"BELOVED, BELIEVE NOT EVERY SPIRIT."
We have often wondered why any one should believe that a bit of consecrated bread was the true body and soul of the Lord Jesus, and that, as such, it should be reverenced and adored. But our surprise abates, though our sorrow increases, when we trace the steps by which a Roman Catholic reaches that point of folly and superstition, as the interesting narrative of Father Chiniquy brings them to our view.
When he was eleven or twelve years old, he met with a class of lads about the same age, to be prepared for his first communion; and there he was taught that, just as his mother punished him more seldom and less severely than his father for his faults, and just as his mother often interceded for him and saved him from punishment altogether, so Mary was more pitiful, more tender, than Jesus, and when He was righteously angry, His mother—the mother of all who pray to her—turned away His anger, and averted the strokes He was about to inflict on the sinner.
The thought of this Christ—terrible, angry, unapproachable—was dark and chilling in the extreme. He seemed a Being to be feared, but not beloved.
And then the false Church presented another Christ to view—a god made with hands, not of wood or stone, but of wheaten flour. The priest's servant girl or attendant takes the dough, bakes it between two heated irons, on which are graven the letters, I. H. S., and the figure of a cross. These wafers, about four or five inches large, when well baked, are cut with a pair of scissors into smaller ones, about one inch in size, and then the priest, taking them to the altar, and pronouncing Latin words for "This is My body," is supposed to turn each of these into the Christ who lived and loved and suffered here, a gentle, tender, loving Saviour; and the poor deluded creatures who tremble before Christ in heaven, bow down and adore, when they do not eat, the paltry wafer which the priest has blessed.
Chiniquy himself passed whole hours, in biting wintry weather, in a church never warmed by a fire, worshipping this wafer god. He was yearning for divine sympathy and love, and hoped he had it then.
And yet, though he tried to "believe a lie" so earnestly, his faith was often shaken by what he saw and heard.
In a company of priests, a strange story was told of a drunken curate and his deacon, who, called to go a long journey in snowy weather, to carry the sacred wafer to a sick person, had a dispute with a traveller as to which should lead his horses into the deep snow, the cleared path being too narrow for the vehicles to pass each other. A terrible fight took place. The priest's horses took fright and returned home, breaking the sleigh all to pieces, and the little silk bag containing their "god" was lost in the snow. It was carefully sought in vain, and not till the month of June was it found, and then the wafer inside the little silver box had melted away! And the priests laughed boisterously when they heard it. Did they believe what they taught the people?
At another time, a blind priest had been adoring the bit of bread he had just consecrated, but when he went to eat it, it was gone. In alarm, he sent for Chiniquy, who was hearing confessions not far away, and as it could nowhere be found, he knew that a rat had taken it, for the rats were both numerous and bold in that place. The old priest was inconsolable, though he blessed another piece and then concluded his devotions. But his lamentations were so deep and long that Chiniquy at last lost patience, and said a word or two which greatly shocked the superstitious priest, who severely rebuked him, and ordered him for a penance to kneel every day before the fourteen images representing "the way of the cross," and say a penitential psalm before each for nine days, and on no account to tell the story of the rat to any one. He complied with these requests, and received a very gracious absolution. But on the sixth day he pierced the skin of his knees while kneeling, and the blood flowed freely, causing him great pain whenever he knelt or walked, and all because he for a moment had doubted the right of Rome to call that a god which a priest could professedly create and a rat destroy!
Alas! for those who follow such pernicious teachings! Let us pity and pray for them, and more than ever cleave to that Gospel which tells us that "there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved"—"one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus," who lives in glory, no more to suffer or die, but who is "Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts xxii. 8), still tender and loving as when He dwelt below, while He is eternally mighty to "save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him."
Oh, that all our hope and confidence may rest on Him—entirely on Him alone!