CHAPTER VIII. THE LORD'S SUPPER. PART II.

II. The second point which I propose to handle in this paper is so completely bound up with the first, that I shall not dwell upon it at length. He that can answer the question, What is the true intention of the Lord's Supper? will find no difficulty in discerning, What is its rightful position in the Church of Christ?

Like the Ark of God in the Old Testament, this blessed sacrament has a proper position and rank among Christian ordinances, and, like the Ark of God, it may easily be put in the wrong one. The history of that Ark will readily recur to our minds. Put in the place of God, and treated like an idol, it did the Israelites no good at all. In the early days of Eli, it could not save them out of the hand of the Philistine. Their armies were defeated and the Ark itself was taken. Defiled and dishonored by being placed in an idol's temple, it was the cause of God's wrath, falling on a whole nation, till the Philistines said with one voice, Send it away! Treated with carelessness and levity, it brought down God's judgment on the men of Beth Shemesh and on Uzzah. Treated with reverence and respect, it brought a blessing on Obed-Edom and all his house.

It is even so with the Lord's Supper. Placed in its right position, it is an ordinance full of blessing. The great question to be settled is, what is that position?

1. The Lord's Supper is not in its right place when it has made the first, foremost, principal, and most important thing in Christian worship. that it is in so many quarters we must all know. The well-known masses of the Romish Church, the increasing importance attached to Holy Communion, as it is called, by many in our own Church, are plain evidence of what I mean.

The sermon, the mode of conducting prayer, the reading of Holy Scripture, in many churches are made second to this one thing, the administration of the Lord's Supper. We may well ask, what warrant of Scripture is there for this extravagant honor? But we shall get no answer. There are at most but five books in the whole canon of the New Testament in which the Lord's Supper is even mentioned, about grace, faith, and redemption, about the work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, and the love of the Father. About man's ruin, weakness and spiritual poverty, about justification, sanctification and holy living, about all these mighty subjects, we find the inspired writers giving us line upon line and precept upon precept.

About the Lord's Supper, on the contrary, we may observe, in the great bulk of the New Testament, a speaking silence. Even the epistles to Timothy and Titus, containing much instruction about a minister's duties, do not contain a word about it. This fact alone surely speaks volumes. To thrust the Lord's Supper forward, till it towers over and overrides everything else in religion, is giving it a position for which there is no authority in God's Word.

I take occasion to say that I view with strong dislike the modern practice of substituting the Lord's Supper for a sermon at Episcopal and Archdiaconal visitations. No doubt it saves bishops and archdeacons much trouble. It delivers them from the invidious responsibility of selecting a preacher. but the thing has a very suspicious and unsatisfactory appearance. Preaching the word, in my judgment, is a far more important ordinance than the Lord's Supper. The subject is one about which evangelical churchmen would do well to awake and be on their guard. This stupid attempt to thrust in the Lord's Supper on all occasions has a most unfortunate tendency to make men remember the Popish Mass.

II. Again, the Lord's Supper is not in its right place when it is administered with an extravagant degree of outward ceremony and veneration. In saying this I should be sorry to be misunderstood. God forbid that I should countenance anything like carelessness or irreverence in the use of any ordinance of Christ. By all means let us give honor where honor is due. But I ask all who read this paper, whether there is not something painfully suspicious about the enormous amount of pomp and bodily reverence with which the Lord's Supper is now administered in many of our churches.

The ostentatious treatment of the communion table as an altar—the lights, ornaments, flowers, millinery, gestures, postures, bowing, crossings, incensing, processions, which are connected with the so-called altar—the mysterious and obsequious veneration with which the bread and wine are consecrated, given, taken, and received—what does it all mean?

