elieves only in an individual
relation between Christ and separate persons, or in an "invisible
Church," does not understand the meaning of the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper, and can hardly be said to participate in it.

There are two views of this sacrament which the "plain man" has always
found much easier to understand than the symbolic view which is that
of our Church. One is that it is a miracle or magical performance, the
other is that it is a mere commemoration. Both are absolutely
destructive of the idea of a sacrament. The latter view, that of some
Protestant sects, was quite foreign to the early Church, so far as our
evidence goes; the former, it is only just to say, is found in many of
the Fathers, not in the grossly materialistic form which it afterwards
assumed, but in such phrases as "the medicine of immortality" applied
to the consecrated elements, where we are meant to understand that the
elements have a mysterious power of preserving the receiver from the
natural consequences of death.[328] But when we find that the same
writers who use compromising phrases about the change that comes over
the elements,[329] also use the language of symbolism, and remember,
too, that a "miracle" was a very different thing to those who knew of
no inflexible laws in the natural world from what it is to us, we
shall not be ready to agree with those who have accused the third and
fourth century Fathers of degrading the Lord's Supper into a magical
ceremony.

Most of the errors which have so grievously obscured the true nature
of this sacrament have proceeded from attempts to answer the question,
"How does the reception of the consecrated elements affect the inner
state of the receiver?" To those who hold the symbolic view, as I
understand it, it seems clear that the question of cause and effect
must be resolutely cast aside. The reciprocal action of spirit and
matter is the one great mystery which, to all appearance, must remain
impenetrable to the finite intelligence. We do not ask whether the
soul is the cause of the body, or the body of the soul; we only know
that the two are found, in experience, always united. In the same way
we should abstain, I think, from speculating on the effect of the
sacraments, and train ourselves instead to consider them as
divinely-ordered symbols, by which the Church, as an organic whole,
and we as members of it, realise the highest and deepest of our
spiritual privileges.

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