CHAPTER XIII THE COMMUNION SERVICE In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper one sees the life and thought of the Christian Church both at their best and at their worst. This is what one would naturally expect for if there be, as I believe, a fundamental error in the Christian scheme of redemption-its trust in superhuman agents-then in its most intense sacrament this error would find its boldest embodiment. At the same time, it is natural that here also the ethical and human elements should be manifested in their highest power. Indeed, it is characteristic of Judaism and Christianity throughout their evolution, that those ceremonies and doctrines which are of greatest social utility are at the same time most in need of radical revision. It has been inevitably so. The tracing of inner experiences to the action of superhuman agents has been an attempt at a philosophical or scientific explanation of the profounder sequences of the moral life. These deeper facts did not find a place in the order of everyday events; and they, therefore, were especially attributed to preternatural sources. Hence one may be almost certain that, wherever theology most defies the law of secondary causes, there lies hidden the deepest and tenderest of experiences. Thus it comes about that the heights of moral discipline have always hitherto been also the pinnacles of supernaturalism; and that dogmas, instead of being merely barren peaks raised by fantastic and empty fears, have been theoretical coverings to human insight at its clearest and human love at its purest. Denude the Church's forms and doctrines of their supernaturalism, and for the first time you will find their full significance and beauty. You remove a disguise which concealed the underlying mental and social truths. The chief points of theological contest are therefore now again the centres of interest for the scientific investigator of mind and morals and for the practical statesman who would reconstruct society. It thus becomes easy for us to understand why the lightnings of controversial wit have flashed incessantly for a thousand years over the communion-table. The illusion that the ethical power of this sacrament was due to the presence of a supernatural agency began early to take possession of men's imaginations. So deep was the sense of intimacy with Jesus Christ which was induced by participation in this rite, so helpful was it in allaying inward temptation and so quickening to enthusiasm for the fellowship of the Church, that already in the second century a belief arose in the actual presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine. Soon the idea grew that in the Communion Service a bloodless sacrifice was each time repeated. In the ninth century it began to be maintained that the bread and wine were actually transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The bread and wine, some thought, ceased to exist except in form, taste and smell; others thought that the substance remained, while the efficacy and power were changed. In 1215 transubstantiation became an article of faith in the Roman Church; in 1672 in the Greek. In the thirteenth session of the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, it was declared, "If anyone shall say that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine, together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the wine into blood, the species of bread and wine alone remaining, let him be anathema." Luther, less consistently, adopted the doctrine that the substance of the bread and wine continued together with the body and blood of Christ. Calvin declared that, accompanying the rite, a supernatural change took place in the soul of the communicant. No body of Christians has doubted the efficacious presence of a living Christ in some mysterious manner through the Eucharist. The Roman Church believes that Christ is entire in both bread and wine, and that accordingly only one kind need be administered to the laity. Witnesses have testified that they have seen the wafers bleed. How pitiable these errors of pre-scientific subtlety appear to-day! How hard to conceive that men should have once supposed the moral personality of Jesus to need any such support, or that the benefits of the Eucharist would be lessened even if the belief in the miraculous action of a Christ still energising fell away! Happily, this question was one of the few points of philosophical interest in which the Protestant reformers dared to differ from the Church of Rome. The principle underlying their rejection of transubstantiation formed. one intellectual stronghold of the Reformation, and has proved an armoury wherein weapons have been forged for the cause of naturalistic religion and of freedom of thought. On account of the supernaturalistic interpretation of its moral power, the Lord's Supper, as we know it to-day, has well-nigh ceased to be, in any sense of the word, a means of communion among men. It is inconceivable that there could be any religious rite devised-and undeniably there is no other in existence-from which purely human fellowship and the consciousness of human fellowship are so entirely banished. Those who communicate testify that by this sacrament their spirits are caught up and lifted wholly above all thought of any creature or any love of any creature, and are merged in the supernatural Christ. A person who has never communicated, but looks upon this sacrament with the eyes of an impartial student of religion, is amazed by the incongruity between the name "communion" and the reciprocal isolation of the communicants. Rich and poor, high-born and low, participate together in this form, on the tacit understanding that it commits them to no actual human fellowship. So much is this the case, that the word "communion," communion," as understood understood among Roman Catholics, indicates communion only with the Creator, and not with man. So bold also is the recognition of these facts of the case in the Church of England, that often in country parishes all the distinctions of social gradation are carefully preserved throughout this so-called communion. First the squire and his family come to the chancel-rail, then the parson's wife and family, then the local doctor and the schoolmaster, and so on down the scale to the peasants. It is quite clear that, if there be any sort of communion in such a celebration of the Lord's Supper, it is not of one human spirit with another in recognition of our common humanity. If it be argued that the Lord's Supper never pretended to be a communion of man with man, but only of each individual soul with its Maker and Redeemer, such a defence of it must be met by two irresistible arguments. Ethically, that God is no God-no true object of human worship and no deliverer from human sin-who can be approached in any other way than through human fellowship and human communion. Not only must one first be reconciled with one's brother, but the only gift which even then one may offer to one's God is the reconciliation achieved. This is the only gift acceptable to a deity worthy of worship. But again, communion presupposes reciprocity and some sort of equality, some form of giveand-take; whereas the spiritual discipline now practised at the Communion Service is one of absolute surrender of the finite creature to his infinite Creator-is annihilation of individuality, that a superhuman Christ alone may live in each. If it be retorted that, whether it be right or not to designate it as a communion, the Lord's Supper is the supreme sacrament of the moral life, the rejoinder must again be an ethical one, which of course can appeal only to him that hath ears to hear: the supreme need of man is spiritual communion with man, and the supreme sacrament of ethical religion must be one of human communion. Furthermore, the highest spiritual ecstasy compatible with individual self-consciousness is that of the spiritual love of equals needing and serving one another. And if one cites, in justification of the present character of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, its awful solemnity, which would be sacrificed if the ritual were to be pervaded with a sense of human fellowship, it must be protested that there is such a thing as an annihilating degree of solemnity, and that this is reached the instant the consciousness of human fellowship is overawed. Whatever obliterates man's selfhood is at enmity with him; and while the cultivation of that peculiar ecstasy which |