erence should not be thus limited in time. Naturally, therefore, wherever the Sacrament has been reserved - and Reservation has been general from the second century onward* - there has developed the habit, especially in the West, of honoring the reserved Sacrament. In comparatively modern times the practice of having special services of adoration of the Reserved Sacrament, like that of Benediction, has also developed.

(1) That the doctrine of the Real Presence is a necessary immediate inference from our Lord's words, "This is My Body, etc.," seems unquestionable. But the phrase "Real Presence " must be taken as symbolical, because, as has been explained above, the Lord's words from which their truth is deduced are symbolical. They are then inadequate and inceptive. They indicate a true line of apprehension rather than define the mystery. There is a Real Presence in the Sacrament such as is nowhere else afforded; but its objectivity is not a subversion of what we see the elements- so much as an identifying relation between them and what we do not see, except by faith. This relation makes them the objective channel of our access in the Sacrament to the unseen Lord.

(2) We must distinguish this Eucharistic Presence from the mystical Presence of Christ in His Church. In His glory, our Lord is so transcendent that we need more than one way of reaching Him; and the objective or Eucharistic way is as needful as is the mystical way. The two Presences are each of a distinct kind, and are complementary rather than mutually substitutionary.

(3 The wide-spread craving for an objective meeting-point with God- one that is outside ourselves and is focused in place - seems to be God-given; so that we may expect it to be satisfied somehow in divine arrangements. The craving referred to, like every vital, human thing, is subject to grave abuse. But it is too universal to be regarded otherwise than as an element of our created nature. Men have never succeeded in retaining an effective worship of God as a personal Being without some form

*For evidence of this, see W. H. Freestone's The Sacrament Reserved. Being No. xxi of Alcuin Club Collections. It covers the first twelve centuries.

of objectification. Even when he forbade the Israelites to devise images for public worship, God authorized the arrangements in the tabernacle which made the Mercy Seat the objective and local focus of their sacrificial worship. There was no image, because the Image of God had not yet been revealed. The Incarnation was the revelation of the true Image, Jesus Christ our Lord. And the Holy Eucharist has by the Lord's teaching been so identified with Him as His Body and Blood, that it has become the continuance of the objective worship of the unseen God through His Son, Jesus Christ. You will observe that this worship is the worship of Him as objectively outside ourselves. Our mystical relation with Him in His Body has another purpose. The consecrated species, then, take the place of the old Mercy Seat, but with this important difference. The Mercy Seat merely suggested the unseen God, whereas the Sacrament enables us under its local and physical conditions to lay hold of the Body and Blood of Him in Whom we find our God. My reading of history teaches me that wherever men lose hold on this objective aspect of worship they soon cease to worship at all. For example, Protestants today have lost the art of worship and go to their churches primarily for subjective edification.

(4) I think that the Bishop of Oxford errs in asking us to be content with Christ in us, as distinguished from Christ objectively present in the Sacrament. In the first place, the presence of Christ in our hearts after Communion is not an "objective presence in the sense in which we have been speaking, but rather a deepening of that relation between us and Christ which our membership of the Mystical Body initiates. It is not in line with worship, as is the Real Presence, but with spiritual sustenance. In the second place, we need both worship and sustenance, for they are complements and not mutual substitutes.

(5) Once consecrated, the Sacrament can never be regarded as losing its value as a medium of worship so long as it remains, sacramentally speaking, the Body and Blood of Christ. It is perfectly true that the Sacrament was not ordained for the purpose of Reservation; but if you have Reservation as incidental to carrying out Christ's appointed purpose, then you have con

ditions under which Eucharistic adoration is inevitable among those who believe in the Real Presence. It does not follow that such services as Benediction are desirable, for it is necessary to keep every development in subordination to the ordained purpose of the Sacrament. There is plausible reason for the fear that a service like Benediction will make people satisfied with it and reduce the frequency of Sacramental Communions. I do not say that it would do this. Our experience with Benediction is not sufficient to determine such a question in advance. The point that I am making is really this, that it is impossible to undertake the suppression of all devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament without driving many people into a state of mind which we have no right to induce. We are dealing with very earnest devotion directed to Jesus Christ, and we cannot afford to condemn such devotion when we so lightly regard denials of fundamental articles of our Faith by ill-educated but vainglorious preachers.

