Proclaiming the Lord’s Death

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.—1 Corinthians 11:26.

1. The Apostle Paul sustained to the Corinthian Church the relation of a father to his child. By him the Gospel had been first preached in the rich and sensual city; by his instrumentality the first converts had been won to Christ; and with all a father’s yearning did he watch over their welfare, counsel them in their ever-recurring perplexities, and guide the heedless footsteps which were too prone to go astray. To his fatherly care for their interests we owe the circumstantial account which he has given us in this chapter of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, in the celebration of which, among the Corinthians, certain abuses had crept in. His account of it, here recorded, is a valuable and welcome revelation. He was not present in the Upper Room. He was not among the awe-stricken company who were thrilled with horror by the announcement that amongst them was a foul betrayer, and who, scarce recovered from the shock of such sad tidings, were invited to join in the tender and prophetic feast; and yet he had not been left to the hazard of a traditional knowledge, nor had he received his impression of the scene from the glowing descriptions of another. He distinctly repudiates the thought that he had either received it or been taught it of man, and expressly states that “he had received it directly of the Lord.” So distinguishing was the honour put upon the Apostle of the Gentiles, and so important the institution itself, that there was given to him a new revelation—that its Divine paternity might be placed beyond all cavil, and that it might be authenticated by yet weightier evidence, and more firmly homed in the hearts of believers, in the perpetuity of its obligation to the end of time.

2. The words of the text are, “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.” The eating and drinking are a proclamation. It is surprising that, notwithstanding these words, this aspect of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper receives so little emphasis. We give the Sacrament names. We call it “the Eucharist,” drawing attention to the element of thanksgiving; or “the Communion,” in order to recognize in it that fellowship which it offers with Christ Himself and with one another; or simply “the Lord’s Supper.” But here, after repeating the words of the institution, St. Paul does not speak of the giving of thanks or the fellowship as the great purpose of the institution, but says that that purpose is fulfilled when we proclaim the Lord’s death till He come.

“As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew.” I cannot tell why our translators preferred this verb to “proclaim” or “announce,” which would have seemed the more obvious one. But should we have expected either word? Are we not speaking of a Communion, of a participation in something? Can an ordinance which possesses that character be described as showing, announcing, declaring? It is safer to let the Apostle explain himself than to insist that he shall follow a course which we have prescribed for him. I believe he will tell us hereafter more about communion and participation than we should ever find out for ourselves; but I doubt whether we shall profit by his teaching, if we stumble at this phrase and wish to get rid of it. Do you think that any ordinance of Christ can have reference merely to the advantage or enjoyment of those who submit to it? Did He come from heaven to enjoy or to suffer; to be ministered unto or to minister? If the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine imports any communion with Him, any sympathy with Him, can this point of communion and sympathy be wanting? Did He not come to show forth or declare a truth to men into which only some would enter? If we are not willing in all our acts and services to make this a primary object; if we are thinking of some selfish end as above this; can we be like Him? Let us grasp this thought steadfastly. If this feast does not show forth or declare something to the world; if we seek in it only for some benefit to ourselves; it cannot be a communion in the body or in the mind of Jesus Christ.1 [Note: F. D. Maurice, Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, iv. 99.]

Let us see, then, what this proclamation consists of, and (in conclusion) how it may be made. It will be found on consideration to consist of three things:—

  I.  A Remembrance of the Past.

  II.  A Recognition of the Present.

    III.  A Regard to the Future.

I

A Remembrance of the Past

“Ye proclaim the Lord’s death.”

1. St. Paul’s words give prominence to the truth that the Sacrament was intended primarily as a memorial or remembrance of the Saviour. Nothing could be simpler or more human than our Lord’s appointment of this Sacrament. Lifting the material of the Supper before Him, He bids His disciples make the simple act of eating and drinking the occasion of remembering Him. As the friend who is setting out on a long absence or is passing for ever from earth puts into our hands his portrait or something he has used or worn or prized, and is pleased to think that we shall treasure it for his sake, so did Christ on the eve of His death secure this one thing, that His disciples should have a memento by which to remember Him. And as the dying gift of a friend becomes sacred to us as his own person, and we cannot bear to see it handed about by unsympathetic hands and remarked upon by those who have not the same loving reverence as ourselves, and as when we gaze at his portrait, or when we use the very pen or pencil worn smooth by his fingers, we recall the many happy times we spent together and the bright and inspiring words that fell from his lips, so does this Sacrament seem sacred to us as Christ’s own Person, and by means of it grateful memories of all He was and did throng into the mind.

