The Blessed Sacrament!--or, as the Prayer Book calls it, "The Holy Sacrament". This title seems to sum up all the other titles by which the chief service in the Church is known. These are many. For instance:--
_The Liturgy_, from the Greek _Leitourgia_,[1] a public service.
_The Mass_, from the Latin _Missa_, dismissal--the word used in the Latin Liturgy when the people are dismissed,[2] and afterwards applied to the service itself from which they are dismissed.
_The Eucharist_, from the Greek _Eucharistia_, thanksgiving--the word used in all the narratives { 82} of Institution,[3] and, technically, the third part of the Eucharistic Service.
_The Breaking of the Bread_, one of the earliest names for the Sacrament (Acts ii. 42, 1 Cor. x. 16).
_The Holy Sacrifice_, which Christ once offered, and is ever offering.
_The Lord's Supper_ (1 Cor. xii. 10), a name perhaps originally used for the _Agapé_, or love feast, which preceded the Eucharist, and then given to the Eucharist itself. It is an old English name, used in the story of St. Anselm's last days, where it is said: "He passed away as morning was breaking on the Wednesday before _the day of our Lord's Supper_".
_The Holy Communion_ (1 Cor. x. 16), in which our baptismal union with Christ is consummated, and which forms a means of union between souls in the Church Triumphant, at Rest, and on Earth. In it, Christ, God and Man, is the bond of oneness.
All these, and other aspects of the Sacrament, are comprehended and gathered up in the name which marks its supremacy,--The Blessed Sacrament.
Consider: What it is; What it does; How it does it.
It is the supernatural conjunction of matter and spirit, of Bread and Wine and of the Holy Ghost. Here, as in Baptism, the "inward and spiritual" expresses itself through the "outward and visible". Both must be there. And, notice again. This conjunction is not a _physical_ conjunction, according to physical laws; nor is it a spiritual conjunction, according to spiritual laws; it is a Sacramental conjunction, according to Sacramental laws. As in Baptism, so in the Blessed Sacrament: the "outward and visible" is, and remains, subject to natural laws, and the inward and spiritual to spiritual laws; but the Sacrament itself is under neither natural nor spiritual but Sacramental laws.