In this article and the ones which follow we shall be looking in some detail at the system of sacraments which constitutes the framework of the Church. It will perhaps be remembered that in a previous article I said that certain things which are said metaphorically of the people of God in the Old Testament are said literally of Christ; and these same expressions—'first bom son of God', ‘priest of Yahweh', etc., are to be said sacramentally of the new people of God, the Church. The Church is Christ existing sacramentally in the world; existing, that is, in our hearts by means of the system of sacraments.

It is common to treat of each sacrament as fulfilling some particular spiritual need of a man or as corresponding to some phase of his natural life. In what follows we shall use a rather different method. We shall try to understand each sacrament by seeing what part it has to play iin the realisation of the Church.