CHAPTER II.

THE EUCHARIST.

It is proposed to give an account of the primitive institution of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper-unquestionably the greatest religious ordinance of the world, whether as regards its almost universal adoption in the civilised world, or the passions which it has enkindled, or the opposition which it has evoked.

Unlike many of the records of the Gospel story, which from the variety and contradiction of the narratives, and from the question as to the date and authorship of the Gospels, are involved in difficulty, the narrative of the Institution of the Lord's Supper is preserved to us on the whole with singular uniformity in the first three Gospels. More than this, it is preserved to us almost in the same form in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and in that case in one of the few writings of the New Testament of which the authority has never been questioned at all, one which belongs to a date long anterior to any of the Gospels, and which is therefore at once the earliest and the most authentic part of the Gospel History. What St. Paul tells us about the Last Supper is a fragment of the Gospel History which all critics and scholars will at once admit. The Supper was universally believed by all Christians to have been instituted or founded by Jesus.'2 There is nothing startling, nothing difficult to accept in the account, no miraculous portents, no doctrine difficult of apprehension; but it con

2 Strauss's Life of Jesus.

tains many of the best characteristics of Our Lord's discourses -His deep affection to His disciples-His parabolical mode of expression-His desire to be remembered after He was gone His mixture of festivity with serious earnestness. It contains also by implication the story of His arrival in Jerusalem, of His betrayal, and of His death. We have enough in this to build upon. No one doubts it. Every one may construct from it a Christianity sufficient for his belief and for his conduct.

By dwelling on the original form we pass out of the mist of modern controversy to a better, simpler, higher atmosphere. It is said that a great genius in France,3 when on the point of receiving a first communion in the years which followed the first Revolution, was overwhelmed by the distracting and perplexing thoughts suggested by all the doubts which raged on the subject, but was restored to calm by fixing the mind on the one original scene from which the Christian Eucharist has sprung. Let us do the same. Let us go back to that one occasion, out of which, all are agreed, both its unity and its differences arose.

The time.

It was not, as with us, in the early morning or at noonday, but in the evening, shortly after sunset- not on the first day of the week, nor the seventh, but on the fifth, or Thursday-that the Master and His disciples met together. The remembrance of the day of the week has now entirely perished except in Passion Week. It was revived. in the time of Calvin, who proposed in recollection of it to have the chief Christian festival and day of rest transferred from Sunday to Thursday. But this proposal was never carried out, and the day now remains unremembered. The remembrance of the hour still lingers in the name when we call it the Lord's Supper; and still more in its German title, the Holy Evening Meal. For such it was. It was the evening feast, of which every Jewish household partook on the night, as it might be, before or after the Passover. They were collected together, the Master and His twelve Memoirs of George Sand.

disciples, in one of the large upper rooms above the open court of the inn or caravanserai to which they had been guided. The couches or mats were spread round the room, as in all Eastern houses, and on those the guests lay reclined, three on each couch, according to the custom derived from the universal usage of the Greek or Roman world. The ancient Jewish usage of eating the Passover standing had given way, that they might lie like kings, with the ease becoming free men, and a symbolical meaning was then given to what was in fact a mere social fashion.

The elements.

There they lay, the Lord in the midst, next to Him the beloved disciple, and next to him the eldest, Peter. Of the position of the others we know nothing. There stood on the table in front of the guests, one, two, perhaps four cups or rather bowls. There is at Genoa a bowl which professes to be the original chalice; a mere fancy, no doubt, but probably representing the original shape. The bowl was filled with wine mixed up with water. The wine of old times was always mixed with water; no one ever thought of taking it without, just as now no one would think of taking syrup or lemon-juice without water. Beside the cup was one or more of the large thin Passover cakes of unleavened bread, such as may still at the Paschal season be seen in all Jewish houses. It is this of which the outward form has been preserved in the thin round wafer used in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches. It was the recollection of the unleavened bread of the Israelites when they left Egypt. As the wine was mixed with water, so the bread was probably served up with fish. The two always went together. We see examples of this in the earlier meals in the Gospel, and so doubtless it was in this last. Close beside this cake was another recollection of the Passover-a thick sop, which was supposed to be like the Egyptian clay, and in which the fragments of the Paschal cake were dipped. Round this table, leaning on each other's breasts, reclining on those couches, were the twelve disciples and their Master. From

