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Regression
Analysis
AN INTUITIVE GUIDE

Jim Frost
Copyright © 2019 by Jim Frost.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed

or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, record-
ing, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written per-
mission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright
law.

To contact the author, please email: jim@statisticsbyjim.com.

Visit the author’s website at statisticsbyjim.com.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by edu-

cators. For details, contact the email address above.

Regression Analysis / Jim Frost. —1st ed.

3
 Contents

My Approach to Teaching Regression and Statistics ...... 11

Correlation and an Introduction to Regression ............... 14
Graph Your Data to Find Correlations .......................... 15

Interpret the Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient .......... 16

Graphs for Different Correlations .................................. 17

Discussion about the Correlation Scatterplots ............. 20

Pearson’s Correlation Measures Linear Relationships 21

Hypothesis Test for Correlations ................................... 22

Interpreting our Height and Weight Example ............. 22

Correlation Does Not Imply Causation ......................... 23

How Strong of a Correlation is Considered Good? ..... 23

Common Themes with Regression ................................ 24

Regression Takes Correlation to the Next Level ......... 25

Fundamental Terms and Goals of Regression .............. 25

Regression Analyzes a Wide Variety of Relationships27

Using Regression to Control Independent Variables .. 29

An Introduction to Regression Output .......................... 30

Review and Next Steps ..................................................... 31

i
Regression Basics and How it Works ................................ 33
Data Considerations for OLS ........................................... 34

How OLS Fits the Best Line............................................. 35

Implications of Minimizing SSE ...................................... 40

Other Types of Sums of Squares ..................................... 41

Displaying a Regression Model on a Fitted Line Plot .. 43

Importance of Staying Close to Your Data ................... 44

Review and Next Steps..................................................... 46

Interpreting Main Effects and Significance ...................... 47

Regression Notation ......................................................... 48

Fitting Models is an Iterative Process ............................ 49

Three Types of Effects in Regression Models .............. 50

Main Effects of Continuous Variables ........................... 51

Recoding Continuous Independent Variables.............. 59

Main Effects of Categorical Variables ............................ 62

Blurring the Continuous and Categorical Line ............. 72

Constant (Y Intercept) ..................................................... 74

Review and Next Steps..................................................... 82

Fitting Curvature .................................................................. 83

Example Curvature ........................................................... 84

Graph Curvature with Main Effects Plots ..................... 86

Why You Need to Fit Curves in a Regression Model.. 88

 Difference between Linear and Nonlinear Models...... 89

Finding the Best Way to Model Curvature ................... 93

Another Curve Fitting Example ....................................105

Review and Next Steps ...................................................110

Interaction Effects ..............................................................111

Example with Categorical Independent Variables.....112

How to Interpret Interaction Effects ...........................113

Overlooking Interaction Effects is Dangerous! ..........115

Example with Continuous Independent Variables ....116

Important Considerations for Interaction Effects .....118

Common Questions about Interaction Effects ...........119

Review and Next Steps ...................................................124

Goodness-of-Fit...................................................................125
Assessing the Goodness-of-Fit ......................................125

R-squared..........................................................................126

Visual Representation of R-squared.............................127

R-squared has Limitations .............................................129

Are Low R-squared Values Always a Problem? .........129

Are High R-squared Values Always Great?.................130

R-squared Is Not Always Straightforward ..................132

Adjusted R-Squared and Predicted R-Squared ...........132

iii
 A Caution about Chasing a High R-squared ................ 138

Standard Error of the Regression vs. R-squared ........ 139

The F-test of Overall Significance ................................ 144

Review and Next Steps................................................... 146

Specify Your Model ............................................................ 148

The Importance of Graphing Your Data ..................... 149

Statistical Methods for Model Specification ............... 151

Real World Complications ............................................ 153

Practical Recommendations .......................................... 154

Omitted Variable Bias..................................................... 156

Automated Variable Selection Procedures ................. 167

Stepwise versus Best Subsets ........................................ 173

Review and Next Steps................................................... 179

Problematic Methods of Specifying Your Model ........... 181

Using Data Dredging and Significance......................... 182

Overfitting Regression Models ..................................... 188

Review and Next Steps................................................... 193

Checking Assumptions and Fixing Problems ................. 195

Check Your Residual Plots! ........................................... 196

The Seven Classical OLS Assumptions ........................ 201

Heteroscedasticity .......................................................... 211

Multicollinearity .............................................................. 220

 Unusual Observations.....................................................230

Using Data Transformations to Fix Problems ............242

Cheat Sheet for Detecting and Solving Problems ......248

Using Regression to Make Predictions ............................253

Explanatory versus Predictive Models ........................254

The Regression Approach for Predictions ..................256

Example Scenario for Regression Predictions ............257

Finding a Good Regression Model for Predictions ....257

The Illusion of Predictability.........................................264

Different Example of Using Prediction Intervals.......272

Tips, Common Questions, and Concerns ........................277

Five Tips to Avoid Common Problems .......................277

Identifying the Most Important Variables ..................282

Comparing Regression Lines with Hypothesis Tests 289

How High Does R-squared Need to Be? ......................294

Five Reasons Why R-squared can be Too High .........299

Interpreting Models that have Significant Variables but

a Low R-squared ..............................................................304

Choosing the Correct Type of Regression ......................311

Continuous Dependent Variables.................................312

Categorical Dependent Variables .................................315

Count Dependent Variables ..........................................317

v
Examples of Other Types of Regression ......................... 319
Using Log-Log Plots to Determine Whether Size Matters
............................................................................................ 319

Binary Logistic Regression: Statistical Analysis of the

Republican Establishment Split .................................... 326

References ........................................................................... 333

About the Author ................................................................ 334
Visit https://textbookfull.com
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To Carmen and Morgan who made this book possible through
their encouragement and support.
The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play
in everyone’s backyard.

―John Tukey
 INTRODUCTION

My Approach to
Teaching Regression and
Statistics

I love statistics and analyzing data! I also love talking and writing
about it. I was a researcher at a major university. Then, I spent over a
decade working at a major statistical software company. During my
time at the statistical software company, I learned how to present sta-
tistics in a manner that makes it more intuitive. I want you to under-
stand the essential concepts, practices, and knowledge for regression
analysis so you can analyze your data confidently. That’s the goal of
my book.

In this book, you’ll learn many facets of regression analysis including

the following:

• How regression works and when to use it.

• Selecting the correct type of regression analysis.
• Specifying the best model.
• Interpreting the results.
• Assessing the fit of the model.

11
 Jim Frost

• Generating predictions and evaluating their precision.

• Checking the assumptions.
• Examples of different types of regression analyses.

I’ll help you intuitively understand regression analysis by focusing on

concepts and graphs rather than equations and formulas. I use regular,
everyday language so you can grasp the fundamentals of regression
analysis at a deeper level. I’ll provide practical tips for performing
your analysis. You will learn how to interpret the results while being
confident that you’re conducting the analysis correctly. You’ll be able
to trust your results because you’ll know that you’re performing re-
gression properly and know how to detect and correct problems.

Regardless of your background, I will take you through how to per-

form regression analysis. Students, career changers, and even current
analysts looking to take your skills to the next level, this book has ab-
solutely everything you need to know for regression analysis.

I've literally received thousands of requests from aspiring data scien-

tists for guidance in performing regression analysis. This book is my
answer - years of knowledge and thousands of hours of hard work dis-
tilled into a thorough, practical guide for performing regression anal-
ysis.

You’ll notice that there are not many equations in this book. After all,
you should let your statistical software handle the calculations so you
don’t get bogged down in the calculations and can instead focus on
understanding your results. Instead, I focus on the concepts and prac-
tices that you’ll need to know to perform the analysis and interpret
the results correctly. I’ll use more graphs than equations!

Don’t get me wrong. Equations are important. Equations are the

framework that makes the magic, but the truly fascinating aspects are
what it all means. I want you to learn the true essence of regression
analysis. If you need the equations, you’ll find them in most textbooks.

