I RESUME our subject: the priesthood, altar and sacrifice in the Christian Church, and the mind of the Church of England upon it. On Sunday last we treated of this in part, shewing in relation to it what were the “old paths,” and pointing to the proof that our Church walks in them, recognising and maintaining a true priesthood in those who minister at her altars, by the solemn committal to them of the power of absolution, a thing which she would not do upon any other hypothesis than that of their possessing a true sacerdotal character. We had not time to say much upon the altar or the sacrifice. Our text, however, now leads us by no uncertain course to this portion of our subject, especially when placed in connection with St. Paul’s emphatic question in another place: “Are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” You will remember that we examined both those passages on a former occasion, {97} when we were regarding the scriptural testimony to the doctrine, and I need not repeat what I then said. But they will lead us on now naturally,—after the remarks I made last week upon the Christian priesthood, as borne witness to by the primitive Church, and maintained in the Church of England,—to some consideration of the sacrifice also, as borne witness to and maintained in like manner. “We have an altar,” says the Apostle. Of course it is in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist that this altar is used, and the sacrifice made; the great commemorative sacrifice of the Christian Church, wherein we do not repeat, or attempt to repeat, (God forbid,) the one sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction once for all made upon the Cross, but yet are allowed to present before God the Father, the memorial of that ever-blessed offering, by the Body and Blood of Christ really present, (though not after the manner of any “corporal presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood,” but) after a true though mystical and heavenly manner; to present this, I say, according to His will and ordinance, by which it is granted us to apply to ourselves the merits of His death and passion, and to obtain His own prevailing intercession for us before the throne of God; whereby, too, our souls and bodies, as we “eat of the sacrifice are partakers of the altar,” and gain heavenly nourishment and sustenance unto everlasting life. We have seen already that such is the judgment and doctrine of the primitive Church in its understanding of Holy Scripture, as shewn by the early Christian writers, and by the ancient liturgies. Also, that the doctrine was maintained continuously for fifteen hundred years. Our question now is, What has our own Church said and done in this matter at or since the Reformation? Does she maintain, or does she reject, the previous teaching of the Church Universal, and put something else in the place of its doctrine, and its understanding of Holy Scripture upon the subject?