Footnote. It is truly lamentable to observe how many young men and women, of whom better things might have been expected, fall away into semi-Romanism in the present day under the attraction of a highly ornamental and sensuous ceremonial. Flowers, crucifixes, processions, banners, incense, gorgeous vestments, and the like, never fail to draw such young persons together, just as honey attracts flies. I will not insult the common sense of those who find these things attractive, by asking them whether they really believe they get any food from them for heart, and conscience, and soul. But I should like them to consider seriously what these things mean. Do they really know that the doctrines of the mass and transubstantiation are the root of the whole system? Are they prepared to swallow these awful heresies? I suspect many are playing with Romanism without the least idea what it covers over. They see an attractive bait, but they do not see the hook. Where is the simplicity which our Protestant reformers both preached and practiced? Where is the simplicity which any plain reader of the English prayer book might justly expect? We may well ask, where? The true Lord's supper is no longer there. The whole thing savors of Romanism.

A plain man can only see in it an attempt to introduce into our worship the doctrine of sacrifice, the blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit of the Mass, the Popish real presence, and transubstantiation. It is impossible to avoid feeling that a deadly heresy underlies this pompous ceremonial, and that we have naught to do merely with childish love of show and form, but with a deep-laid design to bring back Popery into the Church of England and to subvert the Gospel of Christ. One thing, at any rate, is very plain to my mind. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper, administered as it is now in many places, is not in its rightful position. It is so disguised, and painted, and daubed, and overlaid, and bloated, and swollen, and changed by this new treatment, that I can hardly see in it any Lord's Supper at all.

Again, the Lord's Supper is not in its right place, when it is pressed on all worshippers indiscriminately as a means of grace which all, as a matter of course, ought to use. Once more I ask that no one will misunderstand me. I feel as strongly as anyone that to go to church as a worshipper, and yet not be a communicant, is to be a most inconsistent Christian, and that to be unfit for the Lord's table is to be unfit to die.

But it is one thing to teach this, and quite another to urge all men to receive the sacrament as a matter of course, whether they are qualified to receive it or not. I should be sorry to raise a false accusation. I do not for a moment suppose that any high church clergyman recommends, in naked language, wicked people to come to the Lord's Supper, that they may be made good.

But I cannot forget that for many pulpits people are constantly taught that they are born again and have grace, by virtue of their baptism, and that if they want to stir up the grace within them and get more religion, they must use all means of grace, and specially the Lord's Supper.

and I cannot help fearing that thousands in the present day are practically substituting attendance at the Lord's Supper for repentance, faith, and vital union with Christ, and flattering themselves that the more often they receive the sacrament, the more they are justified, and the more fit they are to die.

My own firm conviction is that the Lord's Supper should on no account be placed before Christ, and that men should always be taught to come to Christ by faith before they draw near the Lord's table. I believe that this order can never be inverted without bringing on gross superstition, and doing immense harm to men's souls.

Those parts of Christendom where the Mass is made everything, and the Word of God hardly ever preached, are precisely those parts where there is the most entire absence of vital Christianity. I wish I could say there was no fear of our coming to this state of things in our own land.

But when we hear of hundreds crowding the Lord's table on Sundays, and them plunging into every dissipation on weekdays, there is grave reason for suspecting that the Lord's Supper is pressed on many congregations in a manner utterly unwarranted by Scripture.

Does any one ask now what is the rightful position of the Lord's Supper? I answer that question without any hesitation. I believe its rightful position, like that of holiness, is between grace and glory, between justification and heaven, between faith and paradise, between conversion and the final rest, between the wicked gate and the celestial city.

It is not Christ. It is not conversion. It is not a passport to heaven. It is for the strengthening and refreshing of those who have come to Christ already, who know something of conversion. who are already in the narrow way, and have fled from the city of destruction.

We cannot read hearts, I am well aware. We must not be too strict and exclusive in our terms of communion, and make those sad whom God has not made sad. But we must never shrink from telling the unconverted and the unbelieving that, in their present condition, they are not fit to come to the Lord's table.

