The ceremony was justified among Unitarians by various reasons which, in the end, seemed apologies. With the old-fashioned, semi-orthodox members of the congregations it was a precious heirloom, prized for its antiquity; a link that still held them in the bond of fellowship with the universal church; a last relic of the supernaturalism to which they clung without knowing why; the pledge of a mystical union with their Christ. Any change in the administration of it was regarded as a desecration; the suggestion of its complete discontinuance could, they thought, arise in no mind that was not fatally poisoned by infidelity. It was not, in their opinion, a symbol of doctrine, but a channel of divine influence, which no intellectual doubts could touch, which spiritual deadness alone could dispense with. Tenets might be abandoned, forms of belief might be discredited, but this citadel of faith must not be assailed or approached by irreverent feet. Mr. Emerson's example was not followed by his contemporaries. His fellows did not so soon reach his point of conviction. Even radicals, like George Ripley, did not. In my own case it was the growth of time. At the moment there was no disposition to abandon the observance, simply a desire to reanimate it. It was not perceived till much later that the changes proposed implied a virtual abandonment of the rite itself; that the communion is regarded as a sacrament, that as a sacrament it might be presumed to be supernaturally instituted for the communication of the divine life; that, when faith in the supernatural declines, the sacrament no longer has a function as a medium, and must be omitted; that no attempts to revive it as a sentimental practice could be justified to reason; that all endeavors to awaken interest in it by assuming some occult efficacy must be futile because groundless. The "memorial service" can in no proper sense be called a sacrament. It may be a pleasing expression of sentiment, somewhat over-strained and fanciful, but capable of being made attractive. The task of reproducing the emotions of the early disciples as they sat at supper with their Master, nearly two thousand years ago, is too severe for the ordinary imagination, and when persisted in from a sense of duty may become a dull, creaking performance, against which the sensitive rebel and the witty are tempted to launch the shafts of their sarcasm. The only way of saving it from gibes is to ascribe to it some mystical efficacy for which there is no logical excuse. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation had a foundation in the philosophy of the Church. The Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation, which recognized the presence of Christ on the occasion, but not the literal change of the substance of his flesh, was legitimate. But the Sabellian theory, which the Unitarians inherited, was in no respect justified, save as a tradition.