(3) The Sacramental principle had been most plainly adopted by our Lord: the spiritual forces with which He would renew the face of the earth were to be exerted through material instruments: and He Himself had secured the principle from uncertainty or vagueness or individualism in its expression by appointing, with the utmost weight and penetration of His authority, the definite form of two great ordinances, which were to begin and to advance the supernatural life of His members, to extend the range of His Church, and to maintain its unity. In the acts and letters of His apostles we see how His teaching and bidding had been understood: how promptly and decisively His Church declared its life, its work, its mission, to be Sacramental. The meaning and emphasis of His commandment appear in the obedience of those to whom it was given: in the first words of authoritative counsel uttered by an apostle: in the first act of the Spirit-bearing Body: and thenceforward in the characteristic habits of the Christian life[389].
From the first the prominence of Sacraments and Sacramental rites is constant. In the teaching of later ages their prominence may have been relatively greater, in contrast with the poverty of faith and life in those who insisted on their power while they forgot their meaning; but absolutely it would be hard to devise a higher place for them than that which they hold in S. Paul's Epistles. To be living a life received, nourished, and characterised by Baptism and by the Eucharist—this is the distinctive note of a Christian—thus does he differ from other men. The Sacrament by which he became a member of Christ's body must determine throughout the two distinctive qualities of his inner life: its severance from all forms of worldliness, all dependence on natural advantages, or natural strength, all confidence in the satisfaction of external rules; and its unfailing newness, as issuing from Him who, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, and as carrying through all its activities the air and light of heaven[390]. And the Sacrament which continually renews in him the presence of his Lord, meeting with unstinted wealth the demands of work and growth, assuring and advancing the dominance of the new manhood in him: this in like manner must determine the sustained simplicity of his bearing towards those who with him are members of the one Body, quickened and informed by the one Life[391]. That men may receive eternal life through Jesus Christ: this is the end of all labours in His name: to this all else is tributary and conducive: and there is no hesitation as to the visible means by which God will effect this end in all those who have 'faith to be healed.' And in this sense it may perhaps be said that in Christianity even doctrine holds not indeed a subordinate but (that which involves nothing but dignity) a subservient place; since it is the strength and glory of Christian doctrine that it essentially 'leads on to something higher—to the sacramental participation in the atoning sacrifice of Christ[392].'
IV. Thus then there appears at the beginning the dominance of that note which has sounded on through all succeeding ages; thus may we trace from the first days the dispensation of Divine energy through agents and acts and efficacious symbols gathered out of this visible world. It remains to be shewn with what reason it can be alleged that herein the Church evinces its recognition of the complexity of human nature, and guards the truth, that in the entirety of his being man has to do with God, the Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his soul and body. Along three lines of thought this may in some degree appear; and if the evidence that can be indicated is recognised as in any measure real, it would be unphilosophic to set it aside because it may be fragmentary and inconclusive: since fragments are all that in such a matter we are likely as yet to see.
(1) First, then, there is a profound far-reaching import in the bare fact that material and visible means are thus hallowed to effect the work of God, to bear His unseen grace. For it must not be thought that in this Sacramental union of the visible and the invisible we have only an interesting parallel to the twofold nature of man, a neat and curious symmetry, a striking bit of symbolism or accommodation. Nor is the deepest significance of the Sacramental principle brought out when it is said quite truly that 'it has pleased God to bind His invisible operations to outward and visible methods,' 'lest that which is thus invisible should for that reason be disbelieved or counterfeited or in any of the various ways in which human incredulity or human enthusiasm might do it wrong, abused to the injury of man[393].' We may see in this aspect of the system that it has indeed secondary advantages of the highest worth; but its surpassing glory is in its primary and essential character, as the regular employment of visible means for the achievement of Divine mysteries. For thus our whole estimate of this world is affected. Its simplest objects have their kindred, as it were, in the court, in the very presence chamber of the Most High; and actions such as we see in it day after day have been advanced to a supreme distinction.
And so through Sacramental elements and acts Christianity maintains its strong inclusive hold upon the whole of life. The consecration of material elements to be the vehicles of Divine grace keeps up on earth that vindication and defence of the material against the insults of sham spiritualism which was achieved for ever by the Incarnation and Ascension of Jesus Christ. We seem to see the material world rising from height to height; pierced, indeed, and, as it were, surprised at every stage by strange hints of a destiny beyond all likelihood; yet only gradually laying aside the inertness of its lower forms, gradually seeming to yield itself, not merely to the external fashioning of spirit, but also to its inner and transforming occupation: till in humanity it comes within sight of that which God has been preparing for it, even the reception of His own image and likeness. And yet this is but the beginning: and though sin delays the end, and holds back the crown of all, it is but for a time; in due season there is made known that absolutely highest honour to which God has been leading on the work of His hands, even that in its highest type it should be taken into God; that the Eternal Word should be made man, and from a human mother receive our nature, so that a material body should be His body; His in birth, and growth, and death; His in all its relations with the visible world; His for suffering, for weariness, for tears, for hunger; His upon the cross and in the tomb; His to rise with; and, at length, His at the right hand of God. Thus was the visible received up into glory; thus was the forecast of spiritual capacity in the material perfectly realized; and by the body of the ascended Saviour, an entrance for the whole being of man into the realm of spirit is assured. 'There is a spiritual body[394]:' no part of the material order can be quite untouched by the light that issues from those astounding words, and from the triumph they record. And that truth, that triumph, that possibility of unhindered inter-penetration between the spiritual and the material is pre-eminently attested upon earth by the two great Sacraments of the Christian Church. In those mysteries where water is sanctified to the washing away of sin, and where material substances are made spiritual food, there is a continual witness of the victory that has been won, a real earnest of that which shall hereafter be achieved, a vivid declaration that the barrier between the spiritual and the material is not absolute or eternal.