A faithful clergyman, at any rate, need never be ashamed of taking up the ground marked out for him in the Church catechism. The last question in that well-known formulary is as follows. What is required of them that come to the Lord's Supper? The answer to that question is weighty and full of meaning. Those who come to the Lord's Supper must examine themselves whether they repent them truly of their former sins, steadfastly purposing to lead a new life, have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, and a thankful remembrance of His death, and are in charity with all men. Does any one feel these things in his own heart? Then we may boldly tell him that the Lord's Supper is placed before him by a merciful Saviour, to help him in running the race set before him. Higher than this we must not place the ordinance. A communicant was not expected to be an angel, but a sinner who feels his sins, and trusts on his Saviour. Lower than this we have no right to place the ordinance. To encourage people to come up to the table without knowledge, faith, repentance, or grace, is to do them positive harm, promote superstition, and displease the master of the feast.

He desires to see at his table not dead guests, but living ones—not the dead service of formal eating and drinking, but the spiritual sacrifice of feeling and loving hearts. I pause here. I trust I have said enough to make clear the views I hold of the true intention and rightful position of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. If, in expounding these views, I have said anything that grates on the feelings of any reader, I can assure him that I am unfaintedly sorry. Nothing could be further from my desire than to hurt the feelings of a brother. But it is my firm conviction that the state of the Church of England requires great plainness of speech and distinctness of statement about the sacraments.

There is nothing, I am persuaded, which the times so imperatively demand of evangelical churchmen as a bold, manly, and explicit assertion of the great principles held by our forefathers, and specially about baptism and the Lord's Supper. If we would strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die, we must resolutely go back to the old paths, and maintain old truths in the old way. We must give up the vain idea that we can ever make the cross of Christ acceptable by polishing and varnishing and painting and gilding it and sawing off its corners. We must cease to suppose that we can ever lure men into being evangelical by a trimming, temporizing, half and half, milk and water, moan of exhibiting the doctrines of the gospel, or by wearing borrowed plumes and dabbling with high churchism, or by loudly proclaiming that we are not party men, or by laying aside plain scriptural phrases and praising up earnestness, or by adroitly keeping back truths that are likely to give offence.

The plan is an utter delusion. It wins no enemy, it disgusts many a true friend. It makes the worldly bystander sneer and fills him with scorn. We may rest assured that the right line and the wisest course for the evangelical body to pursue is to adhere steadily to the old plan of maintaining the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as it is in Jesus, and specially the truth about the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Let us be courteous, amiable, charitable, affable, considerate for the feelings of others, by all means, but let no consideration make us keep back any part of God's truth.

Let me close this paper with a few practical suggestions. Assuming for a moment that we have made up our minds what is the intention and rightful position of the Lord's Supper, let us just consider what the times demand at our hands. For one thing, let us cultivate a godly simplicity in all our statements about the Lord's Supper, and a godly jealousy in all our practices about it. If we are ministers, let us often remind our people that there is no sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, no real presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine, no change in the elements, no grace conferred, ex opera operato, no altar at the east end of our churches, no sacrificing priesthood in the Church of England. Let us tell them these things again and again and again, till our congregations have them ingrained into their very minds and memories and souls, and let us charge them, as they love life, not to forget them.

Whether we are clergymen or laymen, let us beware of countenancing or tolerating any practices in connection with the Lord's Supper, which either exceed or contradict the rubrics of our prayer book, and imply any belief in a Romish view of this sacrament. Let us protest in every possible way against any extravagant veneration of the communion table and the bread and wine, as if Christ's body and blood were in these elements or on the table, and let us never forget what the prayer book says about the idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians. We cannot be too particular on these points. The times are changed. Things that we might have borne with in the past years as matters of indifference, and comparative trifles and ceremonial, ought not to be borne with any longer. A few years ago I would have turned to the East in repeating the creed in any parish church rather than offend a neighbour's feelings. I can do so no longer, for I see great principle at stake. But our protest on all these matters be firm, unflinching and universal all over the country, and we may do much good.

