As simple and as natural was that other sacrament, when Christ took the bread from the supper table, and the cup of fellowship, and gave them to those friends of his as his body and very life, which he was giving for them and for their fellows. What could be more fitting than that they should henceforth remember this farewell supper, this supreme gift of himself, when their master was taken from their sight, whenever they partook again of the Passover, nay, whenever they met together as disciples to share in a common meal in the name of him they loved? The more fully they lived in his spirit the more simply would each meal they took with one another be hallowed by the thought of his love and his presence. Thus did the disciples in the early days take together the Eucharist meal from house to house in Jerusalem: and so, in the midst of the storm, Paul took it, before wondering fellow-passengers and crew, mingling the prayer of joyful thanks-[p.75]giving with the remembrance of the Lord for whose name he was suffering hardship. Already in the time of Paul the communion service was beginning to lose its first simple spontaneity, as we may note in his directions to the Church at Corinth, but for long afterwards the Eucharist was in a much wider sense sacramental, than when its meaning was defined and imprisoned in the formulae of theologians. How full of beauty must the eucharist have been in those little churches of Asia Minor, [20] for which perhaps the Didache, "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," was written, towards the beginning of the second century. The eucharist prayer of the Didache is a true prayer of thanks: "We thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou didst make known to us through Thy servant Jesus; Unto Thee the glory evermore !" "For as this broken piece of bread was scattered over the mountains and brought together and became one, so may Thy church be brought together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom, for Thine is the glory and the power through Christ Jesus evermore." Thus was the eucharist meal to early Christians a symbol of the unity of the Church, and a means of drawing them nearer in thought to each other. [p.76] It is sad to think that what in those days was a bond of union should have become in later times a source of bitter contention and misunderstanding; may we not resolve that for our part, however we may differ from each other, or from the majority of Christians, in our views about this observance, we will not let this hinder us from realizing that others may be helped by means which do not aid us, and that it is infinitely better to draw near to God through outward forms than to be without them and not to draw near to Him: that what we need is to realize and to claim the liberty by which a hundred forms may become sacramental, and not to deny the reality of the life which may underlie the fixed forms which others use.