03.17. LECTURE 17 - THE LORD'S SUPPER
LECTURE XVII THE LORD’S SUPPER
We now enter the innermost Most Holy Place of the Christian temple. We approach the sacred altar on which lies quivering before our eyes the bleeding heart of Christ. We come to the most private and personal meeting-place, appointed rendezvous, between our Lord and his beloved. We are here to have discovered to us the Christian mysteries which have been carefully reserved for hundreds of generations for the initiated alone. To all else the wide world is invited without limit and without condition, but to this sacred rite the covenanted brethren alone. It marks the central, vital epochs in the believers life and intercourse with heaven. It marks hence the successive stages of his pilgrimage along the King’s highway toward the New Jerusalem and the banqueting-halls of our Father’s house. It is consequently the central ordinance in the whole circle of church-life, around which all the other ministries of the Church revolve, and through which we have exhibited to the outward senses the indwelling of God with men, the real presence and objective reality of " the holy catholic Church," and the reality and power of " the communion of saints." It will be our place to rehearse succinctly its biblical and ecclesiastical names, its genesis, its matter (including its elements and sacramental actions\ its design and significance and effect, ami its future promts
I. (1st) It is called by the apostle (1 Corinthians 11:20), and after him by the Christian Church in all ages, by the familiar and touching title, the " Lord’s Supper.** The Greek word dttmw, here translated "Supper,** properly designated what we would now call the dinner or the principal meal of the Jews, taken by them mid by all Eastern nations generally late in the afternoon or in the evening of the day. The sacrament inherited this name by uatural descent, because our Saviour instituted it while he and his disciples were partaking of this meal. It is called the Lord?
(2d) It is also called by the apostle (1 Corinthians 10:21), and after him by all Christians, " the Lord’s Table.’1 The word "Table’Micro of course stands for the gracious provisions spread upon it and for the entire scrvicw connected with it. It is the " table" to which tin* precious Lord invites his guests and at which he himself graciously presides.
(3d) It is called also by the apostle the " Cup of Ill<»ss-ing" (1 Corinthians 10:16), the cup blessed by Christ, and so consecrated to be the vehicle of sujxTnaturul blessings graciously conveyed to men worthily partaking. In Christ’s name and in virtue of his commission the ordained minister now " blesses e. invoke** the divine blessing upon—these elements that they may Ixi made tins instruments of conveying this blessing to the worthy partakers of them.
(4th) This service is also called "the Communion" (1 Corinthians 10:16). This and " the Sacrament" are the titles most commonly given by the way of eminence to this sacred rite. The act of partaking of these holy symbols, if intelligent and sincere, involves the most real and intimate communion—i. e. a mutual giving and receiving— between Christ, the Head and the Heart of the Church, and his living members, and consequently a vital interchange of influences between all the living members of that spiritual body of which he is the Head.
(5th) The evangelist Luke also calls this sacrament on one occasion (Acts 2:42) " the Breaking of Bread/’ because the symbolical action of the officiating minister in breaking the bread signifies the precious truths that the flesh of Christ, torn for us sacrificially, purchased our redemption, and that, as we all partake of one bread as we receive one Christ, so we shall all be one in the most vital and spiritual sense in time and eternally.
(6th) This holy ordiuance is also called by our Lutheran brethren, in their symbolical books," sacramentum altaris" the sacrament of the altar, because they have accepted so far the Romish tradition, retained also in the Anglican Church, which has transformed the " communion table " of Christ and his apostles into an altar. This of course the Lutherans, who are strict Protestauts, use only in a figurative, commemorative sense, because this sacrament is in no sense an atoning sacrifice, except in so far as it is the commemoration of the one all-perfect, all-satisfying sacrifice which our Lord offered in his own body on the cross eighteen hundred years ago.
(7th) In the ancient Church, as among some of the modems, agapte or " love feasts" were held, at which all the Christians of a community assembled and feasted in common. At these the consecrated elements of the Holy Supper were distributed and received. The name of the feast thus came to be applied to the sacrament which was the crown of the whole.
