CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF The riillers t'amily BX8073 .gS?" ""'"""^ "*""" Doctrine of the Lord's Supper as set f olin 3 1924 029 461 120 Cornell University Library The original of tinis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029461120 THE DOOTEII^E THE LORD'S SUPPER. THE DOCTRINE THE LORD'S SUPPER, AS SET FORTH IN THE BOOK OF CONCORD, CRITICALLY EXAMINED, AND ITS FALLACY DEMONSTRATED. BY REV. J. B. GROSS. " Kann die Wahrheit yererbt werden, wie irdisoher Besitz 1 Oder angozogen werden, wie eiu Qowand ?" PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1873. THE DOCTRINE THE LORD'S SUPPER, * AS SET FORTH IN THE BOOK OF CONCORB, CUIIICALLT EXAMINED, AND ITS FALLACY DEMONSTRATED. BY REV. J. B. GROSS. " Eann die Wahrheit vererbt werden, wie irdiacber BeBitz ? Oder angezogen werden, wie ein Gowand ?" PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & 00. 1873. Entered according to Act of CongreBs, in the year 1872, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. DEDIOATIOK That which is essential to the salvation of mankind must admit of being readily understood, and — if not easily, at least successfully — carried out, by all that have the gift of ordinary intelligence or common sense, and faithfully make use of the appointed means of grace, as set forth in the word of God : a (](\iali{ication of which we must never lose sight. The idea that God has founded a system of redemption for the benefit of mankind which only priests or hierarchs — that is, men claiming to be especially authorized or Divinely appointed — can accurately understand and render intelligible to the rest of the human race, is preposterous, and at once an insult to God and an outrage against common sense. What mainly causes the Scriptures to be so often misun- derstood, or understood only with great labor and difBculty, is the extensively controlling influence which human creeds, or the exclusive doctriues of sectism, exercise over the human mind, which, thus warped and debased, is no longer competent to interpret the word of God agreeably to its true import or in conformity to common sense principles. Chris- tians at this moment, and in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, though they are not generally aware of the humiliating fact, are too frequently the followers of men in- stead of the Lord Jesus Christ ; of " the commandments of men," tanght as saving truths, instead of the Divine teachings 1* (v) vi DEDICATION. of the Gospel of the Son of God. Owing to this criminal practice, this high-handed invasion of the rights of conscience, the Gospel of the Saviour is virtually superseded by man's devices, and the poor, deluded laity is often made to believe a myth instead of the Divine truth. This is sometimes done designedly for the good, as may be supposed, of plebeian souls ; but in the Protestant Church a practice so base must be presumed to be rare in proportion to the ascendency of liberal principles and the general diffusion of education. Much that the Bible teaches is not absolutely essential to salvation, but is to be regarded as adventitious, and designed only as a vehicle of instruction at the time to which it refers : as the wrapper in which the Gospel has been clothed and handed down to future ages. It is emphatically this unes- sential part of the Scriptures which especially claims the labors and requires the skill of the learned commentator, byt which has no direct or vital bearing on the redemptive virtue of the Divine word. Christ's hearers were in an eminent de- gree the unlearned, the common people, or, in the touching phrase, "The lost sheep of the house of Israel" ; but, unless he spoke in parables or in unusual figurative language, — which he at once explained and thus rendered intelligible, — his illiterate hearers understood him quite well ; and they even had the sagacity to compare his method of teaching with that of the Jewish rabbins, drawing the significant in- ference that " he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes": Matthew, vii. 29. But to render salvation certain there must surely be human creeds ? Oh, no : they are not at all necessary. Christ laid down no creed except that he is the Saviour : the Apostles professed no other creed but this ; and the Christian Church was content to abide by this creed till it began to grow cor- rupt. Sects only need creeds. Christians, not given to novelties, have creed enough in the Bible : this is the only DEDICATION. vii creed that is manifestly God-sanctioned. It is ample enough, and stringent enough ; yet it allows every one " to be con- vinced in his own mind." The Bible refers to man as co-agent with Christ in redemp- tion, and declares works and grace mutually and inseparably co-operative in the Christian life. The Bible and Bible- imbued common sense, therefore, are to be regarded as ex- clusively normative in matters of faith and holy living. Such being the plain and incontrovertible facts, as regards this most interesting and important subject, the opinions incul- cated in this paper are respectfully inscribed to the attention and prayers of the Friends and Advocates of biblical truth, and Gospel-enlightened and guided common sense,* by The Author. * In a Sermon on the Reformation, the learned and devout Spener, the introducer of Pietism into the dead routine of formalism of the Lutheran Church, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, writes thus : " Preachers are not to monopolize all proofs of doctrine to themselves, but to concede personal research to their hearers, who are not to be hindered, but advised and urged, diligently to read and study the Scriptures, that they may establish and strengthen their faith in the word of God." " Therefore," continues this eminent divine, "the Scripture is to be understood, not with blind submission to the commentators, but as each Christian, after diligent meditation and prayer, ia convinced hy the Holy GhoeU Christian ministers too are delivered from the papistic yoke, so that, in our office of teach- ing, so far as doctrine is concerned, we are hound hy nothing hut the Holy Scriptures and the infallihlc word of God, and may, with con- fident freedom, teach whatever we believe to be derived from it, and need, therefore, not ask whether a Pope or Council has authorized it." The following cognate sentiments are from the pen of Prof. Spre- cher, in a contribution to the Lutheran Ohserver of April 10, 1868, founded on the Life and Writings of Luther, by Waloh, vol. v., p. 326, and vol. vi., p. 182 : " Comfort is to be found nowhere but in tho Scriptures and God's word. We are to believe no Councils or Saints, viii dedication: except in as far as they agree with the word of God. We must re- main free judges, and have power to judge and decide, to receive and condemn, whatever the Pope establishes or the Councils determine." I will only add, that while I hail Prof. Sprecher's utterances in this connection with no less pleasure than gratitude, truth compels me to say that the liberal views now and then expressed by Luther were often flatly contradicted by their illustrious author, especially in his obstinate defense of the dogma of the Beal Presence, TABLE OF OOl^rTEIsrTS. PAOE Dedication v Iktkoduction IS SECTION I. Take, eat; this is my Body 19 CHAPTER I. The Language in which Christ administered the Lord's Supper.. 19 CHAPTER n. The Hebrews use the Substantive Verb to &e, in the Sense im- plying to signify, represent, denote, etc 22 CHAPTER IIL This is my Body 27 CHAPTER IV. Consubstantiation or Impanation 32 CHAPTER V. Collateral Scripture Texts, claimed in Support of a Real Presence, examined, and their Inapplicability set forth 39 CHAPTER VL The Doctrine of the Real Presence comes under the Category of Sensitive Knowledge, and therefore its Truth or Fallacy may be tested 45 (ix) TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAQB In which will be shown why so much stress is laid upon the Doctrine of the Real Presence, while its TTntenableness and Dangerous Tendency are pointed out 52 CHAPTER VIII. The Body and Blood of Christ were only Accessories, not Prin- cipals, in the Accomplishment of Redemption 58 CHAPTER IX. The Ubiquity or Omnipresence of Christ's Body 62 PARAGRAPH I. The Ubiquity or Omnipresence of Christ's Terrestrial Body 62 PARAGRAPH II. The Ubiquity or Omnipresence of Christ's Glorified Body 63 PARAGRAPH III. Christ sits on the Right Hand of God, and, therefore, his Glorified Body must, say the Advocates of a Real Presence, possess Ubiquity 73 SECTION II. The Lord's Supper is a Memorial 77 CHAPTER I. Christ our Passover 77 CHAPTER II. Christ, the Pounder of the New Testament 84 SECTION III. The Lord's Supper, Jbeside being a Commemorative Ordinance, is also a Means of Grace 91 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi SECTION IV. PAGE The Use of Blood, as Food, is forbidden in Scripture, and can- not, therefore, constitute a part of the Real Presence 86 CHAPTER I. Its Prohibition in the Old Testament 96 CHAPTER II. Its Prohibition in the New Testament 99 SECTION V. The Apostolio Decree, Acts, xt. 1-29, prohibiting the Use of Blood, as an Article of Food, is still in Force 103 SECTION VI. The Discourse of the Saviour, in John, vi. 32-63, impartially examined, and illustrated with Direct Reference to the Doc- trine of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper 110 SECTION VII. The Doctrine of the Real Presence, in the Lord's Supper, must be, forever, retained ; for the Book of Concord, of which it forms a Part, is required to he euhaerihed 121 CHAPTER I. Students and Ministers, at present received into the Glerman Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Ad- jacent States, are obliged to subscribe all the Symbolical Books or Confessions of Faith 121 CHAPTER n. By Subscription to an Unalterable Creed, Progress in Religious Knowledge is stayed, and Violence done to Conscience 125 SECTION VIII. The Bible, not Man or Human Dictation, is the only Authority in Faith and Christian Life : a Principle of Interpretation which, in the Present Light of Exegesis, must prove Fatal to the Dogma of the Real Presence 132 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS. SECTION IX. PAGE Creeds are Necessary only where there are Sects, but Sectarian- ism is forbidden, 1 Corinthians, i. 10-13 ; lii. 3-11, therefore Creeds are forbidden. This being the case, the Dogma of the Real Presence occupies Forbidden Ground, and is itself, of course, — as Human Prescription, — forbidden 143 SECTION X. Some of the Dogmas of the Lutheran Church have fallen into Desuetude : a Fact which encourages the Hope that the Doc- trine of the Real Presence may, eventually, meet with a Simi- lar Fate ; but in the meanwhile, the Venerable Parent of Prot- estantism may, in Some Measure, justly claim Superiority of Practice over Theory 156 CHAPTER I. Immersion, in Theory, is a Lutheran Mode of Baptism ; in Prac- tice, it is not observed 156 CHAPTER II. Auricular Confession appears among the Articles of Faith in the Eook of Concord, but is, at least in this Country, not observed. 161 CHAPTER III. The Mass, or the Roman Catholic Ritual-Service of the Lord's Supper 167 SECTION XI. The Doctrine of the Real Presence, in the Lord's Supper, was the Cause of Some Trouble in the Early Lutheran Church. The Source of this Trouble — Want of Religious Toleration 176 SECTION XII. The Appeal in Behalf of the Bible and of Our Country 189 THE DOCTEINE THE LORD'S SUPPER INTRODUCTION. Viewed from a Roman Catholic standpoint, the Reformation of the sixteenth century was simply a ridiculous presumption, which ended in a criminal apostasy ; whereas, regarded according to the aim and spirit of Protestantism, it was a glorious revival of pristine Christianity, distinguished at once for the vastness of its extent and the grandeur of its results. From it is derived a new and improved order of things, expressed in the social and intellectual amelioration of Protestant life, and it, therefore, constitutes a pleasing and prominent epoch in the history of mankind. How- ever, with the exception of the religious element, which pre-eminently distinguished this arduous and noble enterprise, the good that resulted from it was rather incidental than designed. Its aim and efforts were of a decidedly negative character : repudiation and an- tagonism prominently marked and illustrated its lofty 2 (13) 14 THE DOCTRINE OF career, while it was mainly content with hurling just criminations against its wily and puissant foe, or with resolutely uttering protestations, significant of stern dissent or bold defiance. The ruling sentiment, which prompted its measures and guided its actions, was the decided conviction that the Roman Catholic Church was most palpably and lamentably corrupt, and that, consequently, it stood in most urgent need of a speedy and thorough purgation from its inherent and mani- fold contaminations. Such a course, it was claimed, was loudly and absolutely demanded as an essential, and, therefore, indispensable condition of the success and perpetuity of Christianity itself. In short, the Reformers strove to restore the gospel to its apostolic integrity, or, in other words, to rescue " the Ark of the Covenant" from the unclean and idolatrous hands of the papal Philistines. To this destructive principle^ — everywhere revealing itself in acts of probing and excision, which animated the zeal and directed the energy of the Reformers with a praiseworthy and invincible resolution, in regard to the devices, the abuses, and the corruptions of the .Roman hierarchy, arid its despotic encroachments upon the inalienable rights of the individual — it was chiefly owing that civil and religious liberty, after a prolonged as well as profound burial of ages, again revived, and that, wherever the spirit of true Protestantism exists, these twin sisters of a higher civilization and a more refined humanity are justly included among the chief blessings, as well as accounted the pride and glory, of the human race. