Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/233

 of Saints find in such intercession its most practical expression.

Consider the bearing of all this on our highest act of worship, the Holy Communion. There are few parish priests who cannot testify from their own experience to the wonderful—if not miraculous—effects of the reception of the Sacrament upon apparently dying persons, who had been given up by medical science. There is nothing in this that need surprise the Christian believer, nothing that is really repugnant to the findings of modern science. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians about the profanation of the Lord's Supper, attributes to this cause certain physical consequences incurred by the offenders. 'For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.' There is a natural and proper antipathy in many minds to the idea that the Sacramental Elements operate as a charm. Such an idea would be irrational and superstitious, and we are not intended to conceive of a vindication of the sanctity of the Lord's Supper by material and simply magical penalties. The offence of the Corinthians was the irreverence of 'not discerning (or discriminating) the Body,' and Apostolic teaching plainly implies that