It is no uncommon thing in the history of nations to commemorate events of national importance by expressive symbolism. Medals are struck to celebrate a victory or to perpetuate the prowess of a hero. The statues of the wise and of the valiant are niched in their country’s temples—columns rear their tall heads on the mounds of world-famed battlefields, or on some holy place of liberty—processions and pageants of high and solemn festivity transmit from generation to generation the memory of notable days and deeds. And it is right that it should be so. These things are expressions of something great and true, and by how much they are invested with imposing grandeur, by so much is the likelihood that they will be fastened upon the memory and the heart. There is hope of a nation when its gratitude lives, though the exhibitions of that gratitude may be extravagant and unseemly.

If we come from the national to the individual, how memory clings round some relic of sanctity bestowed on us by some far-off friend, some dear gage of affection; the gift, perhaps in the latest hour, of the precious and sainted dead. As we gaze upon them—mute but eloquent reminders of a past that has fled for ever—how closely they seem linked with our every conception of the giver, and in what an uncounted value we hold them for the giver’s sake.1 [Note: W. M. Punshon.]

In the Highlands of Scotland, in a wild region, there is a spring at which Prince Albert once stopped to quench his thirst. The owner of the spring fenced it in and built a tasteful monument, making the waters flow into a basin of hewn stone, on which he placed an inscription. Every passing stranger stopping to drink at this fountain reads the inscription and recalls the memory of the noble prince whom it honours. Thus the spring is both a memorial and a blessing; it keeps in mind the great man, and it gives drink to the weary and the thirsty. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial to Christ, but it is food and drink to every one who rightly receives it.2 [Note: S. Marriott, On Playing the Game, 190.]

Jesus Christ could not bear the thought of being forgotten by His people. God and man long to be remembered. This is one point of fellow-feeling at which the Divine heart touches the human. One of the greatest calamities in the sight of God which can befall the wicked is that “his memory shall be cut off.” I know of nothing within the covers of this Book more touching than the way in which the prophets represent God and His people—the One truthfully, and the other untruthfully—as bringing the charge of forgetfulness against each other. “Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me” (Isaiah 49:14). In these words we find the awful charge of unfaithfulness and forgetfulness brought against God Himself by the people of His choice. This suspicion must vanish, or the relationship must cease. On the other hand, there comes from the fatherly and infinitely tender heart of God a broken sigh which has the undertone of desolation in it, “My people have forgotten me days without number” (Jeremiah 2:32); and the answer which He gives to their accusation is, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” Thus, in God’s relationship with His people, all is made to hinge upon this one word “forget.” “Blot me not out of the book of thy remembrance,” exclaims man to God; “Blot me not out of the book of thy remembrance” is the mysterious and pathetic appeal of God to man! Now this longing to be remembered, so Divine and so human, is found with cumulative force and intensity in “the man Christ Jesus,” and is inseparably associated with the institution of the Lord’s Supper. He instituted it so as to make it supremely difficult for His followers to forget Him.1 [Note: D. Davies.]

2. What is it that we are to remember? It is “the Lord’s death”—His death, not His life, though that was lustrous with a holiness without the shadow of a stain; His death, not His teaching, though that embodied the fulness of a wisdom that was Divine; His death, not His miracles, though His course was a march of mercy, and in His track of blessing the world rejoiced and was glad. His death! His body, not glorious but broken; His blood, not coursing through the veins of a conqueror, but shed, poured out for man. On the summit of the Mount of Transfiguration, when the hidden Divinity broke for a while through its disguise of flesh, and Moses and Elias, those federal elders of the former time, came down in conference, and the awe-stricken disciples feared the baptism of the cloud, they “spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” His death! Still His death! Grandest and most consecrating memory for both earth and Heaven.

See Him set forth before your eyes,

That precious bleeding Sacrifice!

His offer’d benefits embrace,

And freely now be saved by grace.

“Ye do proclaim the Lord’s death.”—That is the central message. The mortal is the vital here. It is not, He was born, was made Man, lived, wrought, taught, blessed the poor sinful world by the touch of His feet, and the look of His fair countenance, and the words such as man never spoke before. It is that He died. It is that Gethsemane and Golgotha were that for which, above all things, He came. “He gave his life a ransom for many.” “He poured out his soul unto death.” He was “lifted up from the earth.” He “endured the cross.” “That he might sanctify his people with his own blood, he suffered, without the gate.” “Without shedding of blood was no remission”; “He loosed us from our sins in his own blood.” He came “again from the dead, in the blood of the everlasting covenant.” “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!”1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, 172.]

