acknowledged openly, were at least in the minds of the leaders who took sides in the dispute. On the one side were men whom Luther held to be in part responsible for the Peasants' War, who were the acknowledged leaders of that democracy which he had learnt to distrust if not to fear, who still wished to link the Reformation to vast political schemes, all of which tended to weaken the imperial power by means of French and other alliances, and who only added to their other iniquities a theological theory which, he honestly believed, would take away from believers their comforting assurance of union with their Lord in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. The real theological difference after all did not amount to so much as is generally said. Zwingli's doctrine of the Holy Supper was not the crude theory of Carlstadt; and Luther might have seen this if he had only fairly examined it. The opposed views were, in fact, complementary, and the pronounced ideas of each were implicitly, though not expressly, held by the other. Luther and Zwingli approached the subject from two different points of view, and in debate they neither understood nor were exactly facing each other. The whole Christian Church, during all the centuries, has found three great ideas embodied in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper, and all three have express reference to the death of the Saviour on the Cross for His people. The thoughts are Proclamation, Commemoration, and Participation or Communion. In the Supper, believers proclaim the death and what it means; they commemorate the Sacrifice; and they partake in or have communion with the crucified Christ, who is also the Risen Saviour. The mediæval Church had insisted that this sacramental union with Christ was in the hands of the priesthood to give or to withhold. Duly ordained priests, and they alone, could bring the worshippers into such a relation with Christ as would make the Sacramental participation a possible thing: and out of this claim had grown the mediæval theory of Transubstantiation. It had also divided the Sacrament of the Supper into two distinct rites (the phrase is not too strong)--the Mass and the Eucharist--the one connecting itself instinctively with the commemoration and the other with the participation. Protestants united in denying the special priestly miracle needed to bring Christ and His people together in the Sacrament; but it is easy to see that they might approach the subject by the two separate paths of Mass or Eucharist. Zwingli took the one road and Luther happened on the other.