TRINITY xvii
THANKSGIVING, eucharist, is the very name of this sacrament,
and it is the occasion appointed by God himself for us to offer our thanksgivings
to him at all times. The only perfect thanksgiving ever made is the thanksgiving
of the Son of God to his Eternal Father, and so thankful he is, that he
finds the giving of his whole being continually to his Father not too much
for the expression of his thanks. And when he came amongst us men for our
salvation, his thankoffering to the Father embraced not only his life,
but his voluntary death. On the night before he died he gave us this sacrament,
and he gave it under the form of thanksgiving, adapting to his purpose
the common Jewish thanksgivings for food and drink. We give thanks in his
eucharist for all the bread of God; for food, for the nourishment of mind
and soul—and has not God given us such a mind that it is fed with all his
wondrous works, and such a soul as to feed on Jesus Christ, Man and God?
