CHAPTER II

HOW IT FARED WITH THE EUCHARIST WHILE THE INSTITUTION WAS STILL UNDER THE EYE OF THE APOSTLES

When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating, every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in ? or despise ye the Church of God ?” -I COR. xi. 20-22

IN

N the last Chapter we took a view of the Holy Eucharist in its cradle, wrapped, as it were, in its Paschal swaddling-clothes. We now open the second Chapter of its history. This second Chapter is drawn from the notice of it by the Apostle Paul, as celebrated in the Corinthian Church.

First, it is important to observe that, on St. Paul's becoming an Apostle, the Institution was revealed to him by our Blessed LORD. Of it, as of other matters more purely doctrinal, he could say with truth, “I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." St. Paul was to hand down or deliver to all the Churches of his planting, together with the doctrines and precepts of the Gospel, this Gospel Institution. And accordingly some means must be taken of putting him in this respect on an exact level with the original Apostles. He must hear from the Lord Himself a recital of what took place at the last Supper, and must receive from the Lord's own lips the commission which gives virtue and validity to the Sacrament. A transaction so important is not to be transmitted to him through the medium of any man's memory; it is to come to him

pure and limpid from the fountain-head of Truth. And accordingly we read in the twenty-third verse of the Chapter before us: "For I have received of the Lord"-not of Peter, or John or Matthew, not even through their instrumentality, but 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 then follows an account of the Institution, somewhat different from that given by the two first Evangelists, and having certain original touches in it, as where the Lord is made to speak of His Body being "broken" for us, and where the cup is called "the New Testament in His Blood." St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, who was not present at the original Institution, has evidently drawn his account from the Pauline revelation, not from the memory of the eleven. The coincidence of his narrative with St. Paul's account is a most interesting trace of the association of the two friends, so often incidentally noticed in the Acts of the Apostles.

My reader, what shall I say of those Institutes of the Christian Religion, to which a glorified Christ refers in a glorified state-Institutes upon which He holds a colloquy from heaven with His newly-admitted Apostle, in the solemn stillness, perhaps, of the wilds of Arabia? Shall I say of such Institutes that they are of more importance than the points of faith and practice, which He dwelt upon while on earth? Nay; without going thus far, we may surely say that any matter which the Lord Jesus, not content with adverting to it in the course of His ministry, has reiterated from heaven, must be a matter of the utmost moment to the well-being of His Church. And if there be any reader of these lines who either neglects the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, or thinks meanly of it,-any who has taken up with that false notion of the popular religionism, that in Christianity faith is everything, and Ordinance nothing,-I charge upon him to observe that the voice prescribing the Eucharistic Rite is a voice which issues forth not merely from the Pass

over chamber, but also from the many mansions of the Father's House, and that the form which gives utterance to this voice is not that of a man of "marred visage," but that of Him whose "countenance is as the sun shineth in his strength," and before whose Resurrection-Glory Apostles fell to the earth con

founded.

But to proceed with our history of the Eucharistic Rite.

In the account of the Natural Creation contained in the Book of Genesis, we find the various elements, light and darkness, vapours and water, earth and sea, in a state of confusion at first. Afterwards God divides the light from the darkness, the clouds from the waters, the earth from the sea, disentangling and giving them distinct spheres. Something very analogous to this we find in the history of the Primitive Church. It presents to us the appearance of a confused state of things, out of which order and method of arrangement is to dawn gradually. The Apostles at first have charge of the temporal as well as the spiritual concerns of the Church; but afterwards it is thought better that the administration of Church alms should be made over to special officers called deacons, and the Apostles be left at liberty to attend wholly to spiritual duties. Inspiration and the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost seem to have been at first poured indiscriminately over all the members of the Apostolic Church. "Sons and daughters," "young men and old," "servants and handmaidens,' (i.e. male and female slaves), prophesied in those days and spake with tongues. And accordingly the distinction between ministers and people was not then by any means so clearly defined as it is now. Acts which we should reckon ministerial were not absolutely restricted to persons holding the ministerial office. The four daughters of St. Philip prophesied; Priscilla, as well as Aquila, expounded to Apollos the way of God more perfectly. Nowadays Inspiration speaks exclusively through the Bible,

which is its sole acknowledged repository, and the office of Christian teaching is considered the exclusive prerogative of those who are set apart for it by laying on of hands.-Here again is another point, looking in the same direction. The Mother-Church of all Churches, that of Jerusalem,-began its career with a community of goods. "Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common." It was a beautiful theory. It was the realized ideal of what Christianity would make society, if its principles had free scope, and bore undisputed sway in every heart. But it was not an ideal which could be realized upon earth for more than one halcyon moment of the Church's existence, when, in the earliest morning prime of spiritual life, heart bounded to meet heart in Christian love and joy. The case of Ananias and Sapphira soon showed that this arrangement of community of goods could be taken advantage of by covetous people within the fold of Christ. The offenders were made examples of; and after that time we read no more of any attempt at community of goods in any Church; probably even in the Church of Jerusalem, property found its way again into the original hands, and the poor and rich became once more distinct classes. The principle of brotherhood in Christ excluding all social distinctions was indeed heavenly and divine; but it could not be fully realized in the actual life of a wicked world, nay, nor in the actual life of an Apostolic Church, in which (although Apostolic) there were tares growing side by side with the wheat.

Now there was another point, besides that of property, in which the early Christians at first had mutual fellowship. Rich and poor supped together; ate their daily food at a common board. The plan seems to have been that each one should bring with him, in proportion to his means, a contribution of food, which was to be placed upon the table in the upper room, where their assemblies were held, and partaken of

in common. It was natural-nay, it was an almost certain consequence from the circumstances of the original Institution, that the Lord's Supper should form part of, and be celebrated in the course of, this common meal. It had grown out of the half-social, half-religious entertainment of the Passover; and to an entertainment of a social character it was naturally annexed still. Accordingly it is intimated in the Acts of the Apostles that there was a daily celebration of the Eucharist in the Church of Jerusalem; daily of course it would be, because the Supper, or chief meal, must recur daily, and whenever it recurred, being the common meal of Christians, at which they met one another as Christians, it would surely be sanctified by the appointed commemoration of the Saviour's dying Love. So we read: They continuing daily with one accord in the Temple" (this was their devotion as pious Jews), "and breaking bread from house to house" (this was their devotion as pious Christians), "did eat their meat" (partook of food) "with gladness and singleness of heart." There was a simple domestic joy about those early Eucharistic meals, which, alas! was soon to be dissipated.

For just as the crime and punishment of Ananias and Sapphira seem to have exploded the community of property in the Church of Jerusalem; so certain excesses in the Corinthian Church, in connexion with the common Eucharistic meal,-excesses punished by God's temporal judgment, and severely rebuked by His Apostle, gradually exploded and put an end to the practice of combining the Sacrament with a meal at all. The richer Christians, opening their basket of provisions, and not waiting (it appears) till the whole Christian brotherhood had assembled, and the formal thanksgiving at the opening of the meal had been said, ate and drank to excess, while the poor (more especially if belated) found a most insufficient supper. We open

our eyes wide with wonder at a desecration so totally unfamiliar to ourselves, so impossible under the circumstances of the modern Church; but the fact stands on

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