(8th) It was called in the ancient Church often " a sacrifice, an offering." But it was never understood to be a real sin-expiating sacrifice in itself. It was given this name, since so sadly perverted in the Roman Church, only because it represents commemoratively the one finished sacrifice of Christ, and because it is connected with the spiritual sacrifices of the worshiper’s heart and life (Hebrews 13:15), and with an accompanying collection and oblation of alms for the poor of the church.
(9th) One of the most beautiful of all the designations this sacred service has borne is that of " Eucharist," from the Greek word
II. Its Genesis.—This is essentially and immediately the j>ersonal sacrament of Jesus Christ. It was immediately instituted by him in person while partaking of the last supper with his disciples. It immediately commemorates his death. It is always administered by his direct authority. The worthy communicant immediately communicates with the present Christ. The reality of the sacrament depends entirely upon his being really, immediately present in the act. Take away either its original institution by Christ or the immediate preseuce of Christ in every repeated celebration of it, and it is no sacrament at all. Nevertheless, like every other scriptural, ordinance, it was not suddenly thrust into existence without any foregoing preparation. All things, divine sacraments as well as others, obey the law of continuity, and grow under the special providence of God out of long-prepared roots or seeds. The divinely-prepared historic root of the Lord’s Supper was, as is well known, the Passover. The nation of Israel was the type of the Christian Church. The deliverance of that nation from the bondage of Egypt, and the redemption of her sons from the slaughter which overtook the first-born of every Egyptian household, were types of our redemption from sin. The paschal lamb was a type of Christ. The paschal supper with its attendant rites represented, under the Old Economy, the external redemption already accomplished, and no less the future perfect redemption to be afterward accomplished when Christ the true paschal lamb was sacrificed. The Lord’s Supper commemorates the same redemption, looking backward to the already accomplished fact. The Christian Sunday is an historical continuation of the Jewish Sabbath, only the day of the week changes, and runs back in absolutely unbroken continuity through the ages—through the ages before the Flood, through the years before the Fall—it and matrimony being the only monuments of the golden age of innocency. Each recurrent holy day stands to us first as a monument of the sovereignty of Jehovah as Creator, and secondly, as a monument of our redemption consummated in the resurrection of our Lord. Every Lord’s Day when we celebrate the Holy Supper we repeat in a chain of unbroken continuity the memorial of his sacrificial death. And in the beautiful circle of the Christian year, Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, we repeat in a far longer chain of unbroken continuity the Christian sacrament of the Supper, looking back over a vista of nearly eighteen centuries and three quarters to its institution, and also over a vista nearly twice as long, of nearly three thousand five hundred years, to the institution of the first Passover and the redemption of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. When God delivered the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt he sent forth his angel commissioned to destroy the first-born in each Egyptian household. He oommauded the Israelites by families or small groups of families to select a male lamb of the first year without blemish, and slay it at the setting of the sun, and with a sprig of hyssop sprinkle the lintels and sideposts of the doors of their houses. The blood was to them as a token upon the houses where they were, for when the Lord saw the blood he passed over them, so that the plague which destroyed the Egyptians did not come upon them. They were also commanded to roast the flesh of the lamb that night, and to eat it entirely before the morning with unleavened bread and bitter herbs: with their loins girded, and their feet shod and their staves in their hands they were to eat it in haste, ready to depart (Exodus 12:1-51; Exodus 13:1-22).
Hence the Lord appointed the Passover, or Feast of Unleavened Bread, as a sacramental memorial in their generations, as an ordinance for ever. On the 14th of Nisan the house and all the utensils were diligently searched and purged of leaven, which, as incipient putrefaction, was the symbol of moral corruption. At evening, the beginning of the 15th of Nisan, the paschal lamb was sacrificed and his blood sprinkled on the altar and the fat burned (2 Chronicles 30:16; 2 Chronicles 35:11). The lamb was roasted whole and eaten entirely by the assembled household, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Four cups of wine, the Mishna tells us, were always drunk.