12
 Regression Analysis: An Intuitive Guide

Please note that throughout this book I use Minitab statistical soft-
ware. However, this book is not about teaching particular software but
rather how to perform regression analysis. All common statistical
software packages should be able to perform the analyses that I show.
There is nothing in here that is unique to Minitab.

13
 CHAPTER 1

Correlation and an
Introduction to
Regression

Before we tackle regression analysis, we need to understand correla-

tion. In fact, I’ve described regression analysis as taking correlation to
the next level! Many of the practices and concepts surrounding corre-
lation also apply to regression analysis. It’s also a simpler analysis that
is a more familiar subject for many. Bear with me because the corre-
lation topics in this section apply to regression analysis as well. It’s a
great place to start!

A correlation between variables indicates that as one variable changes

in value, the other variable tends to change in a specific direction. Un-
derstanding that relationship is useful because we can use the value of
one variable to predict the value of the other variable. For example,
height and weight are correlated—as height increases, weight also
tends to increase. Consequently, if we observe an individual who is
unusually tall, we can predict that his weight is also above the average.
In statistics, correlation is a quantitative assessment that measures
both the direction and the strength of this tendency to vary together.

14
 Regression Analysis: An Intuitive Guide

There are different types of correlation that you can use for different
kinds of data. In this chapter, I cover the most common type of corre-
lation—Pearson’s correlation coefficient.

Before we get into the numbers, let’s graph some data first so we can
understand the concept behind what we are measuring.

Graph Your Data to Find Correlations

Scatterplots are a great way to check quickly for relationships be-
tween pairs of continuous data. The scatterplot below displays the
height and weight of pre-teenage girls. Each dot on the graph repre-
sents an individual girl and her combination of height and weight.
These data are real data that I collected during an experiment. We’ll
return to this dataset multiple times throughout this book. Here is the
CSV dataset if you want to try it yourself: HeightWeight.

At a glance, you can see that there is a relationship between height and
weight. As height increases, weight also tends to increase. However,
it’s not a perfect relationship. If you look at a specific height, say 1.5
meters, you can see that there is a range of weights associated with it.
You can also find short people who weigh more than taller people.

15
 Jim Frost

However, the general tendency that height and weight increase to-
gether is unquestionably present.

Pearson’s correlation takes all of the data points on this graph and rep-
resents them with a single summary statistic. In this case, the statisti-
cal output below indicates that the correlation is 0.705.

What do the correlation and p-value mean? We’ll interpret the output
soon. First, let’s look at a range of possible correlation values so we
can understand how our height and weight example fits in.

Interpret the Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient

Pearson’s correlation coefficient is represented by the Greek letter
rho (ρ) for the population parameter and r for a sample statistic. This
coefficient is a single number that measures both the strength and di-
rection of the linear relationship between two continuous variables.
Values can range from -1 to +1.

• Strength: The greater the absolute value of the coefficient, the

stronger the relationship.
o The extreme values of -1 and 1 indicate a perfectly linear
relationship where a change in one variable is accompa-
nied by a perfectly consistent change in the other. For
these relationships, all of the data points fall on a line. In
practice, you won’t see either type of perfect relationship.
o A coefficient of zero represents no linear relationship. As
one variable increases, there is no tendency in the other
variable to either increase or decrease.
o When the value is in-between 0 and +1/-1, there is a rela-
tionship, but the points don’t all fall on a line. As r

16
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 Regression Analysis: An Intuitive Guide

approaches -1 or 1, the strength of the relationship in-

creases and the data points tend to fall closer to a line.
• Direction: The coefficient sign represents the direction of the re-
lationship.
o Positive coefficients indicate that when the value of one
variable increases, the value of the other variable also
tends to increase. Positive relationships produce an up-
ward slope on a scatterplot.
o Negative coefficients represent cases when the value of
one variable increases, the value of the other variable
tends to decrease. Negative relationships produce a
downward slope.

Examples of Positive and Negative Correlations

An example of a positive correlation is the relationship between the
speed of a wind turbine and the amount of energy it produces. As the
turbine speed increases, electricity production also increases.

An example of a negative correlation is the relationship between out-

door temperature and heating costs. As the temperature increases,
heating costs decrease.

Graphs for Different Correlations

Graphs always help bring concepts to life. The scatterplots below rep-
resent a spectrum of different relationships. I’ve held the horizontal
and vertical scales of the scatterplots constant to allow for valid com-
parisons between them.

17
 Jim Frost

Correlation = +1: A perfect positive relationship.

Correlation = 0.8: A fairly strong positive relationship.

Correlation = 0.6: A moderate positive relationship.

18
 Regression Analysis: An Intuitive Guide

Correlation = 0: No relationship. As one value increases, there is no

tendency for the other value to change in a specific direction.

Correlation = -1: A perfect negative relationship.

Correlation = -0.8: A fairly strong negative relationship.

19
 Jim Frost

Correlation = -0.6: A moderate negative relationship.

Discussion about the Correlation Scatterplots

For the scatterplots above, I created one positive relationship between
the variables and one negative relationship between the variables.
Then, I varied only the amount of dispersion between the data points
and the line that defines the relationship. That process illustrates how
correlation measures the strength of the relationship. The stronger
the relationship, the closer the data points fall to the line. I didn’t in-
clude plots for weaker correlations that are closer to zero than 0.6 and
-0.6 because they start to look like blobs of dots and it’s hard to see
the relationship.

A common misinterpretation is that a negative correlation coefficient

indicates there is no relationship between a pair of variables. After all,
a negative correlation sounds suspiciously like no relationship. How-
ever, the scatterplots for the negative correlations display real rela-
tionships. For negative relationships, high values of one variable are
associated with low values of another variable. For example, there is
a negative correlation between school absences and grades. As the
number of absences increases, the grades decrease.

Earlier I mentioned how crucial it is to graph your data to understand

them better. However, a quantitative assessment of the relationship
does have an advantage. Graphs are a great way to visualize the data,
but the scaling can exaggerate or weaken the appearance of a

20
 Regression Analysis: An Intuitive Guide

relationship. Additionally, the automatic scaling in most statistical

software tends to make all data look similar.

Fortunately, Pearson’s correlation coefficient is unaffected by scaling

issues. Consequently, a statistical assessment is better for determining
the precise strength of the relationship.

Graphs and the relevant statistical measures often work better in tan-
dem.

Pearson’s Correlation Measures Linear Relationships

Pearson’s correlation measures only linear relationships. Conse-
quently, if your data contain a curvilinear relationship, the correlation
coefficient will not detect it. For example, the correlation for the data
in the scatterplot below is zero. However, there is a relationship be-
tween the two variables—it’s just not linear.

This example illustrates another reason to graph your data! Just be-
cause the coefficient is near zero, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that
there is no relationship.

21
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CHAPTER III. THE PROPHET IN THE
CHURCH.
FOR the individual and the community alike the deepest influences
are expressed in life rather than words, yet it remains true that
through the symbols of spoken thought life must again and again
come to expression. In former days this was realised in the value set
upon prophecy, if we may use the word in its broadest and highest
sense, as the forth-telling, in the language of human thought, of the
Divine will present behind our lives and at work amid the world.

One of the changes that strike one most in organized Christianity to-
day, compared with the Church of earlier times, is the general
absence of prophecy in this sense, in all but very occasional crises.
The prophetic instinct is not dead indeed, but men find its highest
manifestations rather outside the Church of earlier times. The
leaders of the Church have been too often content to repeat the
messages of the prophets of a former day rather than to seek for a
living voice within their midst. Yet those who know anything of the
life of the Church from within, judged not merely by this incomplete
[p.34 ]expression, but seen as it affects the daily lives of countless
men and women, must surely agree that in spite of all the trammels
of convention and tradition the Church has still a life to pass on and
a message to deliver for the needs of to-day. Those who would have
it become once more the school of the prophets will surely be willing
to look for a few moments at the picture which has come down to us
of what place prophecy filled in the Church life of the earliest days,
and how the prophet was supplanted, not killed, as some have
thought, by the priest, but rather silenced by the iron grip of
organization.
In the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians is
preserved for us a picture the meetings of an early Christian Church,
full of interest to the historian.

