When we speak of our Lord as the Divine Victim when we describe in Sacrificial language his Person and his work, we are using words of immemorial antiquity in the history of religion. The primary reference of this language is always to certain ceremonies of public worship which were enjoined by the religions of the ancient world.

For our present purpose however we need not do more than refer briefly to the offerings-mainly though not exclusively of animals-of which we read in the pages of the Old Testament. Until recent times it has been generally believed, that the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant played an important party on the gradual revelation of God to his People. But there are not those who challenge this belief and consequently deny that this element in Jewish religion was really typical of our Lord and his work.

In answer to this challenge we can point to the broad fact, that the upward progress of Judaism was marked by an ever increasing appreciation of the worship of the Temple and an ever deepening devotion to its services. If it is alleged that this passionate loyalty to the Temple and its services was a mere unintelligent conservatism or an unspiritual preoccupation with the externals of religion we have in the Psalter a sufficient refutation of all such imputations.

But though the religious value of the sacrificial system has been much disparaged there is no dispute as to the nature of the worship offered in the Temple. It is universally agreed that it consisted in certain sacred actions, concerned with the killing of animals and the ceremonial treatment of their remains.

In great contrast with what took place in the Temple were the services conducted in the synagogues, for there were of a purely verbal character. Regarded at first as an altogether subsidiary institution, it was only after our Lord's fulfilment of the Ancient Law, and Israel's rejection of him, that the synagogue with its service of prayers, psalms, scripture readings, and sermons was destined to provide the sole form of public worship in use among the Jews.

To say this is not to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the synagogue as an institution of secondary importance. Our Lord, as we know, took part in the worship both of the Temple and of the synagogues. His example therefore sanctions the use of both the verbal and the ceremonial mode of worship. But it was the latter which he expressly ordained and instituted in his Church. In the solemn hours before his Passion it was a sacred action that our Lord performed and charged his apostles to repeat.

Both as a sacred action and also in the circumstances and terminology of its institution the Eucharist was unmistakeably associated with the age-long tradition of sacrifice. In the worship of the New Covenant as of the Old, sacrifice was still to hold the central place. The Church, accordingly has always described the Eucharist as a Sacrifice, and used sacrificial language in connexion with it; though for many centuries there was not much discussion of the theological implications of the words employed. To this day no part of the Church has formulated any complete definition of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and Catholic theologians have differed in certain particulars when treating of it. From time to time it has seemed good to ecclesiastical authorities to deny various erroneous opinions which have gained some currency; e.g., our XXXIst Article denies at least one such opinion. But apart from views which have been condemned as erroneous a considerable latitude of interpretation has always existed in the Church. This circumstance suggests a practical conclusion which may be stated at this point:-namely that it is infinitely more important that the Holy Sacrifice should be constantly offered and its offering attended by devout worshippers than that hose worshipper should be of one mind about every detail of its theological implications.

Few sings of the times are indeed more encouraging than the immense increase in the number of the churches where the Holy sacrifice of the Mass is offered every Sunday. According to the latest figures these now amount to 11,405. That is to say that during the ninety years which have elapsed since the beginning of the Catholic Revival what was once the rare exception has become the all but universal rule.

Encouraging as are these figures, we must not assume that the Holy Sacrifice is yet restored to its rightful place in English worship. There are still only 1,280 churches in which the daily Offering is made; and we know that in the majority of instances it is only in churches where Mass is said daily that any considerable proportion of the faithful assist at it on Sundays.

Now our aims are essentially practical, and I would venture to suggest that there are ways in which very many of us can set forward the restoration of the Lord's own Service to its due pre-eminence in public worship. This is not the time to dwell further on this aspect of my subject, but before leaving it I would like to commend to your notice a small book published by the Society of SS. Peter and Paul. It is called the "Worship of the Synagogue" or "How to Restore the Mass," by James McArthur.

II

Our first thought when we consider the Divine Victim must always be directed towards his greater glory-that we and others may be led to worship him in spirit and in truth. But since there has been much discussion in the past about the theological implications of our worship: since our right to our belief and practice is vehemently assailed at the present time, we are bound to speak in controversy where we would fain be silent in adoration.

Her again our starting point must be the sacrifices actually offered in the Jewish Temple. These sacrifices differed in certain particulars from one another, but the essential element was the same in all, namely the dedication of life to God. It is true that this dedication was preceded by the death of the victim-but it was the dedication of life, not its destruction, which was the raison d'être of the entire sacrificial system. With this dedicated life the worshipper believed himself to be in some way identified, and so the sacrificial system was the means by which Israel expressed and renewed its communion with its God.

