their
normal condition bread and wine are food-stuffs, expressive of the
divine ideas of nutritive objects, objects fitted for the building up of
bodies. The new idea is that of the Christ nature and life, fitted for
the building up of the spiritual nature and life of man. That is the
change of substance; the object remains unchanged in its "accidents,"
its physical material, but the subtle matter connected with it has
changed under the pressure of the changed idea, and new properties are
imparted by this change. They affect the subtle bodies of the
participants, and attune them to the nature and life of the Christ. On
the "worthiness" of the participant depends the extent to which he can
be thus attuned.

The unworthy participant, subjected to the same process, is injuriously
affected by it, for his nature, resisting the pressure, is bruised and
rent by the forces to which it is unable to respond, as an object may be
broken into pieces by vibrations which it is unable to reproduce.

The worthy partaker, then, becomes one with the Sacrifice, with the
Christ, and so becomes at one with also, united to, the divine Life,
which is the Father of the Christ. Inasmuch as the act of Sacrifice on
the side of form is the yielding up of the life it separates from others
to be part of the common Life, the offering of the separated channel to
be a channel of the one Life, so by that surrender the sacrificer
becomes one with God. It is the giving itself of the lower to be a part
of the higher, the yielding of the body as an instrument of the
separated will to be an instrument of the divine Will, the presenting of
men's "bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God."[346]
Thus it has been truly taught in the Church that those who rightly take
part in the Eucharist enjoy a partaking of the Christ-life poured out
for men. The transmuting of the lower into the higher is the object of
this, as of all, Sacraments. The changing of the lower force by its
union with the loftier is what is sought by those who participate in it;
and those who know the inner truth, and realise the fact of the higher
life, may in any religion, by means of its sacraments, come into fuller,
completer touch with the divine Life that upholds the worlds, if they
bring to the rite the receptive nature, the act of faith, the opened
heart, which are necessary for the possibilities of the Sacrament to be
realised.

The Sacrament of Marriage shows out the mar