This mysterious rite obtained great importance in the lifetime of Jesus. It was probably established some time before the last journey to Jerusalem, and it was the result of a general doctrine much more than a determinate act. After the death of Jesus, it became the great symbol of Christian communion,[1] and it is to the most solemn moment of the life of the Saviour that its establishment is referred. It was wished to see, in the consecration of bread and wine, a farewell memorial which Jesus, at the moment of quitting life, had left to his disciples.[2] They recognized Jesus himself in this sacrament. The wholly spiritual idea of the presence of souls, which was one of the most familiar to the Master, which made him say, for instance, that he was personally with his disciples[3] when they were assembled in his name, rendered this easily admissible. Jesus, we have already said, never had a very defined notion of that which constitutes individuality. In the degree of exaltation to which he had attained, the ideal surpassed everything to such an extent that the body counted for nothing. We are one when we love one another, when we live in dependence on each other; it was thus that he and his disciples were one.[4] His disciples adopted the same language. Those who for years had lived with him, had seen him constantly take the bread and the cup "between his holy and venerable hands,"[5] and thus offer himself to them. It was he whom they ate and drank; he became the true passover, the former one having been abrogated by his blood. It is impossible to translate into our essentially determined idiom, in which a rigorous distinction between the material and the metaphorical must always be observed, habits of style the essential character of which is to attribute to metaphor, or rather to the idea it represents, a complete reality. [Footnote 1: _Acts_ ii. 42, 46.] [Footnote 2: 1 _Cor._ xi. 20, and following.] [Footnote 3: Matt. xviii. 20.] [Footnote 4: John xii. entirely.] [Footnote 5: Canon of the Greek Masses and the Latin Mass (very ancient).] CHAPTER XIX. INCREASING PROGRESSION OF ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION.