realize the ideal of which it is a wreck, until a higher power has entered into it, and made it what of itself it cannot be. Therefore the power of imitating Jesus comes from Jesus through His Spirit, His Grace, His Presence. Now, as in St. Paul's day, 'Jesus Christ is in us' Christians, 'except we be reprobates 9.' The 'power that worketh in us' is no mere memory of a distant past. It is not natural force of feeling, nor the strength with which self-discipline may brace the will. It is a living, energizing, transforming influence, inseparable from the presence of a quickening Spirit r' such as is in very deed our glorified Lord. If Christ bids us follow Him, it is because He Himself is the enabling principle of our obedience. If He would have us be like unto Himself, this is because He is willing by His indwelling Presence to reproduce His likeness within us. If it is His Will that we should grow up unto Him in all things Who is the Head, even Christ; this is because His life-giving and life-sustaining power is really distributed throughout the body of His memberst. Of ourselves we are 'miserable, and poor, and blind, and nakedu.' But we take counsel of Him, and buy of 'His gold tried in the fire;' and forthwith we can do all things through Christ That strengtheneth us v.' It is the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church and in Christian souls which makes the systematic imitation of Christ something else than a waste of energy w. But if the Christ Whom we imitate be truly human, the Christ Who thus creates and fertilizes moral power within us must be Divine. His Divinity does not disturb the outline of that model which is supplied by His Manhood; while it does furnish us with a stock of inward force, in the absence of which an imitation of the Perfect moral Being would be a fruitless enterprise. W r I Cor. xv. 45. Eph. iv. 15. |