For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come—1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

Around the ordinance, the institution of which is here described, gather the controversies of centuries. A history of the communion would be almost a history of the church. By a sad mockery of its true character, it has been brought into unhallowed alliance with nearly every sphere of man’s activity or interest. It has been made a means of regeneration, a declaration of admission to church-membership, a qualification for office, and a sacrifice for the dead; it has been played with as a puppet, and worshiped as a God; it has been the shibboleth of parties; it has been pressed into the service of bigotry, and made a test of fellowship; hate and revenge have used it as their instrument; but these very perversities have testified to its inherently high position in the system of Christianity. O Spirit of God! guide us as we approach this Holy of Holies! direct us into the true knowledge and understanding of its divine nature, and specially fit us to lay hold of it in our hearts, that we may know that true communion with Christ which this service declares.

On the very threshold of our discussion we are met by an objection, urged ordinarily on the ground of the spirituality of the new dispensation, that in the kingdom of Jesus Christ an ordinance like this could not be meant to lie perpetual, that it belongs to those carnal rites suited to an immature state of religious education, and that, if it be continued, the method of observing it must be a matter of comparative indifference to him who looks at the heart. But the words of the Scripture in our text seem to be decisive on the first point; “Ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” This is the language of an apostle, who, more than any other, denounces every thing which conflicts with his sublime idea of a kingdom that is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and if he saw no inconsistency here, we may reasonably conclude there is none. It is a strange spirituality which leads us to reject, not rites of human device, but those of divine appointment, or to undervalue even the manner of celebrating an ordinance which holds such a place in Christ’s esteem, that when, after his death, he commissioned a new apostle, he gave him, by special revelation, information with regard to its origin, and directions how it should be kept; “For I received from the Lord,” says Paul, “that which I also delivered unto you.”

The nature and design of the communion, and the methods, occasions, and incidents of its observance, can be learned alone from the New Testament. Abstract reasoning has little weight in relation to Positive institutions. They derive all their authority and meaning from the will of their Founder, and, in their domain, his words, with whatever light may be thrown upon them from competent sources, must be our sole guide. The study of the New Testament, I think, will reveal the following as the chief features of this ordinance.

I. It is commemorative. “This do in remembrance of me.”

Symbolic and other memorials of important occurrences have been known to all ages, and have their origin in the nature of man. These monumental witnesses are far more effective in diffusing and perpetuating the knowledge of such events than any record in words could be. When incorporated into religious customs of more or less frequent observance, they gain a hold on the common mind which nothing else can equal. The ordinance before us recalls continually the great fact of facts in our Lord’s history, that he died. Not even the express and emphatic language of the Scripture seems to present so incontrovertibly the truth that Christ’s great mission in this world was to make a sacrifice for sin, as this constant commemoration of his death, in accordance with his directions. It would be much easier for those who deny the scriptural doctrine of the atonement to pass by or explain away those portions of holy writ which express this truth in positive and dogmatic statement, and to dwell rather on those which speak of his life and teachings, than it is for them to account for this undeniable and most noteworthy fact, that the great Christian feast commemorates Christ’s death. Other men are remembered by their followers; schools and sects and philosophies have their celebrations; but, while the admirers of the great observe festally the birthdays of their heroes or the anniversaries of their accession to places of power and influence or of their recognition by the world, where can be found an instance of men’s commemorating with joy the dying hour of the one they wish to honor? And what explanation can be given of this, other than the ready and all-sufficient one, that, whereas other men accomplished what they did by their lives or their teachings, Christ wrought his great work for mankind by his death.

It is one of the features that commends this ordinance to every Christian, that it is a positive institution and this offers an opportunity for presenting a test, an evidence, and an offering of love, which is specially grateful to him who gives, and to him who receives. Coming into being in closest proximity to our Saviour’s passion, its birth hour touching Gethsemane and Calvary, solemnly appointed in the last moments of life when nothing can be conceived of as engaging our Lord’s attention which is not of the greatest importance—this rite holds on every account a special place in the Christian’s affections. It is often the want of true love to the Saviour which makes men turn from the representation of Christ’s death, made by himself as he would have it remembered and set forth, to sensuous pictures and images of the crucifixion and burial and resurrection, drawn by fancy, adapted to awaken the emotions of the natural heart, but, to nourish faith or love, utterly powerless.