It is clear from this description that an important part was usually

taken in these gatherings by men who gave to their fellow
worshippers what they believed to be God's message or revelation to
them. This was something quite distinct from the recitation of a
hymn or a passage of Scripture, or from the interpretation of
scripture, or again from the teaching of doctrine. It is regarded by
the Apostle Paul as the highest spiritual gift, one earnestly to be
desired, although it was not given to all, but only to some. Of the
nature of this ministry we get a glimpse in his description of the way
in which an unbeliever who enters the assembly is convinced by it.
[p.35] The ministry goes to his inmost self, reading the needs of his
heart.

"If all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one
unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are
the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his
face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.[3]

The message of prophecy is one, as it seems, which reaches the

subconscious self of the incomer, who suddenly beholds the realities
of his own inner life in this flood of light that flows in upon him,
piercing through the veil that custom and convention had wrought
about him. But the prophetic word does not merely give this fuller
knowledge of his own nature to the stranger; it puts him also into
touch with a higher self. He sees in a flash of revelation not only the
evil in his own life, but the source of power to set it right, here in
the midst of this assembly, and bowing himself before it he
confesses the Divine Presence.

If we ask how this prophetic ministry is conceived as coming to

those who exercise it, it would seem from the words of the Apostle
that it is not by exercise of the intellect that prophecy comes, though
the understanding is to be cultivated in connection with another
highly prized gift, that of teaching. But the Corinthians are urged to
long after the gift of prophecy most of all; they [p.36] are to prepare
themselves for it, then, by prayer, the door through which our life
opens out into the Divine life and is fed from it. The teacher thinks
over what he knows of the needs and difficulties of his fellows,
ponders over the truths that have been made clear to him in the
past, searches amongst the sayings of the Lord, the teachings of the
Apostles, the words of the Law or the prophets of old, for help for
the present. Not so the prophet. He may, indeed, go through all this
preparation of thought, but the essential preparation for his work is
prayer; prayer in which he must be willing to lay aside, if need be,
all these thoughts of this. The prophetic spirit reaches out to realize
the condition of those to whom it is to minister, and upward in
search of light and strength from its only source.

Sometimes it is not given to the prophet to reach conscious hold of

Him by whom we are all upheld, and then all his ministry may be but
a cry for help, with a deep sense of need. Sometimes he feels the
presence very near, and as he keeps close to the Father's hand,
those about him are given to feel it too.

Or, perhaps, some word of the Lord, or some thought of other days
is suddenly illumined by a fresh light, and his message is to hand on
the fire from the altar, that those about him may light their torches
too.

The prophet is God's spokesman. He must lose thought of himself in

his message. He is [p.37] translating for others and to others in the
presence of the Giver of the message. He must keep in touch with
those to whom he is speaking. He must remember too how easy it is
for interpreters to expand and embroider upon the original, and thus
to mar it. And, therefore, the prophet should keep very close to the
Giver of the message, who may have given to others its fuller
exposition.
One danger of the prophets of Corinth was very present to St. Paul's
mind.

Some of them seem to have got so wrapt up in a sense of the Divine

communion that they did not keep that control of their whole nature,
which would lead them to find expression in the language of
intelligence. Carried away by their feelings they gave utterance to
the experience of their spirit in words broken and unintelligible, the
channels of word and thought over which their brains had control
seemed too small for the flood of emotion which swept out in
overmastering power, so that their tongues moved and they spoke
without knowing what they said. Paul knew better than any of them
the hidden things of the Spirit, the groanings that cannot be uttered,
the thoughts that flash upon us and cannot be caught up by our
halting reason, following slowly after, the striving of the soul that no
words can compass, the God-given intuitions which cannot be
imprisoned in words.

But he knew too that language was given us not for the joy of
expressing what we feel but as [p.38] a means of sharing our
experience with others. To speak with an unknown tongue, to
abandon oneself to the ecstasy of the moment, may be right for our
own life, he writes, but it is useless for our fellows. We must not be
content to soar up ourselves into the world of life and light, we must
try to bring back into our world of sense some symbols of the truths
of the world beyond, imprisoning in words which men may
understand fragments of the truths which can never wholly be
expressed in words.

At times the message burns so within the prophet's breast that he

feels he must speak, no matter what is happening about him. Thus it
seems that sometimes at Corinth two or three prophets would speak
at once, and mar each other's messages. But this was to lose sight
of their true place, to forget that the message was given them that
others might receive it.
The prophet, he writes, is still master of his own spirit: he is not to
allow his reason to lose its right control. He has to use his
intelligence in deciding when he is to speak and when he must hold
silence. He has not to let his conscious self be submerged in the
sub-conscious, like an island beneath the waves of the surrounding
sea; rather is he to gather on to its dry land the goods the waves
have brought him, before he sends them forth again to other shores.
In this way may the Divine message not only bring help to him but
comfort to all to whom it is sent. [p.39] Thus the picture of the
Church of Corinth and St. Paul's advice for its needs is one to which
men may look who are seeking to-day for that true prophetic
ministry which seemed to the Apostle the most important of the gifts
of the Spirit to the Christian Church.

It may help us too to consider how far that gift has been present
throughout the succeeding ages, and how far it has been hindered
by the Church from finding its true exercise.

When next we get a glimpse of the Church at Corinth, more than a

generation has passed away, and probably few of those who were
members when St. Paul wrote are still alive. The majority of the
church is in disagreement with its Elders or Bishops, and has
deposed them from their positions; and the Bishop of Rome,
Clement writes in the name of his church, in reply to some letter
from the Corinthians, to urge them to be reconciled, and give once
more the honour that is their due to these worthy presbyters. The
first epistle of Clement is a long and beautiful letter, and enters with
tact and deep concern into a discussion of the dissension that is
troubling the peace of the Corinthians, but it makes no mention
whatever of the place of prophecy in the Church. The word prophet
does occur twice in the epistle, but only in reference to the Old
Testament.

At the same time it is clear that Clement is very sensible of the

importance of the position of [p.40] the bishops or presbyters,
though it is not quite clear whether these are wholly distinct offices.
Apparently the Church at Corinth was trying, in the spirit of Greek
democracy, to dispense with its church officers. Clement tells them
[4] how the Apostles went about setting up bishops and deacons
amongst the first fruits of their converts in different cities; these
offices had even been foreseen ages before, he notes, by the
prophet Isaiah (Ix. 17). [5]

It was not right, he urges, that men who had been appointed by the
apostles and afterwards by other men of renown, with the consent
and approval of the whole Church, who had fulfilled their duties
without blame, should now be cast out of their offices.

If we turn to another group of letters, written some twelve years

later by Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom at Rome, we
find, again, that the only references to prophets and prophecy deal
with old Testament days, but that the greatest importance is set by
Ignatius upon the relations of the Church to its Bishop: "Do all of
you," he bids the Church of Smyrna, [6] "follow the Bishop, as Jesus
Christ the Father, and follow the College of Presbyters as the
Apostles, and give heed to the deacons as God's commandment. Let
no man do anything of those things that appertain to the Church
apart from the Bishop. Let that Eucharist be accounted valid that is
under the authority of the Bishop or of him to whomsoever he
himself entrusts it. Wheresoever the Bishop appeareth there let the
multitude be, even as wheresoever Christ Jesus is there is the
Catholic Church. It is not lawful apart from the Bishop either to
baptise or to hold an Agape, but whatsoever he approves that is also
well pleasing to God; that all that is done may be safe and valid."
(According to present Catholic doctrine even a woman may validly
baptize.)

