fusion of Christianity throughout the world had
rendered it very difficult to supply all the faithful with the consecrated
wine. Such inconvenience is scarcely felt by Protestant communicants,
whose numbers are limited and who ordinarily communicate only on certain
Sundays of each month. The Catholics of the world, on the contrary, number
about three hundred millions; and as communion is administered to some of
the faithful almost every day in most of our churches and chapels, and as
the annual communions in every parish church are generally at least twice
as numerous as its aggregate Catholic population, the sum total of annual
communions throughout the globe may be estimated in round numbers at not
less than five hundred millions. What effort would be required to procure
altar-wine for such a multitude? In my missionary journeys through North
Carolina I have often found it no easy task to provide for the celebration
of Mass a sufficiency of pure wine, which is essential for the validity of
the sacrifice. This embarrassment would be increased beyond measure if the
cup had to be extended to the laity, and still more in the coal regions,
where the cultivation of the grape is unknown and where imported wine is
exclusively used.(387)

It would be very distasteful, besides, for so many communicants to drink
successively out of the same chalice, which would be unavoidable if the
Sacrament were administered in both forms. In our larger churches, where
communion is distributed every Sunday to hundreds, there would be great
danger of spilling a portion of the consecrated chalice and of thus
exposing it to profanation.

But above all, as the Church in the fifth century, through her chief
Pastor, Gelasius, enforced the use of the cup to expose and reprobate the
error of the Manichees, who imagined that the use of wine was sinful; so
in the fifteenth century she withdrew the cup to condemn the novelties of
the Calixtines, who taught that the consecrated wine was necessary for a
valid communion. Should circumstances ever justify or demand a change from
the present discipline the Church will not hesitate to restore the cup to
the laity.

Chapter XXIII.

THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.

Sacrifice is the oblation or offering made to God of some sensible object,
with the destruction or change of the object, to denote that God is the
Author of life and death. Thus, in the Old Law, before the comi