II. It is declarative. “Ye do show the Lord’s death.”

In this ordinance, we do more than remember an act or a person. The word translated “show” means to declare, to announce, and, in most passages where it occurs in the New Testament, is translated “preach.” “They preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead:” (Acts 4:2) “Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins:” (Acts 13:38) “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” (Acts 17:23) The emblems, also, which are spread on the table, so significant in their teachings, show that the rite is more than commemorative. In setting forth Christ’s death, it declares not merely the fact that he died, but the manner and purpose of his death. And as the death of Christ was the great central point of his history, toward which every line in his life converged, so this ordinance gathers unto itself all that death includes and comprehends.

It declares an incarnated Saviour—a Saviour who had body and blood, a Saviour who became for our sakes subject to death. It shows forth the manner of his death. His body is broken before our eyes. It tells more than this—it announces the purpose of his death. He might have died for us out of love to man, as human benefactors have done, he might have died because the earth could not endure his holiness, and then his death would have been worthy of commemoration. But what means this wine, typical of his blood? Why are these two elements used? Does not the broken bread set forth sufficiently his death? Yes, if it were only his death that we commemorate, his blood, which in a being merely human would have no significance apart from his body, has great meaning here, because he is a sacrifice for sin. It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul (Lev. 17:11). “This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” (Matt. 26:28) Hence, this ordinance declares those things in us which made that death necessary; our guilt, our deserved condemnation, and our utter helplessness. How utterly has Rome, in that strange ceremony which she calls the mass, departed from Christ’s institution; denying the cup to the laity, and putting a wafer on the tongue of the communicant; having no broken bread, no poured wine; recognizing neither Christ’s death, nor his atonement.

But it tells as much of life as of death—of what Christ works in us, as well as what he has done for us. It declares Christ to be the life of our souls—our daily bread, nourishment, and strength. It sets forth the identity of Christ with his people, their common life, the union taught in the Bible both in express terms and in many similitudes. It assures us of our possession of Christ, that he is not only given for us, but is given to us. As freely as the officiating minister breaks and gives the bread, and as truly as we receive it, so freely and truly does Christ give himself to us.

Not only does this ordinance declare what was done on Calvary, and what is doing in our souls, it announces what is to be. The Past, the Present, and the Future are closely intertwined in joyous fellowship, in every celebration of this rite. “Till he come.” The gathering of the disciples to break bread looks to the future as well as the past. The thoughts of the communicants turn backward to Calvary but they go forward also. They hear something besides the groans of a dying Saviour. They look for the glorious and triumphant Messiah; that brow which was crowned with thorns they are soon to behold bearing the diadem of regal dominion. The suffering and the conquering, Emmanuel, so closely associated in the pages of the prophets, and so separated by the Church’s night-time, are brought together by faith at this table. Here the saints continually proclaim their expectation of the return of their now absent Lord. They declare their unwavering conviction that he will come: that his kingdom will not be overturned by the malice of foes or the treachery of friends: that there shall never be wanting those who will celebrate his death in this simple and touching rite, until he come again.

III. It is an act of communion. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread.” (1 Cor. 10:16,17)

That the ordinance is something more than merely commemorative and declaratory appears from a variety of considerations. Observe the name itself; it is the communion, coinwnia, a word which, by its own force, and by its scriptural use, must always embrace more persons than one. The broader design of the institution is taught also in the command, “Eat, drink ye all of it.” An exhibition of the elements would have served all the purposes of commemoration, and if any thing more were necessary to make the rite declaratory, it would be sufficient that an individual eat and drink in the retirement of his closet. But this would not be complying with Christ’s requirements. The communion cannot be observed by a single person. It is a joint act. There must be “the many,” (1 Cor. 10:17) or the significance of the one bread and the one body is lost. It is the church’s privilege when they are come together in one place. To a like conclusion are we led by a study of the circumstances which surrounded the original institution of the rite in the upper room at Jerusalem. Not all of Christ’s disciples were there; some were absent, whom he loved most dearly; Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus received no summons to the sacred assembly. But around the board were gathered all the apostles. Christ did not, as in Gethsemane and on the Mount of Transfiguration, select from among them three special friends. It is a question deserving serious attention, why that company consisted of the twelve, and of them only; and the answer is a reply to most of the objections which are made to the principles which govern the Baptist Churches in the administration of the rite. It is a church ordinance; it is the ordinance of that one body of which the Apostolic College was the representative; and therefore, it was with them, and with no others, Christ partook of the feast. And we no more confine Christian affection and the name of Christians to those whom we invite to the table of the Lord, than did Christ refuse his name or love to those beloved ones who stood by him at the cross, but who did not partake with him, on the preceding evening, of the symbols of his death.

