It would be very distasteful, besides, for so many communicants to drink successively out of the same chalice, which would be unavoidable if the Sacrament were administered in both forms. In our larger churches, where communion is distributed every Sunday to hundreds, there would be great danger of spilling a portion of the consecrated chalice and of thus exposing it to profanation. But above all, as the Church in the fifth century, through her chief Pastor, Gelasius, enforced the use of the cup to expose and reprobate the error of the Manichees, who imagined that the use of wine was sinful; so in the fifteenth century she withdrew the cup to condemn the novelties of the Calixtines, who taught that the consecrated wine was necessary for a valid communion. Should circumstances ever justify or demand a change from the present discipline the Church will not hesitate to restore the cup to the laity. Chapter XXIII. THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS. Sacrifice is the oblation or offering made to God of some sensible object, with the destruction or change of the object, to denote that God is the Author of life and death. Thus, in the Old Law, before the coming of Christ, when the Hebrew people wished to offer sacrifice to God they took a lamb or some other animal, which they slew and burned its flesh, acknowledging by this act that the Lord was the supreme Master of life and death. The ancients offered to God two kinds of sacrifices, viz., living creatures, such as bulls, lambs and birds; and inanimate objects, such as wheat and barley, and, in general, the first fruits of the earth. All nations—whether Jews, idolaters or Christians, except Mahometans and modern Protestants—have made sacrifice their principal act of worship. If you go back to the very dawn of creation, you will find the children of Adam offering sacrifices to God. Abel offered to the Lord the firstlings of his flock, and Cain offered of the fruits of the earth.(388) When Noe and his family are rescued from the deluge which had spread over the face of the earth his first act on issuing from the ark, when the waters disappear, is to offer holocausts to the Lord, in thanksgiving for his preservation.(389) Abraham, the great father of the Jewish race, offered victims to the Almighty at His express command.(390) We read that Job was accustomed to offer holocausts to the Lord, to propitiate His favor in behalf of his children, and to obtain forgiveness for the sins they might have committed.(391)