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 15 As to Scripture exegesis, the Reformation may justly be presumed not to have, exhausted the science, and a thorough biblical knowledge is, therefore, by no means under an exclusive or even a very distinguished obligatfon to the Reformers. Of the laws of herme- neubics, of the science of sacred philology, anthro- pology, biblical criticism, etc., they could have but very inadequate knowledge, indeed mere rudimental conceptions. What, for example, in the pages of Scripture, is of mere local import, or restricted to national boundaries only, they — without scruple or misgiving, it seems — applied universally, and the letter or Jleah that profiteth nothing or killeth, had often, alas ! more weight with them than the spirit that qwicheneth ; and hence it must be conceded that, in consequence of such vitiating literalism, they lacked, to a less or greater extent, the first requisites of a cor- rect interpretation of the Divine oracles. The Reformers generally were unable to push their efforts further in the attempted religious metamor- phosis than to the chrysalis state, where they settled down in permanent fixation, and hence the various Protestant creeds are as unalterable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians I A fundamental error in exegesis which, more or less, distinguishes all Protestant creeds, is the want of discrimination between ethical works and the ritualistic works of the Levitical law, and the consequent lapse into Antinomianism, or rejection of spontaneous-iuman agency in the plan of redemption. In short, without in the least wishing to undervalue the important ser- 16 THE DOCTRINE OF vices which they have rendered to mankind, or to ignore their eminently Divine mission, candor obliges me to confess that their task was accomplished in ushering in the dawn of moral and intellectual regen- eration, while to future ages was left the glory of dis- playing a noonday light, reflecting and illustrating the labors and researches of a constantly progressive and expanding religious development. The sequel will show that the reformation of a cor- rupt Church, and a thoroughly intelligent appreciation of Christianity, cannot be achieved in the brief space of a single generation, especially when we reflect that the knowledge of the Reformers chiefly comprised scholastic learning, while, at the same time, their minds were warped by the prejudices of a bigoted and servile education, thwarted in its nobler aspirations by groveling monachism on the one hand, and hierarchical tyranny on the other. Nothing, I make bold to say, so clearly demonstrates at least an exceptional incompetence of the exegesis of Luther and his ostensibly more rigid followers,\eeog- nized — with a view to party distinction — as the Sym- bolical Lutherans, to a correct interpretation of the Scriptures, as the dogma of the Lord's Supper, as taught in the Book of Concord, or the pernicious influence which Romanism still exercised over the awakening intellect of the Reformers. Notwithstand- ing their firm determination boldly to battle for the right as they understood it, they deprecated a final rupture with the papacy. Hence their reformation could not but fail to be thorough, while their secession THE LORD'S SUPPER. I7 from its polluted pale was rather partial than complete. Ultramontanism never ceased to cast its Upas shadow over the Evangelical Churches. And though transub- stantiation was deservedly condemned as a flagrant perversion of the eucharistic institution, as well as a heinous abuse of the expiatory sacrifice of Christ, yet restoration to its original use and true import could be carried no further than to consubstaniiation ! Here the noble ship of this branch of the Reformation came near stranding, and Luther, together with those who shared his excessive sacramental views, for the present cast anchor, while Rome, erst full of hate and just apprehension for the future, looked on with evident complacency; smiled, and apparently triumphed: it was a monstrous Siamese-twin like connection between the Vatican and Witteuberg, which the future only could sever 1 And shall the nineteenth century halt in its biblical researches, where, more than three centuries and a half ago, the Reformers halted ? Is it wise, is it safe, to do so ? Is religious progress interdicted in the word of God ? Or is the God-given reason of the many to be only the plaything of the aspiring few? Can Luther, or Zwinglius, or Calvin answer for the rest of mankind at the bar of the Almighty ? Or is not, on the contrary, every one, held personally and solemnly responsible to his Creator for his faith and conduct? Nothing, I conceive, is more evident to the unsophis- ticated mind than that every one, as far as it is possi- ble, must individually search the Scriptures, or, at least, found his convictions of Christian duty upon his 18 THE DOCTRINE OF own unbiased judgment, and his watchword must, therefore, ever be. Onward and upward 1 St. Paul avers that " the word of God is not bound," 2 Timothy ii. 9 ; while he solemnly urges every one, to " prove all things," and to " hold fast that which is good," 1 Thess. v. 21. It is the undoubted birthright of every one to embrace that creed only which he finds scriptural and reasonable, and to which he can give his hearty approval, while human dogmas at variance with Scripture or the plain dictates of com- mon sense, though sanctioned or enjoined by great names or high ecclesiastical authority, must be always, peremptorily and forever, rejected as inimical to the best interests of men, or as snares most baneful to the soul. Though sometimes carried away by passion or warped by prejudice, Luther was, by no means, devoid of liberal sentiments or generous emotions, as the fol- lowing pithy sayings, among numerous others, will testify : " Man soil gewissenhaft seyn," and, " Es ist um den Glauben ein eigenes Ding, woran man Nie- manden kranken miisse." Easton, Pa., August, 1872.*' TUB LORD'S SUPPER. 19 sEGa?ioisr I. 714^:^, EAT; THIS IS MY BODY. CHAPTER I. The Language in which Christ administered the Lord's Supper. Though the Greek language was to some extent known and spoken in Palestine at the time of Christ and his Apostles, it was by no means the vernacular vehicle of communication, and the great majority of the people was as unaccustomed to its use as it was unconscious of its necessity. According to the distinguished biblical scholar, Michaelis, in his " Einleitung in die gottlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes," the original language of the Jews was the Hebrew, but after their return from the Baby- lonian captivity, this language became so far obsolete as to be retained only in the solemnities of Divine wor- ship,* and to be cultivated exclusively by the learned as a dead language, while the Aramaic — the Syro- Chaldaic language — took its place, and became the * To render it intelligible to the people, it was necessary to trans- late it into Chaldee. 20 THE DOCTRINE OF common vehicle of communication. He adds : " The Hebrew language, whether employed or simply re- ferred to by Philo and the writers of the New Testa- ment, denotes not the proper, original language of that name, but what is emphatically recognized as the Ghaldaic. " What the candid and erudite Dr. Clarke writes in reference to this subject^ in his Commentary on the New Testament, essentially agrees with the foregoing statements. Referring to the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper, he thus expresses himself: " That our Lord neither spoke in Greek nor in Latin, on this occasion, needs no proof. It was, most prob- ably, in what was formerly called the Ghaldaic, now the Syriac, that our Lord conversed with his disciples. Through the providence of God, we have complete versions of the gospels in this language ; and in them, it is likely, we have the precise words spoken by our Lord on this occasion. In Matthew, xxvi. 26, 27, the words in the Syriac version are hanau pagree,this is my body, hanau demee, this is my blood, of which forms of speech the Greek is a verbal translation ; nor would any man, even in the present day, speaking in the same language, use, among the people to whom it was vernacular, other terms but the above to express, This represents my body, and this represents my blood." In this connection, it is proper to state that, in trans- mitting to us an account of the gospel in the Greek language, the writers of the New Testament retained the idiomatic peculiarities of the original Aramaic or Syriac language, habitually spoken by the Saviour, THE LORD'S SUPPER. 21 and in which he proclaimed the momentous truths of redemption. This idiomatic peculiarity, or remarkable linguistic structure, consists pre-eminently in the figu- rative modes of expression, common to the Shemitic languages, of which the Aramaic or Chaldeo-Syriac constitutes an important branch. Much stress has been laid upon the words, " Hoc est corpus meum," this is my body, contained in the Vulgate version of the Bible, as if the original of the three evangelists had been written in the Latin lan- gViage. " Had our Lord spoken in Latin, following the idiom of the Yulgate," says the comrnentator already quoted, " he would have said, ' Panis hie cor- pus meum significat,' or 'symbolum est corporis mei'; 'hoc poculum sanguinem meum representat,' or 'sym- bolum est sanguinis mei' : this bread signifies my body, or is a symbol of my body ; this cup represents mj blood, or is the symbol of my blood. But let it be observed, that in the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Chaldeo- Syriac languages, there is no term which expresses to mean, signify, denote, though both the Greek and Latin abound with them : hence the Hebrews use a figure and say, it is, for it signifies."* *The learned Doctor Prideaux, in his valuable work entitled " The Old and New Testaments, connected in the History of the Jews and Neighboring Nations," etc., after some preliminary remarks in eluci- dation of this subject, writes thus: "In truth the Syriac and the Chaldee are one and the same language in different characters, and differing a little only in dialect." Having observed in the sequel that the Jerusalem Chaldee dialect is the Chaldee dialect intermixed with the Hebrew, be adds : " The Jerusalem Chaldee dialect is the 22 TBE DOCTRINJB OF CHAPTER II. The Hebrews use the substantive verb to he in the sense implying to signify, represent, denote, etc. It is this pre-eminently tropical or figurative char- acter of the Chaldeo-Syriac language that so promi- nently distinguishes it from the Greek and Latin lan- guages, which though sharing this tropical peculiarity to a moderate extent, especially abound in terms e±- pressive of likeness, indication, memento, denotation, symbol, representation, etc. ; and thus this indicative trait, this sign or token-intimation, this index-utterance or oral signation, in these languages, is what consti- tutes a most striking difference between the Occidental and the Oriental idioms of expression.* same which was the vulgar language of the Jews in our Saviour^s time." In Milman's interesting "History of the Jews,'' I find the following narration of facts: ''At Home, Josephus first wrote the history of the Jewish war in the Syro-Chaldaic language for the use of his own countrymen in the East, particularly those beyond the Euphrates. He afterwards translated the work into Greek for the benefit of the Western Jews and of the Romans." To expatiate is unnecessary. * The gist of this matter may, it appears, be briefly summed up thus ; The Greek and Latin languages employ the verb to be some- times in a tropical sense, while its usual import is literal j on the other hand, in the Shcmitic languages, this verb is comparatively much more frequently used in a figurative sense. The chief peculiarity, however, of these languages, according to Oriental scholars, is that they do not contain any words which express signify, denote, or rep- resent, etc. