Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, / 10th Edition, 1890

by Unknown

To us, then, being thus complex, Christianity presents a plan, a principle, a rule of life. And that primary and inevitable question which has been already indicated may therefore take this definite form:—Does the scheme proposed to us acknowledge this our complexity? does it provide for us in the entirety of our nature, with all that we feel to be essential to our completeness? or must a part of our being be huddled out of sight as we enter the precinct of the Church?

II. (1) Certainly the whole history and character of the Christian Revelation would encourage us to hope that its bearing upon life would be as broad as the whole of human nature; and that no true part of our being would be excluded from its light, refused its welcome, or driven from its feast. When we consider how Christianity came into the world, it would seem strange and disappointing if its hold on human life were partial and not inclusive: if, for instance, the body found no place prepared, no help or hope provided for it. This was excellently said by Alexander Knox: 'The gospel commenced in an accommodation to man's animal exigencies which was as admirable as it was gracious; and which the hosts of heaven contemplated with delight and wonder. The Incarnation of the co-eternal Son, through which S. John was enabled to declare what he and his fellow Apostles "had seen with their eyes, what they had looked upon, and their hands had handled, of the Word of Life," was in the first instance, so to consult human nature in its animal and sensitive capacity, as to give the strongest pledge that a dispensation thus introduced would, in every subordinate provision, manifest the same spirit and operate on the same principle. For could it be thought that the first wonderful accommodation of Godhead to the sensitive apprehensions of man should be wholly temporary? and that though that mystery of godliness was ever to be regarded as the vital source of all spiritual benefits and blessings, no continuance of this wise and gracious condescension should be manifested in the means, whereby its results were to be perpetuated, and made effectual[383]?' It would be possible to follow this mode of thought to a remoter point, and to mark in the revealed relation of the Eternal Word to the whole creation a sure ground for believing that whensoever, in the fulness of time, God should be pleased to bring the world, through its highest type, into union with Himself, the access to that union would be as wide as the fulness of the nature in which He made man at the beginning: that the attractive and uplifting bands of love would hold and draw to Him every true element of that nature. But it is enough for our present purpose to look steadily at the Advent and the Life of Christ: to see how carefully and tenderly every fragment of the form He takes is disentangled from the deforming evil which He could not take: how perfect are the lineaments of the humanity He wears, how freely and clearly all that is characteristic of our nature is displayed in His most holy life; where 'the hiding of His power,' the restraining of the beams of Deity[384] leaves room for the disclosure in Him of whatever weakness and limitation properly belongs to us. Surely it would be strange if the grace and truth which came among us thus, proved partial or restricted in their later dealing with our manhood: if any tract of our life were unvisited by their light and blessing: if anything which He took were slighted in His kingdom, forgotten in His ministry, precluded from His worship. The Incarnation was indeed in itself a great earnest of the recognition which would be accorded in the Christian life to the whole of our complex nature. But there are, more particularly, two points in the coming and work of our Lord which seem peculiarly intended to foreshow some abiding elevation of the material and visible to share the honour of the spiritual element in our life. They are so familiar to us that it may not be easy to do full justice to their significance.

(2) For it does seem deeply significant that when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, He took up the lines of a history replete with forecasts of the consecration of material things: He met the truest aspirations of a people trained to unhesitating exultation in a visible worship, encouraged by manifold experience to look for the blessings of Divine goodness through sensible means, accustomed and commanded to seek for God's especial presence in an appointed place and amidst sights on which their eyes would rest with thankful confidence. That Church and nation 'of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came,' must have seemed indeed irrevocably and essentially committed to the principle that when man is brought near to God it is with the entirety of his manhood: that God is to be glorified alike in the body and in the spirit: and that His mercy really is over all His works. Doubtless barriers were to be broken down, when the time of prophecy and training passed on into the freedom of realization: limitations were to be taken away, distinctions abrogated by Him in Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female: but religion would surely have grown in reality narrower and not wider, if the body had been dismissed from its duty and gladness in the light of God's countenance, if the spirit alone had been bidden to draw near, to worship, to taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Through all the amplitude of the Christian dispensation, there would have been a sense of loss, of impoverishment, of expectation encouraged and unsatisfied, had this been so; for in the preparatory system of Judaism, whatever had been lacking, still the whole nature of man had felt the Hand of God and heard His Voice. It would have seemed strange if with the wider extension of God's light to all the world there had been a narrowing of its range in the life of each several man[385].

