CORRESPONDENCE.
INTERCOMMUNION.
tTo rue EDITOR or row " S►tcraroa."l Sra,—" The reward of a precept is a precept," said a Rabbi, meaning that in the wealth of mind as in other wealth to him that bath shall be given. The Jewish Doctor of Divinity finds us a 'formula with which to address the Churchmen who have lately sent to Convocation a petition on the question of Reunion. When they tell us that " No concession, even of a temporary character, can be made with regard to any matter of prin- ciple," and continue that "It is not permissible to admit members of non-Episcopal bodies to Communion except in the case of a dying person who has expressed a desire for recon- ciliation with the Church," one is moved to express, first a fellow-Christian's sincere respect for their austere loyalty to truth as they apprehend it, however harsh and painful to assert, and then to ask them to believe that "the reward of a principle is a principle."
We are wanting to eay by that form of words that behind the theologle position on which they stand to repel the non- Episcopalian from the Communion—and thereby, one fears, from any reunion worth the name—is a more basic truth, from which the "unchangeable principle" constraining them to this refusal must derive its changelessness. We would ask them to consider whether their firm realization of the principle of episcopacy, in which they recognize a command of Christ transmitted to them through the Church, His body, /head not enable them to a deeper realization of that ultimate prin- ciple which is not a command of Christ, but is the very Christ Himself. " Other foundation can no man lay but that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
The right to Communion cannot be denied by the principle of epiecopaey unless it is denied by the principle of the Incarnation, from which the ministry of the Bishop is deduced. The matter then for inquiry is: Does the fact of the Incarna- tion, the fact that Christ is Very God and Very Man, involve a refushl of the Sacrament of the Supper to Christians who do not conform to the episcopal system?
What, we must ask, is the relation of this Sacrament to the Incarnation fact? It is, we shall agree, the means and oppor- tunity of the Incarnation, for it enables the Ifni° Mystica whioh is also a Ccmmunio Mystics, that fellowship with the Divine Christ which is inseparably one with a fellowship between human brother and brothers. That celebration of the Eucharist is valid in which the rite enables a worshipper to live unto Christ by an act of living unto his brother- worshipper, and conversely to have a life unto the brotherhood through the life they both have unto the common Lord. Where this happens the Sacrament has ministered the Divine life: it has, in a phrase we use, been the "extension of the Incarnation "; the Eucharist has been a moment of God-made- man in Christ.
If this is so, why, we go on to inquire, is it unfit that a non- Episcopalian should communicate with Anglicans? The answer may be rendered " Because he is not in true spiritual communion with us, for he belongs to a brotherhood who hold that the ministry of a Bishop is not necessary to the Eucharist, and ho does not seek to be reconciled to our brotherhood who hold that tenet." To this one replies that what is necessary is that the Communio ifystica should in fact be attained in his action, and the question seems to be, not " Does he hold the episcopal theory?" but " Does he have Communion? Does the fire of the Spirit descend upon this worshipper? Is the life unto Christ and the brotherhood really kindled in the com- municant in spite of his nonconformity to the episcopal rule?" For if this happens the final principle has been satisfied, though a derivative principle has been passed by.
It will be objected that we cannot know whether one who seeks Communion with us has the spiritual fitness: this is an inward and invisible thing; we need a tangible evidence such as is obedience to the Episcopal Church order. Surely no evidence of fitness can be so satisfying as the man's desire to share our Communion, unless we suspect a corrupt motive, which Is far lees likely in one who is not formally of our body.
There remains the objection that by communicating a non- Episcopalian we should seem to admit that our principle of episcopacy is not absolute. That may be so, but does our Church claim such absoluteness for the episcopal system? Not as a Church surely, though an influential school among us holds episoopacy to be not of the beer ease but the ease of the Church. If this is the position taken by the petitioners, we have to acknowledge that on their principles they are logical in excluding the member of the other Church; and we can only plead with them that the reward of a Church principle may be a principle of the Christ, and that they may rightly review the former in the light of the other.
In this appeal we are echoing a cry much heard in Churches which seek to cancel their divisions, the cry of " Back to Christ." That cry will hardly rally us, for it recalls the scattered forces of Christendom to a direction which is not the same for all. "What think ye of Christ?" is not answered in the some terms by the christologies of all the Churches. "Back to Jesus, the Son of Man," is the recall which must bring us together. For, if Christ be many things for the many minds, Jesus of Nazareth can mean but the same for all. In the Manhood that " abideth for ever " lie the reasons of Creed and Sacrament and Order.
But there we open up a vista of thought which we cannot here pursue to the conclusions in Sacramental doctrine which it may yield. But we will ask our brothers who, to our ungrudging respect, are firmly loyal to their principle of exclu- sion, to go back to a precept behind their precept and consider whether Jesus of Nazareth, at His first Supper " the highest and most human too," " Who died and behold He lives," is still at this day commanding that which they judge, though by inference, not direct knowledge, He once commanded —the exclusion from His Supper of a disciple whose Church celebrates that rite without instrumentality of a Bishop. Even if Christ through the Spirit—which is Himself acting from the sphere of the infinite upon the field of the finite--emoted at the first the institution of the bishopric as the channel of Sacra- mental grace, is it certain that He maintains that enactment as the absolute unmodifiable rule in the altered conditions of the world's moral, intellectual, and political existence? Is it even a thing to expect that the monarchic system of church government which in earlier centuries was in harmony with the institutions of man's secular life will prove the only pos- sible system in a world where secular monarchy of the old type has died.
Jesus the Divine Son is also the Human Brother, and in and by His Humanity He legislates for the Church. Let us amen] out these questions humanly. Let us ask ourselves how would a man, one who was only human, but whose harmony of mind and will with God's was perfect—how would such a one judge of the rule for Communion? Would he judge that because once the monarchic Bishop was the fittest president, in his own person or by his delegate, of the Sacramental meal, there- fore no other form of presidency was in any time or circum- stance permissible? Might he not rather judge that, as in the first years of the Church at Jerusalem, and doubtless for many years, eucharists were celebrated in a Christian's house by a head of the table, who was neither apostolic nor apostolic- ally ordained, so in these last times a minister authorized by the Church in some other method than nomination by a Bishop could be a legitimate and efficient celebrant of the sacred feast? One thinks this human arbiter might so decide. But Jesus Christ is human, though human infinitely. Let us trust more confidently than is our use this Manhood of the Christ, the Son of Man who is in the Son of God, and is the interpreter to men of that Godhead. Let us think more humanly in our thinkinge on Divine mysteries. Let that mind be in us which not only was also in Christ Jesus, but which is in the same Jesus, Who counts it not a prize to be on equality with God. but keeps in Him the likeness of men, that He may understand and provide for the °hanging needs of His brotherhood in the changing earth.—I am, Sir, &C., Joao H. &ERIN& Oxford.
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