is ordinarily supposed. What do we mean by the omnipresence of God the Father, and of the divine Spirit, and of the Logos, the Son of the Father, as the Mediator of the universe? When we think of the Son, coming forth from the bosom of the Father to become incarnate, is the bosom of the Father localised at some particular place in the universe? Wherever the Father is, there is the Son, and the divine Spirit. The bosom of the Father is an omnipresent bosom for the Son. When the Son became incarnate, he did not come from a place distant or near. He came forth from the Spirit world into the material world; from an illocal existence into a local existence. So when the Son returned to the bosom of the Father as the risen and glorified God Man, did he go to a particular locality of the universe? Is God's right hand limited to one spot in the heavens? Is not God's right hand everywhere, where God is? If this be so, the ascension was simply the departure of the glorified body of Christ out of the material world into the spiritual world, out from under the dominion of spacial relations into the freedom of spiritual and divine existence.

This is, indeed, attested by the abandonment of local ideas in the New Testament itself when allusion is made to sacred places. Christ himself is the altar, the temple, the most holy place, the propitiatory of the Christian dispensation, summing up in himself not only priesthood and sacrifice, but also altar and temple and all sacred places. The heav enly altar is Christ himself, and Christ is wherever God is.1

We have no means of knowing how spirit may be present in localities, when in itself it is free from special limitations; but we may know from the theophanies of Holy Scripture, and from the Incarnation of our Lord, that the divine may manifest itself in localities; and that is all that the sacramental union of the spiritual body of our Lord with the elements implies.

We do not define sacramental presence in the sense of omnipresence, any more than in the sense of multipresence; 'See Briggs, Messiah of the Apostles, p. 543.

but we do say that a divine presence may manifest itself in localities without thereby limiting itself to localities; it may manifest itself in sensuous form without thereby becoming sensuous itself. And, further, it may manifest itself in many places at the same time without thereby limiting itself to any one, or to all of those places. And when we say that Christ's glorified body may be present in the Eucharistic elements, we say that it may manifest itself in these sensible forms without thereby becoming itself sensible. This is what the distinction between substance and accidents was designed to set forth in the scholastic doctrine of the Eucharist. The accidents, the sensible forms, all that can be detected by the human senses, are the accidents of bread and wine. The substance in which these accidents inhere is no longer bread and wine, after the divine power is put forth in connection with the words of institution. These substances have disappeared, and the substance of the body and blood of Christ have taken their place, not thereby made sensuous to be discerned by the senses, but remaining spiritual substance to be discerned only by those who by regeneration have been made capable of spiritual discernment.

(c) The presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharistic elements is not a spacial presence of size or shape or any kind of extension. This is distinctly stated by the Council of Trent:

Wherefore it is most true, that as much is contained under either species as under both; for Christ whole and entire is under the species of bread, and under any part whatsoever of that species; likewise the whole is under the species of wine and under the parts thereof. (Sess. XIII, cap. 3.)

Every particle of bread conveys in it the whole Christ to the communicant; every drop of wine conveys the whole Christ to the one drinking it. And so it is impossible to think of any division of the substance of Christ's body and blood. The bread may be broken into any number of particles, but Christ's body is not broken. His body, whole and entire, is in every particle of that bread. The wine may be distributed

into an indefinite number of drops; but the whole Christ is in every drop. It matters not how great the loaf may be, or how small the particles may be, Christ, whole and entire, is in that loaf, great or small, or in that cup, if it be a drop of wine or an ocean of it. As St. Paul says:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? Seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread. (I Cor. x. 16-17.)