We see at once that it would not be easy to fit into such an ordered
Church as this prophets like those of the earliest Church in Corinth.

But while in most of the larger towns the churches had been
developing along lines like these it would seem that at the same
time there were out of the way places in which a much more
primitive tradition was preserved.

We can get some idea of this from the passages in the Didache
which refer to prophets and travelling apostles.

Two whole chapters of this ancient book of teaching (xi. and xiii.) are
devoted to this subject, whereas only the briefest mention is made
of bishops and deacons, and in these words, "Elect then for
yourselves bishops and deacons, worthy of the Lord, men gentle and
not money loving, true and tested, for they too themselves offer to
you the service of the prophets and teachers; [p.42] "Despise them
not then, for these are they who are honoured of you along with the
prophets and teachers."

Thus it would seem that the bishops and deacons are chosen by the
Church for its work, perhaps in default of sufficiency of prophets and
teachers, to do the work which these would do, and they seem at
least to need, in the writer's eyes, to be supported by an appeal
which he would not think of making on behalf of the prophet and
teacher whose messages carry within themselves their authority.
That the true prophet stands, in his eyes, above the human ordering
of the church, seems clear too, from the section which gives
instructions as to the words (and very beautiful words they are too)
of the eucharistic prayer (ch. x.). At the conclusion of this model
prayer the writer adds: "but allow the prophets to offer thanks as
much as they choose."

Warning of almost naive simplicity is given against dangers from

false prophets. Apparently the temptation to emotional enthusiasm is
not before the writer's mind, as it was before Paul's in writing to
Corinth. The travelling evangelist, or apostle, as he is called, is to be
received "as the Lord," but if he stay for as long as three days he is
to be recognised as a false prophet. The readers are warned not to
judge the prophet who speaks in the spirit, this being treated as the
sin against the Holy Ghost.
"But not every man who speaks in the spirit [p.43] is a prophet," the
writer goes on," but only if he have the ways of the Lord," thus
making the character of Christ the objective standard by which
prophets are judged.

"From their ways then shall the false prophet and the prophet be
known, and every prophet who appoints a feast in the spirit does not
eat of it, unless, indeed, he be a false prophet, and every prophet
who teaches the truth, if he does not do that which he teaches, is a
false prophet." The readers are warned against judging the prophet
who does some strange symbolic act for the edification of the
Church without bidding others to do as he does," for even thus also
did the ancient prophets." "But whoso saith in the spirit Give me
money, or any other things, to him ye shall not hearken; but if he
speak concerning others who are in need, and bids men give, let no
man judge him" (ch. xi.). The true prophet who is willing to settle
amongst them is worthy of his keep, they are told, and so is the true
teacher; "and so," the writer continues, "ye shall take every first-
fruit of the produce of your wine-press and threshing floor, of your
oxen and of your flocks, and shall give to the prophets, for they are
your high priests.

"But if ye have not a prophet give to the poor; and so likewise with
bread, oil and wine, with

money, clothes and all other things" (ch. xiii.).

Here we have, perhaps, the hint of a transitional stage between the

early church of Corinth and the churches of Clement and Ignatius.
The prophet [p.44] has the first place of honour and next to him the
teacher but all churches have not their prophet, and in these bishops
and deacons must act in the place of prophets and teachers, and be
honoured as such, while in other churches the prophets and
teachers were treated as a sort of Christian priest, and one may see
how their work came to be regarded as a regular church office and
gradually assimilated, in church after church to the offices customary
in the larger congregations like Rome and Antioch. As time passes
the place of the prophet is more and more taken by the bishop, and
by the end of the second century it would seem, that, for such a
bishop of the Church Catholic as Apollinaris of Hierapolis, the
prophet was a memory of the distant past.

The Montanist movement in Phrygia had owed its strength to the

appeal which it made to the prophetic tradition and the prophetic
spirit. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Phrygian convert
Montanus had gone into prophetic ecstasies which shocked the more
orderly members of the church, and a separation ensued, in which
Montanus was joined by two prophetesses, Prisca and Maximilla;
they continued for some time, it would seem, to appeal to those
within the greater church to recognise them, for a fragment of
Maximilla which is preserved to us, runs thus:

"I am chased like a wolf from the flock; I am wolf, I am utterance,

spirit and power." (Eusebius v.§ 16). [p. 45]

Some, like Tertullian, listened; but the Church, as a whole, was

frightened at the excesses of their enthusiasm and probably, as a
result, prophecy became more than ever suspect. Irenaeus, it is
true, mentions amongst the Divine gifts still given to Christians in his
day, that some have the knowledge of things to come, as also
visions and prophetic communications (Eus. v. § 7), but this certainly
does not imply any frequent and general gift like that in the early
church of Corinth.

His contemporary Alcibiades, indeed, writes a book to demonstrate

the impropriety of a prophet's speaking in ecstasy, which Apollinaris
abridged (Eus. v. § 17). The good bishop of Hierapolis was very
earnest in his attack against the Montanists: "They will never be able
to show," he writes, "that any in the Old or New Testament were
thus violently agitated and carried away in spirit. Neither will they be
able to boast that Agabus or Judas or Silas or the daughters of
Phillip or Ammia, in Philadelphia, or Quadratus or others, that do not
belong to them, ever acted in this way." It is very significant that the
latest examples of eminent prophets in the Church here named, are
Quadratus and Ammia. Ammia appears to be unknown to Eusebius,
who alludes to her in this chapter as "one Ammia," but Quadratus he
has mentioned in a previous book as a prophet contemporary with
Ignatius, in these words: "Of those that flourished in these times
Quadratus is said to have been distinguished for his prophetical gifts.
There [p.46] were many others also noted in these times who held
the first rank in the apostolic succession." (iii. § 37); whether this
Quadratus is to be identified with the philosopher who wrote an
apology for Christianity to Hadrian (iv.§ 3) is uncertain.

It seems from the words of Apollinaris, which Eusebius goes on to

quote (v. § 17), that the Montanists claimed that their prophets and
prophetesses were the successors of Ammia and Quadratus, but
Maximilla had now been dead for some years, and the bishop
challenges his opponents to point to any living prophet who had
succeeded her: "And if you have no succession of prophets then," he
urges, "you must give up your claim to represent the Christian
Church. (For the apostle shows that the gift of prophecy shall be in
all the church until the coming of the Lord)." What would have been
the bishop's answer if the Montanists had turned on him with the
demand that he, too, should produce his living prophets within the
pale of the great church? In view of what he has told us, may we
not believe that his answer would be somewhat on this wise: "The
gift of prophecy has never been removed from the church; though it
may be dormant as far as such prophecies as those of Quadratus are
concerned, it may be called forth again at any time by the Divine
will, and will be recognised at once by the bishops, who are the
divinely appointed authorities, without whose approval no true
prophet will act. And if there be no such prophets [p.47] now, in any
church, the bishop takes their place, expounding as is fit the will of
the Lord to the people, and guided himself by the Holy Spirit"? How
are we to explain this remarkable change that we have thus
witnessed, and was it the necessary and right development of the
Church which led to it?
To those who know how, in the seventeenth century, another
experiment was begun, which after nearly nine generations, is not
yet ended, in the holding together of religious communities of which
an essential feature has always been the freedom of prophesying, it
may, at first sight, seem easy to reply that the change was no
necessary one.

