The Eucharistic Liturgy was from the beginning the Church's explicit and solemn exhibition of her faith in her worship. She kept it strictly for her own people, and did not allow it to be divulged. It was an act expressing Christ visibly in the midst of His Church. The altar was His throne. The chiefs ministrant bore His person, and enacted before the eyes of the observant people the work of Christ's Incarnation and Redemption, presenting it to God the Father. The rites and ceremonies which accompanied the words removed, for those beholding and participating the mysteries, that obscurity which may belong in matters of faith to mere words. But, moreover, words of singular simplicity and perspicuity were used in describing the acts by which our Lord became man for us and redeemed us. When the attendant deacon[138] gave warning that all should be in fear and trembling, before the commencement of the sacred action, and before the invocation of the Holy Ghost, did not the words themselves signify the expectation of some signal miracle to be wrought by the Divine Omnipotence? When the people heard the celebrant invoking the descent of the Holy Ghost on the gifts lying before him, that by His presence He might make the bread to be the Body of Christ, and the wine and water the Blood of Christ, transmuting them by His divine power,—when the ministers delivered them to each of the faithful, with the words, "the Body of Christ," "the Blood of Christ," to which he replied, "Amen," what merely verbal announcement could equal in force of teaching that visible setting forth of Christ? On one part, it was Christ giving Himself to His people; on the other, a supreme acknowledgment of joy, gratitude, and prostrate homage by His people for the gift.