There are those who say that these distinctions deprive the heavenly flesh and blood of Christ of their reality as flesh and blood. Flesh and blood thus explained are, after all, only symbols figurative of real flesh and blood. That is, however, incorrect, for there is something more in flesh and blood than material substance. There is the power of life which departs at death, and there is nourishment. which is transformed into poisonous tendencies soon after death. Flesh is of value in sacrifice because of its nourishing quality. Bread has the same quality to a lesser degree. Blood is of value in sacrifice because the Scriptures regard it as the seat of life. It has quickening and invigorating power, and therefore is used not only in sacrifice, but also in ceremonies of purification as the greatest of all purifying agencies. No Church holds that the material substance of the flesh and blood of the Christ of the cross continued in his body which ascended from earth, reigns in heaven and is present in the Eucharist. But the Church in all ages has held that the substance of flesh and blood, in which the material properties or accidents inhere, persists in the spiritual body of Christ with properties suited to a heavenly state of existence. It is proper to name this spiritual substance flesh and blood, because it has the same relation to the spiritual body that flesh and blood have to the natural body; because there is unity and continuity between their two states of existence; and because they have the same effect upon the spiritual nature that flesh and blood have upon the material

nature-they impart life, reinvigoration, nourishment and growth to the children of God.

The presence of Christ in the elements is therefore a presence of spiritual substance, and not the presence of material substance; it is a presence entirely independent of the laws of matter. It is a Christophanic presence using sensible forms of matter merely for purposes of manifestation, and of mediating the transference of spiritual substance to human beings-spiritual natures, indeed, yet clothed with material substance and under the dominion of sensible forms, and subject to the laws of the material universe.

From this point of view we may see that the differences of opinion as to the relation of the elements of bread and wine to the body and blood of our Lord are not so great as they appear. The Roman Catholic says that the substance after the consecration of the elements is the substance of the body of Christ, the accidents are those of bread and wine. The substance of the body of Christ there present has none of the qualities of matter. All the qualities of matter, weight, impenetrability, size, shape, locality, magnitude; all the qualities of bread and wine discernible by the senses, of sight, touch, smell and taste, and "the quality natural to bread, of supporting and nourishing the body," remain in the accidents. And these "accidents cannot inhere in the body and blood of Christ," but "in a manner altogether superior to the order of nature, they subsist of themselves, inhering in no subject."

The Lutheran says that the body of Christ is in, with and under the forms of bread and wine. The Calvinist says that the body of Christ is sacramentally present with the elements of bread and wine. The chief differences are those of definition and disagreement as to the philosophical distinction of substance and accidents, rather than differences as to the realities. The Roman Catechism distinguishes the accidents of matter even more carefully from the body of Christ than does the Lutheran, although not so sharply as 1 Cat. Rom. II, iv. 38.

the Calvinist. But all agree that the body of Christ is sacramentally present with the elements, and all agree that it can only be spiritually discerned. All agree that the only thing the senses can detect, the only properties of matter present, are those of bread and wine, and those properties nourish the natural man at the same time that the body of Christ feeds the regenerate man.

5. Christophanic Presence

We may understand still better the results we have thus far attained, if we compare the three chief examples of sacramental communion reported in Holy Scripture: the communion of the Church of Corinth; the communion of the Twelve at the institution of the Lord's Supper in the upper room of Jerusalem on the night of the betrayal, reported in the Gospels; and the communion of the Israelites in the wilderness; all alike reported by St. Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians. One of the most eminent Roman Catholic theologians in Rome agreed with me that we must find a doctrine of Eucharistic presence that would satisfy the conditions of these three historic communions.

The eucharistic communion of the Church of Corinth, like all other Eucharists subsequent to the resurrection of our Lord, is a feeding upon the risen and glorified body of Christ. His heavenly body, the very one enthroned at the right hand of the Father, is given by the great High Priest, Christ himself, to his people at his table. The eucharistic communion of the apostles at the institution of the Eucharist was somewhat different. They fed upon the body of Christ before it was crucified, and so, before it was raised from the dead and glorified.

Bishop Gore' takes the position that this institution of the Eucharist was an anticipation of glory, akin to the Transfiguration. This opinion is due to a too narrow view of the Eucharist, as only a communion in the spiritual body of the risen and glorified Christ. If the original communion Body of Christ, p. 312.

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