Nor is this deep truth without practical and far-reaching consequences in human life. For immediately it thus appears that the unreal spirituality which consists in a barren and boastful disparagement of ritual observance or of outward acts[395], of earthly relationships or of secular life, of natural feelings or of bodily health, clashes with Christian teaching as sharply as it does with human nature and with common sense. And then, in perfect accordance with this principle, the spiritual energy of the Church is sacramentally conveyed for the hallowing of stage after stage in the due order of a human life, as body, soul, and spirit are advanced towards the end for which they were created. Not only in the initial act whereby all are bidden to enter into the kingdom of God, and, at the dawn of consciousness, the onset of evil is forestalled by the cleansing and regenerating work of God the Holy Ghost—not only in the ever-needed, ever-ready mystery of glory whereby, amidst the stains and sorrows of the world, all may again and again be 'filled with the very essence of restoration and of life[396];' but at other moments too, when the soul of man rises up towards God in the divinely-quickened venture of faith, the strength of the Most High is perfected in human weakness, and in Sacramental acts the things that are not seen enter into the history of the things that are seen. It is most unfortunate that the associations of controversy should hinder men from frankly and thankfully recognising the wide range of Sacramental action in Christian life. The dispute as to the number of the Sacraments is indeed 'a question of a name[397];' and it ought to have been acknowledged all along that the name was being used with different and shifting meanings. That men knew that it did not designate an essentially distinct class of exactly equivalent units is shewn on all sides; S. Thomas Aquinas seems to doubt, at least, whether there are not more than seven Sacraments, divides the seven into groups with very important notes of difference, and decides that the Eucharist is 'Sacramentorum omnium potissimum[398]:' Calvin was not unwilling that the laying on of hands should be called a Sacrament, though he would not reckon it 'inter ordinaria Sacramenta[399];' the Council of Trent has an anathema for anyone who says that the seven Sacraments are so equal that none is more worthy than another[400]: Richard Baxter distinguishes between 'three sorts of Sacraments;' in the second sense of the name, in which it is taken to mean 'any solemn Investiture of a person by ministerial delivery, in a state of Church-privileges, or some special gospel-mercy,' he grants 'that there are five Sacraments—Baptism, Confirmation, Absolution, the Lord's Supper and Ordination;' and elsewhere he declares that 'they that peremptorily say without distinguishing that there are but two Sacraments in all, do but harden them (the Papists) by the unwarrantable narrowing of the word[401].' There is indeed no reason why anyone should hesitate to mark the Love of God meeting in Sacramental ordinances the need of man at point after point in the course of his probation. Differences in the manner of appointment or in the range of application may involve no difference at all in the reality of the power exercised and the grace conveyed. And so we may see the Spirit-bearing Church, with whole-hearted recognition of all the elements and wants of human life, proffering to men through visible means the manifold gifts of grace needed for their progress and welfare in the way until they reach the Country. As temptation grows more complex and severe, and the soul begins to realize the warfare that it has to wage, the Personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost, vouchsafed by the laying on of hands, completes the preparation of Christ's soldier: as the desolating sense of failure threatens to unnerve the will and to take such hold upon the soul that it is not able to look up, the authoritative message of forgiveness brings again the strength of purity and the light of hope, and recalls the scattered forces of the inner life to expel the encroaching evil and to regain whatever had been lost. For special vocations there are special means of grace; by ordination God vouchsafes to guilty men the glory of the priesthood: and in Christian marriage He confers the grace that hallows human love to be the brightness and the safeguard of an earthly home, and the earnest of the home in Heaven. And thus in the manifold employment of the Sacramental principle there again appears that characteristic excellence of Christianity which is secured in the very nature of Sacraments: namely, its recognition of the whole problem with which it claims to deal. It speaks to us as we are: there is no true need of which it will not take account: it will lead us without loss to the realization of our entire being.
