inents were regarded as symbolical but not merely symbolical, as effectual but not magical, as bot)i sealing and apjilijing the spiritual benejits which they outit'ardl;/ represented but in a way not yet strictly defined nor yet explained in terms of rela- tive doctrine. The sacriiments were looked uiioii not only as Imman acts but also as Divine instru- ments. Tlie grace of God wrought through them, anil wrought by means of symbols. The method of inslruclion by parable habitually employed by our Lord on earth had already taught His disciples to view external nature as a shadow of the Kingdom of Heaven, and had encouraged the conviction that ' everj'thing, in being what it is, is symbolic of something more' (K. L. Nettleship, quoted by W. K. Inge, Christian Mysticism, London, 1S91I, p. 250). 'God omnipresent was so much in all their [the early Fathers'] thoughts, that what to others would have been mere symbols, were to them designed expressions of His truth, providen- tial intinuitions of His will. In this sense, the whole world, to them, was full of sacraments ' {R. Hooker, Works^, ed. J. Keble, O.xford, 1841, vol. i. p. xcii). In harmony with our Lord's didactic method, and as a continuation of it, the sacraments instituted by Him took their place in the Church as permanent and embodied parables of the Kingdom. Sj-mbolism was inherent in the use made by them of 'sensible signs.' Their ele- ments and their actions were tilled with ideas both obvious and more recondite. The water, the bread, and the wine, and the whole ritual associated with them spoke eloquently of invisible things and spiritual processes. Illustrations of a tendency to pass even beyond the similitudes primarily sug- gested, and to elaborate particular details of the imagery for purposes of doctrine, may be found not only in the age succeeding the apostles (the Didache, Hernias, Barnabas, Ignatius), but already in the apostles' writings themselves (1 P 3-°'^', Ro 6^ Col 2'^ 1 Co 10*', etc.). Care, however, must be taken not to read tlie modern acceptance of the term ' symbolical ' into the primitive view of the sacra- ments. According to modern habits of thought, symbols which speak outwardly to the senses operate upon the soul exclusively through the association of ideas. They make their address to the intellect, and only through the intellect influ- ence the affections and the will. They are nothing more, in fact, than a language of signs. That this was not how the Apostolic Age regarded them, that they were always looked upon as having more than mere intellectual potency, research into the contemporary forms of popular religion claims to have established. Harnack, who both in History of Dogma and in Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (V.i\^. tr., 2 vols., London, 19U4) repeatedly emphasizes the assertion that the symbol was uniformly contemplated as possessing a vital and not only a figurative significance, thus repre- sents the primitive view, at least in the field of Gentile Christianity : ' Although Christian worship is to be a worship in spirit and in truth, these sacra- ments [Baptism and the Lord's Supper] are sacred transactions which operate on life. . . . No doubt, the elements of water, bread, and wine, are .symbols, and the scene of operations is not laid in externals ; still, the symbols do actually convey to the soul all that they signify. Each symbol has a mysterious but real connection with the fact which it signifies ' Expansion of Christianity, i. 286). Lake goes so far as to expre.ss the opinion that ' this position [the purely symbolical view of the sacraments] has re- ceived its death-blow from the modern study of the history of religions' {The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 389). Gentile Christians in contact with the pagan mysteries, and habituated to the concep- tion that symbols carry with them vital effects.
would not, unless expressly taught to do so, divest the sacraments of that deeper than emblematic significance which they naturally assumed them to contain ; while for Jewish Christians a merely emblematic interpretation of the sacramental symbols would have appeared to attribute to these symbols the very character which stamped the legal worship, now abrogated because fulfilled in Christ, with imperfection — the character, namely, of ' a shadow of tlie good things to come, not the very image of the things' (lie 10' 8°, Col 2"). When we find the Didache prescribing careful ceremonial in relation to Baptism (vii.) and a|jply- ing to the Eucharist the Dominical word ' (Jive not that which is holy to the dogs ' (ix. 5), and Ignatius speaking of our Lord purifying the water by His suffering {Eph. xviii. 2) and exhorting 'Let your baptism remain as your arms,' i.e. as your shield (Folyc. vi. 2), and describing the Kucharist as ' the medicine of immortality, the anticUite that we should not die ' (Eph. xx. 2), we feel that we are in a region of sacramental ideas lying quite beyonil the superficial theory of symbols. But we are really in the same region before we leave the canonical books. Those who contend that tlie purely symbolical is the only view of the .sacra- ments entertained by NT writers cannot make good their contention except by denying a plain sacramental reference to Jn 3 and ti, and by em- ploying ingenious exposition to euiiity one after another the entire series of express NT references to Baptism and the Lord's Supper of any other than a figurative implication. But there can be little doubt that the first readers of the Fourth Gospel would perceive in Jn 3 a direct allusion to Christian BaiJtism and in Jn 6 a direct allusion to the Eucharist ; and, while all the express NT refer- ences to Baptism and the Lord's Supper are quite compatible with higher than figurative conceptions of the sacraments, in the case of a number of them {e.g. Ro 6>■>^ 1 Co lu'""- >8. " iin-34 i^'j, Gal S-<^- ■-', Eph 4* 5-«, Col 2"- 12, Tit 3^ 1 P 3="- -', He 6'- '] the straightforward interpretation is one clearly involving that higher sacramental concep- tion, to which also the consen.sus of tiie whole series points and testifies.