of sins, was because this is the one universal craving of humanity. It has been observed by Professor Monier Williams that all the religions of the East, and all their superstitions, arise from a sense of sin and a craving for deliverance from it. Part of the work of the ministry, the beginning of it, is to deepen and maintain that sense of sin and of repentance; and the craving for forgiveness and guidance thus aroused must needs be satisfied in one way or another. If not in the right way, it will be satisfied in the wrong; if not by direct communion with Christ and the Holy Spirit, then by weak human substitutes, and by mortal and fallible priests. But it is the glory of the Ministry, as the witness to the great Evangelical truths of our faith, to point men and women to Christ Himself, to enable them to rely on His words and assurances, and to trust His Spirit. That can only be done by the full and free preaching of His Word, by throwing our whole energies into the study of the Scriptures, and by so entering into their message and their spirit ourselves, as to be able to impress it on the hearts of our people. In proportion as the Clergy do

that will they fulfil the commission of this text, and shall we help to maintain in our Church and in our nation that true sense of sin, and that manly and womanly faith in Christ's forgiveness and redemption, which were won back for us at such a price at the Reformation.

II

THE SACRIFICIAL ASPECT OF THE HOLY COMMUNION

It may, I think, be observed with thankfulness that, during recent discussions, much approach has been made towards agreement between authorities in the various Schools of thought in the Church. In the Fulham Conference, a statement of the late Mr. Dimock on the subject, somewhat amended in discussion, received the assent of all Members of the Conference, except in respect to four words. That statement was that, "as one aspect of the ordinance, there may be truly said to be a submitting to the Divine view of the Sacrifice of the Death of Christ [in representation, not re-presentation], not as making, but as having

made once for all, the perfect propitiation for the sins of the world." The four words in this statement which were not accepted, and which in fact were not practically discussed, are the bracketed words "in representation, not Re-presentation." But some subsequent statements by Canon Gore, in his book entitled "The Body of Christ," would seem to show that he is substantially in harmony with Mr. Dimock on the point involved in those words. Thus he says, on p. 175, "We have thus a

solemn commemoration before God of the sacrificial death of Christ. But the death, or the humiliation which belongs to the death, is commemorated only, not renewed or repeated. When the Fathers speak of an 'immolation' ―i.e. a fresh sacrificing of Christ in the Eucharist, they are referring only to the symbolism of the sacrament, not to its inward reality; and this, in the language of the Church taken as a whole, is quite unmistakable, and continues to be so as late as the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas." In illustration, Canon Gore quotes these statements from St. Thomas Aquinas : "It is called a sacrifice with reference to what is past, inasmuch as it is com

memorative of the Lord's Passion, which was the true Sacrifice ;" and again, "It is a repre

sentative image of Christ's Passion, as the altar represents the Cross on which he was immolated." We have, therefore, the admission, on the part of the most learned member of the Evangelical School, that one aspect of the Eucharist is that of a representation, to the Divine view, of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and, on the other hand, a clear statement, by so learned and able a member of the opposite School as Canon Gore, that the representation of our Lord's sacrifice in the Eucharist is not a re-presentation. In other words, these two representative Divines agree in the statement of St. Chrysostom, quoted by Canon Gore, that "we offer, but as making for ourselves a memorial of His Death...... We make always the same sacrifice, or rather we effect a memorial of the Sacrifice."

We may also welcome thankfully some further observations of Bishop Gore, in which he says (p. 176), that "the Eucharist is not in the stricter sense of the term propitiatory. It is certainly in accordance with the language of the New Testament to reserve this term for

the initial act by which Christ gave humanity a new standing before God, and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers." He observes that Bishop Jeremy Taylor allows that the Eucharist "is ministerially, by application, an instrument propitiatory; and says that "the use of the word propitiatory of the Eucharist, or the refusal to use it, may thus be said to be a mere matter of language." But Bishop Gore adds that "there are deep reasons of religion, as well as Scriptural authority, to move us to restrict its application; and of course still deeper reasons for guarding the truth, which the restriction expresses, of the uniqueness and all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Calvary."

We cannot, I think, but thankfully recognise that these various statements mark a considerable degree of approximation-it might even be said, of practical agreement, between Mr. Dimock and Bishop Gore, as to the view to be taken of the Eucharist as a commemoration and representation of the Sacrifice of our Lord. But another important statement, in the same direction, has been made by a conspicuous representative of the High Church view on