which
He thus ordained: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven:
if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that
I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the
world.... Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal
life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat
indeed, and My blood is drink {35} indeed. He that eateth My flesh,
and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him. As the living
Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me,
even he shall live by Me."

And so we pray in the Holy Eucharist: "Grant us, ... gracious Lord, so
to eat the flesh, of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and our souls
washed through His most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell
in Him, and He in us."

It all speaks of a foretaste here, in a Sacrament, of what heaven shall
give in its fullness.

The sanctuary tells us of heaven in another way.

What the soul that gains its blessedness shall find in it we may put
into one small but very sweet word--"peace."

Now the Altar in the sanctuary of the church, with its "perpetual
memory" of Christ's "precious death and sacrifice," stands for peace
between God and us. The aim and purpose of that sacrifice was to bring
about atonement, that is, at-one-ment, the setting at one, at peace.
Christ "loved us, and gave Himself for us," and by this sacrifice
brought reconciliation between us and God, "having made peace through
the blood of His cross."

{36}

And so at the close of the Holy Eucharist celebrated in the sanctuary,
after the "memorial" has been made before God which His Son "hath
commanded us to make," and we have been "partakers of His most blessed
Body and Blood," this is the Blessing with which the Church lets us
depart--a blessing which carries the thought up to what, in its
fullness, waits for us in heaven: "The Peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of
God, and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

The oblation, the communion, the peace, of the sanctuary, these all
tell us thus of heaven and the "Church triumphant."

Of Christ's "mystical body," with its fellowship and cross-bearing on
earth, its passage through death to the joy of Paradise, and, waiting
beyond, heaven, with its communion and peace through the Cross--it is