appoint diviners or interpreters as discerners of the oracles of the gods'.[1]
We cannot imagine what going to church was like in the first century unless we try to realize that the Sunday service was not the Eucharist alone, but the Eucharist preceded by a fraternal love-feast, the Agapè or Lord's Supper, and followed by an amazing 'Liturgy of the Spirit'. There were in fact three services. The last is thus described by Mgr. Duchesne. These spiritual exercises, he says, held a very large place in the Christian service, as it is shown to us in the most ancient documents:
'After the Eucharist, inspired persons begin to speak and manifest before the assembly the presence of the Spirit that animates them. The prophets, the ecstatics, the glossolalists, the interpreters, the faith-healers (médecins surnaturels) now take possession of the attention of the faithful. There is a liturgy, as it were, of the Holy Spirit (il y a comme une liturgie du Saint-Esprit) after the liturgy of the Christ, a real liturgy, with a real presence and a communion. The inspiration can be felt: it vibrates the organs of certain privileged ones among the faithful; but all the congregation is moved, edified, and even more or less ravished and transported in the divine spheres of the Paraclete'[2]
Modern writers generally dwell on the difference between what they call the 'miraculous' and the
- ↑ Timaeus, 72. Jowett's trans., ii, p. 565.
- ↑ L. Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5me éd., 1909, p. 34.