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 23 I shall now proceed to exemplify the proposition proclaimed in the heading of this chapter, or, in other words, to demonstrate, by numerous and striking pas- sages of Scripture, that the verb to be, in the Aramaic or Chaldeo-Syriac language, is not only used figura- tively, but that, in many instances, it absolutely can- not be used in any other way. Illustrations derived from the Old Testament will first claim our attention : The three branches are three days. Genesis, xl. 12 ; the three baskets are three days. Genesis, xl. 18; the seven kine are seven years. Genesis, xli. 26, 27 ; the seven ears are seveq years. Genesis, xli. 26, 21; ye shall eat it — the paschal lamb — in haste, for it is the Lord's passover. Exodus, xii. 11 ; unleavened bread, at the Jewish passover celebration, ivas the bread of affliction, Deuteronomy, xvi. 3 ; God ' is the rock of salvation, Deuteronomy, xxxii. 15; the Lord is my rock and my fortress, 2 Samuel, xxii. 2 : the same phraseology occurs in Psalm xviii. 2 ; he — behemoth — is the chief of the ways of God, Job, xl. 19 ; he — leviathan — is a king over all the children of pride. Job, xli. 34 ; the Lord is my buckler, the horn of my salva,tion, my high tower, Psalm xviii. 2; the Lord is my shepherd, Psalm xxiii. 1 ; the Lord is a sun and shield, Psalm Ixxxiv. 11; the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, Isaiah, v. 1 ; the ancient and honorable, he is the head; and the prophet that teaches lies, he is the tail, Isaiah, ix. 15 ; Israel is a scattered sheep, Jeremiah, 1. 17 ; this city is the cal- dron, Ezekiel, xi. 3 ; thy elder sister is Samaria, and thy younger sister is Sodom, etc., Ezekiel, xvi. 46 ; 24 THE DOCTRINE OF many isles were the merchandise of thine hand, Eze- kiel, xxvii. 15 ; Judah and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants, Ezekiel, xxvii. It ; these great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth, Daniel, vii. 17 ; and the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise, Daniel vii. 24; the two horns of the ram which thou sawest, are the kings of Media and Persia, Daniel, viii. 20 ; the rough goat is the king of Grecia, etc., Daniel, viii. 21 ; the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, etc., Ho- sea, ix. 8 ; a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, etc., Joel, i. 6 ; prophecy not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court, Amos, vii. 13 ; the Lord is a strong-hold in the day of trouble,- Nahum, i. T ; the four carpenters are the horns which have scattered Judah, etc., Zechariah, i. 20, 21 ; the seven lamps are the eyes of the Lord, Zechariah, iv.. 2, 10 ; the horses of the four chariots are the four spirits of the heavens, Zechariah, vi. 1-5, etc. In all these passages, no one of ordinary intelli- gence and candor will fail to recognize in the words is, are, were, etc., the sense importing to signify, mean, represent, denote, symbolize, etc., and to ac- knowledge that the phrases in which these different tenses and numbers of the verb to be occur, are strictly parallel with the words in the Lord's Supper, upon which the dogma of the Real Presence has been based. I shall next invite attention to the pages of the New Testament for examples of figurative modes of expres- THE LORD'S SUPPER. 25 sion, common, in the use of the substantive verb to be, in the Aramaic or Chaldeo-Syriac language, and, of course, by follovfing a literal translation, reproduced both in the Greek text and the versions v^hich have been derived from it : Ye are the salt of the earth, Matthew, v. 13; ye are the light of the world, Mat- thew, V. 14; this — John the Baptist — is Elias who was to come, Matthew, xi. 14. Adverting now to our Lord's exposition of the Parable of the Good Seed and the Tares, recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Mat- thew, we shall find that it will readily supply us with a mass of fresh and overwhelming proofs in behalf of the figurative character of the Aramaic language, trans- mitted to us in the sacred pages of the Bible, which are so thoroughly imbued with this remarkable linguistic feature. The disciples, not fully understanding its im- port, asked for an interpretation of the parable, a.nd Jesus replied : He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom ; the tares are the children of the wicked one ; the enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the harvest is the end of the world ; the reapers are the angels. Besides this, we read : Be- hold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, — that is, behold Christ, who is the Lamb of God, John, i. 29 ; John the Baptist was a burning and a shining light, John, v. 35 ; the bread of God is he that coraeth down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world, John, vi. 33 ; I am the bread of life, John, vi. 48 ; I am the living bread that came down from heaven, etc., John, vi. 51 ; I am the door of the sheep, 8 26 THE DOCTRINE OF John, X. 7, 9 ; I am the good shepherd, John, x. 11, 14; I said, Ye are gods, John x. 34 ; I am the way, and the truth, and the life, John, xiv. 6 ; I am the true vine, John, xv. 1 ; my Father is the husbandman, John, XV. 1 ; I am the vine, ye are the branches, John, XV. 5 ; they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ, 1 Corinthians, x. 4 ; these — the two sons of Abraham — are the two cove- nants, Galatians, iv. 24 ; this Hagar is Mount Sinai, etc., Galatians, iv. 25 ; Jerusalem that is above, etc., is the mother of us all, Galatians, iv. 26 ; this is the blood of the testament which God has enjoined unto you, Hebrews, ix. 20 ; the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, Revelation, i. 20 ; the seven candle- sticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. Rev- elation, i. 20 ; and in the midst of the elders stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven boms and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth, Revelation, v. 6 ; and the woman that thou sawest is that great city, etc., Reve- lation, xvii. 18, etc. To adduce more evidence upon this subject, a task by no means either difficult or ineffective, would, it seems, be a mockery of common sense, and clearly trifling with the admitted usus loquendi of mankind. Our Lord himself, as we have seen, indorses the figu- rative use of the verb to he in numerous and most emphatic passages in the New Testament, as the pre- ceding quotations clearly and satisfactorily show, and if he is not decisive authority on this subject, how is it possible for my old Symbolistic friends of the Lutheran TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 27 Church to be? "Learn of me," admonishes the Sa- viour, Matthew, xi. 29.* CHAPTER III. This is My Body. After the many and forcible examples in the pre- ceding chapter, of the eminently figurative sense of the verb to he, in its different modes, candid minds, unwarped by prejudice, untrammeled by superstition, '**Th© Latheranisia embraced in the Book of Concord, and includ- ing the three QScumenical symbols, — as the Apostolic, the Nicene, and the Athanasian,— the Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and the Articles of Schmalkald, Luthers Larger and Smaller Catechisms, the Form of Concord, etc., is recog- nized under the appellations of Symholiam, Symbolic Lutheranism, Old Lutheranism, etc., and the professors of this ample and somewhat rigid creed are known as the Symholist, or Symbolic Lutherana, the Old Lutherans, etc. These descriptive epithets imply not reproach, but simply express denominational distinction. In this country, the General Council Lutherans rank under the preceding categories, to which also most emphatically are to be referred tbe Miaaouri branch of Lutherans. Of these General Council Lutherans I may remark, that the " German Evangelical-Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsyl- vania and Adjacent States" occupies a most prominent position, and that, in the prosecution of this Work, I shall not readily lose sight of this venerable body. It is to be observed, too, in this place, that Old Lutheranism, Sym- bolical Lutheranism, etc., is pre-eminently distinguished for the in- flexible tenacity with which it adheres to the dogma of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper. 28 THE DOCTRINE OF and therefore open to conviction, must be satisfied that the phrase, This is my body, means this signifies, rep- resents, or is a symbol, etc., of my body. But we have besides abundant proof that it is not to be taken literally, and that, therefore, to construe it literally is, in fact, to undermine the very foundation of Chris- tianity, as it is generally understood and set forth among orthodox denominations of Christians. When Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he took bread, — unleavened bread, the Jewish Matze, used at the celebration of the paschal feast, — and having broken it and given thanks, he turned to the disciples and said. Take, eat ; this is my body. How, I am curious to know, could he preserve his proper, incarnate iden- tity inviolate, and, at the same time, give his body to be eaten by his disciples ? Where was the Son of God while the Son of man was sacramentally consumed ? He could no longer be present at all, on the occasion, in the capacity of a Saviour ; for as such he carried on the work of redemption, not only as spirit, but as body and spirit, divinity and humanity in unity. Reaching the bread to the distinguished communicants, he said. Take, eat ; this — ^this broken bread, is — means, my body, which is to be broken for yon, his own body being then still alive or unbroken, and participating in all the solemn rites of a most impressive and eventful transaction. Notwithstanding all this, we are naively told that Christ distributed his own body to his dis- ciples. And yet the disciples who, on other occasions, involving less obscurity and incomprehensibleness, readily enough asked for explanations, on this occasion TBE LORD'S SUPPER. 29 never express, or, as far as can be judged, even inti- mate, the least surprise at tliis unparalleled and de- cidedly unique transaction 1 Being present at the time of the delivery, in strongly figurative language, of the Saviour's discourse, in John, vi. 33-63, they thought a literal interpretation of it only could be designed by the Divine orator, and therefore, not being able to re- concile it with the tenor of previous instruction, their past experience, or plain common sense, their aston- ishment found expression in the words, " This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" Sensible that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," Jesus kindly hastened to relieve them of their embarrassment, in proclaiming the emphatic and memorable words : " It is the spirit thatquickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." But, to revert, how can bread, baked dough, and a human body be thus grossly and gro- tesquely confounded, on any recognized principle of sound ratiocination ? Christ said. Take, eat ; this is my body, which is given for you. Did he give his own body, or, in other words, himself, on the cross, for the sins of the world, or did he give the bread in the Lord's Supper, the Jewish Matze, for a sin-offering in a house in the city of Jerusalem ? Matthew, xxvi. 18. If the sacramental bread is our expiatory sacri- fice, then the inference is inevitable that Christ suffered and died in vain 1 St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, xi. 24, in virtue of an express revelation on this inter- esting and important subject, that our Lord, in dis- tributing the bread, said, Take, eat ; this is my body, 3* 30 THE DOCTRINE OF which is broken for you : ii broken for you is a pro- lepsis, denoting the future in the present. Can any- thing be more clear than the apostolic teaching here, that the phrase, " which is broken for you," imports that Christ, not the bread, was broken, and thus made redemption for us on the cross, and that the breaking of the bread was merely to symbolize the manner of his death ? According to Matthew, xxvi. 29, and Mark, xiy. 25, it appears eminently plausible that our Lord partook of the sacramental supper, in common with his dis- ciples, on the memorable night of its institution. For after its celebration was concluded, he is represented as making this remarkable declaration: "But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom." I have not the slightest doubt that he ate and drank with his chosen disciples on this momentous occasion, pregnant with the germs of a great and glorious moral and intellectual regen- eration. Now, if the eucharistic bread is the body of Christ, Christ ate his own body, ate himself! Saturn, we are taught in heathen mythology, only devoured his children, but the sticklers for sacramental literal- ism, inconsiderately, to say the least, charge the im- maculate Saviour of mankind with the extraordinary feat of devouring himself! A phenomenon without parallel in the science of biology.* * The Lord's Supper is the )ianquet of sacred fellowship, the public token of Christian brothe&ood, united in a common interest, and devoted to » common destiny, and hence it was eminently THE LORD'S SUPPER. 