3. “To proclaim the Lord’s death” is not merely to announce our belief that Jesus Christ died upon the Cross some eighteen hundred years ago. That, an infidel might do; or, at least, a man who denies the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture, and puts the sacred narrative on a level with other books, might do. That, certainly, a sinful man might do; or a mere worldling, a man totally careless about living a life of faith in the Son of God. All these persons might accept and credit the fact of the Saviour’s dying, and might be willing to proclaim their acceptance; and some of them would probably avow their persuasion that the Being who hung upon the Cross was no ordinary person, but the Prince of glory, the Lord of life, the incarnate Son of God Himself. And yet such confession as this would not be Christian confession. It would not be what the Apostle here means by showing the Lord’s death. No! The Apostle means by this expression the proclaiming of that death as an event, as a fact, upon which all our hopes of access to God and all our hopes of life, of salvation, and of blessedness depend; and the proclaiming of it, too, as a thing that was done for ourselves. Then do we fully show the Lord’s death, when by word, and by significant action, and by the whole course and tenor of our life, we announce our confident persuasion, that that dying upon the Cross was a dying for us.

4. We are not to understand the Apostle as limiting the remembrance rigidly to the actual Passion. The form of the memorial is fitted to recall the life of our Lord as well as His death. It is His body and blood we are invited by the symbols to remember. By them we are brought into the presence of an actual living Person. Our religion is not a theory; it is not a speculation, a system of philosophy putting us in possession of a true scheme of the universe and guiding us to a sound code of morals; it is, above all, a personal matter. We are saved by being brought into right personal relations. And in this Sacrament we are reminded of this and are helped to recognize Christ as an actual living Person, who by His body and blood, by His actual humanity, saved us. The body and blood of Christ remind us that His humanity was as substantial as our own, and His life as real. He redeemed us by the actual human life He led and by the death He died, by His use of the body and soul we make other uses of. And we are saved by remembering Him and by assimilating the spirit of His life and death.

St. Paul says, “the Lord’s death.” If he had not said so, if this expression, “the Lord,” did not stand written in his Epistle, there are many who would have called it hard and cold. “The Saviour,” they would have said; “the Divine Bridegroom, the ineffable Sacrifice that is offered to us in this feast. How can you speak of ‘the Lord’ like some writer of the Old Testament?” I fancy that the Hebrew of the Hebrews used that Hebrew phrase because he deemed it not to be obsolete for any, because he knew that it was not obsolete for him. He wanted sympathy and fellowship. He wanted also to be guided and governed. The Incarnation had not lessened but deepened his reverence for the unseen Guide of his heart and reins. His belief in a brother of Man did not make him remember less or rejoice less that He is the Lord of men. There were times when he delighted to call Him our Lord. There were occasions when the Lord expressed more fully the universality of His dominion. This was one of them. He is speaking of the bread and wine as testifying, not to him or to his brethren, but to all men, of One whose Kingdom was in the midst of them, of One who had proved Himself to be the King and Shepherd, by dying for them.1 [Note: F. D. Maurice.]

5. When Christ said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He meant that His people to all time should remember that He had given Himself wholly to them and for them. The symbols of His body and blood were intended to keep us in mind that all that gave Him a place among men He devoted to us. By giving His flesh and blood He means that He gives us His all, Himself wholly; and by inviting us to partake of His flesh and blood He means that we must receive Him into the most real connection possible, must admit His self-sacrificing love into our heart as our most cherished possession. He bade His disciples remember Him, knowing that the death He was about to die would “draw all men unto Him,” would fill the despairing with hopes of purity and happiness, would cause countless sinners to say to themselves with soul-subduing rapture, “He loved me, and gave himself for me.” He knew that the love shown in His death and the hopes it creates would be prized as the world’s redemption, and that to all time men would be found turning to Him and saying, “If I forget thee, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.” And therefore He presents Himself to us as He died: as One whose love for us actually brought Him to the deepest abasement and sorest suffering, and whose death opens for us a way to the Father.

For the first time the Dorcas Street Sabbath School Teachers’ gift from South Melbourne Presbyterian Church was put to use—a new Communion Service of silver. They gave it in faith that we should require it, and in such we received it. And now the day had come and gone! For three years we had toiled and prayed and taught for this. At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of Glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus Himself.1 [Note: John G. Paton, ii. 222.]

In 1861 a brave volunteer turned his back upon loved ones in his little home, nestling among the hills of the Blue Ridge and the spurs of the Alleghanies, in Craig County, Va., and went to the battlefield to fight for what he believed to be right. On the 3rd of July 1863, in that fatal charge made by Pickett, he was shot down, and there gave his life for his country. On the following day (4th July) a son was born. As this son grew in stature and in knowledge, his mother would point to a photograph, and tell him that that was his father. He grew to be a man, and at last had the privilege of walking over the ground that had been made sacred with the blood of a father. He cannot express to you his feelings as he stood upon that holy ground; the acute conception of fancy with the vivid flights of imagination would be inadequate to the task. When he returned to his home, and looked again upon the picture as it hung upon the wall, he remembered that his mother had told him that it was his father. He has never seen him; but some time he hopes to see him face to face, and then he will no longer need the picture, for he shall see him as he is.1 [Note: W. H. Book.]

