ween the seen and the unseen, and
sanctified the life of the believer from cradle to grave. The Seven
Sacraments of Christianity cover the whole of life, from the welcome of
Baptism to the farewell of Extreme Unction. They were established by
Occultists, by men who knew the invisible worlds; and the materials
used, the words spoken, the signs made, were all deliberately chosen and
arranged with a view to bringing about certain results.

At the time of the Reformation, the seceding Churches, which threw off
the yoke of Rome, were not led by Occultists, but by ordinary men of the
world, some good and some bad, but all profoundly ignorant of the facts
of the invisible worlds, and conscious only of the outer shell of
Christianity, its literal dogmas and exoteric worship. The consequence
of this was that the Sacraments lost their supreme place in Christian
worship, and in most Protestant communities were reduced to two, Baptism
and the Eucharist. The sacramental nature of the others was not
explicitly denied in the most important of the seceding Churches, but
the two were set apart from the five, as of universal obligation, of
which every member of the Church must partake in order to be recognised
as a full member.

The general definition of a Sacrament is given quite accurately, save
for the superfluous words, "ordained by Christ Himself," in the
Catechism of the Church of England, and even these words might be
retained if the mystic meaning be given to the word "Christ." A
Sacrament is there said to be: "An outward and visible sign of an inward
and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a
means whereby we receive the same and a pledge to assure us thereof."

In this definition we find laid down the two distinguishing
characteristics of a Sacrament as given above. The "outward and visible
sign" is the pictorial allegory, and the phrase, the "means whereby we
receive the" "inward and spiritual grace" covers the second property.
This last phrase should be carefully noted by those members of
Protestant Churches who regard Sacraments as mere external forms and
outer ceremonies. For it distinctly alleges that the Sacrament is really
a means whereby the grace is conveyed, and thus implies that without it
the grace does not pass in the same fashion from the spiritual to the
physical world. It is the distinct recognition of a Sacrament in its
second aspect, as a means whereby spiritual powers are brought in