31 What is said of the bread, in the Lord's Supper, holds equally good in its application to the wine, the other species or element in the Sacrament. Jesus, in the words of the institution, calls the wine the blood of the New Testament, " which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Here again, I ask, was the wine, or the blood of Jesus, shed for the remission of sins ? If the wine could not, on any common sense principle, have had a direct agency in man's redemp- tion, it follows that it must have been simply employed as an emblem or sign, on account of its red, sanguine color, of the vicariously-shed blood of Jesus. In short, if bread and wine could have made expiation for the sins of mankind, neither the incarnation nor the crucifixion of the Son of God would, I conceive, have been necessary ; for an object that may be accom- plished with inferior means, of course supersedes the need of greater. proper that Jesus, as the author of the mnemonic institution, should participate in its enjoyment, as well as preside over its distribution, — eat and drink with the Slite of his Christian household before his death, and thus, once more, by his earnest manner and holy conver- sation, solemnly and abidingly impress the saeredness of their great and responsible mission upon their susceptible and attentive minds. 32 THE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER IV. Consubstautiation or Impanation. CoNSUBSTANTiATiON, with which impanation mainly agrees in signification, means the union of the body — and blood too, of course, as a constituent part of the body — of the Saviour, with the sacramental elements. The origin of the dogma dates back to the twelfth cen- tury of the Christian Church, and claims one Rupert of Duytz for its author, who proposed it as a modifica- tion of transubstantiation. The Symbolists or Old Lutherans deny that their creed teaches consubstautia- tion ; but, notwithstanding, though the term may not appear in their dogma of the Lord's Supper, the fact, I conceive, is patent, and stands out in bold relief ~ According to the Book of Concord, the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are really present under the form or external signs of bread and wine, distributed to the communicants, and thus, under the insignia of bread and wine, received by them. We are likewise taught in the Schmalkald Articles that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are the true or real body and blood of Christ ; and in the Smaller Catechism the same doctrine is reiterated, and incul- cated with equal force and assurance. In the Larger Catechism, the great Reformer again teaches, " That in and under the bread and wine are contained the THE LORD'S SUPPER. 33 real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." As to the Form of Concord, it lays down the somewhat startling proposition, that the eating and drinking of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are a veritable eating and drinking of the body and blood of our Lord in the Sacrament ; yet, after all, that it is a spiritual and supernatural eating and drinking, and, therefore, incomprehensible 1 According to the article on Church Visitation, in the Book of Concord, there are two substances in the Lord's Supper, — the terrestrial, or bread and wine, and the celestial, or the body and blood of Christ, and we not only receive the body and blood of Christ spiritually, like other evangelical gifts, but orally, or with the mouth,* with the bread and wine, though not in a Caper- naitic or carnal, but in a supernatural and spiritual, yet incomprehensible, manner. Besides, agreeably to the same authority, the body and blood that we thus re- ceive sacramentally, are the real, substantial body that hung on the cross, and the real, genuine blood that was shed for us in the great sacrifice. Finally, we find within the ample limits of the variform and elaborate creed of the Book of Concord, that the body and blood of"" Christ are not locally — localiter — confined to the bread and wine, and that they are only present during the communion solemnities. Though this last sentence softens a little the gross tenets of concorporation, ad- vanced in the dogma of the Real Presence, synonymous with impanation or consubstantiation, it cannot nullify * It is technioally an oralis manducatio. 34 THE DOCTRINE OF the proposition that the body and blood of Christ are in and under the bread and wine, and, therefore, locally- confined, or the fact that the communicants, receiving the body and blood of Christ, under the external signs of bread and wine, confine them, at least for a season, to the oral process of mastication and incipient digestion. A doctrine that is encumbered and distorted with traits at once so astounding and mysterious, absolutely in the opinion of many involving blasphemy, is un- doubtedly deserving the severest animadversion. Is consecration instrumental in producing impanation or consubstantiation, — that is, the Real Presence of Christ's material body and blood with the elements of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper ? I answer, No, and proceed to advance the necessary proofs. If by consecration is meant setting apart the sacramental ele- ments, bread and wine, for holy or religious purposes, — I admit the applicability of the term to the liturgic service, employed on the occasion of the institution of the Lord's Supper ; but if by it the idea is designed to be conveyed that a metamorphosis or transmutation of the elements into the body and blood of Christ is pro- duced, or that consubstantiation of the latter with the former is effected, then I deny that Christ used a rite of consecration at the solemn institution of the eucharistic Sacrament. But what do we find on the subject in the words of the institution ? Matthew, Luke, and Paul agree in stating that our Lord thanked, or gave thanks, — eucharistesas, — on this affecting and memorable oc- casion. Blessed appears in the English version of Mat- thew, but is, of course, an erroneous rendering. Only THE LORD'S SUPPER. 35 Mark has eulogesas, he blessed. Now, as to bless and give thanks are analogous acts in this connection, it follows that, if " to give thanks" cannot have, gram- matically speaking, for its objective case the bread and wine, but God, the phrase, he blessed, must likewise imply an act directed to God, and not to the elements in the Lord's Supper. The facts in the case may be briefly stated thus : The Saviour thanked God for the bread and wine, hence called the eucharist ; for it was his devout and psaiseworthy custom always to give thanks before he partook of a meal, or gave entertainment to others. To bless, not the food, but God, the munificent giver of it, is likewise synonymous with offering thanks, or praising God for the blessings of bread and wine ; for eulogeo, according to Parkhurst, for example, among other significations, denotes to bless, as man does God, — that is, to praise, extol, laud, celebrate, magnify him: as, for instance, Christ did for the loaves and fishes, — Matthew, xiv. 19 ; Mark, vi. 41, viii. T ; Luke, ix. 16 — before he distributed them to his numerous and famish- ing guests. This liturgic act of the Saviour, at the Lord's Supper, was in strict conformity with the prac- tice to bless or give thanks, observed at the Jewish passover. God was thanked or blessed, that is, praised, for the manifold blessings, consisting of the wine and viands of which they joyously and gratefully partook on the anniversary of this sacred, commemorative, vernal feast. Our Lord simply repeated this pious and venerable custom, and, I have no doubt, no more thought, in doing so, to change the substance of the sacramental banquet into something supernatural and 36 THE DOCTRINE OF incomprehensible than the Jews did that of their pass- over entertainment. It is also to be noticed that the text merely asserts that Christ blessed, thanked, not thanked or blessed it, for the pronoun it is omitted in the original; and besides, to thank or bless the sacra- mental elements instead of the bountiful Giver of them, would be simply a flagrant absurdity. If consecration does not produce impanation or con- substantiation, what does ?* Luther and the Form of Concord answer: It is the words of Christ, "This is my body." In the Larger Catechism, Luther writes, " It is true that if you omit the words of Christ, This is my body, or contemplate the bread and wine sepa- rately from these words, you have nothing but barely bread and wine ; but if they are retained in their proper connection with the visible elements, as they ought, then the bread and wine are, consequently, the true body and blood of Christ, for, as he says, so it is, inasmuch as he can neither lie nor deceive." What a pity that the clear import of a simple, self- evident, metaphorical language, by the unbiased judg- ment of mankind, should thus, in a most astound- ing manner, be either ignored or perverted I Such proceeding is, doubtless, an easy method to found a creed, but, at the same time, it unhappily keeps up a historic connection with the Church that transub- stantiates and makes a god of its sacramental bread. •'=■■ The so-called aaoramental consecration in the Christian Church is entirely abnormal and unwarranted, and is an idolatrous blessing of the elements instead of God. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 31 hence denominated hostia. This, I venture to suggest, maybe regarded as a specimen of Conservative Prot- estantism. Alas ! it seems like Paradise with the ser- pent in it. Instead of interpreting the phrase, This is my body, accordingto the usus loquendi, of which the Greek text is a translation, and, agreeably to a legiti- mate exegesis, find a metaphor in the expression, Lu- ther understands it literally, and thus, unfortunately, as far at least as the dogma of the Real Presence is in- volved, the confidence in him, as a reliable commen- tator of the Holy Scriptures, is justly shaken. Strange, though his mind cannot be supposed to have been en- tirely freed from the pernicious influence of traditional prejudices, that the man who, in so eminent a degree, deserved the epithet "great" as well as "good," could not perceive a likeness between the broken bread in the Lord's Supper and the broken body of the Redeemer on the cross, and thus recognize and assert the figura- tive import of the passage. What he took for granted he of course did not think necessary to prove, but contented himself with insisting on the supposed magic words, This is my body, as the ultimatum of the matter. At the conference which took place at Marbm-g, in 1529, between Luther and Zwinglius, together with some of the most eminent doctors who adhered to the respective parties of these contending chiefs, on the subject of the Lord's Supper, Luther wrote with a piece of chalk on the table at which they sat. This is my body ; and thus, after a session of four days, ended this pacific discussion. Before these distinguished i 38 THE DOCTRINE OF arbiters of the sacramental question parted they shook hands in token of mutual good will, with the unani- mous resolution earnestly to beseech God to enable them, if they were in error, to attain, through the Holy Spirit, to a true and intelligent solution of the subject in dispute. They no doubt all kept word, and prayed often and fervently for Divine light and guid- ance, but, it appears, without much success ; for all resolutely continued to maintain their preconceived opinions except Melanchthon, who, though not till after the expiration of several years, earned, or at least received, the opprobrious cognomen of Crypto- Calvinist. Consistency, we are assured, is a jewel, and its worth, I presume, can hardly be overestimated ; but I seek for it in vain among the views which Luther taught and others believe in reference to the Lord's Supper, a constituent part of the Gospel, and entirely concordant with its general teaching and significance. Thus, for example, it does no more necessarily follow that bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, or that the words, This is my body, should be taken literally, than it does that he is a real door when he says, I am the door of the sheep, or a real vine when he asserts, I am the true vine, etc. A person of or- dinary intelligence intuitively understands that when our Lord calls his followers sheep, branches, salt, light, etc., the language is metaphorical, and that, though it is the language of our Lord, unless other- wise instructed, it must bend to the plain yet inexora- ble laws of exegesis, and cannot be taken literally THE LORD'S SUPPER. 