II

A Recognition of the Present

“As often as.”

1. It is manifest from the solemnity of its inauguration, and from the singular reverence with which it was regarded by the early Christians, that the Lord’s Supper was not intended to be a thing of one generation, but to be a precious and hallowed memorial to the end of time. So broad and deep was the impression of its perpetual obligation that in every age of the Church, alike when it was crushed by persecution, and when it had degenerated into worldly alliance and conformity, the continuity of this great festival sustained no interruption; it remained in general acknowledgment through all external changes. This perpetuity of the Sacrament seems to stamp it as a confirming ordinance—confirming man’s faith in God, confirming God’s fidelity to man.

2. These symbols were appointed to be for a remembrance of Christ in order that, remembering Him, we might renew our fellowship with Him. In the Holy Sacrament there is not a mere representation of Christ or a bare commemoration of events in which we are interested; there is also an actual, present communion between Christ and the soul.

We may not climb the heavenly steeps

To bring the Lord Christ down:

In vain we search the lowest deeps,

For Him no depths can drown.

Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape,

The lineaments restore

Of Him we know in outward shape

And in the flesh no more.

He cometh not a king to reign;

The world’s long hope is dim;

The weary centuries watch in vain

The clouds of heaven for Him.

Death comes, life goes; the asking eye

And ear are answerless;

The grave is dumb, the hollow sky

Is sad with silentness.

The letter fails, and systems fall,

And every symbol wanes;

The Spirit over-brooding all

Eternal Love remains.

And not for signs in heaven above

Or earth below they look,

Who know with John His smile of love,

With Peter His rebuke.

In joy of inward peace, or sense

Of sorrow over sin,

He is His own best evidence,

His witness is within.

No fable old, nor mythic lore,

Nor dream of bards and seers,

No dead fact stranded on the shore

Of the oblivious years;—

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet

A present help is He;

And faith has still its Olivet,

And love its Galilee.1 [Note: Whittier.]

3. There are three distinct things that stare us in the face here: first, the advent of our Lord in the days of His humiliation; secondly, the coming advent of our Lord in His glory; and between the two, a distinctive sacramental rite—“As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup” (that is, in this present), “ye proclaim the Lord’s death” (that is, in that past) “till he come” (that is, in the anticipation of that future). Now, we may be certain of this, that this is not a mere artificial arrangement; there must be something in the Sacrament which makes it fit to stand between the advent consummated in Christ’s redemptive death and the advent of His coming glory. What is that connecting thing? The one thing that marks out the Sacrament as being what it is amidst Christian rites, is that, in a special sense, it is the sphere of our Lord’s presence. Our Lord’s presence and His humanity are revealed to us under three distinct conditions. First, He has been present in the days of His historical life under conditions of bodily humiliation. Secondly, He will be present after His second coming under conditions of glorification. But between these two conditions He is present with His people in a spiritual manner.

How deep is our obligation to our own Liturgy for bringing out so distinctly, through the means of Holy Communion, the reality of Christ’s spiritual presence, and the verity of our communion with Him in this Holy Sacrament. It has preserved for us the true doctrine in this particular as perfectly as it has done justice to the truth first considered, namely, the memorial of the death of Christ. For instance, “He hath given His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that Holy Sacrament”;—“For as the benefit is great, if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that Holy Sacrament (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink His blood; then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us), so is the danger great, if we receive the same unworthily. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and our souls washed through His most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us”—“Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank Thee, for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of Thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people.”1 [Note: Canon Furse.]

4. The past, however sweet and precious, is not enough for any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just because it is memorial, is a symbol for the present. That is taught us in that great chapter—the sixth of St. John’s Gospel—which was spoken long before the institution of the Lord’s Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas as it expresses by material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ who lives, and must be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to Jesus Christ were only that “Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”; and if we had to look back through lengthening vistas of distance and thickening folds of oblivion, simply to a historical past, in which He was once offered, the retrospect would not have the sweetness in it which it now has. But when we come to this thought, that the Christ who was for us is also the Christ in us, and that He is not the Christ for us unless He is the Christ in us; and His death will never wash away our sins unless we feed upon Him, here and now, by faith and meditation, then the retrospect becomes blessedness. The Christian life is not merely the remembrance of a historical Christ in the past, it is also the present participation in a living Christ with us now.

