e have is Jesus Christ Himself, and none other than He. He
gave us His flesh and blood to consume, with the command to consume.
Our sacrifice, therefore, consists in the offering up of this Victim to
God and the consuming of it. Upon the Victim of the altar, as upon the
Victim of the Cross, we lay our sins and offenses, and, in one case as
in the other, the sacred blood, in God's eyes, washes our iniquity
away.

Of course, it requires faith to believe, but religion is nothing if it
is not whole and entire a matter of faith. The less faith you have, the
more you try to simplify matters. Waning faith began by eliminating
authority and sacrifice and the unwritten word. Now the written word is
going the same way. Pretty soon we shall hear of the Decalogue's being
subjected to this same eliminating process. After all, when one gets
started in that direction, what reason is there that he should ever
stop!

CHAPTER LII.
WORSHIP OF REST.

PARTICIPATION in public worship is the positive obligation flowing from
the Third Commandment; abstention from labor is what is negatively
enjoined. Now, works differ as widely in their nature as differ in form
and dimension the pebbles on the sea-shore. There are works of God and
works of the devil, and works which, as regards spirituality, are
totally indifferent, profane works, as distinguished from sacred and
sinful works. And these latter may be corporal or intellectual or both.
Work or labor or toil, in itself, is a spending of energy, an exercise
of activity; it covers a deal of ground. And since the law simply says
to abstain from work, it falls to us to determine just what works are
meant, for it is certain that all works, that is, all that come under
the general head of work, do not profane the Lord's day.

The legislation of the Church, which is the custodian of the Sunday, on
this head commends itself to all thoughtful men; while, for those who
recognize the Church as the true one, that legislation is authority.
The Church distinguishes three kinds of profane works, that is, works
that are neither sacred nor iniquitous of their nature. There is one
kind which requires labor of the mind rather than of the body. These
works tend directly to the culture or exercise of the mind, and are
called liberal works, because under the Romans, freemen or "liberi"
almost exclusively were engaged therein. Such are reading, writing,
studying, music, drawing--in general, mental occupations