Back to the New Testament, back to the words of Christ, and in reading them we find no evidence that Jesus at that farewell meal He partook with His disciples founded an elaborate and miraculous ordinance; we cannot read into the words of Christ any intention on His part to place in the hands of Churchmen a spiritual weapon to be used offensively and defensively in all their struggle and strategy for the Church’s temporal aggrandizement, as it has been used to subdue and flatten down the people under their spiritual charge. The miracle of the Real Presence is of man’s device. It is an offspring born of priestcraft and pride. Christ has no part or lot in it. The impression the gospels compel in us is that Christ was fighting the sacerdotal error in religion throughout His whole ministry, and for the Church to claim Him as its founder is the greatest irony of Christianity. But time works changes. As the story of the crucifixion of Christ receded with the lapse of lengthening years and became a distant tradition in Church history, the desire possessed men’s minds for something tangible to nail their faith to; the desire was to bring Christ back again somehow into touch with living men and women. The blank of the long, silent ages grew intolerable. The chilling doubt of Thomas haunted men afresh; the longing to see and touch the wounded Christ gathered force. To gratify the religious devotion of the people, art did its best to portray in coloured pictures Jesus Christ the man who walked in Galilee and died in Jewry; and the Fathers of the Church responded promptly to the longing, and found to hand a ready-made mystery which answered the purpose and helped to stay the profound religious hunger of the day--a mystery which could be amplified to meet every expanding need of the people, and the people accepted with greedy faith the doctrine of the indwelling bodily presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and wine on the altar. These elements, they were assured, became changed into the real flesh and blood of Christ when consecrated by the priest, and the people acclaimed with reverent joy the wonderful transformation which brought Christ so near, and drew what religious consolation they could from the sacred illusion imposed upon them. The olden gods were returning in a new form.