III. LAWFULNESS OF RESERVATION.

If Reservation is lawful in this Church, the need of regulation still remains such regulation, of course, as is not practically equivalent to prohibition, and is not made difficult to accept by being based upon theoretical grounds contrary to sound sacramental theology.

We come to the question, Is Reservation lawful in this Church? All action which can reasonably be considered to bear on the question is comprehended in three particulars - the end of the twenty-eighth Article of Religion, the provision for celebrating in sick-rooms, and a rubric at the end of the Communion service.

1. It is now widely acknowledged that the Articles were largely political in their purpose, and eirenic rather than exactly definitive. The purpose of their framers was to hold together in peaceful relations the very discordant parties of the Elizabethan period to still controversy rather than to settle all the questions involved. Not otherwise, it was believed by Elizabeth and her ecclesiastical advisers, could the peace of the realm be se

cured. Accordingly, except in relation to the more central articles of faith handed down from the ancient Church, exclusiveness of definition was intentionally avoided. Methods of statement were adopted which could be assented to, it was hoped, by all the existing parties within the Church.

It is in the light of this design that we ought to take such language as "The Sacrament was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped. At first sight, this language seems to discourage Reservation, but it fails to say explicitly that the practice is either unlawful or excluded by the purpose of Christ's ordinance. We know through other channels of information that the framers of the Articles were quite able to be explicit and unambiguous when they set out to be. They seem in this place to halt in their language. They obviously meant to emphasize the need of keeping the purpose of Christ's ordinance to the forefront, and were plainly expressing disapproval of such uses of Reservation, etc. as had the effect of driving the ordained purpose of the Sacrament-communion-into the background. Such an abuse existed, and therefore there was sufficient reason for the solemn reminder that, however legitimate Reservation might be when subordinated to communion, it was not the subject matter of Christ's ordinance. I am quite unable to see that they said, or meant to say, more than this. At all events they did not explicitly declare Reservation unlawful, and prohibitions which are not explicitly contained in the Articles ought not to be read into them. It should be added that alleged personal views of the framers of the Articles have no binding force unless undeniably expressed in them.

2. The provision for celebrating the Holy Communion in sickrooms was probably made for two reasons, to gratify those sick people who wished for the Liturgy as well as for the consecrated Sacrament; and to serve the purpose of those clergy who did not wish to reserve the Sacrament. In brief, there was a concession to a considerably prevalent sentiment. But such provision was not itself equivalent to a prohibition of Reservation. The most that can be said with certainty is that it gave evidence

of a situation in which further provision than that of Reservation was needed, if the privilege of communion was to be preserved for all the sick.

3. There is the rubric, "And if any of the Consecrated Bread and Wine remain after the Communion, it shall not be carried out of the Church; but the Minister and other Communicants shall, immediately after the Blessing, reverently eat and drink the same. Isolated from its historical context, and viewed from the standpoint of an age which has long outgrown, and has largely forgotten, the conditions which caused the rubric to be inserted, this language seems to prohibit Reservation without qualification. Moreover the argument in favor of such interpretation is more easily grasped by average minds than the contrary argument. It is also to be acknowledged that the literal construction of a law must stand, unless adequate reasons can be given for a different construction.

The reasons which can be given for not regarding it as making Reservation unlawful are two: the historical purpose of the rubric, and a reason which can best be indicated at a later stage in my argument.

The historical purpose of the rubric is well known. It was framed in order to suppress the current and sacrilegious practice of using what remained of the consecrated elements for consumption at the pastor's table. No other purpose is known. The framers desired simply to protect the Sacrament from domestic and secular use.

Why then did they employ such sweeping terms? It seems to have been an inadvertence pure and simple, such as often emerges in impulsive legislation. They did not, so far as historical evidence shows, seek to prohibit Reservation for the sick, but to secure the reverent consumption of all that was not required for Communion In brief, the literal meaning of the rubric is more comprehensive than their known purpose in framing it.

The eighteenth century saw a vital decay of sacramental observance. The Communion was not often administered, and the demand for the Sacrament by the sick became very rare. So far as we can now ascertain, Reservation ceased. When