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the Church of England retained the Lord's Service as the chief act of worship for every Lord's Day. This is shown by the fact that the Eucharist is the only service in which the Prayer Book orders a sermon to be preached, the banns of marriage to be published, and other notices to be given to the people,- all of which implied that in the mind of the Church this was the service at which the bulk of the congregation would be present. In addition to this fact the Prayer Book sets forth a collect, epistle and gospel for every Sunday in the year, which implies that the Holy Communion was to be celebrated at least every Sunday.

How then did it come about that the Communion was celebrated so often when the greater part of the congregation were not making their communion, or when no one except the priest received communion? It was largely the result of the change in the social habits of the people. At first the Holy Communion was celebrated only once on the same day, and then most of those present made their communions. But that was because people did not take the first meal of the day until about noon. Therefore they could easily receive fasting at any hour in the morning, and thereby be obedient to a universal Christian. custom. For it was felt from the beginning that

out of honour to the Holy Sacrament this sacred Food should be received as the first food of the day. Gradually however the social custom arose of breakfasting early in the day. As that custom spread, the Church began to have two celebrations of the Eucharist every Sunday, the early one for communion, and the later one for worship.

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This was a perfectly legitimate development. Our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament for two purposes, to be our Sacrifice and to be our spiritual Food. That is why the Altar, a place on which sacrifice is offered, is also called the Lord's Table, because it is the place where we receive our spiritual food. The Church Catechism puts the sacrificial purpose of this sacrament first, in its answer as to why the Sacrament was ordained: For the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby." Therefore we are at liberty to emphasize either aspect of this rite. We may use it primarily for making our communions, or we may use it primarily as a means of worship. For that reason the Church was acting within her rights when she began to have two celebrations of the Eucharist every Sunday, the early one for communion, and the later one for worship.

Now just what do we mean by saying that the Eucharist may be used for worship? Or to put it in another way, what do we mean by the Eucharistic Sacrifice? We mean that in this service we worship God by offering to Him Christ Crucified as our sacrifice. Through the consecration by the words of the priest the bread and wine become the broken Body and the poured-out Blood of Christ, and we then offer them to God as we say in the Prayer of Consecration, “We do celebrate and make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto Thee, the memorial Thy Son hath commanded us to make." We plead the great Sacrifice once for all offered and made upon the Cross for the sins of the world. Just because we are all sinners, this ought to be the key-note of our worship whenever we appear before God. If we were sinless beings, then it is conceivable that some other kind of worship might meet our needs. But being what we are, we cannot ignore the supreme fact that God has sent His Son into the world, and the world nailed Him to the Cross. That offering determines what is to be our relation to this sinful world. We must be crucified unto the world. And we must not be ashamed to bear the Cross and to hold it up before an unbelieving world. We must glory in the Cross.

We can do that best by making it the fundamental element in all our worship. "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world."

We need have no fear that we are in the minority, that we are doing some strange thing, in taking our share in this kind of worship. It would indeed make little difference whether most Episcopal Churches had this kind of worship or not, for the Episcopal Church is a very small segment compared with the whole Catholic Church of all the ages. We are not in the minority. When we are taking part in the Lord's Service as the chief act of worship on every Lord's Day, we are one with the early Christian disciples and the Apostles, breaking bread from house to house. We are one with all the Christians of the world for the first fifteen centuries. We are one with three-fifths of all the Christians in the world today. We are one with that great company "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues" who stand before the throne of God in Heaven, adoring the Lamb, as it had been slain, and offering the Eucharistic sacrifice.

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THE RESERVATION OF THE BLESSED

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SACRAMENT

ESERVATION of the Blessed Sacrament

has been widely practiced in the Church from the earliest times. The fact is singularly well attested and there is no need here to go into the details of the evidence for it. It will suffice to cite our earliest witness, Justin Martyr, who wrote about the middle of the second century. He is explaining the worship of the Christians to the Roman authorities, and we may assume that the services which he describes as in use in the middle of the second century have been in use for some time preceding that date, and that therefore the practice of Reservation as he describes it is in fact considerably older than the date of his Apology. This is what he says:

"When we have finished our prayer, bread is brought and wine and water, and the president sends up both prayers and Thanksgivings as best he can, and the people express assent by saying the Amen. And there is the distribution and the

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