One would not say that they were wrong, for who can say what
might not have been, if men had only been faithful to their highest
ideals, and been willing always to take the rough and narrow way
that leads straight up to the heavenly city? But we shall, perhaps
judge more fairly if we think how very much greater were the
difficulties that beset the Christian organisms of the first and second
centuries, than those, great as they were, with which George Fox
had to grapple. He had, it is true, to deal with companies of men
and women, amongst whom were enthusiasts or individualistic
quietists, who would brook no discipline, and many of them were
poor and very ignorant folk; but how different in many cases was a
church of the first century. Imagine a [p.48] community of varying
nationalities, containing a number of slaves, many of them illiterate
people, others degraded by their past life to the lowest depths; men
and women rescued from lives of terrible evil and still under
constant temptation to fall back; a number of Christian Jews with
strange oriental customs and traditions, half- familiar only with the
language and civilisation of their adopted town; a few men, possibly,
of higher social position and greater education, but the majority only
able to communicate with each other by a lingua franca of bad
Greek, which was the native tongue only of a small minority. One
can see what a babel of confusion might easily arise amongst such a
community, especially when we remember that many had but an
imperfect knowledge of Christ and His teaching, and very few
churches possessed all the works which we have in our New
Testament.

Moreover, a great change had come from the days of Paul's letter to
the Corinthians. That little church was then still living in the days
when the Christians as such were tolerated by the law. Gallio's
decision had removed the church at Corinth from any need to
observe secrecy.

But after two generations the position had wholly changed, and to
be a Christian was a penal offence which, if adhered to, was
punishable with death. This necessarily involved a need for greater
precaution, for more order and wise management in the assembling
of the Church. [p.49] And in the early days when the churches lived
in constant expectation of the immediate end of the age and the
outward coming of Christ to set up His Kingdom, they would
naturally lay little stress on church order; the struggle of the church
militant was but to last a brief time more; there was no need for
much organisation, or for any other connection between one church
and another than the friendly ties of love. One church might have its
prophets and teachers, another only presbyters or a bishop and
deacons; others of larger size and needs might have ail these
officers together with deaconesses and widows. But no one was
anxious about such differences. Travelling apostles and evangelists
formed living links of love betwixt church and church, and
occasionally, individuals and churches sent letters to each other. No
other bond was needed.

But when it became slowly more evident that the Church might yet
have to continue long years at work in the world before the
consummation came, and when it seemed to the leaders that they
had to fight a life and death struggle, on the one hand against the
vast force of the world empire of Rome, whenever a persecuting
edict might be enforced, and on the other against a growing crowd
of strange errors, which seemed to them to be sent by the Devil to
delude the hearts of the faithful, and draw them away from the
Gospel of Christ; can we wonder that they did their best to draw the
scattered communities of [p.50] Christians to a sense of unity under
a like organization, adapted for a strenuous fight to preserve the
good order of the Church from being shattered by persecutions from
without or broken up and corrupted by false or mistaken brethren
from within. And often, too, especially under the fire of persecution,
something of the true prophetic spirit showed itself in the bishops
themselves, as they admonished their fellow believers to be faithful
even unto death, and beheld, amidst the shadow of death, visions of
the deep things of God. Very true is this of Ignatius, whose letters
breathe forth again and again the fiery faith and zeal of the true
prophet, with flashes now and then of great and Christlike thoughts
that still shine like gems amid the dust of pious exposition and
mistaken exegesis that even first century Christian literature shares
as a characteristic with our own. In the letter which he wrote to his
friend Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one sees how intensely he felt
the importance of a bishop's work for the life of the Church, how
great the need was for gifted and holy men to fill such posts and
what true help such men were able to give to the struggling
communities for whom they lived and whom they served. Ignatius,
for all his exaltation of the bishop's office, is full of humanity, feeling
his own unworthiness and regarding himself as the servant of his
church. As we hear him urging upon Polycarp to do his best to save
all his flock, to put up with them all, even as Christ bears with [p.51]
him, to love not just the good disciples but rather more especially
the worse, and to conquer them by gentleness, to stand like a rock
against false teaching, to care for the widows and not to overlook
the slaves, we feel indeed how high the task of such a bishop was;
and with both Ignatius and Polycarp, as with countless of their less
illustrious fellows, it was a task crowned by martyrdom.

But if history shows us how valuable was the work done under the
system of the catholic hierarchy to preserve a living Christianity
across the centuries, it also bears witness to the way in which in
succeeding ages the prophetic spirit re-asserted itself. A long series
of heresies from that of the Montanists in the second century to that
of the Fraticelli in the fourteenth, or of the Lollards and Hussites in
the fifteenth, up to the days of the Reformation and the Anabaptist
prophets of Munster, give us evidence of the way in which that spirit
meets the profound need of humanity and proves the outcome of
deep stirring of soul. But inside the Church itself we shall find again
that the spirit of prophecy cannot be banished, just because there
always was true life there. Yet the prophetic gift does not go along
the orthodox channels of the hierarchy, but is continually bursting
out in new and unexpected quarters, so that often the authorities of
the Church are in a strait whether they are dealing with a saint or a
heretic. To those outside the Church, the canon sometimes seems
strange enough which [p.52] rules into one class St. Theresa, into
the other Madame Guyon, which, after burning Savonarola was
almost on the point of canonising him, which deposed and exiled
John of Parma, and then beatified him. The prophetic spirit surely
often found its outlet in the early ages amongst the monks of the
desert, witness for instance such a saint as Telemachus, who
brought to an end the gladiatorial shows at Rome; and in later times
first in the Benedictine and the subsequent monastic orders, and
then, very notably, in the Franciscan brotherhood, it found freer
outlets than the church of the day could provide, while the lives of
countless saints bear witness to some touches at least of the spirit of
the prophet re-asserting itself in spite of the trammels of the
organization of the church. If the gift of prophecy were to be
connected with a divinely ordered hierarchy we might naturally look
for it most of all in the popes. Yet in so many centuries
comparatively few popes have been canonised as saints, and few
amongst these are conspicuous as showing forth this gift in the way
in which we see it in such a simple woman as Catherine of Siena, or
in plain men like Giles of Perugia.

In our own day, a devout catholic like Fogazzaro has pictured for us
the way in which a true prophet may arise within the bosom of the
Church, only to meet with obstacles from the authorities, and finally
with persecution ending almost in martyrdom. Yet that book, which,
in spite of [p.53] Papal prohibition, has found such warm support
and awakened such eager interest in Catholic Italy, bears witness to
the profound longing (which many in England surely share) that
there is within the orthodox Church for a deep spiritual ministry,
which the recognised authorities have not always supplied, for a
revelation of new truth to meet the needs of our day, for a fresh
unfolding of the meaning of the gospel of Christ, which shall appeal
once more with apostolic power to the hearts of men.

Two centuries ago the early Quakers felt that they had known such
an experience and tried to hand it on to others. Need we wonder if it
should appear that the Society of Friends to-day has inherited their
traditions but not their spirit? For, indeed, the prophetic spirit can
never be inherited, or passed on from man to man by any
mechanical arrangement. It must come anew from generation to
generation, often after the hardest travail of soul, through fresh
strivings, as the result of other needs; but we can, at least, see that
our ordering, whether of the Church's life or our own, is such as not
to hinder its coming but to prepare us for it.

And not the least of such a heritage has been a form of worship and
a view of life which may still give not only to a little community but
to a wider world a school of the prophets.

When we see the weak side of quietism, and mistakes of an earlier

day of mystics (as now we [p.54] are so apt to do), let us not forget
that, amidst the quietist Quakerism of the eighteenth century, there
grew up and flowered one of the most beautiful products not only of
Quaker but of Christian training; to many of us to-day, John
Woolman speaks as do few others with the power of a true prophet.
Yet too often in the past the Society of Friends has been content
with a succession of minor prophets, whose message was only to a
little congregation. Without was a multitude who had no priests or
shepherds, and nations needing a guide. To-day, if we cannot make
teachers like Woolman, at least we can prepare the way for their
coming.

Prophecy is born of prayer, supported by it, not the prayer of words,

but that attitude of soul, of will, of which the most beautiful of our
collects are the momentary reflections. In this spirit then, feeling our
need and our fellows', let us long for more light to come into our
lives. Let us remember that we have not just to sit down contentedly
in the dark and wait for God's light.