(3) And then, again, it is to be marked that our Lord Himself by repeated acts sustained and emphasized this acceptance of the visible as the organ or vehicle of the Divine. His blessing was given by the visible laying on of hands, and His miracles were wrought not by the bare silent energy of His Almighty will, not even in many cases by the mere utterance of His word, but through the employment of acts or objects, impressive to the bodily element in man, and declaring the consecration of the material for the work of God. Alike in the blessings bestowed and in the manner of their bestowal men must have felt that there was with Him no disparagement of the body, no forgetfulness of its need, no lack of care for its welfare, its honour, or its hope. Perhaps it may even be that had we watched the scene in the Galilean town as the sun was setting, and in the cool of the evening they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; as He moved about among those wasted, suffering forms, and on one after another laid His hands and healed them; it may even be that what would have struck us first of all would have been the bringing in of a better hope for the bodily life of man and the replenishing of a familiar act, a common gesture, with a grace and power that it had but vaguely hinted at before.

We have, then, (1) in the Incarnation of the Son of God, (2) in the essential character of the history ordered as an especial preparation for His coming, and (3) in certain conspicuous features of His ministry on earth, a strong encouragement to expect that in the life thus brought into the world, in the way thus opened out, there would be evinced a large-hearted care for the whole nature of men: that no unreal abstraction would be demanded, and no part of humanity be disinherited: that in the choice of its means, in the scope of its beneficence, and in the delineation of its aim, Christianity would deal with us as we are, and prove that God has not made us thus for nought. An endeavour will be made to shew how this great hope is greeted in the Sacramental system, and uplifted and led on towards the end of all true hope. But it seems necessary first to adduce the grounds for saying that that system has been from the beginning an integral part of Christianity.

III. When we turn to look at the presentation of the Sacramental principle in the Gospels, our first impression may be that the place it holds there is less than that which is given to it in the teaching and practice of the Church: that it is by a disproportionate growth that the doctrine of Sacraments has gained so much space and so great prominence in Catholic theology. But the impression certainly ought not to be lasting. For it is due to our forgetfulness of the conditions under which Christianity came into the world: the characteristics and habits of religious thought with which it had to deal. We can draw no reasonable inference from the brevity or length with which a truth is enunciated in the Gospels until we have inquired what were the previous convictions of those to whom our Lord spoke: what preparation had in that particular regard been made for His teaching. We ought to look for some difference in the manner of revelation corresponding to the difference of need when a wholly new principle of thought has to be borne into unready minds, and when a fresh direction has to be given to an expectation already alert and confident, a new light to be thrown on the true worth and meaning of an existing belief about God's ways towards men. Amplitude and iteration would indeed have been necessary for any teaching which was to dislodge the Sacramental principle out of the minds of those among whom our Lord came—to preclude them from seeking the mercy of God through visible means. But if the Divine purpose was not to destroy but to fulfil; not to discredit as mere misapprehensions the convictions men had received, but to raise and purify them by disclosing the response which God had prepared for them: to disengage them from that which had been partial, preparatory, transient, and to fasten them on their true satisfaction: then we might reverently expect that the method of this teaching would probably be such as in the New Testament is shewn to us in regard to the doctrine of Sacraments.

(1) For, in the first place, we find abundant and pervading signs that the general principle is taken up into Christianity and earned on as a characteristic note of its plan and work. The regular communication of its prerogative and characteristic gift through outward means: the embodiment of grace in ordinances: the designation of visible agents, acts, and substances, to be the instruments and vehicles of Divine virtue:—this principle is so intimately and essentially woven into the texture of Christianity that it cannot be got out without destroying the whole fabric. As our Saviour gradually sets forth the outlines of His design for the redemption of the world, at point after point the Sacramental principle is affirmed, and material instruments are designated for the achievement of His work. 'He proclaims Himself the Founder of a world-wide and imperishable Society,' 'the Kingdom of Heaven' or 'the Kingdom of God[386];' and while the claims and energies of this kingdom penetrate the hidden depths of life, so that it is indeed 'a moral empire,' and 'a realm of souls,' yet none the less is it openly to take its place in human history. It is not an unsubstantial haze of vague spirituality, precarious and indistinct, hovering or said to hover half way between earth and sky, with no precise attachment to either. At once, it is the kingdom of Heaven, and it is to have all the apparel of a visible society: it touches this earth with a definite and inclusive hold; it ennobles material conditions by a frank acceptance. As in the Incarnation, so also in the preparation of the Church to be the ever-present witness to Christ, the guardian of His truth, and the home of His people, the principle was sustained that, in the redemption of the world, God would be pleased to take the instruments of His work out of that world which He was renewing: that the quickening Spirit would not repel or destroy the material order, but would assume, pervade, and use it.

