We have now added to the throne of the Almighty, in the midst of the four living creatures and the twenty-four crowned elders, "a Lamb standing as it were slain," who, having received the sealed book from Him that sat upon the throne, becomes Himself the centre of adoration. He takes the place of the altar in the Church, being Himself the altar and the celebrant; He opens the seals of the book which no one in heaven or earth could open but Himself; He rules the evolution of all the events which make up the history of His people; He the victim; He the priest; He the ruler. And under the Eucharist Sacrifice thus exhibited the whole evolution of judgments and victories are drawn out, which ends with "the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a Bride adorned for her Husband." Only this vision of the Beloved Disciple and the feelings which it exhibits would adequately represent that awe and joy, that gratitude and triumph, with which the faithful took part in what the Fathers call "the tremendous and unbloody sacrifice." And could any Christian of the Apostle's day read the words of this heavenly vision without recognising in it the very order and arrangement of the great worship which formed then, as it forms now, the central act of united Christian life? No higher act of authority is even conceivable than that establishment of worship. But this was a worship which the Apostles had received in secret from their Lord, which they did not commit to writing, but carefully imprinted upon the memories of their disciples, which they guarded with the utmost care and jealousy from the knowledge of all until they had first instructed them and then baptized them, the participation in which was the crown of all Christian privileges. Thus they understood what Christ had ordered them to do in commemoration of Himself. They began it at Jerusalem; they carried it with them in their dispersion to all Churches. It is found the same in its principal parts and sequence in all places. The same form was received everywhere solely in virtue of an Apostolic tradition, which originally was not written, but conveyed by word of mouth, and at once and incessantly practised. The commemoration in which they earned out their Lord's command was contained in words, and rites, and vestments illustrating those words, and making up together an act, a permanent act, going through all the life of the Church from end to end. This act in the present day, as in every past age, is not derived from any written authority, though the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles, and, as we have seen, the Apocalypse, bear witness to it, but from the authority of the Church, immanent in her from the beginning by perpetual descent from the Apostles.