Two of these are distinctly mentioned in Luke 22:17-20. Our Lord, Luke says, took one cup and gave thanks, and said, " Take this, and divide it among yourselves." " Likewise also he took the " second "cup after supper, saying/’ etc. They also always sang the Hal lei, or praise-psalms, consisting of all the Psalms in our Bible from Psalms 113:1-9, Psalms 114:1-8, Psalms 115:1-18 Psalms 116:1-29, Psalms 117:1-2, Psalms 118:1-29 inclusive. The first part, including Psalms 113:1-9 and Psalms 114:1-8, was sung early in the meal, and Psalms 115:1-18 Psalms 116:1-29, Psalms 117:1-2 and Psalms 118:1-29 at the close, after the fourth or last cup of wine had been drunk. This is the " hymn " alluded to (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26) when it is said, "And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives."
After the filling of the secoud cup of wine, and just before the eating of the paschal lamb began, the son or eome other member of the family asked the father, who presided as the prophet and priest of his household, what was the meaning of the peculiar arrangements of this feast (Exodus 12:26). Then the father rehearsed the history of their great national redemption, and expounded the symbolical and commemorative and the moral and religious significance of the traditional observance. The whole service was at the same time a pious memorial of the redemption of the lives of the first-born of Israel, and of the nation itself from the bondage of Egypt, and a type or prophetical symbol of the redemption of men by the sacrifice on the cross of the body of Jesus Christ.
Therefore Christ came up to the feast of the Passover on purpose to be offered up a Sacrifice for the sins of the world. When many came up out of the country to be purified before the Passover, "they sought for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?" They little knew the significance of their own question. Of course he would come. If he did not, the entire historical development of the Jewish people for nearly two millenniums would have been a failure. The meaning and fruition of the entire line of prophets and of priests, of sacrificial offerings and of periodical feasts, depended upon his coming up to this particular feast, fulfilling the promise, giving reality to the symbolical representation of all that had gone before. Therefore he at once fulfilled all the prophecy of the past and inaugurated the future of realized redemption. He ate with the disciples the flesh and bread of the typical Passover, and while doing so he gave to the elements a new and higher significance, and thus developed out of the paschal supper of the past the Lord’s Supper of the incomparably more glorious future. So he took the bread—the same unleavened bread which had been eaten from the beginning for sixteen hundred years—and gave thanks and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, " This is my body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of me." As if he had said, You will no more need to kill and eat the paschal lamb, for I, Christ, am your true Passover, sacrificed for you (1 Corinthians 5:7). But this bread I appoint to be the symbol of my sacrificed body; take and eat it until I come again, in remembrance of me. Likewise also he took the last, or fourth cup, after supper—the same cup which had been drunk for ages uncounted at the close of the paschal supper. This ancient cup, with all its historical associations, he took up, and instantly glorified it with new meaning. This cup hereafter you are to continue to drink until the end. It is henceforth the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you ; drink ye all of it (Matthew 26:26; Matthew 26:28; Luke 22:20). And from that awful night until to-day, for upward of eighteen hundred and fifty years, the disciples of Christ of every nation and rite have endeavored, with more or less success, to keep this feast of the Christian Passover with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:8).
III. The matter of the Lord’s Supper consists (1) of the elements used, and (2) of the sacramental actions which are performed in their use. The elements consist, as all Christians are agreed, of bread and wine.
1st. The bread used in the original sacrament was the unleavened bread which had been used by divine command in the paschal feast from the time of Moses to that of Christ. But Christ speaks of it, in instituting the sacrament, not as " unleavened," but as " bread." The point of the symbolism is that as bread, our daily bread, is the staff of life and nourishes the body, so Christ in his divi-ne-human Person and mediatorial offices nourishes our souls when apprehended by faith. It is evident, from the allusions to its observance throughout the Acts and the Epistles, that the apostles commemorated the communion in connection with ordinary social meals and in the use of whatever bread happened to be present, which on such occasions we know to have been the common leavened bread. Although it is obviously a matter of indifference what particular form of bread should be used, a controversy sprang up between the Greek and Roman churches as to the kind of bread it is proper to use in the Eucharist. The Greek Church insisted that the bread used should be leavened, and maintained that the contiuued use of unleavened bread was a remnant of Judaism. The Roman Church insisted upon the use of unleavened bread. The Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church adheres to the practice of Rome in this particular. The great body of the Reformed churches, including the Anglican Church, on the contrary, maintain that the kind of bread is not essential, but that the wafer used by the Romanists is not properly bread, which is the staff of life, the ordinary food of mau. We therefore, by an eminently proper tradition, use ordinary leavened loaf bread, so prepared that the unity of the " one bread " of which all partake is visibly set forth, and this is broken before the people into parts, so that they, being many, all partake of one bread.