39 except at the risk of stultifying the human mind, as well as committing a heinous sin against the holy oracles of God. CHAPTER V. Collateral Scripture Texts, claimed in support of a Real Presence, examined, and their Inapplicability set forth. A MAIN collateral argument to prove that the body and blood of the Saviour are contained in the sacra- mental elements of bread and wine, is based, by the advocates of the Real Presence, as may be seen by consulting the Schmalkald Articles, the Form of Con- cord, etc., upon the passage of Scripture recorded in the 1 Corinthians, x. 16: "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 com- munion of the body of Christ?" These words have, indeed, reference to the Eucharist, but " the cup of blessing" is simply the equivalent of the Hebrew cos hdbaracah, over which, according to Doctor Clarke, Lundius, and others, thanks and praises were olfered at the conclusion of the paschal banquet. Where now appears the proof that in the words of the Apostle, just quoted, is taught the Real Presence ? According to the Literalists, the sacramental wine is the blood of Christ; and, of course, in drinking of the cup over which a blessing, that is, for which thanksgiving or 40 THE DOCTRINE OF praise has been given, we have communion with Christ : and in eating the sacramental bread, it being, as is too hastily or too credulously taken for granted, the body of Christ, we have again, of course, communion with Christ. In other words, we thus eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, and are accordingly morally and physically united with him through means of the visible elemeuts. If this is not a begging of the ques- tion, I should be glad to learn the meaning of that phrase. We see here that a point is to be gained, while the means which are used to this end seem not to be so scrupulously chosen as the importance of the subject seems to demand. I doubt not that Luther and many of his stanch adherents of the sixteenth century were entirely honest in their religious convic- tions ; but it is clearly one thing, even with great men, to be honest, and another to be capable of establishing articles of faith strictly conformable to the word of God. The most objectionable part of their conduct, doubtless, is that they treated all that differed from them on the subject of the Real Presence as heretics and reprobates, and uncharitably branded them with the name Sacra- mentarians. Reason had primarily nothing to do with the formation of their creed, being declared incompe- tent to arbitrate in matters of salvation, and their watchword seems to have been. Believe that what we tell you is true, and it is true, whether you under- stand it or not. A concise mode of inculcating faith that does not always go unrebuked, as the following ludicrous incident, recorded in D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, goes to show : " When Erasmus was THE LORD'S SUPPER. 41 in England, he was one day in earnest conversation with Sir Thomas More, the Lord High Chancellor, on the subject of transubstantiation. ' Only believe,' said More, 'that you receive the body of Christ, and you really have it.' Erasmus was silent. Shortly after this, when Erasmus was leaving England, More lent him a horse to convey him to the port where he was to embark ; but Erasmus took it abroad with him. "When More heard of it, he reproached him with much warmth; but the only answer Erasmus gave him was in the following quatrain : " ' Only believe thou sharest Christ's feast, say you, And never doubt the fact is therefore true : So write I of thy horse ; if thou art able But to believe it, he is in thy stable.' " But, to resume the thread of my argument and give the true sense of the misinterpreted text, I remark that to have communion with the body and blood of Christ, signifies to have fellowship with Christ, inasmuch as we are partakers of the sacramental bread and wine in commemoration of his vicarious death. The Chris- tians, thus eating and drinking sacramentally, commune with their Lord, or have fellowship with him, in pre- cisely the same way in which the heathens, at the celebration of their sacrificial banquets, had communion or fellowship with their gods, to whom the sacrifice was offered. Paul demonstrates in the following verse that the Corinthian congregation, though composed of many members, was still one body, inasmuch as it par- took of one bread, one sacrificial banquet, — the Chris- tian banquet, or Lord's Supper, — in memory of the cru- 4* 42 TEE DOCTRINE OF cified body and shed blood of our Lord, while they re- frained from participating in Jewish or heathen sacri- ficial feasts. This view of the subject is corroborated and triumphantly established in the following verses of the same chapter, in which the important matter under discussion is further illustrated and confirmed by additional evidence. In the eighteenth verse, the Apostle speaks of the unconverted Israelites, — "Israel after the flesh," — and asserts that inasmuch as they ate of the sacrifices offered to Jehovah, they " were par- takers of the altar" ; meaning not that they /easfed on the altar, but that they declared themselves to be mem- bers of the Jewish Church, and in fellowship with the exalted object of the sacrificial rite — Jehovah. I shall omit in this place the following or nineteenth verse, as it is not deemed to be essential to a correct under- standing and proper appreciation of the subject. The Gentiles, noticed in the twentieth verse, sacrificing, ac- cording to the Apostle, to demons, erroneously called devils, in the English version, and not to God, he for- bade the Corinthian Christians to have fellowship with them, — that is, he demanded that they should not take part with them in the celebration of their sacrificial banquets, and thus become guilty of maintaining com- munion or fellowship with the gods. The Apostle, it should be observed here, distinctly speaks of a fellow- ship with the gods, a commemoration of the greatness of their deeds or the excellence of their character, not of an eating of them! Finally, he plainly tells the Christians at Corinth, in the tvi^enty-first verse, that they must confine themselves exclusively to the cele- THE LORD'S SUPPER. 43 bration of the Lord's Supper, and to the commemora- tion of the Saviour in the sacramental banquet, and not likewise take part in the communion feasts or cele- brations observed in honor of the gods ; that, in short, they could not be followers of Christ and devotees of polytheism at the same time, etc. In addition to the foregoing Scripture, supposed to furnish — besides the vcords of our Lord, This is my body — the main evidence in favor of a real presence, the following paragraph, recorded in 1 Corinthians, xi. 2'r-34, is appealed to as furnishing a decided triumph to that most extraordinary doctrine. It treats in a con- cise and forcible manner of a disorderly and irreverent celebration of the Lord's Supper, and of the pernicious consequences to which such shameful conduct must necessarily give rise. A large number of the Corin- thian Christians, unmindful, it seems, of the proper nature and responsibility of their sacred calling, asso- ciated their participation of the eucharistic rite with ordinary, yet festive-like, entertainments, in which they indulged to excess in eating and drinking : and thus, under these highly reprehensible and disgraceful cir- cumstances, they were unable to discern the Lord's body in the sacramental bread and wine, or, in other words, to realize in the bread and wine the sacred symbols of the body and blood of Christ, offered as an expiatory sacrifice for our sins ; that hence they were guilty of "eating and drinking" — of the sacramental banquet — "unworthily"; and that thus, "they ate and drank damnation to themselves." The damnation, krima, in the original, mentioned here, I may state in 44 THE DOCTRINE OF passing, means punishment or suffering, which resulted as a natural effect of their impious, intemperate be- havior; yet this damnation was not, by any means, tantamount to final reprobation, but disciplinary or corrective, and, therefore, adapted to amend the evil ways of these unworthy Christians, as is evident from the tenor of the thirty-second verse, " But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not he condemned with the world." From this exhibition of undoubted facts, the intelli- gent reader will readily perceive that if the controverted tenet of a Real Presence, in the Lord's Supper, has no better support than that which this passage supplies, in which the Apostle simply treats of the nature, guilt, and consequences of a bacchanalian celebration of the Lord's Supper, by a numerous part of the members of the Corinthian congregation, and the necessity of a devout and careful preparation for a worthy participa- tion in its solemnities and blessings, as well as a proper appreciation of the design and use of the sacred insti- tution, its chances to be recognized among the scrip- tural authorities for our faith are indeed very small, and I hesitate not, therefore, to challenge the brethren of Symbolic Lutheranism to adduce the least proof from Scripture, legitimately interpreted, in substantia- tion of this clearly anti-biblical dogma, the relic of a pre-Reformation period, and a calamitous source of distraction to the Protestant Church. - But why do the Symbolist Lutherans lay so much stress upon the doctrine of the Real Presence ? Do they suppose that that doctrine, in spite of its manifest THE LORD'S SUPPER. 45 incongruity with the general tenor of Holy Writ, is especially calculated and designed to honor our Lord ? Whatever may be their motive in thus obstinately per- sisting, contrary to the laws of correct exegesis and the plain dictates of common sense, in a literal render- ing of the words. This is my body, it appears quite evident to the unsophisticated mind that they involve themselves in the charge of putting a false construction upon the word of God, and that, such being the case, it can hardly be expected that its Divine author should hence feel himself especially honored. CHAPTER VI. The Doctrine of the Keal Presence comes under the Category of Sensitive Knowledge, and therefore its Truth or Fallacy may bo tested. In the fifth edition of the Book of Concord, published by H. Ludwig, pp. 602-3, speaking of the different modes, according to which Christ is generally or in- definitely present, Luther thus writes : " Again, in the Lord's Supper, Christ is present in a spiritual, in- comprehensible manner, inasmuch as he is not confined to space, but, as seems good to him, is omnipresent to all creatures, and is thus similar to my vision, — to use a homely comparison, — which extends through air, light, or water, and is not limited to locality or space ; similar to sound, which is likewise exempt from the 46 THE DOCTRINE OF trammels of physical laws, and passes, unobstructed, through air, water, a wall, or other solid substance ; and finally, similar to light and heat, which, with an equal freedom of motion, penetrate through air, water, glass, crystal, etc. It was in conformity to modes of presence or laws of mobility, corresponding to these, that our Lord escaped through a closed grave, entered through a barred door, came to have real presence in the Lord's Supper, and, as is commonly believed, was born of the Virgin." In the foregoing remarkable specimen of ignorance of the laws of physics, Luther affirms that the Real Presence of Christ, in the Lord's Sapper, is to be ac- counted for on the principle, conformably to which our vision is not limited to locality or space, but extends, without impediment, to any distance through air, light, and water. But the air, light, and water, through which it extends or passes, are themselves confined to locality or space, and the fact must, it seems, be familiar to every one, that our sight is of very limited range, reaching but a short distance into visible space. Persons, ignorant of the laws of optics, often fancy that they see objects, when they only see their reflection in the air or water or other bright, transparent bodies. If, therefore, our Lord is not more omnipresent than our vision is far-reaching, then, indeed, he must be very circumscribed in his relation to space. Sound, the Reformer likewise assures us, meets with no ob- struction in its passage through air, water, a wall, or other solid substance. That sound cannot be propa- gated beyond a given distance deaf people will testify, THE LORD'S SUPPER. 47 and even the mighty peal of thunder, springing into ex- istence at the iiat of the electric flash, embraces but a very limited area in its appalling reverberations, in comparison with the extent of our globe. Hence, again, if the Saviour's real presence, in the Lord's Supper, is not more widely extensible than sound, his ubiquity is not only local, but local in a marked degree. Finally, light and heat, we are told, penetrate with- out obstruction through air, water, glass, crystal, etc. If this is so, whence comes night, or the ice of the polar seas ? At some depth beneath the earth's crust im- penetrable darkness reigns, and could man, with his present organs of sight, appear there, the transparent glass or crystal, visible and resplendent on its surface, would be undistinguisbable by him, amid the surround- ing objects, shrouded in the sombre habiliments of everlasting night. It is clear, therefore, that light and heat have their limits, and that if the Saviour's omni- presence, sacramentally considered, is not superior to their diffusive properties, his ubiquity will not estab- lish the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper.