§ 9G. THE SACRIFICE OF THE EUCHARIST. 503
Erlangen, 1851. The articles : Messe, Messopfer, in Wetzee u. Welte: Kirchenlexicon der kathol. Theologie, vol. vii. (1851), p. 83 ff. G. E. Steitz : Art. Messe u. Messopfer in Eerzogh Protest. Real-Encyklopa ■ die, rol. ix. (1858), pp. 375-408. Phil. Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. Part ii. Oxf. and Lond. 1862. This last work sets out with a very full consideration of the Mosaic sacrificial cultus, and (in the Pref. p. vi.) unjustly declaies all the earlier English and German works of Mede, Outram, Patrick, Magee, Bahr, Hengstenberg, and Kurtz, on this subject, entirely unsatisfactory and defective.
The Catholic church, both Greek and Latin, sees in the Eucharist not only a sacramenttim, in which God commnnicates a grace to believers, but at the same time, and in fact mainly, a sacrijici'uni, in which believers really offer to God that which is represented by the sensible elements. For this view also the church fathers laid the foundation, and it must be conceded they stand in general far more on the Greek and Roman Catholic than on the Protestant side of this question. The importance of the subject demands a preliminary explanation of the idea of sacrifice, and a clear discrimination of it? original Christian form from its later perversion by tradition.
The idea of sacrifice is the centre of all ancient reliirions, both the heathen and the Jewish. In Christianity it is fulfilled. For by His one perfect sacrifice on the cross Christ has entirely blotted out the guilt of man, and reconciled him with the righteous God. On the ground of this sacrifice of the eternal High Priest, believers have access to the throne of grace, and may expect their prayers and intercessions to be heard. With this perfect and eternally availing sacrifice the Eucharist stands in indissoluble connection. It is indeed originally a sacrament, and the main thing in it is that which we receive from God, not that which we give to God. The latter is only a consequence of the former ; for we can give to God nothing which we have not first received from him. But the Eucharist is the sacramentum of a sacrijlcium, the thankful celebration of the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross, and thebelievinsr participation or the renewed appropriation of the fruits of this sacrifice. In other words, it is a feast on a sacrifice. " As oft as ye do eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come."
504 THmi) PERIOD. A.D. 311-590,
The Eucharist is moreover, as the name itself implies, >n the part of the church a living and reasonable thank-offeri.g, wherein she presents herself anew, in Christ and on tlie ground of his sacrifice, to God with prayers and intercessions. For only in Christ arc our offerings acceptal)]e to God, and only through the continual showing forth and presenting of His merit can we expect our prayers and intercessions to be heard.
In this view certainly, in a deep symbolical and ethical sense, Christ is ofiered to God the Father in every believing prayer, and above all in the holy Supper ; i. e. as the sole ground of our reconciliation and acceptance. This is the deep truth which lies at the bottom of the Catholic mass, and gives it still such power over the religious mind.'
But this idea in process of time became adulterated with foreign elements, and transformed into the Graeco-Roman doctrine ot the sacrifice of the mass. According to this doctrine the Eucharist is an unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ hy the priesthood for the salvation of the living and the dead j so that the body of Christ is truly and literally offered every day and every houi-, and upon innumerable altars
* Freeman states the result of his investigation of the Biblical sacriflcial cultus and of the doctrine of the old CathoHc church on the eucharistic sacrifice, as follows, on p. 280 : " It is enough for us that the holy Eucharist is all that the ancient types foreshowed that it would be ; that in it we present ' memorially,' yet truly and with prevailing power, by the consecrating Hands of our Great High Priest, tlic wondrous Sacrifice once for all offered by Him at the Eucharistic Institution, consummated on the Cross, and ever since presented and pleaded by Him, Risen and Ascended, in Heaven ; that our material Gifts are identified with that awful Reality, and as such are borne in upon the Incense of His Intercession, and in His Holy Hands, into the True Holiest Place : that we ourselves, therewith, are borne in thither likewise, and abide in a deep mystery in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus ; that thus we have all manner of acceptance, — sonship, kingship, and priesthood unto God ; all our whole fife, in all its complex action, being sanctified and purified for such access, and abiding continually in a heavenly sphere of acceptableness and privilege. — Enough for us, again, that on the sacramental side of the mystery, we have beec thus privileged to give to God His own Gift of Himself to dwell in us, and we in Him ; — that we thereby possess an evermore renewedly dedicated being — strengthened with all Tiiight, and evermore made one with Him. Profoinilly reverencing Chi'ist's peculiar Presence in us and around us in the celebration of such awful mysteries we nevertheless take as the watchword of our deeply mysterious Eucharistic worsl p^ 'Puraum corda,' and ' Our life is hid with Christ in God.' "