2d. The contents of the cup were wine. This is known to have been "the juice of the grape," not in its original state as freshly expressed, but as prepared in the form of wine for permanent use among the Jews. " Wine," according to the absolutely unanimous, unexceptional testimony of every scholar and missionary, is in its essence " fermented grape-juice." Nothing else is wine. The use of " wine " is precisely what is commanded by Christ in his example and his authoritative institution of this holy ordinance. Whosoever puts away true and real wine, or fermented grape-juice, on moral grounds, from the Lord’s Supper, sets himself up as more moral than the Son of God who reigns over his conscience, and than the Saviour of souls who redeemed him. There has been absolutely universal consent on this subject in the Christian Church until modern tim&, when the practice has been opposed, not upon change of evidence, but solely on prudential considerations. Many Christians have, however, mingled water with the wine, because it was an ancient custom probably practiced by Christ himself, and also by some because water mingled with the blood flowed from his broken heart (John 19:34). But the Lord’s Supper is not a material object, something, like the " Host" in the Roman Catholic worship, that can be enclosed in a box, carried about, lifted up and worshiped. It is in its essence a transaction, something performed in time, having a commencement, a progress and a conclusion. Hence we Presbyterians hold that the consecrated elements cannot be carried from the church after the celebration of the communion by the minister to sick and absent communicants. If a person is not present at the communion he does not commune, no matter how much he partakes of the bread or wine which remains. The only proper way to meet the cases of sick communicants is for the minister to take representatively the Church with him to the sick-room, and there go through the service in all its parts.
Since, then, the communion is a transaction, the sacramental actions involved are as essential parte of it as the elements of bread and wine. These are—
1st. The "blessing," or cousecrating prayer, in which we ask God to set apart as much of the elements as we shall consume to their sacramental use, to bless them to us, aud us in their use; in which, moreover, we invoke the presence of Christ, the great Master of assemblies, as one of us in our midst, and of the Holy Ghost in our hearts.
2d. The " breaking of bread," symbolical of the sacrificial breaking of the body of Christ upon the cross, and also of the oneness of believers, who, being many, all partake of one Bread. This is so prominent that the entire service is once designated from this one feature (Acts 2:42).
3d. The distribution and reception. In these acts the whole communion culminates and concludes. The sacred character of the elements does not consist in themselves, but in their use. As soon as this use is completed tlie bread and wine, whether in the body of the recipient or remaining in the vessels of the service, are no more holy than any other specimen of their kind in the world. In the Roman, Anglican, and Lutheran churches the minister in person conveys the bread and wine carefully to the mouth of each communicant. In the Reformed churches, on the contrary, the elements are distributed by elders, or " representatives of the people," who carry the elements and set them before the communicants, each one of whom is expected to receive and appropriate them with his own hands. The Lord says to each of us, " Take, eat." The communion always implies an active attitude upon the part of each recipient. Each communicant for himself transacts with his present Lord. Each one receives and appropriates to himself by faith Christ and all the sacrificial benefits of his redemption. It is, therefore, a cruel and an injurious perversion of this ordinance when the minister, not satisfied with all his other opportunities of preaching, throws his fellow-oom-municants into a passive attitude at the Lord’s Table by his ceaseless addresses, fencing of tables and charges and preachments of whatever kind. Christ is present. Every believer at the table should be left alone with his Lord. All that one fellow-communicant, minister or other, can do for his fellow in such a case is to stimulate and direct his activities Christ-ward. This can be done ouly by leading in direct acts of worship, in appropriate hymns and prayers, or in the simple, quiet recitation of the words of Christ himself. Who besides Christ should dare to discourse at the communion? All that the minister can possibly have any true call to say, in the way of instruction, exhortation or warning, can surely be delivered previously in the " preparatory services" or in the "action sermon."