* * The following facta claim the attention of the reader: Dense, dark bodies do not reflect, but ahaorb, light. In such case it is iso- lated, and can, of course, afford no basis of a comparison with the attributes of ubiquity. Again, light — whether emitted directly from the sun, or reflected from the planets — moves at the rate of about two hundred thousand miles in a second, and though this velocity is inconceivably great, it implies locomotion, and is carried through space by successive ether-waves, thus precluding similitude to omni- presence, and, therefore, ill adapted to prove and illustrate the latter. " When the air," writes Professor Tyndall, *' possesses the particu- 48 THE DOCTRINE OF As to the manner of Christ's birth, as an instance of invisible bodily presence, it suffices to say that the Gospel, according to Luke, ii. 22, flatly refutes so absurd an idea. An immaculate birth can deserve attention only in so far as it may be considered a counterpart of the monkish "dogma of the immaculate conception." That Jesus appeared among his assembled disciples lar density and elasticity corresponding to the temperature of freez- ing water, the velocity of sound in it is one thousand and ninety feet in a second." Some philosophers differ somewhat from this state- ment, and declare the mean rate of the velocity of sound, whether loud or weak, to amount to about eleven hundred and thirty feet in a second of time. Sound, then, instead of being instantaneously, uni- versally diffusible, or affording a good similitude of ubiquity, moves, or is successively propagated, through space, and in its most acceler- ated motion or favorable condition of progression, requires an hour to pass through a distance of seven hundred and forty-three miles : a rate of velocity which would occupy thirty-three hours to pass around the earth. Hence, if the ubiquity of Christ has no more omni- presence than the phenomenon called sound, with which it is com- pared in the text, it rests upon mere assertion instead of fact. Sound, moreover, is interrupted in its motion by the interposition of solid bodies, for it does not readily pass from one medium to another. Therefore the likening of the ubiquity of Christ to the propagation of sound ignores these obstacles, and is consequently futile. Professor C. A. Young, of Dartmouth College, in his lecture on " The Sun, and the Phenomena of its Atmosphere," writes as follows : " If sounds could travel through the celestial spaces at the same rate as iu our air, then the thunder of a solar storm might reach us in a little more than fourteen years." Finally, to bestow a passing thought upon some of the properties of heat, I remark, for example, that the rays of heat cannot be trans- mitted through opaque bodies, but that impinging on such bodies, they are either reflected or absorbed, and the idea of ubiquity is, of course, nipped in the bud. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 49 in the character of a disembodied spirit, next demands a brief notice. From the fact that he entered in a bodily, yet invisible manner, through a barred or locked door, the feasibility and therefore truth of the tenet of a real, bodily sacramental presence is hastily assumed : an assumption which needs corroboration, for though the disciples, as appears from Luke, xxiv. 36-40, were much alarmed when they beheld Jesus suddenly standing in the midst of them, and really thought his ingress had been ghostlike, it does not follow that their opinion was well founded. The words of the sacred historian are these: " They were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them. Why are ye troubled ? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts ? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have," etc. Christ here clearly repudiates the idea of a purely spiritual entrance, and I will only add that flesh and bones are not well adapted either to ubiquity or invisibility. But we are finally told, that our Lord made his egress from his closed grave by again assuming the semblance and properties of a disembodied spirit, while the fact of his incarnation remained unimpaired. I would fain learn how the Reformer knows this. When the grave was visited in the morning, imme- diately after the resurrection, it was found to be closed ; but our Lord, who could bodily arise from the dead, could also bodily pass out of the grave, opening and shutting it, if it thus pleased him, even unperceived 5 50 THE DOCTRINE OF by the soldiers placed there by Pilate to guard it. At any rate, as neither Christ nor the writers of the New Testament ever refer, in so many words, to an actual metamorphosis on the occasion, the case, I humbly conceive, merits no further attention. If, in the Lord's Supper, the body and blood of our Lord are really present in and under the external signs of bread and wine, it is knowledge, not faith, that must inform us of the fact ; for, as stated in the heading of this chapter, the question comes under the category of sensitive knowledge, and may be tested agreeably to the laws of induction, as to its truthfulness or fallacy. If the body and blood of our Lord are really present in the sacramental elements, the communicant must become apprised of the extraordinary fact in the act of oral manducation, or, in other words, in receiving and eating them, but he is not ; for his sense of taste per- ceives only the presence of bread and wine. Both elements taste as they would taste if they were not sacramentally used ; they have the aspect of the ordi- nary bread and wine of the same kind or denomina- tion ; they have the same weight; and, if they are chemically analyzed, they are found to have the same composition and properties. How, then, can the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and shed for us, be in, with, and under, or only in and under, the external signs of bread and wine ? For the Real Presence is not a presence of the benefits, result- ing to mankind from the vicarious death of our Lord, but an organic bodily presence, such as was exhibited at the crucifixion on Calvary, and must, therefore, have TBE LORD'S SUPPER. 51 sensitive and palpable properties, however men may twaddle about a spiritual eating and drinking. To pro- vide a feast of material aliment, and then tell the guests to partake of it spiritually and supernaturally, could only be regarded and treated as ridiculous trifling, and I may be allowed to observe that our Lord was much too earnestly engaged in the arduous work of saving souls to have either leisure or inclination for trifling. To illustrate the doctrine of the Real Presence, and render its mysticism less obscure or more plausible, Luther was in the habit of using a simile, founded on a union of heat and iron. " Christ," according to him, writes D'Aubigne, "desired to give to believers a full assurance of salvation, and, in order to seal this promise to them with most effect, had added thereto his real body in the bread and wine. Just," con- tinued he, " as iron and fire, though two different sub- stances, meet and are blended in a red-hot bar, so that in every part of it there is at once iron and fire ; so, a fortiori, the glorified body of Christ exists in every part of the bread." I remark that even so subtile a body as heat cannot permeate the interspaces of iron without producing a marked change in the metal : such as increase of temperature, combustion, red or white color, expansion, malleability, etc. Now, the asserted Real Presence produces no sensible change whatever in the sacramental bread and wine, not even in their weight, though it is the real, substantial body and blood of our Lord, notwithstanding the evasive postulate made here, that it is, as such, his glorified body, while 52 THE DOCTRINE OF heat, reckoned among imponderable substances, in its union with a material body,* attests its presence in so manifold and decided a manner! Alas! it seems to me, at this moment, as if I heard the Saviour once more exclaim, in solemn sadness of soul, " In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the com- mandments of men J" CHAPTER YII. In which will be shown why so much stress is laid upon the Doctrine of the Real Presence, while its Untenableness and Dangerous Tendency are pointed out. In the Larger Catechism of Luther, we are in- structed to believe that the ineffable blessings of re- demption, procured for us through the death of Christ, are imparted to us only in the Lord's Supper, in virtue of the words of the Saviour, "This — the broken bread — is my body, which is given for you ; this cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you for the remission of sins," etc., and not simply in consequence of his self-immolation for our sakes on Calvary. These words of the Divine Pounder of the New Testament, it seems, derive their extraordinary power in the Lord's Supper from the circumstance that his body » I shall show in the sequel, that the glorified body of the Saviour is not more likely to be in impanate combination with the elements of the Lord's Supper than the natural body. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 53 and blood are in, with, and under the external signs of bread and wine.* Having taught that the validity of the Lord's Supper is not impaired, but that it is still the true Sacrament, or, in other words, Christ's body and blood, though a knave should administer or receive it, the Reformer thus proceeds : " Let us now consider the design and benefit, in reference to which the Lord's Supper was instituted ; for this is of great moment, in order that we may know what advantage we derive from its use. This knowledge may be readily acquired by giving proper heed to the words, This is my body and blood, given and shed for you for the remission of sins. The sense of which is briefly this : We celebrate the Lord's Supper for the purpose of obtaining the gift, in and through which we receive the forgiveness of sins. But how is this end accomplished ? I answer, In consequence of the words of the institution confer- ring the gift of the remission or forgiveness of sins ; for it is for the sake of attaining this end that the Saviour bids me eat and drink the sacramental bread and wine," etc. In Luther's Smaller Catechism, we find essentially the same doctrine advanced on this subject. The an- swer to the question. What are the benefits derived from thus eating and drinking in the Lord's Supper ? is thus given : " They are pointed out in those words of the institution, ' Given and shed for you for the re- * The Form of Concord gives the formula of the Real Presence in these words : in pane, cum pane, et aub pane : in, with, and under the bread. 5* 54 THE DOCTRINE OF mission of sins' ; which words show us that forgive- ness of sin, life and salvation, are imparted to us in the Sacrament ; for where there is remission of sins, there of course is also life and salvation." These benefits, thus resulting from the use of the Lord's Supper, are, according to Luther, as appears from the teaching of the same catechism, not owing to a corpo- real eating and drinking of the sacramental bread and wine, inasmuch as mere eating and drinking cannot produce such effects, but it is that solemn declaration, " Which is given and shed for you, for the remission of sins'' ; which words, beside the literal eating and drink- ing, are to be considered as the main part of the sacra- ment. Hence whoever sincerely believes these words has what they promise, namely, the forgiveness of sins. What first deserves our notice here is, that the Lord's Supper is said to be instituted mainly with a view to afford an opportunity to the believing commu- nicant to appropriate to himself the Saviour's words, This is my body and blood, given and shed for you, for the remission of sins ; and thus, in so doing, re- ceive what they purport to convey, namely, the for- giveness of sins ; whereas it is, as I shall demonstrate in the sequel, instituted expressly as a memorial, pre- figurative of the body and blood of our Lord, to be given and shed for us upon the cross. The words, This is my body, This is my blood, etc., given and shed for you, for the remission of sins, are always in force in their relation or applicability to the sincere be- liever ; and not only on actual sacramental occasions, because Christ did not make expiation for us in the THE LORD'S SUPPER. 