the ancient dispute concerning the number of the
Sacraments. In view of the fuller and larger knowledge which has come to
us, this, like so many other objects of theological strife, ought before
this to have been consigned to the limbo of forgotten controversies.

But in all this we have been, in fact, interpreting the whole universe in
the light of the Incarnation. For that is the supreme sacrament of all,
the very type and complete embodiment of the sacramental principle. There
we see the Divine manifesting Itself through, and using as the instrument
of its action, a Human, a "material" Body.

The Eucharist thus for the first time becomes intelligible. It is only
one particular illustration, although a most momentous one, of the
universal sacramental principle, of which all things else in the world
are also illustrations. There we have the Spirit manifesting itself and
acting, as always and everywhere, wherever "matter" is found; but in a
particular way, and for a particular purpose.

The bread and the wine are the material substances which He uses at the
critical moments in His perpetual action of feeding us with the flesh and
blood of the Son of man. And these elements were obviously chosen,
"ordained by Christ Himself," for their most significant symbolism. There
is no truer philosophy of the Eucharist than that which is contained in
the familiar words of the Church Catechism, which speak of "the
strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of
Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine." That wonderful, and in
itself essentially sacramental process, by which the organism lives by
the incorporation and assimilation into its own substance of other
substances which we call foods, is the exact analogue of the way in which
our true, spiritual manhood lives by the incorporation and assimilation
of the manhood of Christ, that manhood which is holy, which exists in the
Divine Union, which has perfectly realised eternal life in the complete
dying to sin, and the complete putting on of holiness.

The Eucharist is, in the broadest sense, the final act in the drama of
our salvation. It is the means by which, by His own appointment, all
that Christ achieved _for_ us upon the Cross, the repudiation of, or
dying to sin, the realisation of perfect obedience, obedience unto death,
comes to be _in_ us, is made all our own.

But it is most important that we should ever remember that this truth has