But the Communion implies more than the presence and act of the church, in distinction from the act of an individual; it includes HIM of whom his people are made partakers. The Scripture gives no countenance to the figment of transubstantiation—a view which it has been well said, is poverty itself compared with the evangelical—nor to the theory of consubstantiation; but we must be careful, in our eagerness to avoid the error of materializing the solemn words of Christ, “This is my body, this is my blood,” not to adopt the shallow opinion that the only benefit of this rite consists in its power to affect the Christian’s feelings. This hollow theory has been applied to prayer and other religious duties, but it has no attractions for the true Christian. He approaches the table of his Lord with the deepest solemnity, for he beholds his Lord’s body, he hears the words of the apostle—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” He does not undertake to define, in exact words, those spiritual ideas which elude expression by clearly-marked logical lines and boundaries; for he recognizes fully the evident fact, that on the ordinance which is the most affecting symbol of the sublimest of truths—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,”(John 6:53) “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him,” (John 6:56)—there must rest, in a measure, whatever obscurity belongs to that most profound and mysterious subject. When the union between Christ and his people can be exactly set forth in any form of words, so that the understanding can grasp it; when that mystical union, transcending, as it does, any other possible union—a union, as good Bishop Hall says, “not merely virtual, accidental, metaphorical, but a true, real, essential, substantial union, so that in natural union there may be more evidence, there cannot be more truth”—a union embracing the bodies, as well as the souls of the believers—when this union can be divested of all mystery, and expressed in words so as to be perfectly intelligible to the intellect, then may we explain, with equal fullness and clearness, every thing pertaining to these symbols. Until then, faith as well as knowledge, the heart as well as the mind, must interpret these words—“The communion of the body of Christ:” “the communion of the blood of Christ:” words which, by the sanctified consent of Christendom, have given to this ordinance a unique and holy character. For if no other partaking of Christ is here than may be found in prayer or meditation or other religious exercise, would it not have been called communion with Christ, rather than the communion of the body and of the blood of Christ?

And let it not be supposed that we teach by this that there is any thing in partaking at the Lord’s table essential to salvation. Not at all. The salvation of the soul does not depend upon any outward ordinance. But as there is a blessing in public worship which can only be obtained by participation therein, though a believer may be holy and happy who has never seen a gathering of the saints; as there is a blessing found in the reception of baptism, and nowhere else, to the finding of which multitudes can testify, although unnumbered happy ones have gone to heaven who have never been baptized; so the communion of the body and blood of Christ, to the worthy recipient, has its own special blessing, that can be found only at the table of our dying Lord. It is a blessing which far transcends that which Rome seeks in her interpretation of the words of Christ, even if her highest conceptions and all her boasting were true. Our service is a communion. “The Christ of the mass is not turned toward the soul, but toward God; and the feelings of the church in the mass are to be just such as it would experience were Christ actually dying over again his sacrificial death.” (Dorner) With us it is a living Christ whom we come to meet. We find and recognize his death here, but it is more than death that we find—more than the results of his death even—more than the merits of his atonement; we come to the table, not so much to secure the divine redemptive virtues, or any impersonal thing, even grace itself, as to “further the celebration and intensification of direct, personal, loving fellowship between Christ and the soul.”

The Communion is not merely a commemoration, telling what Christ once did—a monument of blessed service performed and love shown centuries ago in other lands, nor merely a prospect of good things to come; we are not shut up to remembrance and expectation, having only absent joys in our mind; we worship and meet a living and present Lord.

