December 14, 1856
The passage: Everything comes from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
Last Sunday I spoke of the Scriptures as explaining Sacraments, and of our Sacraments as throwing light back on the Scriptures’ method and hope. But since my aim was to find the character and virtue of the Eucharist itself, I could not stay with general considerations. The Red Sea, the Manna, the Rock were sacraments of God, as Paul taught; the principle they showed might be universal, and every event in the history might be a sign of the same unseen Presence to the Prophets. But Scripture also tells of the special institution of Sacrifices. These had become associated with a Eucharistic service supposed to carry a sacrificial meaning, and I could not avoid asking whether it did. Treating Scripture as the continuous history of a gradual discovery of God’s nature and purposes, we are driven to conclude that a time came when the sacrifices of the Law had done their work, and one complete sacrifice was offered once for all. The Eucharist, then, must be a thanksgiving for that complete sacrifice, not the completion of something left unfinished. But Paul tells us every sacrifice implies communion with the Being to whom it is offered; and if the very purpose of the Incarnation and Death was to establish complete communion between men and their Father in Heaven, then the feast celebrating the sacrifice’s accomplishment asserts only the beginning of a communion — real now, but not to reach its full fruit until all evil resisting God’s righteousness and love is entirely conquered.
There is another aspect of the subject I did not touch last week. The thought of sacrifice at once suggests a priest. Those who take the Eucharist as completing an unfinished sacrifice naturally take its minister as a priest offering that sacrifice. But how does this notion survive in a Church which asserts so vehemently that the sacrifice is complete? How can a prayer declaring that Christ made a “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction… for the sins of the whole world” be read only by one we call a priest? Why do we allow no one else to consecrate the elements? It is no answer to say that “priest” is merely a contraction of “presbyter.” We must explain why we reserve this office to the Presbyter, what dignity we do or do not attach to that name, and whether — and how — his office resembles the priest’s under the Old Covenant.
These questions are suggested by today’s Collect and Epistle, as last Sunday’s subject was suggested by that day’s. I hope, as before, that considering two topics together will lessen our difficulties rather than increase them. The subject of the Christian Ministry may seem more perplexing joined to the Eucharist, but the Service may in the end help us appreciate our obligations and our powers; and understanding our work may help us appreciate the worth of this Sacrament, and how it bears on the life of individuals and of society.
I did not take my text from this morning’s Epistle, though its opening words tempted me. If I could explain in what sense Paul bids the Corinthians count him and Apollos “ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God,” I might lead you to the heart of the subject. But that explanation, I believe, comes better from Paul’s second epistle to the same church, where he more fully shows his sense of the responsibilities and terrors of his office, and more fully compares the Minister of the Old Testament with the Minister of the New. In the passage I have chosen he lays down principles that apply to the whole subject — the meaning of the Eucharist as much as the meaning of the Ministry.
His first assertion, “All things are of God,” belongs no more to the New Testament than the Old — it is the characteristic Hebrew maxim on which the ancient economy stood and the whole Bible is built. But it was no truism: it cuts at a whole scheme of religion familiar to Corinthians bred in heathenism, and not strange to Jews either, however their own oracles witnessed against it. How men might worship one God or many, please or propitiate them, or become gods themselves — these were the questions priests of every nation strove to answer, and philosophers too. The different methods of prayer, sacrifice, and purification that different priests invented or sanctioned, meeting different calamities, marked the character of each nation; they multiplied with new wants and new sins, provoked rival experiments and popular reactions, and drew civil rulers to use them for their own ends or to oppose them when they threatened civil society. The great proposition “all things are of God” might seem to underlie all these attempts and justify them. In the form the Jewish history gives it, it instead undermined them all: man’s attempts to reach God are hopeless; God declares himself as seeking out men made in his own image, claiming them as servants, and making them aware of a relationship higher than a servant’s. But this idea was, if anything, more unintelligible to the pharisaic Jew than to the heathen. Heathen gods might be capricious and full of human passion, but at least hinted at friendship and sympathy with their worshippers. All the Pharisee learned from his holy men was that the God of Abraham stood apart from such fellowship, dwelling in inaccessible darkness, issuing written decrees men were merely to obey. Since these decrees were hard to keep and terrible punishments threatened those who failed, his priests, like the heathen’s, were to devise means of averting the tyrant’s wrath. The Pharisee boasted that he had divine authority for these means, that God had favored his race with the knowledge of how to conciliate him — but he lied, and knew he lied. He could not destroy the meaning of Scripture at its foundation and still make it his guide; and it was not, in fact, his guide, however he worshipped its letter. As our Lord told him, he substituted the traditions of the Elders for God’s commandments — traditions that taught him not how to draw near to God, but the arts of hiding from God, of silencing the Holy One of Israel so as not to be interrupted in his course of baseness and falsehood.