IV. Tlie Design or Meaning of (he Sacrament.—This, of course, is the heart of the whole ordinance. The one necessity for us is to have clear and comprehensive views as to what meanings the sacrament bears, and as to the uses it is designed to serve for us. Comprehension here is as much to be sought as clearness, because this consummate means of grace has many sides, like a diamond cut with many facets, and sustains many relations and accomplishes blessings for us in many different ways. The real truth here, as elsewhere, is to be found only in the view which takes in the whole on all sides.
Let us begin, therefore, with the surface meanings and lower uses, and rise gradually toward the heart and inner mystery of the whole.
1st. This sacrament is, in the first place, avowedly and self-evidently a commemorative rite. The Master said when he instituted it, " This do in remembrance of Me." And ever since that awful night endless successions of disciples have gathered to perforin these sacred rites with the intention of " showing forth his death till he come." The great mass of men pass away in indistinguishable throngs, falling like the leaves of the forest in mass, their individuality lost to human recollection in this world for ever. The memory of some few men out of the thousands linger long and fade slowly into the night of oblivion. A very few epoch-making men, as Moses, Paul, Augustine, Luther, change the course of human history and live for ever in the new world they inaugurate. But it is only Christ the incarnate God, Christ the perfect Man, Christ the bleeding Price of man’s redemption, Christ the resurgent Victor over death and hell, whose ever-present memory is the condition of all progressive thought and life. The memory of Christ as the great character of all history has become omnipresent in all literature, philosophy, ethics, politics and life. All experience, all existence, witness to him. The whole universe repeats his story and keeps him eternally in mind. Monuments (monere) exist to keep persons and events in mind. They are of many kinds, as of earth or stone or brass or changes wrought in the forms of human speech or action, or other observances to be repeated for ever at intervals. This latter kind are incomparably more effective and imperishable as memorials than the others. The Tower of Babel, the Pyramids of Egypt, the most stupendous material monuments, the world has ever seen, have either perished or are far gone in decay, while the history they were erected to commemorate is lost beyond the rational guess of critics. And yet the Sabbath-Day monument of creation, thousands of years older than the Pyramids, and the Lord’s Supper, which in its historic roots in the Passover was brought into being at the very feet of the then young Pyramids themselves, remain as fresh and as articulate with their original significance as at their birth. These observational monuments are likewise omnipresent the world over, as well as imperishable. The Sabbath Day and the Lord’s Supper, preserved and disseminated with absolutely unbroken continuity down the ages and throughout the nations, keep the memory of Christ alive just as it was at the first, because their very existence and their constant repetition are the unfaded testimony of Christ’s contemporaries, the accumulated testimony of all the ages that Jesus Christ was in very fact delivered sacrificially for our offences and raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25).
2d. It is no less obvious that the sacrament is an object-lesson addressed to the eye, a picture of the essential central verities of the gospel to be seen accompanying and enforcing the preached or read Word addressed to the ear. God has so constituted us as composed of soul and body that all impressions made on the senses naturally compel the attention and excite the corresponding emotions more powerfully than abstract ideas expressed in words. This is the source of the power of all music and poetry and art which appeal to the senses, the imagination and the feelings. Experience has proved that when men invent improved methods of exhibiting the gospel beyond the narrow limits of illustration explicitly authorized by the Master, infinite corruption is the swift result. But certainly we are safe as long as our liturgical scheme keeps accurately within the limits prescribed by the positive commands of Christ and the example of his apostles. The excess of the Papists and Ritualists, on the one hand, is not more dishonoring to Christ and injurious to the spiritual interests of his Church than the unauthorized restrictions of the Quakers on the other. This pictorial exhibition of the central truths of the gospel presented in the elements and sacramental actions of the Lord’s Supper is of course reinforced and rendered many times more effective by the fact that all the worshipers take part personally, each one for himself, in those sacramental actions. Not only is the mind exercised with divine truth, not only are the senses appealed to, and the emotions through the senses, but the will is immediately called into action, and the outward acts of taking and of eating and drinking correspond in the consciousness immediately with the inward acts of receiving and appropriating Christ and the benefits of his redemption. It is for this reason that the Reformed insist so emphatically upon the communicant actively taking and appropriating the elements with his own hands, and that we so urgently exhort the minister not to throw the worshipers at the communion into a passive attitude by his instructions and exhortations, but to confine himself to the legitimate office of stimulating and guiding their spiritual activities by leading them in direct acts of worship and covenanting with the Lord.