If we try to listen to the voice of the prophet teachers of the past

whose message still comes home to us, and to picture the thoughts
of some disciple of theirs to-day, might we not frame them thus?

"If we cannot scatter the clouds, we can at least clean our windows
and open our doors. Every faculty of our nature is God's gift and to
be used in His service, and so we are not to think of prophecy [p.55]
as coming with the atrophy of the intellect; with every power of our
minds we are called to serve God and seek truth, which is His
revelation. To pray, ' Thy will be done ' should be, as Fogazzaro has
told us, no attitude of passive submission, but a call to our whole
nature to strive to the utmost for the cause of God.

"Then we must remember that the more truly we are at one with
Christ, the more we shall feel ourselves fundamentally united with all
our fellows. We shall feel their wrongs and sins as ours, and their
needs too, and as we come to feel this, we shall realise more and
more that in every act and word and thought we are not our own.

"Every evil desire overcome is a victory for our brothers, and not
merely for ourselves. Our lives are intertwined one with another, and
constantly, unseen and unknown to ourselves and each other, we
influence one another for evil or for good. The prophet is nothing
else than a true priest, not to one or two, but to a multitude.

"We are all called to be priests, and, if God calls us to be prophets,

in learning to be truly priests, we shall unconsciously be learning too
in the prophets' school.

"The priest must have a two-fold vision, of the truth above him and
of the brother beside him who has need of the truth. The more he
can see of either, the more he can be brought into communication
with his fellows, and with the truth, the more priestly will his service
be. [p.56] "Let us be faithful in word and deed to the highest that
we know, and higher things shall be revealed unto us. Let us be
patient with the worst and those who naturally repel us. Far more
repulsive has been the evil in our own thoughts in the eyes of the
holy angels. Let us not be uplifted because others have been helped
through us; Truth is not ours, but God's.

"Let us not be discouraged if our work seem fruitless; never despair

of the truth. Have faith in the truth that has been revealed to you,
for some day others too shall see it.

"Have faith in the Truth that is yet unknown; others perhaps have
already caught some glimpse of it.

"Blessed is the man in whose heart there is built an altar with the
inscription written: ' To the unknown Truth '; of such men are
prophets made.

"Truth is beautiful in the mouth of a friend, but most divine when it

is seen in the heart of an opponent. The devil had delight to seek for
faults in Job; let us seek rather to see, with Christ, the good in the
heart of the publican."

Those of us who are striving after this ideal should be the greatest
of sacerdotalists; our faith and worship are built up upon belief in
the essential priesthood of every human soul. Let us not forget then,
that if all men have some vision of God, all may teach us something
of Him. And since heavenly truth comes to no man naked, but clad
in changing robes, let us strive in our [p.57] search for truth, alike in
speaking and in listening, to remember that the garment of words
changes and may mean one thing to us and another to our fellows.
Let us get beneath words and forms to the life-giving spirit, and as
we are to be the greatest sacerdotalists let us be the most thorough-
going of ritualists too, to whom there are symbols and lessons of the
Divine Life, not only in the beautiful liturgies of the altar, but in all
the mysteries of nature and the sacraments with which life is full.
For surely there are not merely two or seven sacraments, but
seventy times seven, for him whose heart seeks ever fellowship with
his brothers and with the Father above him, who would be loved in
them, and served by their service. The whole world is God's and full
of His light; our lives are His and they are our fellows. And since in
every heart of man is some well through which the God-given waters
of life may flow, we may go forth in faith to our work; as we serve
our neighbours and search for truth, in the spirit of followers of
Christ Jesus, seeking that our own wells may be made wider and
deeper, and that their springs may be shared more fully by others,
God will make priests of all of us, and, if He will it, prophets too.
[p.58]
CHAPTER IV. SACRAMENTS OF LIFE.
"THE Finger of God," wrote once Sir Thomas Browne, "hath left an
inscription upon all His works." We have little skill to read that
wondrous message, but from the very dawn of humanity men have
tried to trace the writing, have sought to spell out the words, and as
they came to perceive something of those spiritual forces that are at
work in the world, and to look beneath the surface of things to that
which lies deeper, they too have endeavoured to embody in outward
forms for themselves and for others the truths which they would
apprehend.

The course of the ages changes the meaning of even the simplest
words which we use, for words, like men, are mortal; and so it has
come about that the thought which rises in our minds as we speak
of a sacrament is not that which came to those who used the word
long ago.

In the ancient days a sacrament was simply a holy thing, something

consecrated and set apart; in very early times it was especially a sort
of judicial pledge deposited by the parties in a law [p.59] suit; then
it came to mean the solemn oath of a soldier, pledging his loyalty to
his commander on entering upon his military service. It was used by
early Christian Latin writers to render the thought of the Greek
mystery, μυστήριον, a word which we have failed to translate into
English, as so often we must fail in any translation from one tongue
to another to render thought for thought.

We think nowadays of a mystery as being something hidden, but to

the Greek it was rather a revelation; an unfolding through symbol of
that which could not be wholly expressed in any words. The mystery
remained a secret to him who was without, to the uninitiate; but the
initiate understood its meaning.
In the most famous mysteries of Greece, those which were
celebrated at Eleusis, it would seem that along with the idea of
revelation of truth went also the sense of upbuilding of the inward
life, the purification of the soul and the assimilation of the Divine
things imparted beneath the symbol. For revelation, the unveiling of
truth, is no one-sided act; it involves response in the mind that
receives; if the truth is apprehended, it must in part at least, be also
assimilated. And so every mystery is something more than the
unfolding of a hidden reality; it also implies the imparting of new life.
[7] [p.60 ]

In the earlier Christian literature sacraments still bear this wide

meaning. Tertullian often uses the word thus. In one passage he
speaks of a woman known to him who was accustomed to go into
ecstasies during the weekly service of the Church; "she converses
with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and both sees and hears
sacraments" [8] He speaks of "the sacrament of allegory,"[9]
"sacraments of metaphors," [10] in both cases alluding to Old
Testament types, and again, he explains the wood by which Moses
made the waters of Mara sweet (Exodus xv.), as a sacrament
symbolizing the cross [11]

According to Prudentius, the early Christian poet, the Evangelist tells

us that Christ gave these [p.61] commands to His disciples: "Seek
not carefully for words when ye shall have to descant of my
sacrament," [12] "my Sacrament," being evidently here equivalent to
"the Gospel."

But, as time passed by, the word sacrament became more and more
used for certain mysteries of the Church alone, although far down
into the middle ages even in this sense the word had a wider use
than that of the seven sacraments of the Council of Trent.

Thus in 393 A.D. the synod of Hippo made a decree as to the use of
the sacrament of salt at Easter by the catechumens, and in later
times the ringing of bells and the use of the sign of the cross were
regarded as sacraments. By the time of Augustine, however, the
word sacrament was frequently used in its narrower signification,
and already emphasis is laid on the saving power of the sacrament
rather than on its significance as a revelation. Yet Augustine, though
holding that the sacrament of baptism was necessary to salvation,
once wrote thus: "For what else are each of the bodily sacraments,
but, so to speak, certain visible words; most holy words it is true,
but yet mutable and temporal ones?" [13]

It is this wider sense of the word which we must [p.62 ]be careful
not to lose, the use in which a sacrament means the unfolding and
imparting of the spiritual and eternal through that which we see and
hear and feel.

