[19] _The writer does not hesitate to advise persons who are temporarily residing, as is often the case during the summer, where there is no Episcopal Church, to attend public worship, once a Sunday at least, at the representative Evangelical place of worship of the community. Reading the Church service at home by one's self is no substitute for public worship._
The Eucharist is the Church's great central act of corporate worship. It would be strange, considering the origin of this wonderful mystery, were it otherwise. Even those who regard it as a bare memorial of the historic occurrence of Christ's Passion and nothing more, however highly they may honour the ordinary round of prayer and praise, approach the Eucharist with unwonted awe.
Of course no one conception of its character is complete, as its various and stately names testify. So bound up with the Person of our Lord is it, that, as new treasures of knowledge are laid open concerning Him who is the eternal Son of God, this feast of rich things is proportionately enriched to the participant. Says Jeremy Taylor in his quaint and reverent way: "The Holy Communion or Supper of the Lord is the most sacred, mysterious and useful conjugation of secret and holy things and duties in the religion."[22] And withal it is, in essence, of all simple things the most simple--a meal, a meal transformed and exalted, it is true, but still a meal. However difficult the liturgy may be for unlearned folk, the sacrament itself, "the breaking of the bread," is easily understood by every one, even the least wise. Nor is it hard to reconcile the idea of a feast with this meagre meal of a morsel of bread and a sip of wine; for everyday experience has prepared us for the conveyance of great wealth through what has no intrinsic excellence. If a scrap of paper can have the value of heaps of gold, and, by the law of association, an age-worn trinket can become of priceless worth, it suggests no unreality to claim that under certain conditions a simple meal becomes a royal banquet, filling heart and soul and mind, and admitting into the very presence of the Most Holy and Most High. There is diversity in the explication of this act of worship, but whatever difference of opinion there may be regarding its exact nature, those most widely separated in thought will agree in this, that it is a profound rite, and that in it is spiritual wealth. And in these days, when at last men are beginning to perceive that truth is always greater than its best definition, no one will contend that what he sees in the Eucharist is all that it contains.[23]