any one to undertake the charge of your flocks, in your absence from your Parish, without previous communication with me.

I have to ask you, my lay brethren, to assist the Clergy, according to the rubric, in making Collections on Sunday in the Church at the Weekly Offertory.

I am thankful to see that Weekly Collections at the Offertory are becoming more and more common in the Diocese. (Appendix C.)

Habitual Almsgiving is as much our Christian duty and privilege, as habitual Prayer.

Our Blessed Lord has joined both together in His Sermon on the Mount. The duty of almsgiving was inculcated by the Apostles as one of the acts of Christian worship on the Lord's Day,1 and was practised as such by the Primitive Church.2 One of the characteristic blessings of the Weekly Offertory is, that in it the poor are united with the rich in offering to God, to Whom the "widows' mites" are specially dear; and all are joined together in consecrating their substance to Him by the reverent presentation of the alms to Him on His Holy Table, and are associated as brethren and sisters in Christ in giving to Him from Whom all receive whatever they have to give, and Who will bless them with abundant increase for all that they offer to Him for His dear Son's sake.

Next, I would desire you, my reverend brethren, not to allow the Parish Clerk, or anyone else, to place the elements of Bread and Wine on the Communion 2 S. Justin, Martyr, Apol. I. c. 67.

1 I Cor. xvi. 1, 2.

Table before the Service; but to place them reverently there with your own hands, according to the rubric, at the time appointed, namely, just before the Prayer for the Church Militant.

3

This also is an act of worship. The Bread and Wine are God's creatures; and by placing them on the Holy Table as oblations to Him, and as afterwards to be consecrated to holy uses, so as to become spiritual food and sustenance, and to be the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ to all faithful receivers, you solemnly acknowledge and recognize God as the Creator and Giver of all good both to our souls and bodies, and also declare the Christian duty to dedicate His creatures-represented by the Bread and Wine— 3 I Cor. x. 16.

4 See the language of S. Irenæus, iv. 32 and 34, ed. Grabe; S. Justin, Martyr, c. Tryphon. c. 117, ed. Otto; and Joseph Mede, on the Christian Sacrifice, book ii., ch. viii., Works, p. 373, where he says, summing up the contents of these passages,-"The ancient Church first offered the Bread and Wine unto God to agnize Him the Lord of the creatures, and then received them from Him again as the Symbols of the Body and Blood of His dear Son." And so Dr. Grabe, on Irenæus, iv. 32, "The ancient Fathers, next after the Apostles, regarded the Eucharist as the sacrifice of the new Law, and offered Bread and Wine as sacred oblations to God the Father on the Altar, before Consecration, as the first fruits of His creatures, in acknowledgment of His supreme dominion over all things, and after consecration as the mystical Body and Blood of Christ, to represent the oblation of His Body and Blood on the Cross, and to obtain the benefits of His death for all for whom He offered it." S. Justin, Martyr, ibid, says that in the oblations of Bread and Wine the Christians made thankful remembrance of their food in solid and liquid nourishment, and commemorated the Passion of the Son of God for their sakes. Dr. Ridley, Life of Ridley, p. 238, complains of those Clergy who, in their dislike to Romanism, have "slovenly fallen into the opposite extreme by permitting the elements to be indecently offered and placed upon the table by the clerk or sexton, contrary to the rubric."

to sacred purposes, so that all Creation may be sanctified as a holy oblation offered by Man to Him Who created all things for His own glory and for our good.

Let me also ask your attention, my reverend brethren, to the rubric which prescribes that the Priest in the act of consecration should "break the bread before the people."

It

This rubric also has a doctrinal significance. reminds us of Christ's act in instituting that holy sacrament (Matt. xxvi. 26; Mark xiv. 22; Luke xxii. 19) when He brake the bread—(observe the original words used by the Evangelists and by St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 16, xi. 24) probably one and the same loaf,—signifying the oneness of the sacrifice, and the union of those who communicate with Him and with one another, in the living Bread, broken for their sakes, and distributed to all. In order that the rubric may be obeyed, and that those doctrines may be duly represented, it is desirable that the Bread should not have been broken up into little fragments when first. placed on the Holy Table, but that the unity of the bread should be preserved as far as possible, and that it should be broken in the act of consecration, and not before, so that all may feel that He is there visibly set forth crucified for us (Gal. iii. 1), and that they are all invited to communicate in the one bread by Him Who says to us in that Holy Sacrament, "Take, eat; this is My Body which is given for you."

Two errors as to the Eucharist.

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I am thankful to remark a considerable increase since 18735 in the number of celebrations of the Holy Communion in our Parishes.

And here with reference to the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, let me warn you against two opposite prevalent errors; first, against the error of some who affirm that the one Sacrifice of Christ is continued or repeated in that Sacrament; and secondly, against the opposite error of those who imagine that the Holy Communion is only a memorial or picture of that Sacrifice. A memorial indeed it is, but it is very much more; it is the divinely appointed means for our personal communion in the Body and Blood of Christ, which (as our Church teaches) "are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper"; and it is the means vouchsafed for our reception of all the benefits of that Sacrifice, offered once for all for our sins on the Cross, and for the sins of the whole world; namely, forgiveness of sin, the cleansing, strengthening, and refreshing of our souls; and the earnest and pledge of a blessed resurrection for our bodies, and of a glorious immortality for our souls and bodies in heaven. And by it the whole Church on earth is united with her glorified Head and Lord, and High Priest, in heaven, representing the One Sacrifice, and pleading for us its virtue at the Right Hand of God.

5 Cp. Twelve Addresses, p. 111, and Appendix C. to the present volume.

Let me quote the words of St. Augustine. "The Hebrews of old, by means of the Sacrifices which they offered, celebrated a prophecy of the future Sacrifice which Christ has now offered. We Christians now celebrate the memory of that past Sacrifice, in the holy oblation and participation of the Body and Blood of Christ." As to the spiritual,—not carnal,—but real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist it will suffice to refer among our Reformers to the words of Bishop Ridley.7

6 St. Augustine, Contra Faustum, xx. 18.

7 Bishop Ridley thus speaks (see Ridley's, Life of Ridley, p. 620), “In the Sacrament is a certain change whereby that Bread which was before common Bread is now made a lively representative of Christ's Body ; and is not only a figure, but effectually representeth His Body; that even as the mortal body is nourished by that visible bread, so is the internal soul fed with the heavenly food of Christ's Body, which the Eye of Faith seeth as the bodily eye seeth only Bread; such a Sacramental mutation I grant to be in the bread and wine, which truly is no small change, but such a change as no mortal man can make, but only the omnipotency of Christ's Word. Notwithstanding this Sacramental mutation, which all doctors confess, the true substance and nature of wine remaineth with which the body is in like sort nourished as the soul is by grace and spirit with the Body of Christ.” And p. 681 : “I will declare to you in few words what real presence of the Body of Christ I affirm to be in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. With St. Luke and St. Paul I declare that the Bread which we break is the Body of Christ, for the perpetual remembrance of His death till He comes again. The Bread which we break is the communion of the Body of Christ. With the orthodox Fathers I believe that not only is a signification made of the Lord's Body by the Sacrament, but I confess with Cyprian, that with it the grace of that Body, namely, the aliment of life and immortality is there supplied to the pious and faithful receivers. I say with Augustine, we there feed on life, and we drink life; and feel the Lord present with us in grace. With Athanasius I affirm, that we there receive heavenly food coming down to us from above. With Cyril, the virtue of the proper flesh of Christ, its life and grace. With Ambrose, the Sacrament of the very flesh of Christ. With Chrysostom, the grace of the Spirit. With