He is near each of us that we may make Him the very food of our spirits. We are to live upon Him. He is to be incorporated within us by our own act. This is no mysticism, it is a piece of simple reality. There is no Christian life without it. The true life of the believer is just the feeding of our souls upon Him—our minds accepting, meditating upon, digesting the truths which are incarnated in Jesus; our hearts feeding upon the love which is so tender, warm, stooping, and close; our wills feeding upon and nourished by the utterance of His will in commandments which to know is joy and to keep is liberty; our hopes feeding upon Him who is our Hope, and in whom they find no chaff and husks of peradventures, but the pure wheat of “Verily! verily I say unto you”; the whole nature thus finding its nourishment in Jesus Christ.

“We proclaim the Lord’s death.” By the very fact of so doing we proclaim also His glorious present life, His victory over the grave, His spiritual presence with His people, His gift of Himself to be their life indeed. Never, let us be quite sure of this, would the first believers have kept festival over their Master’s death, had not that death been followed by a triumph over the grave which at once and for ever showed His dying work to be the supreme achievement which it was. Only the risen Christ can explain the joy of the Lord’s Supper. Without Him it would have been a funeral meal, kept for a while by love in its despair, and then dropped for ever. From the very first till now it has been a feast of life and of thanksgiving. It is a contemporary and immortal witness to the risen One. And the risen One is alive for ever more. And in His eternal life He is our life, here and now. Feed on Him as such, feed everywhere and always upon Him. Eat Him and drink Him, that you may live because of Him. Such is the message of the festal Meal of the Church, spoken straight from her Lord to the heart of every member of His Body.1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, Thoughts for the Sundays of the Year, 173.]

What would be the value of the Holy Supper if it were simply a memorial of a Divine visitation long ago, and not a pledge and a discovery of the Lord’s abiding presence? John Knox called it “a singular medicine for all poor sick creatures, a comfortable help to weak souls”; and he “utterly condemned the vanity of those that affirmed sacraments to be nothing else but bare and naked signs.” I fear there are few among us in these days who thus esteem them. The truth is that the Sacraments are the very heart of Christian worship, and their neglect, their perfunctory and slovenly administration, is a sore impoverishment of the Church, and proves how very low the tide of our spiritual life has ebbed. True worship is essentially sacramental, and I warmly sympathize with old Gilbert of Sempringham, the friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, when he says: “All doctrine is suspect with me, and surely despised, which introduces no mention of Christ, which neither renews me with His Sacraments, nor informs me with His precepts, nor inflames me with His promises.”2 [Note: D. Smith, Christian Counsel, 39.]

A communion was held at Pesth, in Hungary, on the 1st of January 1843, being the Lord’s Day. We met in an upper room, at night and in secret—“for fear of the Jews,” and to escape the eye of an intolerant Government. From the moment that the service began, the place where we were assembled seemed to be filled with a mysterious presence. Indeed, the risen Lord had entered by the closed door, and stood, as at Jerusalem, in the midst of His disciples. Deep silence fell on the little company as they realized His nearness, a silence interrupted only at intervals by the deep-drawn sigh of some bursting heart. The dividing wall which separated heaven and earth seemed for the time removed, and that fellowship between both was experienced which is the fullest blessedness of earth, and anticipates the glory of heaven.1 [Note: Memoir of John Duncan, 334.]

III

A Regard to the Future

“Till he come.”

1. The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper not only proclaims to us the Gospel of the Passion, it also proclaims to us that great Gospel which is the centre and basis of all Christian hope: the Gospel of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord. And since this holy rite is in creed and in action, they who preach it look back upon the first Advent and recognize and confess its redemptive aspect, and they look forward to the second Advent and recognize it and confess it as being the one great act in which that redemptive work on Calvary will reach to its full and to its glorious climax. And in this present, the gaze of our faith is fixed upon the redemption consecrated in Christ’s first coming; the eyes of our hope are fixed on the glorious consummation of His work in His second coming, and in the meantime we wait with the repose of love, giving ourselves up to His sweet ministries, in the conviction that as often as we eat this bread, and drink the cup, we “proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.”

In the original words of the institution our Lord Himself makes reference to the future; till I “drink it new in the kingdom of God.” And in the text here, the Apostle provides for the perpetual continuance, and emphasizes the prophetic aspect, of the rite, by that word, “till he come.” His death necessarily implies His coming again. The Cross and the Throne are linked together by an indissoluble bond. Being what it is, the death cannot be the end. Being what He is, if He has once been offered to bear the sins of many, so He must come the second time without sin unto salvation. The rite, just because it is a rite, is the prophecy of a time when the need for it, arising from weak flesh and an intrusive world, shall cease. “They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the Lord; at that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord.” There shall be no temple in that great city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple thereof. So all external worship is a prophecy of the coming of the perfect time when, that which is perfect being come, the external helps and ladders to climb to the loftiest shall be done away.

