LORDS, HOUSE OF. See PARLIAMENT.
LORD'S-Si:HIER, THE, is one of the sacraments of the Christian religion (see SACRA MENT). It iS so called from its being instituted at supper by Jesus Christ, whom his disciples styled the Lord or Master. It receives also the names of eucharist and com munion (q.v.). With the exception of the Quakers, all sects of Christians, however different their views as to its nature, agree in celebrating it as one of the most sacred rites of religion. The present article is written from the point of view of those who admit more or less the idea of a historical development of the doctrines connected with the Lord's-supper; the views of Roman Catholics, who hold that the doctrines of their church on the subject were delivered by our Lord and his apostles, and have from the first centuries been taught in substance in the church, will be found under other heads.
See MASS; TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
The circumstances of sorrow amid which it was instituted, and its intimate relation to the crowning work of Jesus, his death, had, at the very outset, made a deep impres sion upon the early- church. Not only was the solemnity, in conformity with its original institution, repeated daily in conjunction with the so-called Agapce (q. v.) (love feasts), and retained as a separate rite when these feasts were set aside; but from the very first it was believed to possess a peculiar efficacy, and soon ideas of the wonderful and mystical became associated with it. The Lord's-supper was celebrated on every important occasion of life—when entering on marriage, when commemorating departed friends and martyrs, etc.; to those that could not be present at the meeting of the con gregation, such as prisoners, sick persons, and children, the indispensable food of heaven was carried by the deacons, and in some churches—those of Africa, for instance--the communicants took part of the materials of the feast home with them, that they might welcome the gift of a new day with consecrated food. Heathens also and unworthy persons were excluded from this holy mystery. As early as the 2d c., Ignatius., Justin Martyr, and humus advance the opinion that the mere bread and wine became, in the eucharist, something higher—the earthly, soinething heavenly—without, however,peas ing to be bread and wine. Though these views were opposed by some eminent individual Christian teachers, such as Origen (died 254), who took a figurative conception of the sacrament, and depreciated its efficacy; yet both among the people and in the ritual of the church, more particularly after the 4th c., the miraculous or supernatural view of the Lord's-supper gained ground. After the 3d c., the office of presenting the bread and WiL1C caine to be confined to the ministers or priests. This practice arose from, and in turn strengthened the notion which was gaining ground, that in this act of presenta tion by the priest, a sadtifice, similar to that once offered up in the death of Christ, though bloodless, was ever anew presented to God. This still deepened the feeling of
mysterious significance and importance with which the rite of the Lord's-supper was viewed, and led to that gradually increasing splendor of celebration which, under Gregory the g-reat (590), took the form of the mass. See Mass. As in Christ two dis tinct natures, the divine and the human, were wonderfully combined, so in the eucharist there was a corresponding union of the earthly and the heavenly.
For a long time there was no formal declaration of the mind of the church on the presence of Christ in the eucharist. At length, in the first half of the 9th c., a discussion on the point was raised by the abbot of Corvei, Paschasius Radbertus, and Ratraninus, a learned monk of the same convent; they exchanged several violent controversial writ ings, De Sanguine et Corpore Domini, and the most distinguished men of the time took part in the discussion. Paschasius maintained that the bread and wine are, in the act of consecration, transformed by the omnipotence of God into that verf body of Christ which was once born of 3Iary, nailed to the cross, and raised from the dead. Accord ing to this conception, nothing remains of the bread and wine but the outward form, the taste, and the smell; while Ratramnus would only allow that tliere is some change in the bread and wine themselves, but granted that an actual transformation of their power and efficacy takes place. The greater accordance of the first view with the credulity of the age, its love of the wonderful and magical, as well as with the natural desire for the utmost possible nearness to Christ, in order to be unfailingly- saved by him, the interest of the priesthood to add luster to a rite which enhanced their own office, and the apparently logical character of the inference, that where the power; according to universal admission, was changed, there must be a change also of the substance; the result of all these concurring influences was, that when the views of Ratramnus were in substance revived by Berengarius, canon of Tours, in opposition to Lanfranc, bishop of Canterbury, and cardinal Humbert, the doctrine of transubstantia tion, as it came to be called, triumphed, and was officially approved by the council of Rome in 1079. In the fourth Lateran council at Rome, 1215, under Innocent III., tran substantiation was declared to be an article of faith; and it has continued to be so held by the Roman Catholic church to the present day. The Greek Catholic church Salle Moped the same view of transubstantiation at the synod of Jerusalem in 1672.