(2) Secondly, Sacraments are a constant witness against our readiness to forget, to ignore, or to explain away the claim of Christianity to penetrate the bodily life, and to affect the body itself, replenishing it here with powers which are strange to it, lifting it out of the reach or mastery of passions which falsely boast that they are congenial with it, leading it on towards its everlasting rest, beyond all weakness and dishonour, in the glory of God. This claim, with the deeply mysterious but wholly reasonable hope which it engenders, has been set forth by Hooker, with his unfaltering strength of thought and words: 'Doth any man doubt that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day, and for which they are already accounted parts of His blessed body? Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with His body, which is incorruptible, and that His is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing, through the death and merit of His own flesh, that which hindered the life of ours. Christ is therefore, both as God and as man, that true Vine whereof we both spiritually and corporally are branches. The mixture of His bodily substance with ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of His flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies through mystical conjunction receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in His: and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth, than the manner of coherence between His sacred and the sanctified bodies of saints[402].' The body, as well as the spirit, is accessible to the Divine life: there are avenues by which the energy of Christ's perfect and glorified manhood can penetrate, inform, affect, transfigure our whole being, bodily and spiritual. His prevalence in the life of the body and the change He works in it, may be very gradual, discerned in incoherent fragments, interrupted by surprising disappointments, hampered by limitations which it would be unlike Him now to overbear: but the change is real. The body is not left inert and brutish and uncheered, while the spirit is being carried on from strength to strength, with growing light and freedom and majesty: it also rises at its Saviour's touch, and finds from Him the earnest of its liberation and advancement.
The work of grace upon the bodily nature of man may indeed be a matter of which we ought not to think save very humbly and tentatively: it is easy and perilous to overstate or to mis-read the evidence: but there is peril also in ignoring it. The language of our Blessed Lord; the clear conviction of His apostles; the intrepid quietude of His martyrs; the patience of the saints; their splendid and unrivalled endurance in His service; the change that may be marked in the looks and voices and instinctive acts of some who seem to be most nearly His:—here is such guidance for thought and hope as we ought not to dismiss because we cannot make up a theory about it. There are real facts—though they may be fragmentary, and require very careful handling—to warrant us in praying that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, as well as that our souls may be washed by His most precious blood.
It is this truth, with the higher aspirations, the more venturous hopes and efforts which it suggests, that the Sacramental system of the Church keeps in its due prominence. It is at all events not incongruous to think that the spiritual grace which is conveyed by visible means may pass through our spiritual nature to tell upon that which is visible. He who comes spiritually under a visible form may well be believed to work spiritually upon a visible nature. It is not, of course, to be thought for a moment that our bodies can at all after their own manner receive that Food which is wholly spiritual: nor that the visible element in a Sacrament gives to our bodies any hold upon the invisible grace, any power to appropriate to themselves by their own proper energies that which is incorporeal and supra-sensuous. 'Only the soul or spirit of man can take in and feed upon a spiritual nutriment[403]:' it is only (so far as our thoughts can go) through the avenue, by the medium of the faithful soul that the spiritual force of the Sacrament can penetrate to the body. But the fact that the spiritual virtue comes to us under a form of which our bodily senses take cognizance is at least a pledge that the body is not forgotten in the work of sanctification. And it is something more than this:—it is an assurance of that invasion and penetration of the material by the spiritual which is the very ground of all our hope for the redemption of the body. There is in the very nature of a Sacrament the forecast of some such hope as this:—that He who said of the material bread 'This is My Body,' may, in His own time, through changes which we cannot imagine, take to Himself and lift into the transfiguring realm of spirit our material bodies as well as our souls; seizing, disclosing, perfecting capacities which under their present conditions we hardly suspect in them. And, perhaps, yet more than this may be said: for there would seem to be warrant for trusting that, in spite of all hindrance and delay, His word of power even now goes forth towards this work, and in the holy Eucharist has its efficacy throughout our whole nature. It is the thought to which Hooker points in words of endless import: 'there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration from death to life;' words which rest on those of S. Irenaeus: 'As bread from the earth receiving the invocation of God is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly; so our bodies also receiving the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the Resurrection[404].' Alike in us and in the Sacrament the powers of the world to come invade the present, and already move towards the victory which shall be hereafter.
(3) And thus, in the third place, the ministry of Sacraments is a perpetual prophecy of the glory that shall be revealed in us; the glory that shall pervade and transfigure our whole being. 'Till He come;' 'until His coming again;' that note of expectancy, of looking towards the east and watching for the return of a great light, discloses a deep truth about the Christian Sacraments. They sanction and confirm, as ever-present witnesses of a Divine assent, certain thoughts which will not let men rest in any low contentment with the things of time—with the approval, the success, the gratification, or the systems of this world. They declare with a perpetual insistence the mysteriousness of our present being: they have a certain fellowship with those strange flashes and pulsations we have felt of a life which seems astray and alien here, which yet somehow suggests the thought that could we commit ourselves wholly to its guidance, could we be replenished with its power, we should not walk in darkness, but rather, even in this world, be as the children of light:—and so they take the side of faith and patience against the attractions of completeness and security and achievement and repose. For they offer to guide into the way of peace, to welcome into an ordered, hallowed, course of loving service and of steady growth, those passing thrills of an intenser life, which if they be forgotten, denied, misunderstood, or surrendered to the abuse of wilfulness and vanity, may so subtly and terribly be unto us an occasion of falling.