Because in times past the Church has tended to narrow the use of
the word, and, by confining the Divine operations to certain
channels, to misread the great sacrament of life, so lessening the
mystery of the world, there is all the more reason that we should not
rest content with seeing how inadequate such views have proved. It
is true that over the doctrine of sacraments men have fought and
wrangled, forgetting the name by which they were called. But it is
true, too, that to countless souls it has seemed that through the
sacraments the Church has offered them help which has come as in
no other way to their lives. And surely this has not been all delusion.
The error of the sacramentalist in the past has often rather been
that he has confined the Divine presence and the Divine working to
certain fixed channels and unchanging visible signs. Those of us who
hold that these good men have narrowed down the freedom of the
inner life need to meet them not by denying the Divine presence
where they see it, but by trying to see and to realize that presence
ourselves more fully throughout all our lives. We are called to the
worship and the knowledge of the transcendent and immanent God,
who is here in the midst of our lives, in the midst of His world and
His works, yet is far more than all these. [p.63] When the stern old
Tertullian looked out upon the pagan world around him and noted in
its religious rites strange mimicry and rivalry of the Christian
mysteries, he could perceive no good in what he saw. In the worship
of Mithras he found a baptism for the remission of sins, and a sign
made on the forehead of the soldier in this pagan army of salvation;
a crown purchased by the sword, and the ritual offering of bread.
But all this, like the ancient Roman rites of Numa, or the mysteries
of Eleusis and of Samothrace, seemed to him but the work of the
Evil One. It was the devil's part, he wrote, to invert the truth and
make of it his own counterparts, as he seemed to do in much of the
ritual of the heathen temple.[14]

In like manner, in more modern times the early missionaries in the

far east learned with amazement of the way in which, in the
mountains of Thibet, the devil had made his imitation of the
ceremonies and offices of the Catholic Church, and wondered as
they heard of the Buddhist monasteries with their abbots and
hierarchy of clergy, and the celebration there of mysterious offices
strangely resembling their own mass, to the sound of bells and amid
the smoke of incense.

In our own day an even wider area opens before [p.64 ]the
historian's vision, and across five continents men trace, under
various forms, rites whose origin seems the same. It is not now the
devil who is credited with inspiring these myriad devices, but
perhaps not a few of the students who return with Dr. Frazer from
the survey of this vast field are inclined to feel that they have
reduced all alike to one origin, in primitive savage superstition at
work in the presence of life, birth and death. But if Tertullian and his
school lack charity in their judgment on the sacraments of the
heathen, there is surely danger too that our modern men of science
may lead us to believe that in tracing a custom to its primitive origin
they have found its cause or explained its nature. We can under-
stand a thing best, not merely by knowing its beginning, but by also
viewing it in its full development, judged not only by what it is at its
lowest, or when it is most degraded, but at its highest and best.
The world-wide use points surely to a world-wide need, expressing
itself in different ways, but in essentials the same. Unconsciously,
indeed, in all our lives we make use of sacraments whenever we
apprehend the invisible and the higher through the medium of the
visible and lower. And, in our very thoughts, metaphors and symbols
are nothing else than sacraments expressing truth in pictorial form.
Even when men deliberately attempt to explain all life on a basis of
atheistic materialism they still feel the need of what might [p.65]
truly be called a kind of sacrament. It is very significant from this
point of view to find that some French secularists have found it
desirable to publish a ritual of civil ceremonies, [15] in which model
liturgies are provided for a secular baptism, a secular confirmation
service, as well as secular marriage and burial services. A conscious
recognition of this same need led Auguste Comte and his Positivist
followers to devise an elaborate ritual which might make their
worship of Humanity more real.

The Society of Friends itself, which is popularly supposed to

represent a protest against all forms of sacraments, can illustrate in
its history the value of the true sacrament, and the danger there is
of doing worship to the form of the sacrament, rather than to the life
which makes it of worth.

No other Christian community has proved so strikingly the value in

worship of the beautiful sacrament of silence, that universal liturgy
in which all nations can unite; where ignorant and learned men
come together on a like basis. Yet the very fact that in speaking of
this we need to emphasize the worth of "Living silence," shows that
too often, even here, men have but honoured a dead silence,
making an idol of the sacrament which was only a means to an end,
not an end in itself.

We may see even more clearly how easy it is for the form to become
a bondage in the history of [p.66] another strange Quaker
sacrament, that of the "Plain dress" of the middle nineteenth
century. There is no need to tell how, in the case of this custom, the
protest against changing fashions became itself the most tyrannous
of fashions. What is especially interesting to us now, is to note that
the dress which was an outward sign of inward grace became to be
considered as, in a sense, holy itself. A young man or woman would
wear the ordinary dress of the day, and suddenly some time of
decision would come, a crisis in the inner life, and perfectly naturally
the change would be marked by the adoption in the plain dress of
the older generation. And it even became customary to associate the
length of the hat brim with the holiness of the wearer's life; the truer
to Quaker principles he was, the longer was the brim. It has been
said that you may find in a journal written seventy years ago such
an entry as this: "I think I can honestly, yet in all humility, say that in
the past year there has been a growth in grace, and I have ventured
to add a quarter of an inch to the brim of my hat." We smile; yet for
some of us at least that ancient costume is so redolent of beautiful
memories that we can scarce bear to laugh at its vagaries; we know
too well the sacramental efficacy of the old Friend's bonnet, which
forever recalls the goodness and love of the face beneath it.

It is strange that in the ancient Church of Rome men should have

come to think in much the same [p.67] way of the peculiar habits of
the religious orders, regarding the monk's dress itself as something
sacred, which an unworthy man dishonoured, and which actually
helped its wearer to be holier in his life just as the old Quaker dress
was felt by many to help them to be more consistent in all their
ways with the ideal which they strove to realize. So strong was this
feeling that men who were not members of an Order sometimes
obtained as a privilege to wear for a time the cord, to die in the
habit, or even to be buried in it, the dress itself being felt to be
sacramental.

If these minor sacraments came to be so misunderstood, how

natural it is that similar misunderstandings should arise as to
sacraments in common use throughout the whole Church, and
associated with the very deepest truths of the inner life. Yet if we go
back to their origin we shall see that the two chief sacraments of the
Church were most simple acts expressing in visible language the life
of the spirit, acts perfectly natural and full of significance to those
who first took part in them, but which in later days have too often
lost their meaning because the mere form was held to have some
magical efficacy in itself.

To understand these sacraments aright do we not need to enter into

the spirit of the Teacher in whose name they are celebrated, and
who is believed to have instituted them? As we read the evangelists'
record of the life and words of Jesus, [p.68] we must surely feel that
to him all life was a sacrament, a continual unfolding of the Divine
through the visible world and through human life. In his eyes the
sunshine falling alike upon good and evil men is a constant
revelation of the Divine love, compassing just and unjust,
overcoming evil with good. The beautiful flowers of the field,
blooming for a moment and then destroyed, bring to him no
thoughts of gloom, as they did to the Greek poet, but the certainty
that the Power which gives such loveliness to the creatures of an
hour will provide for His higher creation too. The sparrows chirruping
under the eaves, humblest of birds, fill him with a sense of the
Father's care for these, and much more for man. As Christ walks
across the fields, he sees messages for men in all the life about him:
the parable of the seed, summing up the whole mystery of our
nature in its life and growth; the sower at his work, the fishermen at
their task, all are parables for him. And so it is with the relationships
of our human life, which Christ takes up in his teaching and makes
sacramental. Because he is in unbroken communion with the Father
unseen, he constantly brings all the little things of daily life into
relationship with Him.

Christ found the religious folk of his day intent on fulfilling certain
duties; eager to guard the letter of the scriptures, the sacredness of
the sabbath, and to fulfil the various acts which the law prescribed.
He did not destroy the sacredness of [p.69] the one day by his
treatment of the sabbath, but he raised the other days to its level:
he did not secularize life by his attitude to the law, but rather
recognised all life as holy. Religion was no longer to be something
confined to certain acts and to special offices and places, but rather
the attitude of the soul toward God and one's fellows, a spirit
pervading the whole life and not concerned merely with the
externals of duty or with certain special seasons of prayer.

Was it not natural, and even necessary, that One who looked thus
upon the world, seeing every- thing in relation to God as the Author
and the end of life, should make of the commonest acts a means to
the Source of all strength? The water of purification, without which
men could not live a clean and healthy life, the daily bread without
which they could not live at all, the wine which stood for the
inspiring fellowship which makes life worth living, were symbols
ready to hand and full of spiritual meaning.

