The Holy Eucharist, besides being the abiding presence of Jesus Christ in His Church, and a Sacrament as communicated to us, is also a mysterious Sacrifice. In this respect it accomplishes the great requirement of objective religion, and the demand of the religious sense in man. Sacrifice is an offering, a supreme offering, that testifies to the supreme excellence and absolute dominion of God. Ordinary gifts or tributes may be presented to human superiors; the oblation of life, by means of its destruction, has always been recognized as due to God alone; and the universal sense of mankind has generally led them to worship God with that ceremony. As a natural sign the victim,
1. stands as a substitute for man, and suggests that he offers himself unreservedly to his Creator and Master;
2. it is the appropriate offering from a rebel and criminal, in token that his life is due as an expiation to the Majesty offended. According to divine law "without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Heb. ix. 22). Under the Old Testament this great truth was conveyed in figure by the Jewish sacrifices; the Christian system gives us the reality in the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary. As a Christian you are the heir of all the ages. The universal aspiration of mankind is expressed and is satisfied in the sacrifice of the Christian Church. Supernatural revelation explains the natural impulse in man, and has developed his crude forms of worship into one which is most solemn and beautiful, rational and spiritual.
