because the categories of Substance and Accident were ceasing to be a part of the furniture of living thought, and the term Substance was beginning to be used with all the vagueness of the modern term Reality, which often turns out on investigation to stand for Meaning or Value. If, however, “Substance" is understood to mean Value the objections to Consubstantiation also disappear. "Convaluation

is, in fact, just what is wanted. The Bread still has the value of Bread; it has also the value of the Body of Christ.1

It should be noted that the ordinary connotation of the word "body" has been immensely affected by the science of organic chemistry, which is a very recent science. Most people of to-day, when hearing such a phrase as "the substance of the body," would think at once of chemical "substances "-nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and the like. Of course, these are among the "accidents" of scholastic terminology; and no theologian would, I imagine, ever have asserted a physico-chemical continuity between the Body of our Lord in His earthly ministry and the Body which is offered to the faithful in the Eucharist. Even if it be held that the Body thus offered is the Glorified Body, it must be remembered that this is conceived as so transmuted as to be no longer a physico-chemical entity at all.

1 The difficulties in which the subject was involved in the sixteenth century are vividly represented by the Black Rubric, even in the form in which it still appears in our Prayer Book. There we read that " the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one." In Heaven, and not here! so completely was the mind of that period obsessed by the form of space. Heaven is indeed not here" so long as "here" is peopled by spirits disobedient to God; but no one, we may suppose, now thinks of Heaven as a place " elsewhere," and exclusive of "here." No doubt if it is to be answered that Christ's Body is still subject to spatial conditions in such a sense that if it is "here" it is "not there," and if it is "there" it is "not here," then to assert its presence on countless altars is to talk nonsense. But this view involves astronomical difficulties; for if Christ's Body exists under that spatial mode, where is it? We mention this controversy, however, only to illustrate the additional perplexities of theologians in the period of the Reformation, for, as has been made clear, we do not hold that the Eucharistic Body of Christ is the Body of His Ascension.

We have admitted that this view has high authority; on the whole it would seem that no other view has anything like the same weight of authority; moreover, it has a great spiritual significance to which we shall attend shortly. Yet it is open to the fatal objection already made; when Christ, in His natural Body, said to the disciples as He administered the Bread, This is my Body," He cannot have meant "This is my risen, ascended, and glorified Body," nor certainly can He have meant that the Bread was His physical organism, or that the Cup contained the Blood then circulating in His veins. I think it is possible to see how the misconception arose. Jeremy Taylor, in an often quoted passage, gives the clue: "In the explication of this question it is much insisted upon that it be inquired whether, when we say we believe Christ's body to be 'really' in the sacrament, we mean that body, that flesh, that was born of the Virgin Mary, that was crucified, dead, and buried. I answer, I know none else that He had or hath." 1

But He has another Body-the Church. And St. Paul in one place speaks of the Church as His Body in so close proximity to his account of the institution of the Eucharist that the two thoughts must have been present together in his mind (1 Cor. xi. 23-25; xii. 27). The fact is that the thought of the Church as the Body of Christ, for all its prominence in Pauline doctrine, never gained a hold upon the general belief of Christians at all comparable to that gained by the thought of the consecrated Bread as His Body. St. Augustine indeed brings them together, but this is recognised as a peculiarity of his teaching. Bishop Gore follows St. Augustine in this, and lays great stress on the fellowship of the Church. But he places the two thoughts in a sequence which, though certainly legitimate, is not inevitable or required by Scriptureby receiving His body from above we are to become

1 The Real Presence, §§ 1, 11. Quoted by Gore, op. cit. p. 62.

His body on earth."1 If by "body" we mean "spirit"("the spiritual principle or essence of His manhood)" 2—no objection can be raised to this; but that makes the use of language very strange.

It is easy to see why the thought of the Eucharistic Bread as the Lord's Body was, and is, more vivid than that of the Church as His Body. The Church of our experience mediates His Spirit very imperfectly because its "members are not wholly yielded to His control. In the Eucharist the worshipper experiences an actual fellowship with his Lord such as he does not experience from Church-membership in general. In the Eucharist we find what we ought to find, but as yet do not find, in the Church that celebrates the Eucharist. Here for the mystic moment, perfection is attained; one day, when the Church's task is complete, that perfection will be actualised in the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile our contention is that when St. Paul called the Church the Body of Christ he used the words in just the same sense as when he called the Eucharistic Bread the Body of Christ. And inasmuch as apart from the Resurrection there would have been no perpetual commemoration of the Death (for there would have been no Church to commemorate it), and what we become partakers of is the Life Eternal which has risen out of death, triumphing over it, we see how appropriate devotionally is the association of the Eucharistic Bread with the Glorified Body of the Lord. Perhaps the transposition of an adjective is all that is needed. That Bread is not itself the Glorified Body of the Lord, but it is the Body of the Glorified Lord— the Body of Christ who is known to us as crucified, risen, ascended, glorified.

There are, then, certainly two distinct uses of the term "Body as regards our Lord. There is His fleshly Body, and there is the Church. Our suggestion

is that there is a third use, as distinct from each of these as they are from one another; there is His fleshly Body, there is the Church, and there is the Eucharistic Bread.

What, after all, is "my body"? It is an organism which moves when I wish it to move. If I will my hand to move, it moves without my thinking how to set it in motion; if I will anything else to move, it remains unmoved unless with my body I lift it.

My body" is that part of the physical world which moves directly in response to my will, and is thus the vehicle and medium whereby I effect my purposes. In precisely this sense the Church is the Body of Christ; in precisely this sense (I suggest) the Eucharistic Bread is the Body of Christ. The identity which justifies the use of one name is an identity of relation to the Spirit of Christ and to His disciples. As through the physical organism which was His Body Christ spoke the words of eternal life, so through the Church which is His Body He speaks them still. As through the physical organism which was His Body He revealed in agony and death that utter obedience of Humanity in His Person to the Father, which is the atoning sacrifice, so through the broken Bread He shows it still and enables us to become participants therein. Thus by means of Bread and Wine, blessed and given as by Himself at the climax of His sacrifice, He offers us His human nature given in sacrifice (Body broken and Blood outpoured) to be the sustenance of our souls.

The objector will say, "This reduces everything to mere symbolism." To symbolism-yes; the word mere is question-begging and probably represents a misunderstanding. In the physical universe symbolism is the principle of existence. Each lower stratum of Reality exists to be the vehicle of the higher. The organism which was Christ's Body in His earthly ministry derived the significance entitling

it to that name from the fact that it was the instrument and vehicle-the effective symbol-of His Spirit. The Eucharistic Bread is His Body for the purpose for which it is consecrated, which is Communion, in exactly the same sense as that in which a physicochemical organism was once His Body; it is the vehicle the effective symbol-of His Personality. The identity which makes it appropriate to speak of our Lord's fleshly organism, the Church, and the Eucharistic Bread by one name-the Body of the Lord is an identity of relation to His Personality on the one hand and to His disciples on the other.1 The addition of the outpoured Blood makes it plain that it is the symbol of His Personality as offered in sacrifice. As we receive His sacrificial Personality we become able to take our part in the one sacrifice, which is the self-offering of humanity to God.

1 I have been asked how I should put this before "simple people." It does not seem very difficult. I should say something like this. "When in faith you receive the Bread and the Wine you receive the Lord Jesus Christ into your soul as truly as those who opened their doors to Him in Palestine received Him into their homes."