2. For another thing, let us not be shaken or troubled by the common charge that we are not churchmen, because we do not agree with many of our brethren on the subject of the sacraments. Such charges are easily made, but not so easily established. I trust my younger brethren especially will treat them with perfect indifference and unconcern. I know not which to admire most, the impedance or the ignorance of those who make them. Do those who cruelly say that evangelical churchmen are not true churchmen suppose that we cannot read? Do they fancy we cannot understand the meaning of plain English? Do they think to persuade us that our doctrinal views are not to be found in the articles, the liturgy, and the homilies, and in the writings of all the leading divines of our church, up to the days of Charles I? Do they fancy, for example, that we do not know that the communion table was seldom to be found at the east end of the church till the time of Laud, but generally stood in the chancel like a table, and that Ridley especially called it the Lord's Board?

It is a fact that the communion table in Gloucester Cathedral was first placed altar-wise against the east end of the chancel by Laud himself, when he was Dean of Gloucester in the year 1616. It is also a fact that Bishop Miles Smith, then Bishop of Gloucester, was so pained and annoyed by this change that he declared he would not enter the cathedral again till the table was brought back to its former position. He kept his word, and never went within the walls of the cathedral till he was buried there in 1624.

Let us observe the language used by Bishop Ridley in his injunctions to the clergy of the Sea of London. Assigning reasons for the removal of altars and the substitution of tables, he says, The use of an altar is to sacrifice upon. The use of a table is to serve men to eat upon. Now when we come to the Lord's board, what do we come for? To sacrifice Christ again and to crucify Him again, or to feed upon Him that was once only crucified and offered up for us? If we come to feed upon him, spiritually, to eat his body, and spiritually, to drink his blood, which is the true use of the Lord's Supper, then no man can deny that the form of a table is more meat than the form of an altar. See Fox's Acts and Men, Volume 6, Sealy Edition, page 6. End of footnote.

Alas, I fear they presume on the non-reading propensities of the day. They know too well that the reading of many evangelical people is seldom carried beyond newspapers and magazines.

I am bold to say that in the matter of true, honest, conscientious membership of the Church of England, the evangelical body need fear no comparison with any other section within the Church's pale. We may safely challenge any amount of fair investigation and inquiry. Have others signed the Thirty-Nine Articles, ex animo et bona fide? So have we. Have others declared their full assent to the liturgy? So have we. Do others use the liturgy, adding nothing and omitting nothing, reverently, solemnly, and audibly? So do we. Are others obedient to bishops? So are we. Do others labor for the prosperity of the Church of England? So do we. Do others value the privileges of the Church of England, and deprecate needless separation? So do we. Do others honor the Lord's Supper, and press it on the attention of all believing hearers? So do we.

but we will not concede that a man must follow Archbishop Laud, and be half a Romanist, in order to be a Churchman. We are true High Churchmen, and not Romish High Churchmen. And the best proof of our Churchmanship is the fact that for every one of our body who has left the Church of England and gone over to descent, we can point to ten High Churchmen who have left the Church of England and gone over to Rome,

No. Evangelical churchmen never need be moved by the charge that they are not true churchmen. Ignorant and impudent men may make such charges, but none except shallow and ill-read men will ever believe them. When those who make them have answered Dean Good's works on the Eucharist, as well as his other works on baptism and the rule of faith, it will be time for us to pay attention to what they say, but till then we may safely act on the advice given to the Jews by Hezekiah about Rabshakeh's railing accusations. Answer them not.

3. In the last place, let me express an earnest hope that no one who reads this paper will ever let himself be driven out of the Church of England by the rise of the present tide of extreme ritualism and the seeming decay of the evangelical body. I lament that there should be a need for uttering this warning, but I am sure there is cause. I can well understand the feelings which actuate many in this day. They live, perhaps, in a parish where the gospel is never preached at all, where Romish doctrines and practices about the Lord's Supper carry all before them, where, in fact, they stand alone. Week after week, month after month, and year after year, they hear nothing but the same dreary round of phrases about Holy Church, Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, Holy Priests, Holy Altars, Holy Sacrifice, until they are almost sick of the word holy, and Sunday becomes a positive weariness to their souls. And then comes up the thought, why not leave the Church of England altogether? What good can there be in such a church as this? Why not become a dissenter or a Plymouth brother?