♦ Maimonides, Pesach, 10. 1; Farrar, Life of Christ, ii. 278.

mouth to mouth passed to and fro the eager inquiry, and the startled look when they heard that one of them should betray Him. Across the table and from side to side were shot the earnest questions from Peter, from Jude, from Thomas, from Philip. In each face might have been traced the character of each, receiving a different impression from what he saw and heard; and in the midst of all, the majestic sorrowful countenance of the Master of the Feast, as He drew towards Him the several cups and the thin transparent cake, and pronounced over each the Jewish blessing with those few words which have become immortal.

Let us see what may be deduced from the first institution of the ordinance.

Its connection with Judaism.

1. It was the ancient Jewish paschal meal. The Founder showed by thus using it that He did not mean to part the new from the old. He intended that there should be this connection, however slight, with the ancient Israelite nation. The blessing which He pronounced on the cup and the bread was taken from the blessing which the Jewish householder pronounced on them. The hymn' which they sang was the long chant from the 113th to the 118th Psalm celebrating the Exodus. The moon which shone into that upper room, and which shines over our Easter night, is the successor of the moon which lighted up the night to be ever remembered when Israel came out of Egypt. The most Christian of all Christian ordinances is thus the most Jewish. Whitsunday has hardly any Jewish recollections, Christmas and Good Friday none. But Easter and the Lord's Supper are the Passover in another form, and the link which binds the old and the new together is the same sense of deliver

In this respect the picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinc gives a true impression. The moment represented is that in which, as a bombshell, the declaration that one of them should betray Him has fallen among the Apostles. It is not a picture of the Last Supper, so much as the expression of the various emotions called forth by that announcement. The hymn which Sir Walter Scott has put into the mouth of a Jewess, 'When Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out of the land of bondage came,' is also one of the very best hymns of Christians.

D

ance.

The birthday of the Jewish Religion was the day of the birth of a free people. The birthday of the Christion Religion was no less the day of the birth of the freedom of the human race, of the human conscience, of the human soul. 'This year,' so says the Jewish service, we are servants here; next year we hope to be freemen in the land of Israel.' This year Christendom may be a slave to its prejudices and its passions; next year it may hope to be free in the land of goodness.

Selection

of the most universal eiements.

2. But out of this supper He chose those elements which were most simple and most enduring. He left altogether out of notice the paschal lamb and the bitter herbs. He did not think it necessary to accept all or reject all of what He found. Here as elsewhere He used the best of what came before Him. He exercised His free right of choice. When He took into His hands- His holy and venerable hands,' as the old Liturgies express it-the paschal bread and the paschal wine, it was the selection of them from the rest of the Jewish ceremony, as He selected His doctrine from the rest of the Jewish books and Jewish teaching. He said nothing of the water which was mixed with the wine. That was a

mere passing custom which would change with time and fashion. He said nothing of the form or materials of the bread. It was unleavened, it was round, it was thin, it was a cake rather than a loaf. But He said nothing of all these things, nothing of the accompanying fish. All those questions which have arisen as to the proportions in which the materials should be mixed were far, very far, behind Him, or far, very far, beyond Him. He took the bread and wine as He found them; He fixed on the bread and wine as representing those two sustaining elements which are found almost everywhere--bread that strengtheneth man's heart, wine that maketh glad the heart of man. These were the fruits of the earth which He blessed, for which He gave thanks, to indicate the gratitude of man for these simple gifts. As in His teaching He had chosen the most homely images of the shepherd, the sower,