We have a perfect instance, in the account given in the fourth

Gospel of the washing of the disciples' feet, of the true nature of the
sacrament, and we are able perhaps to see it more clearly because
the actual form of this sacrament has never been in general use in
the Church, and men have almost ceased to think of it as a
sacrament at all. "Except I wash thee thou hast no part in me," the
Master says to Peter; so necessary was the sacrament. Yet the mere
form meant nothing, when the thought [p.70] and life beneath it
was not entered into, for Judas too, submitted to the ordinance, and
went out to betray his Lord. We are told how, when Christ had
ended this visible parable, the disciples were bidden even so to wash
each other's feet. Often possibly in after years one or another may
have done a like act for his friend, and recalled the Master's words in
doing it. But this sacrament never became fixed into a form, and so
even now we can clearly see its meaning. Indeed, had it become a
custom of the Church, Christians would have needed to have been
very simple and humble if the ordinance were not to lose its
significance. In the few instances where the rite of feet-washing is
still observed, we see how far removed to-day the ceremony may be
from the thought which once inspired it. The selected poor, who
have first been carefully washed before the ceremony, are
marshalled in stately order, attendant dignitaries are ready at hand
with ewers of scented water and basins of precious metal; and so,
yearly, do Pope and Emperor commemorate the scene in the upper
chamber where in very different wise one whose kingdom was not of
this world taught his followers the way they should serve him by
serving one another.

The sacrament of baptism would seem to be one which comes

naturally to the Eastern peoples: it has been in use for ages among
the Hindus of India, and it was apparently in general vogue in
Palestine in Christ's time. It would appear [p.71] to have been not so
familiar to the Western world, for the evangelist Mark has to explain
to his Gentile reader how it was the custom of the Pharisees to
baptize pots and vessels, and even beds. Apparently, even in that
day the symbol of purification had come to have a magical
significance. The washing or purification as a symbol of initiation is
common to many religions, and it was a natural pictorial language
for the prophet John the Baptist to employ, to express the change of
life that was to follow the repentance which he preached. Christ's
disciples had, many of them, first been followers of John, and would
readily continue to use this sign in their ministry. But though Baptism
was to the early Church the natural expression of entrance into the
new life of Christianity (as we see in the case of Philip and the
Ethiopian eunuch), yet it is hard to imagine that if it were held to
possess in itself the importance which in later time was attached to
it, the Apostle Paul would actually rejoice in the fact that he had
hardly baptized any converts at all himself. [16] Already, however,
the ceremony had a meaning deeper than the simple act of
purification severing the old life from the new, which was probably
that of the first baptisms of the disciples during the lifetime of Christ.
We gather from Paul's words that in baptism the believer made real
to himself, and to those about him, his [p.72] going down with Christ
into the waters of death and his rising again with him into a new life,
by the power of the resurrection. Some inherent virtue was soon
thought to attach to the outward act itself, or else one can scarcely
explain the origin of that strange custom of baptism for the dead,
alluded to in the same epistle. [17]

This thought of the inherent worth of baptism continued to grow

until by the beginning of the fifth century it became generally held
that without it salvation was impossible. The Christian con- science,
however, discovered a way to remove what would have been the
hardest application of such a belief by what was spoken of as the
baptism of blood. If an unbaptized convert was martyred for the
name of Christ (as often might happen), the martyr's death was held
to be itself a baptism, and this idea was extended to what was called
the baptism of desire, or the baptism of faith, whenever death
occurred before it was possible for a convert to be baptized. The
classical instance of this, discussed by St. Augustine and frequently
cited by subsequent writers, is that of the penitent thief upon the
cross, [18] And Tertullian, who called baptism the "seal of faith,"
goes so far as to say "we do not receive the washing of purification
[p.73] in order to cease from sinning, since we had already been
washed in our hearts." [19] The seal of baptism was in his view the
legal and visible completion of the act, not the act itself. Still, he
holds baptism to be the needful "vesture of faith," as he calls it in
another passage, and accordingly discusses the difficulty raised by
some heretics of his own time, that Paul being the only baptized
apostle, the other apostles could none of them be saved; though he
does not feel it needful to adopt the explanation of certain orthodox
ritualists of his day, who held, he tells us, that the apostles were
possibly baptized on the occasion when the waves beat in upon
them in the little ship on the sea of Galilee.

It was not to be wondered at that, with such a view of baptism

current in the Church, the Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries should have laid stress rather on the numbers
whom they could baptize than any other result. It is indeed at once
pathetic and amusing to turn over the leaves of the letters from the
missions which the good Jesuit fathers wrote two centuries and
more ago, describing the progress of their work among the American
Indians. You may read there the words of a missionary spending
laborious days amid all manner of hardships, baptizing the sick and
aged when very near to death and therefore removed from the
danger of possible relapse into infidelity, and especially [p.74]
rejoicing in the number of souls won by the baptism of dying infants,
who could not possibly fall away from grace.

To such almost ludicrous notions do men come through materialising

the pictorial language of the primitive sacrament, and imagining that
its visible words have magical efficacy in themselves. Yet the thought
of the scene in the upper room on the night of the last supper
makes us feel how much that visible language might mean in its first
simplicity.

As simple and as natural was that other sacrament, when Christ took
the bread from the supper table, and the cup of fellowship, and gave
them to those friends of his as his body and very life, which he was
giving for them and for their fellows. What could be more fitting
than that they should henceforth remember this farewell supper, this
supreme gift of himself, when their master was taken from their
sight, whenever they partook again of the Passover, nay, whenever
they met together as disciples to share in a common meal in the
name of him they loved? The more fully they lived in his spirit the
more simply would each meal they took with one another be
hallowed by the thought of his love and his presence.

Thus did the disciples in the early days take together the Eucharist
meal from house to house in Jerusalem: and so, in the midst of the
storm, Paul took it, before wondering fellow-passengers and crew,
mingling the prayer of joyful thanks-[p.75]giving with the
remembrance of the Lord for whose name he was suffering
hardship.

Already in the time of Paul the communion service was beginning to

lose its first simple spontaneity, as we may note in his directions to
the Church at Corinth, but for long afterwards the Eucharist was in a
much wider sense sacramental, than when its meaning was defined
and imprisoned in the formulae of theologians. How full of beauty
must the eucharist have been in those little churches of Asia Minor,
[20] for which perhaps the Didache, "The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles," was written, towards the beginning of the second century.
The eucharist prayer of the Didache is a true prayer of thanks: "We
thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou didst
make known to us through Thy servant Jesus; Unto Thee the glory
evermore !" "For as this broken piece of bread was scattered over
the mountains and brought together and became one, so may Thy
church be brought together from the ends of the earth into Thy
Kingdom, for Thine is the glory and the power through Christ Jesus
evermore."

Thus was the eucharist meal to early Christians a symbol of the unity
of the Church, and a means of drawing them nearer in thought to
each other. [p.76]

It is sad to think that what in those days was a bond of union should
have become in later times a source of bitter contention and
misunderstanding; may we not resolve that for our part, however we
may differ from each other, or from the majority of Christians, in our
views about this observance, we will not let this hinder us from
realizing that others may be helped by means which do not aid us,
and that it is infinitely better to draw near to God through outward
forms than to be without them and not to draw near to Him: that
what we need is to realize and to claim the liberty by which a
hundred forms may become sacramental, and not to deny the reality
of the life which may underlie the fixed forms which others use.

Luther once said that God might have made a sacrament of a bit of
stick, had He chosen; Pusey repeated the saying to a friend with a
shudder, telling him that it showed an irreverent mind. [21] Yet
surely Luther's words convey the very key to our comprehending the
truth of the Real Presence, which may be revealed without outward
form, or under innumerable forms, just because God is so much