Of all earthly signs and tokens, there is none which seems so wonderfully ordained to prepare us for the last Day, and keep us in mind of it, as the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Holy Scripture expressly connects the one with the other; the Communion with the Day of Judgment. For after St. Paul had put the Corinthians in mind of what he had always taught them concerning that Sacrament, how that our Lord ordained it, the same night in which He was betrayed, to be done, or sacrificed, in remembrance of Him after He was gone, lest they should imagine that it was only the Apostles who had to perform this service, seeing that they alone were present with our Lord when He commanded it, the Apostle goes on and declares, “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come”—as much as to say that this mode of remembering our Lord’s Death, and setting it forth before God and man, should never cease, while the world should stand. One generation after another will perish from the face of the earth; cities and empires will fade away; the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent will be forgotten; customs, manners, languages may change, and the outward face of things be ever so different: but still this holy memorial of God made Man and crucified for us will go on being offered, and the holy Feast will go on to be received, from time to time, in all Churches of all lands, until that last morning break upon the earth, and the very meaning and substance of that Sacrament, the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall appear openly in the eyes of men.1 [Note: J. Keble.]

When you go to put flowers upon a grave, what is the motive that prompts you?—to keep memory green? Doubtless; but is that all? Why do you wish to keep memory green? It is because you are looking forward as well as backward. You are convinced the old days will come again. If it were not for that hope, you could not plant your flower; you would rather let memory wither. Some have written of the pleasures of memory, and some of the pleasures of hope. But has it occurred to either that the pleasures of memory are the pleasures of hope? Has it occurred to either that these are twin sisters, who cannot live apart? When hope dies, memory cries out to be killed; she cannot abide alone. When memory goes with her flowers to the grave, hope calls from the shadowy land, “Occupy till I come.” If she did not hear that call, she could not plant her flower. My Lord tells me that when I build to His past I am prompted by His future. It is the light of Easter morn that leads me to the sepulchre; it is the gleam of resurrection that conducts me to the broken body, “As often as ye eat this bread, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.”1 [Note: G. Matheson, Searchings in the Silence, 223.]

(1) The sacrament confirms our faith in the certainty of His coming. He shall come; the Church is not for ever orphaned of His presence; the disciples need not mourn over a dead Christ; the weeping Virgin may dry her tears, for her Son liveth, glorified, exalted, King of kings and Lord of lords.

The first thing that we need in the anticipation of our Lord’s second coming is to have the knowledge within us that were He to come to us now we should be found of Him in peace. “Be diligent,” says St. Peter, “that ye may be found of him in peace.” And the only peace in which we can be found, we who have our sins in the past, and our failures and imperfections in the present, is in the peace of the Divine reconciliation. And in this Sacrament, first of all, the consummated passion is preached to us through powerful sacramental action. Christ is evidently set forth as crucified among us. Through the union of the earthly action with our Lord’s continued intercession in heaven, we learn that that death thus died is at the present moment being pleaded for us in all its reconciling efficacy before the Father, and then, when we draw nigh to Him in this Sacrament, He comes and gives Himself to us. Doing what? Assuring us, thereby, of God’s goodness towards us, and that we are all members of the mystical Body of His Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people. The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament of Christian assurance, and they who are hushed into the peace of God by the sacramental kiss of Christ of the Eucharist can anticipate without fear His coming, for they will “be found of him in peace.”2 [Note: Canon Body.]

The Feast has gone on; for it has been God’s, and not man’s. It has had a power over Christendom which we cannot measure, but which we shall know one day. For it contains a promise which may sustain us when its influence appears to be weakest, when the Church appears to be most rent by the factions against which it is bearing its silent, awful protest. It is written, that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we show forth the Lord’s death till He come. The Incarnation and Death and Resurrection of the Son of God were the fulfilments of all that men in the Old Dispensation were able to long for. The manifestation of Christ in the glory of His Father and of the Holy Angels is the highest object which we in this Dispensation are able to long for. It includes every craving for righteous government, for a perfect Society, for the adoption of our spirits, for the perfection of the faculties of our souls, for the full redemption of our bodies. It includes the fulfilment of every relationship, of all loving intercourse, which has been most imperfectly realized here, but which has been raised and sanctified by a diviner Communion. It includes the accomplishment of all earthly discipline and sorrow, fellowship with those whose faces we miss, but whose love must be far warmer than ever it was, because it is in more immediate contact with the perfect Love. It includes the apprehension of the order and beauty of God’s creatures, when the veil of death which covers them has been taken away. It includes the ever-deepening sense of the meaning and force of that death which revealed the whole mind of God, which was the perfect Atonement for Man 1:1 [Note: F. D. Maurice.]

