It has been remarked that perverse conceptions of the Eucharist were responsible for the equally corrupt teaching about orders. This is the case. Previously to the third century, the Eucharist remained what it had ever been, "the breaking of bread," the commemorative meal. Then there came a change, and men began to read into it a sacrificial meaning and to interpret it as a mystical repetition of the death of Christ. From Cyprian this novel theology apparently passed to Augustine and Ambrose in the fourth century, and thenceforth it became dominant, though by no means universally so, until the eighth and ninth centuries. The rise of Athanasianism in the fourth century, and the abuse of the doctrine of incarnation by that bishop, reacted naturally in the matter of the Eucharist. Christ, who was proclaimed to be the solitary incarnation, the Deity hidden behind a veil of flesh, naturally paved the way for the Eucharist as a sacrament wherein the Deity is hid behind the veil of bread. The one incarnation is, as it were, the complement of the other. Hence, a rigidly literal meaning was given to Christ's utterances about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and Christians were taught to believe that by the manducation of his bodily frame his holy spirit could be incorporated, as though, for example, a man might hope to become a poet or a sculptor by feeding upon the flesh or bones of a Shakespeare or a Michael Angelo. Only mind can know and receive mind, and it is really difficult to comprehend the grossness of soul which suggests to man the idea that by feasting on the flesh and blood of his God he may hope to become like a God.
It would be just as easy to show that in the matter of church government and discipline everything was, in the early days, on a thoroughly democratic, or representative basis. Power, as in the England of to-day, is recognised to reside in the community, not exclusively in the presbyters. St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians recognises this in the matter of the removal of officers. The epistles of Clement and Polycarp recognise the same thing. Bishops are always elected by the people, and the net conclusion therefore is that no such thing as a hierarchy of ordained deacons, priests and bishops was known to Christ, to Paul, or the writers of the first two and a half centuries. The teaching and belief of those days was nonsacerdotal and non-sacramental, and nothing but a superstitious accretion overlaying the original truth can account for the spectacle which vast portions of the Christian world now present, as indeed do vast portions of the Buddhist world. The fate reserved for both these great prophets seems to be identical, the submergence of their pure and elevated ethical teaching beneath an accumulated mass of traditionary and ceremonial law; but here in the West, at all events, there appears to be a well-grounded hope that it is not altogether impossible to get back to Christ and his pure and wholesome teaching. Prophets have arisen in this past century who have far more influence than many priests, and there may be "some standing here" who will witness the close of the reign of the priest and the restoration of the dominion of the prophet.
The priests and scribes sat in the chair of Moses in the days of Christ, and that chair is overturned. No one knows where to look for it. Now we have another priest who sits in Peter's chair, a third who holds Augustine's seat, and a fourth and a fifth who can trace back their priestly ancestry in unbroken line to some era of superstition and decay. The same thing goes on in India and Ceylon, and in Thibet you have the Grand Lamas, to whom successively is united, by a sort of hypostatic union, the holy Spirit himself. Always and everywhere the shadow of the priest, the mystical, magical dispenser of the favours of heaven! We look to the days when religion shall be purified of such conceptions, when no one shall venture to stand between a man and his conscience, or claim to possess powers unattainable by other men, or pretend that the favour of heaven can be purchased by any other means than those indicated by the prophet of old and no less by the conscience of mankind—a life in accordance with righteousness, that is, a life in conformity with the moral law and the example of that supreme among the prophets of the race—Jesus who was called the Christ.
[1] Christian Institutions, p. 193.
[2] See Times, 5th February, 1898.
[3] Quoted in Spencer's Ecclesiastical Institutions.
[4] The appointment of Aaron by Moses, the leader of the Hebrew people, is the exact counterpart of the institution of the Flamens by Numa.
[5] Martineau, Studies of Christianity, p. 38.
[6] And, therefore, we note the inconsistency of the sacramentarian theory. It insists on moral goodness in the recipients and ministers of sacraments. But if the rite works of itself, its mechanical performance should be sufficient. But no; goodness is needed to secure any benefit therefrom; and this, of course, is the explanation of the alleged results of the sacraments. The moral goodness of the recipient has already secured the blessing before any rite has been administered.
[7] So that what had been thought to be a papal letter turns out to be a lay homily, showing that a layman could preach as well as a pope in the second century of our era. This suggests the notorious fact that unordained ministers are equally, if not more, successful in awakening ethical and religious emotion than priests and bishops. Nay, women like Catherine of Siena could hold Europe, its kings, and popes spell-bound, when "mere men" were powerless. Has any one in this generation read more powerful appeals to the religious sense than the fragments of the sermons of Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, more thrilling descriptions of an unavailing remorse than in the sermon on the text, "Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing which is right, for this shall bring a man peace at the last," which is preached by the agonised minister in The Silence of Dean Maitland?