(2) And, in the second place, the particular expressions of the general principle thus reaffirmed were authoritatively appointed: the approved anticipation of men was left in no uncertainty as to its response and sanction; men were told plainly what were the outward and visible signs which God had chosen in this world to be the means whereby His inward and spiritual grace should be received. It is difficult indeed to imagine any way in which more weight and incisiveness could have been given to the appointment of the two great Sacraments than in the way which Christ was pleased to use:—any way in which Baptism and the Eucharist could have been more firmly and impressively designated as the vital and distinctive acts of the Christian Church. We can hardly wonder at their pre-eminence in Christian thought and life when we remember how they were fastened upon the consciousness of the Church. Their antecedents lay in that long mysterious course of history which Almighty God had led on through the strange discipline of the changeful centuries to the coming of Christ. And then, there had been in Christ's teaching certain utterances which seemed to have a peculiar character: which were plainly of essential importance, concerning things necessary for all His disciples, bearing on the primary conditions of their life: and yet utterances which were left unexplained, however men might be troubled, offended, overstrained, discouraged by them: left as though their explanation was impossible, until the occurrence of events which could not be forestalled[387]. But such utterances, if they could not be understood, could still less be forgotten: they lived in the memory, they haunted the imagination, they sustained expectancy: they were as a prophetic conviction in the mind, strong, deep, fragmentary, and unsatisfied. Who can measure the consilient force with which, in moments of intensest thought and feeling, moments when all the besetting conditions seemed quick with some imminent disclosure, the Divine commands, meeting, illuminating, establishing those former utterances, would be riveted upon the hearts of men and clenched for ever into the faith and practice of the Church, with a dominance never to be forgotten or infringed, as a very primal law of life? In the unique, controlling awe of His impending agony and crucifixion:—in the heralded majesty of His appearance to the disciples upon the mountain where He had appointed them, and with the proclamation of the absolute authority given to Him in heaven and in earth: so did our Lord enact the ordinances to which His earlier words had pointed, and in which at length their meaning was made clear: so did He institute His two great Sacraments: so did He disentangle the Sacramental principle from all that had been temporary, accidental, disciplinary, accommodated, in its past embodiment, and determine what should be the form of its two main expressions, for all ages and for all men in His Church 'until His coming again,' 'even unto the end of the world.'

It may be in place here briefly to suggest a few thoughts with regard to that which was secured by this authoritative designation of the outward sign in each great Sacrament, beyond all that could have been attained by the general enunciation of the Sacramental principle.

Much might be said—and much more, doubtless, be still left unsaid—about the especial fitness of the very elements thus chosen from the material world to be the vehicles of saving grace:—for the water and the bread and wine are called to their place in the Divine work with deep and far-reaching associations already belonging to them. Again, the very simplicity and commonness of the elements taken into God's nearest service may have been a part of the reason why they were appointed: for in no other way could the minds of men have been more surely and permanently hindered from many of the mistakes to which in the past they had been prone: in no other way could the Sacramental principle have been more perfectly disengaged from the misconceptions which had confused its purity: in no other way could men have been more plainly taught that in no expense of this world's goods, in no labour of their own hands, in no virtue of the material elements, but only in the sustained energy of His will, who took and penetrated and employed them, lay the efficacy of the Sacrament. The very plainness of the element hallowed in the Sacrament was to urge up men's thoughts from it to Him. But, above all, the decisive appointment of particular signs and acts may seem to have been necessary in order that the Sacraments might take their places as acts emanating from, upheld by, and characteristic of the Church's corporate life, and not merely concerned with the spiritual welfare of the individual. So S. Paul appeals to Baptism and to the Eucharist as both effecting and involving the communion of saints[388]. By Sacraments men are to be taken out of the narrowness and isolation of their own lives, out of all engrossing preoccupation with their own state, into the ample air, the generous gladness, the unselfish hope of the City of God: they are to escape from all daily pettiness, all morbid self-interest, all preposterous conviction of their own importance, into a fellowship which spans all ages and all lands. By Baptism and the Eucharist the communion of saints is extended and sustained: they are the distinctive acts of the Body of Christ: and as such He designated their essential form, to abide unaltered through all that changed around them. And even those who stand aloof from them and from the faith on which they rest, may feel the unmatched greatness of an act that has held its place in human life through all the revolutions of more than 1800 years: an act that in its essential characteristics is to-day what it was when imperial Rome was venerated as eternal: an act that is every day renewed, with some measure, at least, of the same faith and hope and love, in every land where Christ is owned.