CHAPTER I. THE REAL PRESENCE. THIS lies at the foundation of the whole controversy, and to this our first and chief attention must be directed. Now, there can be no doubt on the minds of those who take the Word of God as their true and only guide that it is the sacred privilege of the Children of God to feed by faith on the most precious body and blood of our blessed Saviour. I am not now discussing in what way we feed on Him, or whether His words in the 6th chapter of St. John refer, or do not refer, to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It is my own belief that they do not; but that is not the present question. My present concern is with the fact that, however we explain His words, we are taught by our Lord Himself that such a feeding is essential to our life: ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.’ Nor can there be any doubt that in 1 Cor. x. 16, 17, the partaking (_κοινωνία_) of the body and blood of Christ is connected with the Lord’s Supper. I am not now making any assertion as to the way in which it is connected, for that is the great point to be determined. All that I now say is that there clearly is a connexion, for the words are: ‘The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many, are one bread and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread.’ Two things, therefore, seem plain from Scripture: that there is a feeding on the body and blood of our most blessed Saviour, without which none can live, and that the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is in some way or other connected with that sacred privilege. Thus far, I presume, we are all agreed. But as to the nature of the connexion, there is the widest possible divergence. Rome teaches that by the act of consecration the bread and wine become Christ Himself; that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, and that both the bread and wine become each of them a whole Christ, body, soul, and divinity. The advocates for the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Church of England differ, as far as I can understand them, from Rome in one respect, and one only; namely, that they maintain that the bread and wine do not cease to have the accidents of bread and wine, so that they may still be spoken of as bread and wine, although they have become the body and blood of Christ, or rather Christ Himself. This slight difference is of no practical importance in the discussion, and appears to have been introduced only to avoid the conclusion drawn from those texts which speak of the bread as bread, and the wine as wine, after consecration. The practical conclusion is the same, viz. that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is in the bread and in the wine. This is what is meant by the expression, ‘The real objective presence.’ It means that He is present in the elements as a real