3d. It is also obvious, and universally recognized, that this holy communion service is a visible mark or badge of Christian discipleship; an appointed form whereby repentant rebels are to lay down their rebellion and take up and profess their new allegiance to their Lord ; and a conspicuous sign whereby the Church and her members are to be distinguished from the world. Every human society finds such a visible, easily-recognized sign or badge indispensable, and this especially when the members of the society in question are commingled in hostile relations with foreign elements. And it is obvious that every such badge of membership and pledge of loyalty to be effective must, like the flag of the nation, be authoritatively imposed by the central sovereignty.
True living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only absolutely necessary condition of salvation, because if a man exercises true faith in the very article of death, as did the thief upon the cross, he shall be certainly saved. Nevertheless, it is evident that in the social state true faith, if it exists, must express itself in full and open acknowledgment of the Lord, and that salvation must be conditioned upon open loyal confession and upon open loyal obedience, as much as upon an internal principle of faith. The faith is the root. It comes first, and the true profession and obedience depend upon it, and cannot exist without it. Nevertheless, in the advanced stage the fruit is just as essential as the root, and the tree that finally fails to bear fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire. The judgment asserted by Christ is unavoidable : "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before ray Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven " (Matthew 10:32-33). Hence the conditions of salvation as proclaimed by the Master himself include public confession as well as faith : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark 16:15-16). This principle is explicitly emphasized by the apostle Paul: " The word of faith, which we preach : that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation " (Romans 10:8-10).
It is true that a true believer, who for any reason is prevented from confessing Christ by wearing publicly his sacramental badge, may just as efficiently confess him by other significant words and deeds. And it is further true that if a communicant is indeed a true believer at heart, he will constantly confess Christ in other ways— indeed, in all conceivable ways—in all his life. Nevertheless, a loyal citizen cannot choose his own flag. The public and official signification of loyalty cannot be left to the accidental choice of individuals. Above all, in a state of active war no loyal soldier can for one moment fail to hold aloft the one battle-flag which his leader has entrusted to his care. He covers it with his body, he shields it with his life, he carries it aloft with streaming eyes and heaving breast at the head of the host. So do we with solemn joy, with reverent love and passion, carry in sacred pomp this sacramental flag of confession and of challenge high in the face of the world which crucified our Lord. But before we can go any farther we must answer this question: Is Christ really, truly, personally present with us in the sacrament ? Do we therein covenant and commune with him in person, touch to touch, immediately and really, or is this only a show, a symbol of something absent and different from what it seems ? The gross perversions of the Romanists and Ritualists, who have made it altogether a question of the local presence of Christ’s flesh and blood, have occasioned much confusion of thought and many prejudices on the subject. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, every believer knows that Christ is present in the sacrament—that he has, as a matter of fact, experienced his presence. If he is not present really and truly, then the sacrament can have no interest or real value to us. It does not do to say that this presence is only spiritual, because that phrase is ambiguous. If it means that the presence of Christ is not something objective to us, but simply a mental apprehension or idea of him subjectively present to our consciousness, then the phrase is false. Christ as an objective fact is as really present and active in the sacrament as are the bread and wine or the minister or our fellow-communicants by our side. If it means that Christ is present only as he is represented by the Holy Ghost, it is not wholly true, because Christ is one Person and the Holy Ghost another, and it is Christ who is personally present. The Holy Ghost doubtless is coactive in that presence and in all Christ’s mediatorial work, but this leads into depths beyond our possible understanding. It does not do to say that the divinity of Christ is present while his humanity is absent, because it is the entire indivisible divine-human Person of Christ which is present. When Christ promises to his disciples, " Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world-age," and, " Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," he means of course that he, the God-man Mediator they loved, trusted and obeyed, would be with them. His humanity is just as essential as bis divinity, otherwise his incarnation would not have been a necessity. His sympathy, his love, his special helpful tenderness, are human. He is able to be our perfect High Priest, "being touched with the feeling of our infirmities," because he "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin " (Hebrews 4:15). But what do we mean by "presence"? It is a great mistake to confuse the idea of " presence " with that of nearness in space. This may be a condition of presence or it may not, but it is never " presence " itself. If you walk abroad at noonday in the tropio6, the most overwhelmingly present thing to you in the universe is the intolerable sun, although it is ninety-three millions of miles distant. If another person is only one foot distant, but separated from you by a wall which cuts off all light and sound, he is as absent as if in the centre of a distant star. But if the same person, a hundred feet from you in an audience-room, sees you face to face and hears every vibration of your voice, he is as truly present as if he touched you at every point. When Whitefield’s preaching was fully heard and its power felt across the Delaware River, he was present really and truly wherever his voice was heard and his matchless eloquence felt " Presence," therefore, is not a question of space: it is a relation.