(2) The second thing that is needed is this. If we are to be ready for Christ’s coming, we must be numbered with those who, in the language of the Book of Revelation, are “sealed.” And what is this sealing? A seal is that whereby an impress is made upon molten wax. And so it is here. There is a seal in which there is the image of Christ, and this image of Christ is to be imprinted on hearts that are melted in the furnace of contrition until they are all molten wax. There is a seal that bears the image of the King, and by the impress of that seal that image is stamped on those who are sealed. What is that seal if it be not that sacred rite in Christendom in which Christ Himself is present, in which Christ Himself impresses His own image upon the image of His elect? “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come”; for the Sacrament is not only the sacrament of assurance; it is the sacrament of increasing conformity.

The definition of a Sacrament seems to lack completeness, unless it be regarded not only as a sign but as a seal—a solemn federal act which involves mutual pledges, of fidelity on the one hand and of blessing on the other. The expression of the inner dispositions by appropriate symbol is by no means of uncommon occurrence in the sacred writings. When the Psalmist speaks of his own deliverances, and, in astonishment at their extent and magnitude, asks, “What shall I render?” he replies, as the most public and graceful utterance of his gratitude, “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord,” and the next verse may be regarded as the translation of the symbol into language, “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people.” And our participation of the Holy Communion must be thus regarded as the fresh act of our espousals, as the solemn renewal of our covenant; as our surrender, entire and unhesitating, to the service of the Lord. It is thus that we confess Christ and witness of Him to the world. If we eat and drink without discerning this great purpose, we eat and drink unworthily; if we repudiate such purpose, either in thought or in act, we crucify in our measure “the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.”

(3) And last of all, what do we need as we are living now between this first and second Advent—looking for the coming of the Lord? Is it not the grace of perseverance, the power to hold on our way, and day by day to act more and more firmly? And does not He who came to save us, and is coming to raise us up to be partakers in His glory—does not He Himself come to us in this Sacrament to give to us this grace of perseverance? Is it not true of us what is said of Elijah in the mystical language of old? God said to him, Arise and eat; and he arose and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God. And so it is still. God says to us: “Wearied in life’s journeying, burdened with life’s burdens and anxieties and woes, eat, O friends; drink; yea, drink abundantly, O beloved”; and we draw nigh and eat of Him whose flesh is meat indeed, and drink of Him whose blood is drink indeed; and through His love we find strength in weakness and refreshment in weariness. And through the sacrament of perseverance, receiving into ourselves the blessing of the first Advent, we wait in confident hope for the second coming of the Lord.

I will give a brief parable to those who live in continual ebullitions of love, in order that they may endure this disposition nobly and becomingly, and may attain to a higher virtue.

There is a little insect which is called an ant; it is strong and wise, and very tenacious of life, and it lives with its fellows in warm and dry soils. The ant works during summer and collects food and grain for the winter, and it splits the grain so that it may not become rotten or spoiled, and may be eaten when there is nothing more to be found. And it does not make strange paths, but all follow the same path, and after waiting till the proper time they become able to fly.

So should these men do; they will be strong by waiting for the coming of Christ, wise against the appearance and the inspiration of the enemy. They will not choose death, but they will prefer God’s glory alone and the winning of fresh virtues. They will dwell in the community of their heart and of their powers, and will follow the invitation and the constraint of Divine unity. They will live in rich and warm soils, or, in other words, in the passionate heat of love, and in great impatience. And they will work during the summer of this life, and will gather in for eternity the fruits of virtue. These they will divide in two—one part means that they will always desire the supreme joy of eternity; the other, that by their reason they will always restrain themselves as much as possible, and wait the time that God has appointed for them, and so the fruit of virtue shall be preserved into eternity. They will not follow strange paths or curious methods, but through all storms they will follow the path of love, towards the place whither love shall guide them. And when the set time has come, and they have persevered in all the virtues, they shall be fit to behold God, and their wings shall bear them towards His mystery.1 [Note: M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 132.]

Not so in haste, my heart!

Have faith in God and wait;

Although He linger long,

He never comes too late.

He never comes too late,

He knoweth what is best;

Vex not thyself in vain:

Until He cometh, rest.

Until He cometh, rest,

Nor grudge the hours that roll;

The feet that wait for God

Are soonest at the goal;

Are soonest at the goal

That is not gained by speed;

Then hold thee still, my heart,

For I shall wait His lead.1 [Note: Bayard Taylor.]

And the coming of the Bridegroom is so swift that He is always coming, and that He dwells within us with His unfathomable riches, and that He returns ever anew in person, with such new brightness that it seems as if He had never come before. For His coming is comprised beyond all limit of time, in an eternal Now; and He is ever received with new desires and a new delight. Behold, the joys and the pleasures which this Bridegroom brings with Him at His coming are boundless and without limit, for they are Himself. And this is why the eyes of the spirit, by which the loving soul beholds its Bridegroom, are opened so wide that they will never shut again. For the contemplation and the fixed gaze of the spirit are eternal in the secret manifestation of God. And the comprehension of the spirit is so widely opened, as it waits for the appearance of the Bridegroom, that the spirit itself becomes vast as that which it comprehends. And so is God beheld and understood by God, in whom all our blessedness is found.2 [Note: M. Maeterlinck, Ruysbroeck and the Mystics, 152.]