Paul destroys the edifice of religious notions raised by the Rabbinical schools — which he had once delighted to study — just as much as that raised over centuries in the heathen world with its incongruous additions from priests, kings, and people, when he asserts that “all things are of God” and explains this by adding, “who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” Here God is declared the great Reconciler, entering into communion with men in the Son in whom he had originally created them, using his law, his judgments, his terrors, as instruments to bring the wills of creatures who had revolted from him back into union with his own. This purpose — removing every barrier to communion between man’s spirit and the Father of spirits, every vision of wrath that might make him unwilling to draw near, every thought that some compensation or merit was needed before he returned — was accomplished, Paul declares, when God raised his Son, who had borne our death, out of the grave, and exalted him in our nature to his right hand.
On these two clauses the third depends: “he has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation.” Paul could conceive of a Christian Minister only as one sent to testify that all things are of God, and that God has reconciled us to himself in Jesus Christ. It follows from the first proposition that the Minister must regard his authority as received from God. Paul spoke here as a Jew: no Jew could think he held any office — whether offering sacrifice in the Temple, making its curtains, leading and lawgiving, or serving in the humblest rank of the humblest tribe — except by God’s appointment, from whom he would also receive the wisdom, courage, and strength the office required. Had the priest not been taught to see himself as chosen and clothed by God for his service at the altar, he would have been the one exception in the whole commonwealth — and a perilous one, since of all men he could do the most mischief by setting up an independent authority and losing the sense of being under government, and had the greatest temptation to confound himself with God, even to make himself a god. It was necessary that he above all be fenced round with statutes to show he was not his own master. And yet his very function made it a contradiction to think of himself as the servant of men — an opinion he was likely enough to fall into, with the result that he became their slave and their tyrant by turns, or both at once.
Did Paul, then, transfer to the new economy what he had learned in the old? That is scarcely the right way to put it. He rather learned the true position of the Old Testament Minister by feeling himself called to be a Minister of the New. Often as he had read Exodus and Leviticus, he probably never understood what was written of Aaron the Priest until he felt his own divine call to be an Apostle.
To deliver such a message, unless God himself had committed it to him, would have seemed to Paul the strangest, most monstrous assumption. For was it not a message of reconciliation from God to man — that God had actually reconciled men to himself in Christ? How could he declare that reconciliation without believing himself an ambassador from God? How could he declare that all things were of God without owning his own words as of God?
Paul’s repeated assertions that he was an Apostle not of man nor by man vouch for this conviction, so far as he himself was concerned. But was this message to fall silent once he left the earth? Then it had been false in his mouth, for he had proclaimed a permanent reconciliation and taught that the Church exists to testify of it. Or was every future preacher to see a blinding light and be led sightless into a city, as Paul had, that light and blindness having told him that the One he persecuted had taken man’s nature and become King over men forever? Must not all offices among men still be divine offices, as before? Did not the revelation of this King show under whom such offices were held, by whom each person was called to the one meant for him, and to whom he was responsible for the duties entrusted to him? Did it not behoove anyone doing his work faithfully to confess where his trust came from, and to seek strength from the One who laid it on him, that it not be abused? Was this obligation not heaviest on those who preached a Gospel of Reconciliation? If there is no such Gospel, then the fancy that men are called to preach it in any age is an equally gross fiction. But suppose the Gospel real, for all times — the proclamation of a Living Person in whom God is united to men and converses with them — then it would be strange if men were not called to set it forth; and the danger then lies in men supposing that their own gifts or wit make them its proclaimers, rather than that they are, as much as Paul was, ambassadors of God who must give account to him whether they have testified truly or falsely, whether they have shown by word and act that all things are of him, and that he has reconciled them to himself through Jesus Christ.
