borne in upon the Incense of His Intercession, and in His Holy Hands, into the True Holiest Place : that we ourselves, therewith, are borne in thither likewise, and abide in a deep mystery in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus ; that thus we have all manner of acceptance, — sonship, kingship, and priesthood unto God ; all our whole life, in all its complex action, being sanctified and purified for such access, and abiding continually in a heavenly sphere of acceptableness and privilege. — Enough for us, again, that on the sacramental side of the mystery, we have been thus privileged to give to God His own Gift of Himself to dwell in us, and we in Him ; — that we thereby possess an evermore renewedly dedicated being — strengthened with all might, and evermore made one with Him. Profoundly reverencing Christ's peculiar Presence in us and around us in the celebration of such awful mysteries, we nevertheless take as the watchword of our deeply mysterious Eucharistic worship, * Sursum corda,' and ' Our life is hid with Christ in God.' " § 96. THE SACKIFICE OF THE EUCHAEIST. 505 at the same time. The term mass^ which properly denoted the dismissal of the congregation {missio, dismissio) at the close of the general public worship, became, after the end of the fourth century, the name for the worsliip of the faithful,' which consist- ed in the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the commu- nion. The corresponding terms of the Orientals are Xecrovpyca, Ovaia, 7rpoa(f)opd. In the sucriiice of the mass the whole mysterious fuhies.-- and glory of the Catholic worship is concentrated. Here the idea of the priesthood reaches its dizzy summit ; and here the devo- tion and awe of the spectators rises to the highest pitch of adoration. For to the devout Catholic nothing can be greater or more solemn than an act of worship in which tlie eternal Son of God is veritably ofiered to God upon the altar by the visible hand of the priest for the sins of the world. But though the CathoKc worship here rises far above the vain sacri- fices of heathendom and tlie merely typical sacrifices of Juda- ism, yet that old sacrificial service, which was interwoven with the whole popular life of the Jewish and Grseco-Romau world, exerted a controlling influence on the Eoman Catholic service of the Eucharist, especially after the nominal conversion of the whole Roman heathendom, and obscured the original sim- plicity and purity of that service almost beyond recognition. The sacmmentum became entirely eclipsed by the sciGriJicium., and the sacrificium became grossly materialized, and was ex- alted at the expense of the sacrifice on the cross. The endless succession of necessary repetitions deti-acts from the sacrifice of Christ. The Biblical support of the sacrifice of the mass is weak, and maj be reduced to an unduly literal interpretation or a downi'ight perversion of some such passages as Mai. i. 10 f. :