Conclusion

In conclusion, let us see to whom the proclamation is to be made.

1. It is to he made to ourselves.—The Lord’s Supper is a presentation to our own minds of the great work of redemption. If it was said to the Galatians that before their eyes Christ, whom they had not seen in the flesh, had been evidently set forth crucified among them (Galatians 3:1), so may it be said to us that, not only by the preaching of His Word, but by visible signs before our eyes, and spiritual realities to our hearts, Christ is set forth in the Holy Communion, in all His love and grace and mercy.

The Lord’s Supper may be celebrated without any spectators. It should be in public where it can be; but if there are none to look on, it may be otherwise. In Venice, in Milan, in Paris, and in other cities where Romanism prevails, five or six of us have met together in our room at our hotel, and we have had the true Lord’s supper there, though there were none to look on; and probably if there had been, in some cities where we have partaken of it, we might have been amenable to the law. ’Tis a showing forth of Christ’s death to ourselves. We see the bread broken, and see the wine poured out, and we ourselves see here, in symbol, Christ crucified; and we see as before our eyes, when we eat and drink, our interest in the sacrifice offered upon Calvary.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

2. It is to be made to one another, as members of the Body of Christ.—As instituted, the holy Service is nothing if not social, mutual. Scripture knows nothing of a solitary Eucharist. Therefore the rite has a mutual significance; it has some sacred thing to say, all round the circle, Christian to Christian. By his presence, by his partaking, “each is then a herald to the rest,” telling it out that Jesus did indeed die, to rise again.

When at the Table of our Lord

In silence all we kneel

With broken bread and wine outpour’d

To share the heavenly Meal;

Few though we be, and though the few

Are feeble at the best,

Yet each is here, if God is true,

A prophet to the rest.

We to each other show the Death

Of that slain Lamb we love,

Until He come (the Scripture saith)

In glory from above.

Yes, gathering here, each other all

With solemn cheer we warn

Of the Archangel’s thunder-call

And resurrection-morn.

Blest Sign of Christ’s own victory won,

Thy prophecies we prize;

Oh, with what joy the eternal Sun,

Thus heralded, shall rise.2 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, In the House of the Pilgrimage, 56.]

3. It is to be made to the world.—The Lord’s Supper is a confession before men of our faith; a testimony as to whose we are and whom we serve. So long as this ordinance exists in the Church of God, the world will not be left without a testimony for Christ. It is a sermon always in course of being preached. Its text is Christ, its argument is love; its appeal is, “Come unto me, all ye,” etc. It preaches not only to those who draw near to it, “Eat, O friends, yea, drink,” etc. (Song of Solomon 5:1), but also to those who turn their back upon it, “Will ye also go away?”

All the provinces of China in the month of May are astir with pilgrim crowds, moving up and down the rivers, and along the intersecting ways. It is the red-letter day of the ancestral cult, and is called “the Feast of Manifestation.” Hundreds and thousands of miles are traversed to show filial regard for the last resting-place of the departed forefathers. After the viands have been presented, all weeds hoed up from the grave, and the ground trimmed, three or four sheets of white paper, kept in position by a stone, are placed on the apex of the mound, to show that the grave has a living guardian, and no one must dare to turn the soil to common uses. The symbolic act is recognized in all the courts of law. In the absence of that simple but effectual sign the peasant might drive his plough across the grave-plot and enlarge the border of his rice field, and no one would resist him. The little sign asserts an inviolable heritage.1 [Note: T. G. Selby.]

We gather to the sacred board

Perchance a scanty band;

But with us in sublime accord

What mighty armies stand!

In creed and rite howe’er apart,

One Saviour still we own,

And pour the worship of the heart

Before the Father’s throne.

A thousand spires o’er hill and vale

Point to the same blue heaven;

A thousand voices tell the tale

Of grace through Jesus given.

High choirs, in Europe’s ancient fanes,

Praise Him for man who died;

And o’er our boundless Western plains

His name is glorified.

Around His tomb, on Salem’s height,

Greek and Armenian bend;

And through all Lapland’s months of night

The peasants’ hymns ascend.

Are we not brethren? Saviour dear!

Then may we walk in love,

Joint subjects of Thy kingdom here,

Joint heirs of bliss above!1 [Note: Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch.]

Proclaiming the Lord’s Death

Literature

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