THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



"last supper" with the traditional rite of the Jews, Christ sought 

 on the one hand to found the new dispensation on the old, and 

 on the other hand to institute a love-feast (communion or agape) 

 among his followers. Like baptism, the Lord's Supper led 

 afterwards to the bitterest controversy among theologians. 



The differences of opinion as to the Eucharist in the Middle 

 Ages culminated at last in the opposition of the two reformers, 

 Luther and Zwingli. The latter, the founder of the Free Re- 

 formed Church, saw in the Supper only a symbolical act and a 

 commemoration of Christ. Luther, however, adhered to the 

 mysterious miracle that had been defined in 12 15 by the dogma 

 of transubstantiation. Bread and wine are believed on this 

 view to be converted physically into the body and blood of 

 Christ! I was taught this in 1848 by the minister who prepared 

 me for confirmation, and to whom I was greatly attached. We 

 were actually to perceive this change when we assisted at the 

 Supper for the first time, if we did so with real faith. As I was 

 quite conscious of having this quality, I had great expectations 

 of the miracle. But I was very painfully disillusioned when I 

 found only the familiar taste of bread and wine, not the flesh and 

 blood that faith had desired. I had to regard myself (then a 

 boy of fourteen years) as an utterly abandoned sinner, and it 

 was with the greatest difficulty that my parents succeeded in 

 pacifying me over my want of faith. 



I have spoken somewhat fully in the seventeenth chapter of 

 the Riddle of the view of the papacy and ultramontanism which 

 modem historical and anthropological science leads us to form. 

 No one who has any idea of history and of the metamorphoses of 

 religion can question that Romanism is a miserable caricature of 

 primitive Christianity; it retains the name, but has completely 

 reversed the principles. In the course of its domination, from 

 the fourth to the sixteenth century, the papacy has raised up the 

 marvellous structure of the Catholic hierarchy, but has departed 

 farther and farther from the stand-point of pure Chrii5tianity, 

 The aim of Romanism is to-day, as it was a thousand years ago, 

 to dominate and exploit a blindly believing humanity. It 

 finds admirable instruments for this in its mystic sacraments, to 

 which it has ascribed an ' ' indelible character. ' ' From the cradle 

 to the grave, from baptism to the last anointing, in confirmation 

 and penance, the believer must be reminded that he must live 

 as an obedient and self-sacrificing child; and the sacrament of 

 ordination must teach him that the priest, with his higher 

 inspiration, is the only intermediary between man and God. 

 The symbolical rites that are associated with these sacraments 



426 



