“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 show the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Cor. 11:23-26).
I desire to offer a few, brief remarks on the subject of the Lord’s Supper, for the purpose of stirring up the minds of all who love the name and institutions of Christ to a more fervent and affectionate interest in this most important and refreshing ordinance.
We should bless the Lord for His gracious consideration of our need in having established such a memorial of His dying love, and also in having spread a table at which all His members might present themselves without any other condition than the indispensable one of personal connection with and obedience to Him. The blessed Master knew well the tendency of our hearts to slip away from Him and from each other, and to meet this tendency was one, at least, of His objects in the institution of the Supper. He would gather His people around His own blessed person; He would spread a table for them where, in view of His broken body and shed blood, they might remember Him and the intensity of His love for them, and from whence, also, they might look forward into the future and contemplate the glory of which the cross is the everlasting foundation. There, if anywhere, they would learn to forget their differences and to love one another; there they might see around them those whom the love of God had invited to the feast and whom the blood of Christ had made fit to be there.
However, in order that I may the more easily and briefly convey to the mind of my reader what I have to say on this subject, I shall confine myself to the four following points:
The nature of the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper.
The circumstances under which it was instituted.
The persons for whom it was designed.
The time and manner of its observance.