Search -
Baptism, Confirmation And The Eucharist - Together With A Brief Exposition Of The Church Catechism
Baptism Confirmation And The Eucharist Together With A Brief Exposition Of The Church Catechism Author:John Gamble FOREWORD A LARGE body of readers, educated and thoughtful men and women, lacking the opportunity for theological research, desire clear and brief state ments ofvarious aspects of Christian truth, as it appears in the light of modern knowledge. For they feel that their faith must find expression in terms of modern thought before it can be adequat... more »ely translated into action. It is for such readers that the Modern Churchman s Library is intended. The writers of these volumes will all be practising members of the Church of England, who accept the main results of recent criticism, whether scientific, historical, or literary. Trained scholars and thinkers, they do not undervalue tradition but above all they are truth-seekers and desire to be truth-speakers. COPGROVE RECTORY, HARROGATE, Michaelmas, 1917. HENRY D. A. MAJOR. PREFACE THE object of the following pages is to interpret the Church's Sacraments by the light of actual experience. The question asked has been not What did they originally mean but What do they mean to-day to those who value them most and use them with greatest intelligence In contemplating the Sacraments from this point of view we can hardly fail to perceive that they embody a principle which has many other ex emplifications. Whereverwe see material things instinct with spirit, and conveying to the mind a meaning above what their superficial appear ance would suggest, we are in the presence of the sacramental principle. If it be true that the doctrine of the Incarnation is weakened when it is separated from the fact of the uni versal immanence of God in the human soul, it is no less true that the Sacraments lose in greatness when they are viewed apart from the principle of which they are only one illustration. The book has been written in view of definite needs. The writer in the course of a now lengthened parochial experience, has found the same difficulties reappearing again and again, and the same questions asked by successive generations of young men and women. Large numbers indeed continue to believe that the language of religion is meaningless, or at least that the meaning is no longer recoverable...« less