If these minor sacraments came to be so misunderstood, how natural it is that similar misunderstandings should arise as to sacraments in common use throughout the whole Church, and associated with the very deepest truths of the inner life. Yet if we go back to their origin we shall see that the two chief sacraments of the Church were most simple acts expressing in visible language the life of the spirit, acts perfectly natural and full of significance to those who first took part in them, but which in later days have too often lost their meaning because the mere form was held to have some magical efficacy in itself. To understand these sacraments aright do we not need to enter into the spirit of the Teacher in whose name they are celebrated, and who is believed to have instituted them? As we read the evangelists' record of the life and words of Jesus, [p.68] we must surely feel that to him all life was a sacrament, a continual unfolding of the Divine through the visible world and through human life. In his eyes the sunshine falling alike upon good and evil men is a constant revelation of the Divine love, compassing just and unjust, overcoming evil with good. The beautiful flowers of the field, blooming for a moment and then destroyed, bring to him no thoughts of gloom, as they did to the Greek poet, but the certainty that the Power which gives such loveliness to the creatures of an hour will provide for His higher creation too. The sparrows chirruping under the eaves, humblest of birds, fill him with a sense of the Father's care for these, and much more for man. As Christ walks across the fields, he sees messages for men in all the life about him: the parable of the seed, summing up the whole mystery of our nature in its life and growth; the sower at his work, the fishermen at their task, all are parables for him. And so it is with the relationships of our human life, which Christ takes up in his teaching and makes sacramental. Because he is in unbroken communion with the Father unseen, he constantly brings all the little things of daily life into relationship with Him. Christ found the religious folk of his day intent on fulfilling certain duties; eager to guard the letter of the scriptures, the sacredness of the sabbath, and to fulfil the various acts which the law prescribed. He did not destroy the sacredness of [p.69] the one day by his treatment of the sabbath, but he raised the other days to its level: he did not secularize life by his attitude to the law, but rather recognised all life as holy. Religion was no longer to be something confined to certain acts and to special offices and places, but rather the attitude of the soul toward God and one's fellows, a spirit pervading the whole life and not concerned merely with the externals of duty or with certain special seasons of prayer.