the Peasant of Galilee who at nightfall had not where to lay His head. Flattery worked the Church’s undoing, for in the hour of her worldly triumph she gave away all that the early Christian martyrs had died to win. The mass of people who obsequiously played up to Constantine and joined the Church were not converted to the Christian faith; they did not believe in Christ with all their heart. To many of them Christ was only a new Deity added to the many gods they already worshipped. In heart they remained pagan, but behaved prudently and changed their coat at the Emperor’s bidding. They did not forsake their old religion when they accepted the new creed; they amalgamated the two. They carried their pagan superstitions with them into the Christian Church, and, planted in new soil, there they took root and flourished vigorously in the garden of the Lord. The old gods became saints; the pagan shrines and images and festivals were whitewashed and christianized and given a place in the Church calendar; the magic by which their pagan priests trained the spirit of the gods to enter the idol at call, the same priestly magic transferred to the new religion brought the body of the Lord into the bread and the wine at the service of the Lord’s Supper. Such galloping progress did the heresy make amongst the mixed multitudes who mingled their devotions with the elect in the Church that before long the bread and wine were given to the dead. The Sacrament, it is supposed, was placed on the breast of dead persons, as a charm against evil spirits. This superstitious custom was rooted deeply in the religion of the day, for the Church was compelled to legislate on the subject. The custom was forbidden in Africa by the Council of Hippo, A.D. 393; the Council of Carthage, A.D. 397; and in Gaul at the Council of Auxerre, A.D. 578; yet it lingered tenaciously in the hearts of the people as a sacred custom to be observed regardless of hostility to it in high places. Again at the Council in Trullo, A.D. 691, it was forbidden. An incident in the life of St. Benedict, who died about the year 540, discloses much to us. A boy who had been disobedient died suddenly, and his corpse could not rest, in the grave, so St. Benedict ordered the body of the Lord (the Sacrament) to be placed on the breast of the boy, and the corpse rested immediately, and remained quietly buried. The miraculous legend of the Lord’s Supper obtains in the Church to-day with perfumed pomp and splendour of worship. The magic of the Real Presence bites deep into the core of the Church’s creed. As the ages roll the legend develops new forms of expression. Its inferences are not always expressed, nor is its significance posted on the surface, but it is the deeply sunk tap-root of the green bay-tree of sacerdotalism which flourishes in the Church of Christ and binds the people round and round with disciplinary fetters of steel, captives to priestly power.