55 Lord's Supper, but on the cross. It is not, therefore, in the sacramental institution that we have " life and salvation," in the participation of the fruit of a consub- stantiational union of the external elements of bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ, but through the vicarious passion and death of Christ symbolized by the eucharistic bread and wine, which, in themselves, are nothing' but baked flour, on the one hand, and the juice of the grape, on the other, ren- dered sacred on a sacred occasion, and celebrated for sacred ends. Again, if "forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, are imparted to us in the sacrament," then the Lord's Supper is a substitute for the cross, and Christ's declaration, that his body and blood are given and shed for us, vitiates, nay, nulliiies, the sacrifice of him- self for our sins ; for when he uttered those brief but emphatic words, he had not yet suifered death in our behalf. Hence it is clear, if plain language can make anything clear to us, that' the words, This is my body, This is my blood, etc., are to be taken metaphorically, and that they signify, denote, represent, typify, etc., as has been shown on a former occasion, the body and blood of Christ to be offered up in the immediate future for the redemption of mankind. The doctrine set forth in these catechisms, on the subject of the Real Presence, is not only radically erroneous, but of decidedly dangerous tendency. Thus, for instance, it eminently encourages /or)7iaZis??i among its adherents, and hence, whore it prevails, re- vivals of religion, at least in the Spener and Wesleyan 56 TBE DOCTRINE OF spirit, are unknown. I have known repeated instances where persons who for many years had not appeared at the communion-table, and whose lives had all that time been undistinguishable from those of "the chil- dren of this world," who, supposing themselves at the point of death, or perhaps actually being in a dying state, without any apparent signs of penitence, ex- pressed a wish to have the Lord's Supper administered to them, while they seemed unconscious, — owing, doubt- less, more or less, to the influence of such sacramental views as we have here found inculcated, — that anything more was needed, to be a worthy communicant, than the conviction that, according to the words of Luther, " He alone is truly worthy and well-prepared that be- lieves in these words. Given and shed for you, for the remission of sins." It is a fact which challenges refu- tation, that many well-meaning professors of religion, led astray by notions derived from the dogma of the Real Presence, are in the habit of ascribing to the bare use of the Lord's Supper a kind of talismanic property, and it is accordingly, in their opinion, virtually a mere formality or routine observance, or, in other words, an opus operatum. Of course, Luther by no means de- signed to bring about so sad and mischievous a result, by promulgating bis singular views of the Real Pres- ence ; but such fruit is the natural product of seed at once exotic and noxious. If the Lord's Supper must necessarily be a saving ordinance, agreeably to the facts brought to light in this chapter, the question may not be quite irrelevant, "What became of those Christians who lived anterior TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 57 to the institution of the Lord's Supper ? For they could not in any way be benefited by the words of the Saviour, This is my body, This is my blood, given and shed for you for the remission of sins, if belief in them is essential to salvation, as we are positively taught in the Reformer's catechisms, the Form of Concord, etc., in which, to invite attention to the fact once more, it is repeatedly and most emphatically affirmed, that life and salvation are imparted to us in the Sacrament, in virtue of our faith in the words of the institution, " Given and shed for you, for the remission of sins." Finally, the doctrine that the merits of Christ are ap- priated through means of the Lord's Supper undoubt- edly betrays a lingering sympathy of the Reformer, without perhaps a consciousness of the fact, with the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation ; a leaning, by traditional links and educational prejudices, towards the scholastic mysticism of a dark age ; and hence the Lord's Supper, as interpreted by him, has soterial efficacy or expiatory virtue. What has been here said in reference to Luther, is of course equally true in its application to his rigid and literal adherents.* * That I do not prefer an unlikely or historically untrue charge against Symbolic Lutheranism of the sixteenth century, with a still existing propensity towards Roman Catholicism, the following sen- tence, quoted from the comments on the twenty-first article of the Augsburg Confession, as they appear in "the Church Book" of the Synod of Pennsylvania,* a true representative, in the nineteenth * The designation, Synod of Pennsylvania or Ministerium of Pennsylvania, is an abbreviation of the full title : The German-Evangelical Lutheran Minis- terium of Pennsylvania auil Adjacent States. 58 THE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER VIII. The Body and Blood of Christ were only Accessories, not Principals, in the Accomplishment of Redemption, The great stress which is laid upon the dogma of the Keal Presence of the body and blood of the Saviour, in the Lord's Supper, is doubtless owing, in no small degree, to the over-estimate of the part which they bore century of the Christian era, of " the faith once delivered to — 'the fathers" of the Book of Concord, will verify : " This," thus begins the sentence referred to, "is about the sum of doctrine among us, in which can be seen that there is nothing which is discrepant with the Scriptures, or with the Church Catholic, or even with the Roman Church, so far as that Church is known from writers — the writings of the Fathers." Now, if the writings of the Fathers of the Church are true exponents of Romanism, as is here claimed, and Romanism is scriptural, what need was there of the Reformation, which set oat from the principle that the Roman Church was monstrously corrupt ; that a reforma- tion of it was imperatively demanded; and that, accordingly, this reformation must carry back its efforts to the pristine Christianity of the apostolic age ?* * I adduce, as a further instance of the too great connivance observed towards a corrupt Church, the attention which is paid, in the Lutheran " Church Almanac," to Roman Catholic Church festivals. In what condition this almanac appears this year I cannot say, as I have not examined it, hut a few examples may suffice to give an idea of its character last year, or the year 1871. The festival in the Roman Catholic Church called " Corpus Bomini Jesu Christi," is sacred to the Jiostia or consecrated eacrameutal bread, which, according to a dogma of this Church, is transubstantiated or changed, by the Boleran act of consecration, into the veritable body and blood, soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and the notice of this festival figures in a THE LORD'S SUPPER. 59 in the grand work of redemption. They were, I may confidently say, in fact, mere accessories in the sacred and awful drama enacted on Calvary by the Son of God. Flesh and blood cannot make redemption : they can only be vehicles in its accomplishment; and therefore, in strict propriety, be regarded simply as mere passive, altogether secondary, instruments or adventitious ac- companiments in the holy mission of mercy and pardon Lutheran almanac aa if it was one of the recognized dogmas of the Lutheran Church ! Candlemas is another Roman Catholic festival taken under the patronage of this almanac, calculated, hy such dalliauce with a corrujjt Church, to injure the cause of true Lutheranism. "On this day," says Webster, '*the Roman Catholics consecrate all the candles and tapers which are to be used in their churches during the whole year. In Rome, the pope performs the ceremony himself, and distributes wax candles to cardinals and others, who carry them in procession through the great hall of the pope's palace," etc. Shrove-Tuesday and Ash-Wednesday next claim our attention as ecclesias- tical curiosities in this otherwise excellent almanac. " On Shrove-Tuesday," writes the learned author just quoted, "all the people of England, when Roman Catholics, were obliged to confess their sins, one by one, to their parish priest, after which they dined on pancakes or fritters," etc. Ash-Wednesday derives its name from a custom observed on that day by the priests of the Roman Catholic Church, of sprinkling ashes on the heads of penitents. With this day begins the quadragesimal or forty-days fast be- fore Easter, in the Roman Catholic and other churches. The Carnival, cele- brated in papal countries, and the counterpart of the ancient Saturnalia, is the devout and edifying introduction to this prolonged hut, it seems, not very macerating fast. St. Patrick, too, has a place in this most indulgent almanac, and the Apostle of the Irish seems to be in a fair way to receive the honors of saintship be- yond the hallowed precincts of Maynooth and of Rome. On the third of May, the Invention of the Cross is celebrated in Roman Catholic countries, in commemoration of the. finding of our Saviour^s cross; and as this finding of the cross is, of course, an undoubted historical fact, the Church Almanac does well to notice and perpetuate its memory. I Invite attention but to one more Roman Catholic festival mentioned in this almanac, the Elevation of the Cross ; a practice of which every Protestant must cordially approve, as both its spirit and origin are alike evangelical and instructive ! 60 THE DOCTRINE OF of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the mind, — the human and the infinite mind, — in the person of the Redeemer, that brought to a happy issue the sublime and wondrous achievement on the cross. Tes, let me repeat it, it is mind, soul, the immortal intelligence, in the blessed, in- carnate Saviour, that alone could, and did, execute the important and arduous task of rescuing, exalting, and saving sin-lost man. I shall, of course, not stop here to inquire what quantitative relation the two natures, in the Divine person of the Saviour, sustained to each other in making expiation for us ; for this is a problem which I do not presume to solve, and which, in order to the attainment of salvation, needs no solution; but sim- ply state that it was the immortal element, so to speak, in the incarnate God-man that wrought out salvation for mankind, and not his body and blood, a fact which, con- sidered separately or abstractly, cannot, from the very nature and magnitude of the case, admit of the least doubt. Without Divinity, on the one hand, and the im- perishable human principle on the other, the body and blood of Christ would have been mere dead, inert matter, incompetent to any action or passion, let alone expiatory and redemptive action and passion. Indeed, the body and blood of our Lord had directly no more to do with achieving our salvation, except as external instruments, and as means of a visible display of that momentous fact, than had the robe which he wore at the bar of Pon- tius Pilate, or the swaddling clothes in the manger of Bethlehem. Why, then, such being the case, did the Saviour say, at the institution of the Lord's Supper, This is my body; this is my blood, given and shed for TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 61 you for the remission of sins, thus apparently at least ascribing redemptive efScaey to his body, given for us, and to his blood, shed for us? I reply, the human mind is usually much more powerfully impressed in witness- ing, or, in imagination only, contemplating, a human body fixed to a cross, crowned with thorns, pierced with a lance, and blanched and writhing from the effect of the sharp mental agonies endured and manifested in the appalling death-struggle, than it is possible for it to be by a simple reference to mental distress, however intense this may be, or however vivid and pathetic should be the eloquent and graphic portraiture that might be given of it. It is, therefore, the body secured to the cross, torn, bleeding, dying, dead, that is said to be given for us, and the blood, flowing from its side, or, sweat-like, oozing from its pores, Luke, xxii. 44 ; but, in fact, the body and blood of Christ, thus exhibited to view, in a state ordinarily regarded as simply indica- tive of exquisite homily suffering, are really but out- ward displays of the invisible act of redemption, sym- bols or signs of the inward agony and struggl.e endured by the immortal mind. As if he had said. Behold this broken bread and poured-out wine, they are to put you in mind of the broken, bleeding state awaiting my body on the cross, and thus enable you to judge or form some idea of my inward throes, endured in the vast and overwhelming birth-labors of redemption. Redemption is based upon the combined part which the Divine and the human spirit performed in the exalted person of the Saviour, and not upon the exhibition, which the flesh and blood — in themselves mere organic matter — 6 62 THE DOCTRINE OF were led to make of it ; and, therefore, the doctrine of the Real Presence, consisting of the body and blood of Christ, under the external signs of bread and wine, in the Lord's Supper, must, judged from this point of view, — the only really logical, and therefore tenable one, — be regarded as at best only specious, — a baseless assumption ; for, as we have seen, the body and blood of Christ have actually no direct and absolute action or efficacy in the origination and completion of our salva- tion. Hence here, as elsewhere in the Divine teachings of the Gospel, " It is the spirit that quickeneth," while "the: flesh profiteth nothing." John, vi. 63. CHAPTER IX. The Ubiquity or Omnipresence of Christ's Body. PARAGRAPH I. The Ubiquity or OmDipresenco of Christ's Terresti-ial Body. That, during his sojourn on earth, Christ was true man as well as true God, is the unanimous teaching of all orthodox creeds. He was born, it seems, accord- ing to the New-Testament historians, like any other child, Luke, ii. 22 ; grew up gradually to man's estate, in the manner of other children, Luke, ii. 52 ; ate and drank in a human-like way, Matthew, xi. 19; wept and sorrowed, as does poor humanity everywhere, John, THE LORD'S, SUPPER. 