IV. In this ordinance, the New Testament worship culminates. The end of Christianity for man is living fellowship with God. All Christian worship announces and celebrates the reconciliation of the worshiper, with God in Christ; and this idea finds its climax in the Communion. All preceding religious rites appear here in spiritual meaning and fullness. Circumcision, which promised a peculiar people for God; the passover, which foretold the redemption of that people; baptism, which declares the redemption accomplished and owned of God by the resurrection from the dead; the sacrifices which smoked on Mosaic altars—are all gathered and fulfilled here. The various methods of worship—individual, social, spiritual, external, etc.—kindly provided by God to meet the manifold wants of man, and to accomplish the great purposes of spiritual training, are combined in this rite in their highest forms. Here is the act of the individual, for unlike any other social service, this requires a distinct participation by every person. But it is more than an individual act, as we have previously seen—it is associated worship, and yet not a promiscuous gathering, but the worship of the church, solemnly convened for that purpose—and God, who has declared that he loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob, has given his largest promises to his assembled saints. Here is set forth Christ—Christ, the Atonement—Christ, the Life—Christ, the King. In the common preaching of the gospel, where Christ is declared, he is too often rejected by many to whom the tidings of salvation come. But in this ordinance, the public reception of Christ is coextensive with the presentation of him. In accordance with this idea, in the primitive times, none but communicants were permitted to remain during the celebration of the Eucharist. In other religious ceremonies, in baptism and the preaching of the gospel, there is no absolute necessity for any accompanying vocal prayer or praise. The service is complete without them. But the communion cannot be, without audible address to God; the mere eating and drinking do not constitute the feast. The cup and bread must be blest; the church’s thanksgiving and request must come up before God. Devotion, moreover, in its highest moods, demands silence as well as speech. The soul in its soarings after Christ becomes impatient of words—they are too weak to bear the burden which it lays upon them, and the instinct of Christians always requires that there be a portion of time during the communion when every voice is hushed, that the heart undisturbed by any intruder, in solemn silence, may syllable the emotions of love and gratitude which the tongue is powerless to express. The offering of our substance is always a component part of complete public worship, and by the same instinct, immediately after the reception of the elements, a contribution is taken for the poorer members of the church. The singing of a hymn closes a rite in which all other rites are brought together and intensified—in which the church has assembled as a body for the solemn purpose of the celebration—in which the pastor and deacons, the full New Testament complement of church officers, have officiated—in which every individual member has taken an outward and equal part—in which Christ has been set forth and accepted in solemn symbols—in which the great facts of the gospel, past, present, and future, have been declared—in which the voice of prayer and praise has been heard—in which an offering of our substance has been made, remembering both our Lord and our needy brother. It is the complete circle of Christian worship, a fitting type of that coming kingdom of the Father, in which Christ is to drink the fruit of the vine new with His disciples.

If the views of this ordinance presented in this discourse are correct, it is evident that a due regard to the high and holy place which it occupies, forbids its being employed as a preliminary or adjunct to any thing else, however important. All other things may prepare for the communion, but it may not rightfully be made a means to any thing except those great ends, all of which are to be regarded in every celebration. Superstition has carried the elements to the bedside of the dying; the influence of the same false faith has caused them to be hastily spread and partaken of in the hour of danger on shipboard, and elsewhere; the eating of the broken bread has been made a prelude to sacred and civil office, a manifestation of brotherly kindness and the union of Protestants; but, however we may respect the motives of those who thus use the sacred rite, our study of the word of God forbids our compliance with any such custom. An institution occupying the place this does in the Christian economy, must be kept for the purposes for which Christ designed it.

Thus jealously guarded and exalted, there will be no necessity for fencing it about with those hindrances and restrictions, unknown to the New Testament, with which it has often been encircled; no need of surrounding it with such fastings and discipline, that the trembling soul dares approach but seldom, and then with a fear and terror that almost destroys the true character of the ordinance. It is the great gospel feast; it is the table where Christ summons his beloved and ransomed ones and communes with them. Solemn as is the place, the celebration should be one of the devoutest joy. Here faith, and hope, and love should burst the bounds which too often confine them. Here every Christian grace should be in highest exercise. It is none other than the very gate of Heaven.

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