Now, I desire to offer an affectionate warning to all who are in this frame of mind. I ask them to consider well what they do and to take the advice of the town clerk of Ephesus, to do nothing rashly. I entreat them to call faith and patience into exercise, and at any rate to wait long before they succeed, to pray much, to read their Bibles much, and to be very sure that they have done everything that they can do to amend what is wrong.

It is a cheap and easy remedy to secede from the Church when we see evils round us, but it is not always the wisest one. to pull down a house because the chimney smokes, to chop off a hand because we have cut our finger, to forsake a ship because she has sprung a leak and makes a little water. All this we know is childish impatience.

But is it a wise man's act to forsake a church because things in our own parish and under our own minister in that church are wrong? I answer decidedly and unhesitatingly, No. It is not so sure as it seems that we mend matters by leaving the Church of England. Every man knows the faults of his own house, but he never knows the faults of another till he moves into it, and then perhaps he finds he is worse off than he was before his move.

There are often smoky chimneys, and bad drains and draughts, and doors that will not shut, and windows that will not open, in No. 2 as well as in No. 1. all is not perfect among dissenters and Plymouth brethren. We may find to our cost, if we join them in disgust with the Church of England, that we have only changed one sort of evil for another, and that the chimney smokes in chapel as well as in church.

It is very certain that a sensible and well-instructed layman can do an immense deal of good to the Church of England, can check much evil and promote Christ's truth, if he will only hold his ground and use all lawful means. Public opinion is very powerful. Exposure of extreme malpractice has a great effect. Bishops cannot altogether ignore appeals from the laity. By much importunity even the most cautious occupants of the Episcopal bench may be roused to action. The press is open to every man. In short, there is much to be done, though, like anything else that is good, it may give much trouble.

And as for a man's own soul, he must be in a strange position if he cannot hear the gospel in some church near him. At the worst he has the Bible, the throne of grace, and the Lord Jesus Christ always near him at his own home.

I say these things as one who is called Low Churchman, and as one who feels a righteous indignation at the romanizing proceedings of many clergymen in our own day. I mourn over the danger done to the Church of England by the ritualism of this day. I mourn over the many driven in disgust out of the pale of our Zion.

But Low Churchman as I am called, I am a Churchman, and I am anxious that no one should be goaded into doing rash and hasty things by the proceedings to which I have alluded. So long as we have truth, liberty, and an unaltered confession of faith in the Church of England, so long I am convinced that the way of patience is much better than the way of succession. When the Thirty-Nine Articles are altered, when the prayer-book is revised on Romish principles and filled with potpourri, when the Bible is withdrawn from the reading-desk, when the pulpit is shut against the Gospel, when the Mass is formally restored in every parish church by act of Parliament, when, in fact, our present order of things in the Church of England is altered by statute, and queens, lords, and commons command that our parish churches shall be given over to processions, incense, crosses, images, banners, flowers, gorgeous vestments, idolatrous veneration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, mumbled prayers, gabbled over apocryphal lessons, short, dry, sapless sermons, histrionic gestures and postures, bowings, crossings, and the like, when these things come to pass by law and rule, then it will be time for us all to leave the Church of England.

Then we may arise and say with one voice, Let us depart, for God is not here. But till that time, and God forbid it should ever come, till that time, and when it does come, there will be a good many succeeders

Till that time let us stand fast and fight for the truth. Let us not desert our post to save trouble, and move out to please our adversaries, and spike our guns to avoid a battle. No, in the name of God let us fight on, even if we are like the three hundred at Thermophylae, few with us, many against us, and traitors on every side. Let us fight on, and contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

The good ship of the Church of England may have some rotten planks about her. The crew may, many of them, be useless and mutinous, and not trustworthy. But there are still some faithful ones among them. There is still hope for the good old craft. The great pilot has not yet left her. Let us therefore stick by the ship.