It was this twofold idea of dedication and identification which constituted the significance of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, and not, as has been often supposed, the radically different notions of penal death and substitution. It was because the ancient sacrificial system had this significance, that it was the type of Christ's atoning work and the foreshadowing of the way of worship he instituted in his Church. Further, the intimate connexion between the Eucharist and the Cross is made very clear in the New Testament, and has been maintained by all Christian theologians ever since.

It is, for example, stated very plainly in the first of the long exhortations in our Liturgy which bids us "render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God our Heavenly Father for that he hath given his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ not only to die for us but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that Holy Sacrament." Now the Cross is at once God's gift and Christ's offering, and the same is true of the Mass. Each is an act of the same Person; and so Mass is not simply a sacred action which we perform in obedience to Christ's command, but a divine action which he performs in virtue of his office as our great High Priest.

In emphasizing the connexion between the Altar and the Cross, our Prayer Book agrees with Catholic theology of every age; in leaving out of sight the further connexion between the Eucharistic Sacrifice and "the Lamb standing as it had been lain," it reflects the outlook of the sixteenth century. For the period of the Reformation, like the Middle Ages, tended to ignore an aspect of the truth that had been prominent in early times and was destined later again to occupy the attention of theologians. It will be convenient however to consider first the relation of the Eucharist to the Cross, and then to go on to consider its relation to the heavenly Offering. Catholic theology claims that this relation is so profound and fundamental as to amount in some sense to identity. So our inquiry resolves itself into an investigation of what constitutes this very close connexion.

The doctrine of the Atonement has already been before this Congress, and for my present purpose I would only call attention to one of its many aspects and to one conclusion which emerges from the very varied treatment it has received from theologians. Among the great Catholic writers who have expounded this doctrine there is a very remarkable consensus of opinion that its essential element resides in the moral and spiritual perfection of our Lord's life and death viewed as an offering of obedient love and homage to his Father's will. Such was the teaching of St. Anselm. Never was it expressed more clearly and tersely than by St. Bernard, when he said Non mors, sed voluntas pacuit sponte morientis.

Quite recently the Abbé Rivière (and, I suppose, no living theologian can speak with greater authority on this subject) has said "Where according to them (i.e., the better Catholic theologians) must one look for the meaning of the Passion and the formal reason of its redemptive worth? Nowhere else but in the interior dispositions of the Saviour's soul and the infinite dignity of his Person." Few, if any, of these theologians have approached the Atonement primarily from the point of view of sacrifice, and that makes it all the more significant that they have found its essential element precisely in that dedication of life which Old Testament scholars have taught us to be the essential meaning of the typical sacrifices of the ancient dispensation.

The importance of this conclusion gains in force when it is remembered that those who first impugned the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice, held a theory of the Atonement which differed fundamentally from that of Catholic theologians. For the Protestant Reformers found the essential element of the Atonement in the penal character of the sufferings inflicted on our Lord, rather than in the dispositions with which he endured those sufferings. The Cross in their teaching was essentially a punishment and Christ a substituted Victim punished in our stead. Thus in place of dedication and identification they put death and substitution. Not altogether unnaturally therefore they were disinclined to admit any real identity between Christ's offering on the Cross and at the Altar.

The basis on which modern Protestants attack the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is more obscure. There are probably still some who believe the doctrines of Luther or of Grotius, others are disciples of Abelard or Socinus. But whether they are conservatives or modernists we have the right to ask that before they denounce the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass they will tell us what the believe about sacrifice in general and the sacrifice of the Cross in particular.

For those, however, who believe that the essential element in the Sacrifice of Calvary consists in the interior dispositions of the Crucified rather than in the sufferings inflicted upon him, the relation of the Mass to the Cross becomes much easier to apprehend. For the Mass is the act of the same Person who made on Calvary an act of perfect consecration to the will of God-Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. In the Mass there is the same perfect self dedication to God's loving purpose for mankind that characterises every action of him whose redemptive work was summarised and consummated on the Cross.

This does not mean that what happens at the Altar is a repetition of what happened at Calvary. We do not think of a series of redemptive Acts, but rather of the one supreme Act of our redemption made present for us by him and in him and through him whose Act it was. It is the presence of the Divine Victim, once slain but now alive for evermore, which unites the Altar with the Cross. Unlike other past events, the Cross is not separated from us by an unbridged gulf of time. In the Eucharist our Lord sets us free from the limitation of time and gives us all he is and all that he has done for us. The purpose of this obliteration of time is not that we may become mere spectators on the hill of Calvary, but rather that we may be enabled to unite ourselves with the perfect offering of obedient love and homage there made on our behalf. For though it has recently received a one-sided and misleading emphasis, the oblation of ourselves, our souls and bodies is an aspect of the Eucharistic Sacrifice of great devotional importance; and we cannot be too thankful that it has received verbal expression in our Liturgy.

