Nevertheless, the difference between Catholic and Protestant in that the one laid stress upon the necessity to salvation of sacra ments where they could be had, and the other on the indispen sableness of faith, which could justify without sacraments, while without it sacraments could not justify, profoundly affected their respective attitudes towards an institution which the Protestant as little intended to disparage as the Catholic. In respect of the eucharist, whereas Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers generally had hoped, by abolishing celebrations at which the priest alone communicated, to restore the primitive frequency of communions, the actual result of the changes introduced by them was to deprive that service in any form of the central place in the public worship of the Church which it had held from the very beginnings of Christianity. Catholics on the other hand were driven by the necessity of maintaining the efficacy of sacraments ex opere operato into placing and encouraging a reliance on sacraments which exposed them to the charge of allowing their religion to degenerate in practice into magic.
It cannot be denied that the use of sacraments presents a cer tain resemblance to some kinds of magic. There is in both the employment of material objects and of bodily gestures in con junction with a particular form of words to produce effects which, apart from such conjunction, they could not have accomplished. But sacraments resemble far more closely facts of human life which no one would think of describing as magical in any disparag ing sense; such as the operation of words, spoken or written, in creating states of feeling, inspiring action, or revealing person ality. Here the necessity of intelligent acceptance by those affected of the conventional meaning of the sounds or words employed, the limitation of the effect produced to a certain social context, and the quality (not merely physical, but intellectual or spiritual) of the result obtained distinguish verbal communication (though, as certainly not fully explicable on the principles recognized in the natural sciences, it may fairly be called mysterious) from what is usually meant by magic. And in these respects, sacra ments must be classed with verbal communication. No Christian theologian would allow that these are effective altogether outside of the context of that agreement as to the meaning of the signs and formulas used which exists among Christians, or for the production of merely physical effects according to any law which, like those called "natural," operates irrespectively of the con sciousness of those in whose bodies they are produced.
Attempts to treat sacraments as thus effective for "magical" purposes have not been unknown; but they have always been denounced by ecclesiastical authority and regarded as wrong and profane. Without entering into details as to charges of the magical use of sacraments made by theological opponents against particular groups of Christians, it may be observed, in reference to one of special historical importance that, while it is quite arguable that to use the eucharist as a focus of adoring devotion apart from communion is an unwarrantable departure from its original intention, both parties to the controversy here indicated would agree in disapproving as illegitimate any use of it for pur poses really other than that or those (whatever it or they may be) for the sake of which it was originally instituted.
Wherever sacraments are used at all (and few Christian de nominations have, like the Society of Friends, abandoned the use even of the two which undoubtedly date back to New Testa ment times), although there may be no crude abuse of them for confessedly magical purposes, quite other than those which the Church holds them to be intended to secure, it is possible to assimilate them to magical performances, by losing sight of their function as vehicles for communicating to individuals a life essentially social and, like all social life, requiring a conventional or ceremonial mode of expression, and of the essentially ethical character of the life which they are thus designed to communi cate. The use of material objects or of bodily gestures in the
communication of spiritual grace is not alien to the religion of the New Testament, but it is never there taken out of the context of a moral and social life in the imparting and maintaining of which the whole purpose of such use of objects and gestures con sists. It is in a firm grasp of the social character of sacraments and of the moral quality of the life which they are designed to serve as instruments in communicating that the true safeguard against the very real danger of a degeneration of sacramentalism into magic-mongering should be sought rather than in the elim ination of sacramentalism from religion, with the whole history of which it is intimately bound up, and by which, as has been well said, "the higher gifts are made accessible to persons of all stages of culture." "The principle that spiritual values and forces are mediated through material processes," the same writer observes, "runs through nature as a whole." The very production of a new per sonality is only possible through "a material process the most liable . . . to carnal misuse." "Truth, beauty, goodness . . . be come effective only through material forms." There are "natural sacraments"—the kiss, the handshake, the flag—outside of re ligion. The admittedly important part which these and their like play in our common social life the sacraments play in religion; and in Christianity in particular, "we are bidden to act as sons of God and sharers in Christ, knowing by an outward sign that we are so. Our reliance is to be on the word and act of God, while the joy of responsive emotion comes and goes." (Gore, The Holy Spirit and the Church, pp. 24, 146, 148.) To the value of sacramentalism to human life Goethe (IV ahrheit Dichtung, Th. ii., B. 7) and Comte, who devised an elaborate system of symbolic rites for his new Religion of Humanity, may be cited as witnesses. That in the early stages of civilization the magical and the sacramental are not easily discriminated is no more than may be said of the magical and the religious in general, or indeed of the magical and the scientific. Primitive magic owes its disappearance at a higher level of culture to its confusion (aris ing at first from lack of experience, afterwards from the persistence of uncriticized tradition) of different kinds of causation; the sup position, for instance, that the utterance of a name may affect an animal, thing, or unconscious person as it may a person who hears himself called ; or that the moral healing of a soul may be effected by external actions without a change in the direction of the will. We still know too little about the interaction of mind and body to despise our ancestors or undeveloped contemporaries for making mistakes in this department, which it has taken cen turies of progress, religious and scientific, to render us inexcusable in making. But neither need these ancient errors, even though they may, here as elsewhere, have left traces of themselves, interesting to the archaeologist in conventions and customs which have sur vived the false beliefs in which they originated, be supposed to render trivial or illusory the higher activities and experiences in connection with which these traces are retained.