Personal presence is such a relation of persons that they are conscious of each other as immediate objects of perception and sources of influence. We know nothing as to the ultimate nature of the union of our souls and bodies, yet we no less are certain of the fact. We know nothing as to the ultimate nature of either sight or hearing, whereby we make our mutual presence felt in social intercourse, yet we are absolutely certain of the facts. So we need not speculate how it is that Christ, the whole God-man, body, soul and divinity, is present in the sacrament, but we are absolutely certain of the fact. He has promised it. We have hundreds of times experienced it. We can neither see his face nor hear his voice with our bodily senses; nevertheless, when we exercise faith, he, the whole Christ, speaks to us, and we hear him; we speak to him, and he hears us; he takes all we give him, he gives us and we receive all of himself. This is real, because he is present. And this is not confined to the sacrament. He makes manifest to our faith the reality of his presence with us, and communicates the same grace to us on many other occasions. But here and now and thus is his appointed rendezvous. Whatever may be our fortune under other conditions and at other times, here and now and in this breaking of bread we have a personal appointment to meet our Lord. And he never disappoints those who thus seek him with faith and love. The Romanists and Lutherans and Ritualists have confused this question and greatly lowered its tone by insisting that the real presence in this sacrament is the literal flesh and blood of Christ, and that the object we really eat and drink when we partake of it is the same literal flesh and blood. This view, as far as it has any scriptural foundation at all, rests on two assertions of Christ.
(1) In the Gospel of John (John 6:53-54) he says, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life." Two great mistakes have been made: (a) This language has been interpreted literally instead of spiritually; (6) it has been held to refer to the Lord’s Supper. Now, neither of these interpretations is true. In John 6:63 Christ explains the sense of the entire passage when he says; " It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." The literal interpretation is senseless, useless and revolting. No eating of any flesh can give spiritual life or holiness to man. The spiritual sense is full of light and sweetness. What is present in the sacrament is not literal flesh and blood to be eaten and drunk, but the whole divine-human person of our Lord to be loved, worshiped, communed with, covenanted with, and enjoyed in every form of use and fellowship.
Eating and drinking is not by the mouth and digestive organs of our bodies, but it is the believing reception and self-appropriation to our souls of the spiritual grace offered. What we do thus eat and drink is not literal flesh and blood, but all the sacrificial benefits of Christ’s redemption, all the blessings of every kind he purchased for us by his sacrifice—justification, adoption, sanctifica-tion, life, peace, joy, victory, himself and the fullness of his love and grace. Besides, this language does not refer to the Lord’ Supper. The words were spoken before the Lord’s Supper was instituted, and no allusion is made to that Supper in the entire passage. Besides, " the eating of the flesh " and " the drinking of the blood " spoken of in that passage are declared to be absolutely necessary to salvation, which no Christian, whether Papist or Protestant, ever believed to be true of the Lord’s Supper.
