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This imposition of hands, already so familiar to Jesus, was the sacramental act par excellence. It conferred inspiration, universal illumination, the power to produce prodigies, prophesying, and the speaking of languages. It was what was called the Baptism of the Spirit.
There the conversation stopped, leaving a wall of separation between the two clerical brothers, who had together professed to be Evangelical, and cordially hated sacramental religion. They had also professed to believe in salvation by faith only; but for all this they never urged upon their people to perform any acts of faith they only expected them to receive the doctrine.
Some portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various economies or dispensations of the eternal.
It was a living system of thought, and one which carried the mind upwards towards the Eternal will, rather than downwards towards my personal security. Keble has said of the old Catholic views, founded on sacramental symbolism, that they are more poetical than any other religious conception.
Thus he opposeth the sacramental presence of the body and blood of Christ not only to bodily, but also to real presence; and by just analogy, sacramental receiving of the body and blood of Christ is not only to be opposed to a receiving of his body and blood into the hands and mouths of our bodies, but likewise to the real receiving of the same spiritually into our souls.
Tall of stature, fresh of face, and faintly smiling, he had his wonted air of amiable sovereignty, and it was with august unction that he pronounced the sacramental words, like some pontiff well pleased at reconciling the two great empires whose heirs he united. His address to the newly married couple was awaited with curiosity. It proved really marvellous, he himself triumphed in it.
He was, also, having finally despatched the sacramental number of tragedies, working at an equally sacramental number of satires and comedies, absolutely unconscious of his complete deficiency in both these styles, and persuaded that he owed it to his nation to set them on the right road in comedy and satire, as he had set them on the right road in tragedy. A ridiculous man! Not so.
He knew not as yet the only remedy for such sorrow, that there is a love celestial and divine, of which earthly love in its purest form is only the sacramental symbol and emblem, and that this divine love can by God's power so outflood human affections as to bear the soul above all earthly idols to its only immortal rest.
In the same way we cling to the specious untruth that we can begin over and over again in this world, forgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our sin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape.
The Latin words, the sentiment of which had been traditional in the Church from time immemorial, had to her a sacred fragrance and odor; they were words apart from all common usage, a sacramental language, never heard but in moments of devotion and aspiration, and they stilled the child's heart in its tossings and tempest, as when of old the Jesus they spake of walked forth on the stormy sea.
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