Paul never suggests that the difference between the Old and New Testament ministry is that one was appointed by God and the other not, that one would last from age to age and the other not, or that the one could call itself ministers of God while the other were merely ministers of some society that had chosen them. What he does say is that the ministers of the Old Testament were largely ministers of a letter written and graven in stone, while those of the New are ministers of the Spirit; that the one is a ministry of condemnation, the other of righteousness; that the one exhibits God’s glory under a veil, the other presents it openly as revealed in Christ. These are great distinctions: they point, first, to a discipline preparatory to the full manifestation of God in the Word made flesh and dying for men; second, to a reconciliation grounded on that manifestation, and to the gift of a spirit of righteousness who makes men inwardly righteous and fits them for communion with a righteous God. They point, therefore, to truths fully embodied in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: the truth of a perfected atonement for the whole world; the truth that men are invited to share the holy life that dwelt fully in Christ; and the truth that their spirits are admitted, in him, to the knowledge of his Father and theirs.
I want to draw your attention to this connection between the Christian Ministry and the Christian Festival. It is expressed in the practice reserving administration of the Eucharist to the Presbyter, the Deacon’s highest honor being only to assist. If this rule exalted the priest above other ministers and the congregation, if it warranted the inventions by which priests in every age have bound and enslaved sin-stricken consciences, if it confused the minister of the Old Testament with that of the New so as to reduce the latter to the former’s condition — then no length of prescription, no weight of tradition, could justify a Church in keeping it, since it would clash with eternal principles which prescription must yield to. But if it testifies that the utmost a Christian minister can do is assert the reconciliation of God with men already accomplished in Christ, and on the strength of that fact beseech them to be reconciled; if it declares that no scheme priests devise for reconciling men to God can avail, and that to suggest one is sin and treason; if it shows how the New Testament priest’s function is more glorious than the Old’s, because he heralds what the other only showed to be necessary and promised — then I think we can understand why this old bond between the Presbyter’s office and the Eucharist was not burned away in the fires of the Reformation, and why it may endure fires hotter still. Of this much I am sure: there is no more significant, and often more terrible, reminder to our consciences of the purpose of our existence, of the Gospel we are to deliver, of how paltry our words are to convey it, of the true intercourse God holds with the heart and conscience while we are at best instruments for removing — or, just as easily, for creating — obstacles to hearing his voice. To be taught that the very highest act we can perform is one in which we utter nothing of our own, in which we are merely servants, is the greatest humiliation to priestly arrogance, and the greatest lesson I can imagine about the whole of our work.
This lesson has not sufficed; we have set up our own pretensions in spite of it, even turned it into an apology for them — I do not wish to deny this. We need to consider how we fell into this error in the past, and how it may recur now, that we may not be high-minded but fearful, relying on nothing in our circumstances or in ourselves, but on God, who governs our circumstances and will govern us if we do not fight against him. I will not now speak of notions about the Ministry and Eucharist in other Churches that have hindered them from witnessing God’s reconciliation — how gravely the Romish doctrine of an uncompleted sacrifice has affected the whole life of Christendom, throwing it back not only into Judaism but into Heathenism, giving rise to an ethics that destroys the distinction of right and wrong and a politics that excuses any tyranny or anarchy — I feel this strongly, but will not dwell on it. The Laudian doctrine of the Priesthood and the Eucharist, however — a native English formation, spared some of the wider scheme’s consequences by English civil conditions — shows no less instructive and alarming an example of how the most blessed institutions can be robbed of their character and turned to mischief if we forget the scriptural reasons for their existence. For this school, the fact that the Eucharist cannot be administered without a Presbyter became the foundation of all its teaching: their great business was to maintain that certain blessings pass through the hands of lawful ministers in this Sacrament, of which those seeking them through other hands or other ways are deprived. Men’s minds were thus fixed on an object to be attained and the means and agents through which to attain it. The old inversion was renewed: not God declaring that he had reconciled men to himself, but men, by a certain process, reconciling God to themselves. The old consequences followed too: the priest was regarded as the depository of the grace he transmitted; the ordinance was no longer a witness of direct communication between men and the living God through the ascended Mediator, but forced itself on men’s notice, eclipsing the sun instead of being a transparent medium for its rays. I speak of the theory as it appeared in controversial books and in acts that startled those who never read such books. God forbid I should say that men who held this theory did not themselves often receive a true life through the Sacrament — that is exactly my point. We cannot shut out the light of God’s countenance from men however we try; Sacraments are stronger than sacramental systems; suffering and sinful men turn to the one while others merely debate and declaim about the other. But this does not stop such sacramental systems from being mischievous and accursed things, even though God comes forth himself to counteract the denial of himself to which they might lead.