The same considerations which help us to appreciate the relation of the Altar to the Cross, will help us also to give due weight to the connexion that Catholic theology finds between the Eucharist and Christ's heavenly work. For no one, I suppose, would dispute that our Lord's obedience to the will of God and love for sinful man is as perfect in Heaven as it was upon the Cross. Our Lord's heavenly work is therefore a fulfilment of that foreshadowing of perfect self-dedication which makes the sacrifices of the Old Covenant typical of him and of his work. If those sacrifices are interpreted in the detail of their ceremonial as well as in their fundamental significance, then Our Lord's Ascension into Heaven corresponds with the High Priest's entry into the Holy of Holies there to make the oblation of the Victim's blood. As a modern representative of an important school of French theologians has said:-"The ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven fulfils the sacrificial rite of the oblation of the blood . . . The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ continues eternally in heaven . . . In spite of the change in the outward conditions of the Victim it is ever the same homage of perfect religion rendered by the Incarnate Word of his Father. It is ever the same and one Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ infinitely acceptable to the divine majesty."

Now just as the Eucharist bridges the interval of time which separates us from Calvary, so also it enables us to ascend in heart and mind to union with our great High Priest in Heaven. There is thus a fundamental unity between the Cross, our Lord's Ascended work, and the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. In each is manifested Christ's perfect dedication to his Father's will, as revealed to us in acts of perfect love towards mankind.

So far, we have dwelt mainly on that aspect of the divine Action, which fulfils the dedication of life, typified in the ancient sacrificial system. But the Divine Victim entirely pleasing in his Father's sight is also the Means by which his Church may enter into communion with God. For the dim foreshadowing of communion under the Old Law is fulfilled in the Christian's reception of the Holy Sacrament. It is the two divinely ordained ceremonies of consecration and communion which together constitute the Mass. As Bishop Gore has pointed our, "that the sacrifice is completed in communion is the effective witness of all liturgies." With this witness the best Catholic theology has always agreed. Certainly it is a statement which no Catholic at the present time is likely to dispute. For though the consecration may be said to be the specific act of sacrifice because communion depends upon it, yet the whole idea of sacrifice necessarily involves communion. It is significant that St. Thomas, when speaking of sacrifice in general, said "Sacrifices are properly so called when something is done in regard to things offered to God . . . as that bread is broken and eaten and blessed."

The title of my paper has lead me to devote the time at my disposal to the consideration of the Sacrifice of the Mass from one particular point of view. It is a commonplace that there is a sense in which we may rightly speak of the Priest offering, the Priest consecrating and giving communion, but only because in a deeper sense it is our Lord who offers, our Lord who consecrates and gives communion. This is not a distinction which involves more than a difference of method in approaching the subject, and in confining myself almost entirely to the latter way of approach, I do not wish to be understood to underrate the value and importance of the former. Indeed I would submit that the more fully this subject can be considered under all its manifold aspects, the greater is the probability of misunderstandings being removed and agreement being reached among men of good will.

Such full consideration is specially needed at the present time, when there are many who stand at the parting of the ways. For it is now being realised with increasing clearness that a Catholic Christology requires Catholic faith and practice as regards the Mass. It is well known moreover that the most advanced Biblical criticism has confirmed from a totally non-Catholic standpoint the claim that Catholic Eucharistic doctrine is essentially the same as that of the writers of the New Testament.

Naturally it takes time for truth, which comes in a new guise or from unexpected quarters, to gain acceptance, and not least when it seems likely to disturb old prejudices. So we cannot be surprised that there are those who halt between two opinions and hold as a leader of one section of the Evangelical party so aptly puts it, an "interims theologie."

But sooner or later they will have to make up their minds between Catholicism and some form of Socinianism or Ritschlianism. It is our part as Anglo-Catholics to try and help them to make the choice for which we pray, by doing all we can to clear away whatever hinders the truth from shining forth in all its beauty and attractiveness.

For the offering of the Holy Sacrifice makes its own appeal to the human heart-an appeal which in countless instances is well-nigh irresistible. Again and again the words of the Divine Victim prove true of the Mass as of the Cross-I when I am lifted up will draw all men unto me.

Project Canterbury