[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Si n ,--The indwelling of a
Divine Incarnate Person in the hearts of men is central to the Christian religion. " Believing " is more than an intellectual assent to a number of propositions about a Divine Person, and more than an act of faith in a Divine Person ab extra ; it is laying hold of that Person and receiving Him into our innermost being, as food is received into the body.
It is as an effect of that indwelling that we have " eternal life." For eternal life is not a gift from without, but the result of the indwelling of Him who is called The Life " and " The Eternal Life."
The highest prayer that St. Paul could offer for the Epliesians was that " Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." There is no doctrine more capable of demonstration than this, that the indwelling of a Divine Incarnate Person in the bodies and souls of men for the highest moral and spiritual purposes is the very heart of Christianity. " Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates," 2 Cor. xiii. 5.
But difficulties arise when the question is asked how this Divine Person is received into the soul. Of course the universal answer is " by faith." But this is not enough. Is there any divinely appointed means by which this Divine Person may be received into the soul ? And there are few Christians who would deny that the Holy Communion is the divinely appointed means by which this stupendous gift is received.
It may not be the only means, but it is the appointed means—appointed by Him who gave Himself to us, to dwell in us. But when we touch the question how does He give Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament, there are two views :- There is the Roman view that bread it changed into the body of the Lord, and there is the Anglican view that the bread is the means by which the Sacred Body is given to us. The subject has been one of controversy for ages, and no doubt it will continue to be a subject of controversy for ages to come. But whichever theory is adopted the fact remains indisput- able to a Christian that in the Blessed Sacrament the Living Divine Person is received, whether " in," " by," or " through " the elements, and that the cardinal ddetrinc of the Christian religion is the indwelling of a Living Divine Incarnate Person in the soul of man for the highest moral and spiritual ends.—, I am, Sir, &c., 9 Prospect Terrace, Ramsgate.
WILLIAM MCCARTHY,
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