This fact of the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Holy Communion has ever been the belief of the Church Catholic and of the Anglican Church as a part thereof. Bishop Andrewes in the seventeenth century, writing in reply to Roman Controversalists, at a time when the Church in England had at length settled down after the upheaval and conflict of the Reformation period, asserted the belief of the Anglican Church as to the fact but also her refusal to dogmatize as to the mode of the Saviour's presence. "The Presence we believe no less truly than you to be real. Concerning the mode of the Presence, we define nothing rashly, nor, I add, do we curiously enquire."
True to the teaching and to the Spirit of the early Church the Church of England devoutly accepts her Lord's words, neither attempting to explain them or to explain them away, but leaving them where He has left them a holy mystery not requiring and therefore not receiving definition. Not as attempting to define, but as a safeguard against errors which have at various times been prominent in the Church, representative writers of the Anglican Communion have been accustomed to speak of Our Lord's presence as being at once real and spiritual. To understand the full significance of this language it is necessary that we dismiss forever from our minds the idea that there is any opposition between that which is real and that which is spiritual. On the contrary, we must grasp the fact, which all are coming to recognize more and more, that the spiritual is the real, and the real is the spiritual. I do not think that it would be possible to have this truth concerning the Sacramental Presence of Our Lord expressed more clearly, more beautifully, or more truly than it has been by Dr. Hall, the present Bishop of Vermont, who says that "Christ's presence in the Baptized is as real as His presence in the Eucharist, His presence in the Eucharist as spiritual as His presence in the Baptized". Moreover, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist cannot be said to differ in kind or in degree from His presence in and with His people at other times and in other Sacramental ordinances, but it does differ in purpose.
Our Lord is present with us in the Eucharist for certain very definite and specific purposes and we must now proceed to enquire what those purposes are. We shall be on safe ground if we say that Our Lord as the great Head is present with the members of the Church which is His Body to do those things which He did or commanded to be done at the last supper.
Why then did Our Lord at the Last Supper institute and ordain the Sacrament of the Holy Communion and command it to be celebrated and observed by His Church until His coming again?
THE CONTINUAL REMEMBRANCE.
It was ordained for the continual remembrance of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ, a commemoration of Our Saviour's meritorious Cross and Passion. This commemoration is made before God, before ourselves, before the world.
(a) It is a commemoration of the Saviour's death before God. The whole service of Holy Communion as celebrated in the Church of England, with the exception of certain exhortations and invitations, consists of prayers addressed, as all prayer must be, to God. The most important of these prayers is the one which we call the prayer of consecration.
In this prayer the Celebrant, as the commissioned leader and mouthpiece of the Congregation, commemorates before God that which Our Lord did in the upper room as the Passover feast on the same night in which He was betrayed.
Before God in this prayer commemoration is made of His gift of His only begotten Son to suffer death for our redemption, before God commemoration is made of that which Christ did for us upon the Cross, before God the institution of this Sacrament of perpetual memory is recalled, before God the very acts and words of Our Saviour Christ in instituting and ordaining this Holy Sacrament are solemnly rehearsed and enacted. It is impossible for any Priest of the Church of England to celebrate the Holy Communion, or for any member of the Church of England to take part in the celebration of this Holy Sacrament, without making before God the most solemn commemoration of the death of Christ and His all sufficient Sacrifice which it is possible for the mind of man to conceive. And in so doing we are at one with the Historic Churches in all ages. If it be objected that God needs no such reminding of what Christ did, then the objection is equally valid against all mention of Christ's holy name in prayer as the ground and basis whereby we trust such prayer will be accepted and answered by God. The commemoration before God in the Eucharist is but the doing in act by the whole body of the faithful of that which each individual Christian does when he says, at the close of his prayers, "Grant this for Jesus Christ's sake," or, "through the merits of Christ Jesus Thy Son Our Lord."
It is the doing in act, and by use of those very elements and words and actions which Jesus has Himself commanded, of that which we do when in the Litany we supplicate, "By the mystery of Thy Holy Incarnation; by Thy Holy Nativity and Circumcision, by Thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, by Thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by Thy Cross and Passion; by Thy Precious Death and Burial; by Thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord deliver us." This aspect of the Eucharist is perfectly expressed in Canon Bright's well known hymn, a hymn which by many not of Dr. Bright's School is regarded as their favourite hymn, and which has commended to them the truth of the commemoration before God, in a way that might not have been possible had the same form of words been cast in a prose setting.