(2) The second assertion of Christ upon which this revolting doctrine is made to rest is his word of institution : " Jesus took the bread, . . . and gave to his disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body." Now, remember that Christ was sitting in the actual flesh at the table, eating and drinking the bread and wine with the rest. According to all the laws of language and common sense, he could only have meant, " This bread represents, signifies, my body." Thus, in Genesis 41:26-27 it is said, " The seven good kine are seven years: and the seven good ears are seven years." Thus it is said in the symbolical language of Daniel (Daniel 7:24), "And the ten horns are ten kings;" and in Revelation 1:20, " The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches." And so we now say, when tracing on a map the progress of an historic battle, " These are the British forces, and these are the Americans," or " Here are the Federal forces, and here those of the Confederates." On such an unsubstantial basis as this has grown up the Romish doctrine of trausubstantiation, that when the priest pronounces the words of consecration the whole substance of the bread is changed into the very body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine is changed into his blood, so that only the sensible qualities (appearance, taste, smell, etc.) of the bread and wine remain, and the very substance of flesh and blood remain without their appropriate qualities. This conversion of substance is permanent, so that the flesh and blood in the form of the wafer and wine, as long as they are visible, are to be kept and adored as the very flesh and blood of Christ. And, the blood being inseparable from the flesh, and the human spirit inseparable from the blood, and the divine Spirit from the human, whosoever either eats the bread or any portion of it, and he who drinks the wine or any portion of it, eats or drinks the entire person of the God-man.
Hence when the Romanists withhold the cup from the communicant he suffers nothing, because, eating the bread, he receives the whole Christ. Hence the minister is a priest, and when he, turning toward the altar, elevates and waves the Host toward God, he offers a real expiatory sacrifice, expiating the sins and purchasing gracious favors for the living and the dead. Thus Romanists make the Mass a sacrifice as well as a sacrament. On the same unsubstantial ground even the Lutherans insist that while the bread and wine remain just what they appear to our senses to be, nevertheless the literal flesh and blood of Christ, though invisible, are really in, with and under the bread and wine, and are really eaten and drunk together with them. And even Calvin tried to mediate between the two extremes by maintaining that though the flesh and blood of Christ are as to their essence absent in the distant heavens, nevertheless they are dynamically present (as, e. g.f the sun throughout the sphere of its radiance) to the body and soul of the believing communicant.
Discarding all such materialistic and mechanical con ceptions, we maintain our unshaken faith, not in abstract, material flesh and blood, but in the actual objective, effective presence with the believing communicant of the whole divine-human Person of Christ. We are unable, and we do not care, to explain the nature of the fact scientifically; but we do know that he is as fully and as really with us in the sacrament as the minister or the fellow-communicant sitting by our side. Face to face and heart to heart and hand to hand, he recognizes and speaks to us, and we recognize and speak to him; and when we speak he hears, and when he hears his whole divine-human heart responds.
4th. Since, then, Christ is personally and immediately and literally present, our communion with him is direct and real. The Greek words xoevwvta, the act or state -of copartnership, the having all things in common, and
5th. And, finally, this holy Supper is, in conformity with its inner nature, called by way of eminence " the sacrament." The sacramentum, in classical Latin, came to mean specially the soldier’s oath. The army, halting under the shadows of the great primeval forests, gathered in its new recruits, and by the terrible ceremonial of the soldier’s oath they were bound to an unconditional loyalty to their imperial leader, who reigned from his seat at the head of the host. A victim having been offered in sacrifice, his blood was poured into the hollow of their convex shields. The new soldier, plunging his right hand into this sacrificial blood and raising it to Heaven, swore by all most sacred to be faithful, heart and act, to his master through life and through death. This, of course, implied a reciprocal pledge of protection and benefit from the lord to his loyal follower. So Jesus went in person to the feast, and taking the broken bread and poured wine, the symbols of his crucified body and shed blood, he swears to each of us to fulfill for us and in us his whole mediatorial work—to secure for us, body and soul, his complete salvation culminating in the bosom of God, And we with streaming eyes, taking in our hands and mouths the same tremendous symbols, swear, looking straight into the face of our present Lord, to keep back no part of the price, but to place on the altar of his service all we are and all we possess, without reserve or change for ever. Take the shoes from off your feet and step lightly, for the place is most holy on the inner side of the veil. And when you go down and out into world again, remember that the binding sanotion of this great sacrament rests on you every moment of your lives.
V. Our blessed Saviour told us when he instituted this holy Supper just before his death, " I will not any more eat thereof [of this Passover] until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:16); and again, " I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in ray Father’s kingdom " (Matthew 26:29).
[The MS. shows that the conclusion of this Lecture was left unwritten.]