It is the knowledge and communion I have with Christ before the act of eating the Lord’s Supper, which will give me a condition of soul for my remembrance of Him. Instead of remembering Him generating a condition, my remembrance of Him will be in accordance with my condition of soul. Thus, a babe in Christ will only remember Him as far as a babe’s knowledge has reached—a young man’s and a father’s remembrance will be according to their knowledge of the person whom they are remembering. I must know a person in order to remember him. I could not be called upon to remember a person with whom I was unacquainted. We know a living Christ, and we remember Him at the moment of His betrayal and death.
The offerings—burnt offering, meat offering, peace offering, sin offering, and trespass offering—give us the varied apprehension of each person who eats; each has his own note of praise when the heart is awakened; and, like a chord of music, all is in perfect harmony and unison. Hence, the individual state of each is in the preparation to the united condition of the assembly. Rom. 6:22.
If we live unto God, there will be the knowledge of what good and evil is in the eye of God. Not simply that you live to Christ as to outward devotedness, but you will get your heart withdrawn from the influence of the things which drew it formerly away from Him. Therefore, in plain, common life, O let God be everything! Be not like one slipping and getting on, and slipping and getting on—as Christians often are—but be advancing quietly and steadily; increasing in separation to God: then you will have “fruit unto holiness,” yourselves being servants to God. 2 Cor. 4:18.
“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” I do fear that in many, things that are seen, and can be seen, have a stronger hold upon them than things which are spiritual and unseen, and but the objects of faith. How many, like Jacob at Jabbok, can send their all over the little brook, but not pass over themselves until their flesh has been crippled.