I believe he did come forth in the days of Charles and Laud. The strength of the protest against their system lay in the deep and true conviction of their opponents that God is living and reigning, that he has not delegated his powers to any body of ministers or shut up his grace in ceremonies. That conviction, together with the assurance that a minister’s business was to proclaim good news about him to men, called forth the energy and courage that at last proved invincible. The Puritans advanced as men who could not be resisted, because they were asserting the presence of a Living Being against those setting up offices and ordinances that are dead without him, appealing to consciences that recognize his voice and no other. But it was soon proved, to the satisfaction of those who had struggled bravely and usefully against our priestcraft, that new Presbyter was only old Priest writ large — that ministers making no claim to sacramental powers might bind men’s spirits as tightly and cruelly as those who thought themselves sole possessors of such powers; that men who believed their function was only to preach the word might substitute for it hard dogmas and hard practices that misrepresent God’s character and make themselves objects of faith in his place. For here the old error intrudes again: all things are no longer referred to God; the Gospel is no longer a message that he has reconciled the world to himself, but a message of how certain men may, by certain acts of faith, achieve reconciliation with him; and divines must then determine the quality and degree of those acts, define the ways men may approach God, and ascertain that they are at peace with him. Whatever such ministers call themselves, once they take up this office they must cultivate all the arts of priestcraft.
Here again we see how inseparably the Eucharist is bound up with the Ministry, and how narrow or lowering notions of the one affect the other. When the Gospel ministers preach is no longer a message to mankind that God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ, but only a message of how certain men may, by certain methods, gain peace of conscience and the rewards of Heaven, then this Sacrament inevitably becomes the badge of a sect, a mark of who its true and spiritual members are — not God’s seal on our union with Christ, not his invitation to hold communion with him. My text gives the one basis for a Church, a Eucharist, a Ministry. Change it for any other, and no device will keep the Church from sinking into a narrow, artificial corporation; the Eucharist, first into a mere expression of human feeling and thanksgiving, then into a means of procuring the blessings we are to be thankful for; the Minister, first into a mere representative of a society’s convictions or desires, then into either an organ of its prejudices or the founder of a sect that separates from it.
In modern times, people weary of the oppressions of a body calling itself the Universal Church on one side, and of the sects tearing nations to pieces on the other, have conceived the notion that if men could shake off all associations with the priesthood as a divine institution, and simply elect officers to perform whatever devotional services satisfy their consciences or religious impulses, a Church might grow up suited to our time, or some better time to come. Those proposing such an experiment deserve respectful attention; their plans probably embody useful hints and devout suggestions, and will certainly expose evils eating into society now, sins of Churchmen and statesmen that must be repented of if society is not to perish. The more they shame us, the more grateful we should be. But if they lead us to think a Church can be reconstructed without the doctrine that all things are of God at its foundation, without regarding all offices as more — not less — divine than we have regarded them, I believe we can expect nothing from such a change but the reproduction of every old corruption, and the loss of the good that has counteracted it. We have not been wrong, my brethren, in believing we are called by God to our work, and cannot do it without that calling. We have been very wrong in not making it plain that our calling is for your sakes, that we are witnesses of his care for you. We have not been wrong in saying that when we stand at his altar and give you bread and wine we are there as his ambassadors. We have been very wrong in pretending we can be anything more, that we possess any dignity or sacredness of our own. We have not been wrong in asserting a communion between God and his children. We have been very wrong in limiting it by our own notions and fancies; in failing to believe and rejoice that God may make the truth known without our testimony; in not desiring that all should be prophets, that all should have his Spirit — as that old lawgiver did, who would not let the order of the Priesthood be changed, because that concerned not himself but the Nation and its Lord. Do not tell us we have no right to speak, in word and sign, of the complete Redemption God has wrought for men. Denounce us instead for not grasping the length and breadth of that Redemption, for so often representing God as the author of slavery rather than freedom, for so often ourselves enslaving those his Spirit seeks to free. Do not say we mock you when we speak of ourselves as priests presenting Christ’s finished sacrifice for you, blessing you with the food of his body and blood. Only complain that we have not told you more of the High Priest within the veil, the Elder Brother of the whole family, in whose name we and you may draw near together to one Father. Join with us at the altar in confessing these sins, ours and yours, to him, and ask there for strength to fulfil your own ministries, to prove that God has given you work to do as well as us. Then you will find that the security against the falsehoods and oppressions of men lies in the God of truth, the God who delivers, the God who reconciles; that while we trust him, all things will minister good to us; that if we lose sight of him, the very means he devised for our blessing will become our heaviest punishment, and the pledges he has given of our unity with him and each other will become the watchwords and weapons of endless strife.