IN THANKFULNESS TO GOD FOR THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF WILLIAM JOSIAH IRONS, PRIEST, WHO ENTERED INTO REST, JUNE 18, 1883. Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace: according to Thy word. For mine eyes have seen : Thy salvation. PREFACE. T is a revealed truth that 'man shall IT. not live by bread alone,' that the soul of man requires food for its sustenance suitable to its spiritual needs, that it cannot rest in the finite, that the Living GOD must be the support of a living soul. Our LORD's teaching was founded on this principle when He said, 'Except ye eat the Flesh of the SON of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you.' The saying was a hard one, and difficult to understand—as the disciples found it; but to limit the truths of Religion to those which we can perfectly understand is rationalism. The Catholic Church, striving to live by 'every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of GOD,' teaches us that this nourishment of the soul is afforded to us in the Eucharist, and that after the consecration of the Bread and Wine, our LORD JESUS CHRIST, both GOD and Man, is truly, really, and substantially present under the species of those sensible things, and that thus GOD is brought down to us, and by our acts of Communion becomes one with us and we with Him, -a doctrine which is quite independent of the further question of transubstantiation, or the change of the substance of the Bread and Wine. But the Eucharist is not only a means of bringing GOD down to us, it is a means whereby we ascend to GOD; and so again the Church teaches us that the Precious Body and Blood being there sacramentally under those outward forms, are through them offered to the FATHER as the Great Memorial Sacrifice,—the Memorial before GOD of that Sacrifice offered once for all upon the Cross. The devotions contained in this Manual will be found to embody these precious truths. It has been asked where in the present |