fied by His grace, our imperfections covered by His perfection. The clouds of incense ascending before the altar symbolize the merits of Christ in this sacrifice covering our sins and ascending to God as a sweet-smelling savor.

That is the sacrifice we offer to God whenever we are present at the Holy Eucharist. We are taking part in a great action. We should not think of it so much as a form of words, it is a great action: the offering of ourselves in and with with our Lord Jesus Christ to our Father in heaven. That action is preceded by the rehearsal of the Commandments of God, by the reading of selections from the Epistles and Gospels for our edification, by our profession of our faith in the Creed, by intercessions and prayers for the whole state of Christ's Church, and by the confession of our sinfulness. It is followed by thanksgiving and a great act of praise to God in the Gloria in Excelsis. But the essence of the transaction is to be found in the Prayer of Consecration, when we offer ourselves in and with Christ to the Father. We are thereby fulfilling the injunction of S. Paul: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." It does not make any vital difference whether we attend to each

particular word of the service or not; in fact, one may conceivably join in this holy sacrifice of the Eucharist without hearing a word that is spoken from the altar. If we take part in this great action by offering ourselves to God, our souls and bodies, in union with our Lord's perfect offering of Himself, we are taking part in this service in an edifying way.

This act of self-consecration should never be absent from our worship. Every time we are present at the Eucharist we should make an effort to detach ourselves from all that is sinful and renew our consecration to God and all that is good. That is something that we need to do very often if we are trying to live earnest Christian lives. We need very often to detach ourselves from everything worldly and sinful, and renew our union with our Lord Jesus Christ; as we offer Him to God we must offer ourselves to God. We should do this at least on every Lord's Day. It was a true instinct in the Church which has made this offering of ourselves in the Eucharist the crowning act of all events in our lives. The burial of some one we love, the marriage of a Christian man and Christian woman, the ordination of a man to the priesthood, the consecration of a Bishop, the opening of a council or a convention, the consecration of a King, or any great

act in our individual, national, or ecclesiastical life, should be crowned and consummated by the great offering of the Holy Sacrifice in which we present Christ and ourselves in union with Him to God.

XXI

THE CHIEF ACT OF WORSHIP

HERE are many churches in the Anglican

Communion in which the Holy Eucharist is celebrated every Sunday as the chief act of worship. Those who enter such churches for the first time often express surprise at the kind of worship being offered. It does not seem to be like the worship in other Episcopal churches with which they have been familiar. Perhaps they are sufficiently versed in the Prayer Book to understand that it is the Holy Communion that is being celebrated; but they do not understand why so few people, or none at all, should receive Communion. Perhaps they are not Church people and therefore have not the slightest notion what is going on. Any regular attendant of such a church if asked by those people why they had that sort of worship ought to be able to answer them. Let us now try to see what that answer would be.

First of all let us get it clear in our minds what this service is. It is the Lord's Service, the one

act of worship instituted by our Divine Saviour. On the night before He died He took bread and wine and instituted the sacrifice of the New Covenant, as a perpetual memorial of His Body broken and His Blood shed upon the Cross for our redemption. He said to His disciples "Do this in remembrance of Me." You may call it by any name you like, the Lord's Supper, the Holy Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Mysteries, the Holy Sacrifice, or the Mass; but in any case it is the Lord's Service,- the one kind of worship He commanded us to offer.

That this was the common act of worship on the Lord's Day among the early Christians is plain from the Acts of the Apostles. In many passages we read that the disciples came together on the first day of the week" for the breaking of bread." That was the name then commonly applied to that service. For example, we read, "Upon the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them." This continued to be the chief act of worship everywhere in the Church until the days of the Reformation. The various Protestant sects that then arose substituted different forms of man-made worship for the ancient and divinely established worship of the Eucharist. But the Book of Common Prayer is witness that