63 xi. 35 ; was joyous with the joyful, as a genial person would be likely to be, John ii. 1-11 ; and uttered, as an honest human teacher would feel himself bound to do, the sentiments of profound indignation at the ia- gitious conduct of the hypocritical scribes and Phari- sees, Matthew, xxiii. 13-33, etc. But the portions of Scriptures, to which I shall more especially refer as the chief basis of my present argument, are those which we find recorded in Philippians, ii. 7, 8, and in He- brews, iv. 14, 15. According to the passage in Phi- lippians, Jesus was made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man ; while the text in He- brews teaches essentially the same facts, with the addi- tion of several important particulars, in the following impressive language : " Seeing then that we have a great high-priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high-priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Christ, having thus become incarnate, or assumed humanity, is henceforth, or while this incarnate state lasts, no longer in possession of Divinity, in an abso- lute sense, but in that dual state peculiar to the God- man, and which is restricted in its relation to humanity to the limits and conditions of place and time. I do not, by any means, say that he could not, at any time that he might please to do so, sever such connection, and assume Godhood without the clogs and imbecilities of manhood ; but I say that as long as he maintains the incarnate relation to man he ceases to be ubiquitous 64 THE DOCTRINE OF or omnipresent, — a prerogative of the pre-incarnate state, whichhe, of course, voluntarily relinquished when he assumed the trammels incident to humanity. To obviate this difficulty, so glaringly militant against the dogma of the Real Presence, it is, I conceive, of no use to talk about the doctrine de communicatione idioma- tum, — that is, of the reciprocal interchange of the Divine and human attributes, in the person of Christ, possessing at once a Divine and human nature.* Such interchange of attributes, except in some, to be sure, adequate degree, and temporally, namely, during the consummation of the great act of redemption, I am constrained to deny, and, on the contrary, to maintain that Divinity and humanity consisting of but one per- son, this person is incapable, owing to the human ele- ment forming a part of it, of ubiquity. As certainly as m an is of local or circumscribed presence, so certainly must the Saviour in his humanity be local or confined ' in his mobility ; for such is the lot of man, and he " is in the likeness of men, and in fashion as a man." If Christ, therefore, should impart Divinity to humanity, so as to confer on it ubiquity, it would instantly cease to be proper humanity, and he could no longer be re- garded or treated as " the Word" that " was made flesh, and dwelt among us." John, i. 14 I shall now briefly invite attention to the proof that the terrestrial body of Christ, which is claimed to be present in the sacramental bread and wine, was so far from being ubiquitous, that he that was incarnate in * Form of Concord. TSE LORD'S SUPPER. 65 that body was accustomed, during his earthly sojourn, to move about within very narrow limits, and was, besides, never known, as far as appears from the history of his life, transmitted to us in the gospel, to be in more than one place at the same time ; which, I humbly conceive, would not have been the case if he had pos- sessed a body capable, by a conferred attribute of Divinity, of the sublime exercise of ubiquity. It is a law of physics, to which there is no exception, that a body cannot be in more than one place at the same time. This is a property of matter, with which God himself has endowed it, and to which the mightiest monarch on the throne, as well as the smallest atom of dust, are alike inexorably subject. Even the Lord Jesus Christ, in his humility, is not exempt from it. Thus, when he lay in the manger, he was nowhere else, and the "wise men from the East" found him only there. When he resolved to go to Egypt, he had to leave Bethlehem before he could carry his resolution into effect. When he departed from the far-famed land of the Pharaohs, to take up his abode at JNazareth, he had to go there progressively, in a manner similar to another human being; and when "he went about doing good," which, in his benignant and exalted capacity of Saviour, he always did, he went — agree- ably to the laws of motion — from place to place, ad- vancing by degrees, and at the expense of a certain amount of physical force, as did the least and most obscure of his followers ; and we find no trace, in his grand missionary and soterial operations, indicative either of the possession or of the practice of ubiquity. 6* 66 THE DOCTRINE OF I will come and heal him, Matthew, viii. 1 ; I go to prepare a place for you, John, xiv. 2, etc. The words of Doctor Clarke, though uttered without direct refer- ence to this subject, are emineritly appropriate, and ac- cordingly deserve a place here. Treating of the prop- erties of matter or body, less, to be sure, like a commentator than a philosopher, he writes : " To these belong extension, divisibility, figurability, and mobility, which imply limitation: Ood and matter have essen- tially contrary properties." Prom the foregoing train of reasoning, I think it is evident that God, as the absolute Divinity, has attri- butes which the God-man no longer possesses. Add to this already imposing array of testimony the decisive fact, that the crucified body of the Saviour no longer exists, and what becomes of the great stumbling- block in the Lutheran Church, — the dogma of the Real Presence ? It is carefully to be borne in mind, that it is emphatically the identical body that expired upon the cross that is declared to be present in the sacra- mental bread and wine, or, in other words, to be in, with, and under these visible and tangible constituents of the holy supper : " Of the Lord's Supper, we teach that in it the true body and blood of Christ are really present, under the form of bread and wine, and thus, at once, distributed and received." (Augsburg Confes- sion, Article Tenth.) In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon, in addition to this statement, indorses what St. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, says of the Lord's Supper, " That Christ is bodily present and distributed in the Sacrament." These startling views THE LORD'S SUPPER. 6T are substantially reiterated in the Form of Concord, and read thus: "We believe, teach, and confess that the words of the Lord's Supper are not to be under- stood differently from their literal import, and thus the bread and wine made to signify the absent body and blood of Christ, but that the bread and wine, for the sake of sacramental union, are the true body and blood of Christ." It is useless to cite more Symbolical author- ity, to prove that the body in which our Saviour was incarnate upon earth constitutes the Real Presence in the Sacrament. It suffices to repeat that this body no longer exists, but has been superseded by Christ's glorified body, and that, as it is a universally recog- nized axiom in natural philosophy, to which all bbdies, however subtile or dense, must yield, " that it is im- possible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time" ; therefore, I hold that the crucified body of Christ, long since decomposed into its elementary constituents, and supplanted by a body, to the func- tions of which it was no longer competent, can have no existence in the Lord's Supper, in its normal organic state, or in any state responding to a personal humanity; and hence a real presence, in the accepted sense, can have no existence, except in imagination, or, perhaps, a fondness for antithesis. 68 TEE DOCTRINE OF PARAGRAPH II. The Ubiquity or Omnipresence of Christ's Glorified Body. Having treated of the spiritual eating of the bless- ings resulting from the death of Christ, or their appro- priation by faith, in a general way, the authors of the Form of Concord, p. 597, speak of the eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ as an oral or sacramental eating and drinking, and then continue thus to expatiate on the subject: "In the Lord's Supper," they assert, " the true and essential body and blood of Christ are received by the believer, as a pledge and assurance that his sins are most certainly forgiven, and that Christ dwells in him and imparts to him his grace. The Saviour's commandment, when he dis- tributed the symbols of bread and wine to his disciples, and called them, in the literal sense of the terms, his body and his blood, 'To eat and drink,' cannot have meant anything but an oral eating and drinking, though not a gross, carnal, Capernaitic* eating and drinking, but an eating and drinking in a supernatural and incomprehensible manner," etc. What strikes, one very forcibly here is, that the oral eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ are declared not to be a gross, carnal, Capernaitic eating and drinking, but a supernatural and incompre- * This Capernaitic eating and drinking of the Lord's Supper, I shall prove in the sec[uel to be an eminently spiritual eating and drinking. THE LORD'S SUFFER. 69 Lensible eating and drinking'. Now, if it is incompre- hensible, in what way is its meaning ascertained by the believers in the Real Presence ? And again, if it is incomprehensible, how can they, with any sense of justice or propriety, censure or condemn those who entertain views on this subject different from their own ? Christ — as I have shown all along — certainly teaches no such sacramental enigma. Then again, to receive the body and blood of Christ into the mouth, eat it, drink it, swallow it, digest it, and do all this, not in a natural and appreciable, but in a supernatural and incomprehensible manner, without being conscious of it, is a most glaring outrage against the common sense of the communicant. I would not deal harshly with the memory of men who, as Reformers, notwithstand- ing the incompleteness and partial defects of their la- bors, deserve, for the vast deal of good they have done, the profound gratitude of posterity ; yet I am under log- ical and moral necessity to avow — without intending the least disrespect in so doing towards dissenting brethren — that the doctrine of the Real Presence, in the Lord's Supper, is the most extravagant chimera that the human mind has ever devised, to mystify and perplex a plain, nay, in fact, a self-evident truth I It is not possible that God can take pleasure in the origi- nation and propagation of error, and au error, too, of so grave and pernicious a character, when a simple, universally recognized principle of interpretation can alone be adequate to declare Ms will and illustrate our duty. Some of the principal arguments assigned in the 70 THE DOCTRINE OF Form of Concord, p. 499, for the reasonableness and practicability of the Real Presence, in the Lord's Supper, of Christ's glorified body, I shall here intro- duce to the reader's notice, and in so doing enable him to judge of their cogency as well as prepare him prop- erly to appreciate the scope and pertinence of the pres- ent disquisition : " Having entered into his glory, the Lord Jesus Christ knows all things, not only as God, but as man ; possesses all power ; is omnipresent to all creatures ; and holds, as he himself assures us, all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, in subjection: ' All power is given to me in heaven and on earth.' And St. Paul declares that, ' He that descended is the same that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things,' Bphesians, iv. 10. Hence he possesses the power to communicate his true body and blood in the Lord's Supper, not according to the peculiarities of the human, but according to the pecu- liarities of the Divine nature." The substance of the foregoing communication is, that Jesus, though still God-man, possesses absolute Divinity, and thus continues, notwithstanding his hypo- static connection with humanity, to be omniscient, omnipresent, and almighty, and that — such being the ' case — his glorified body is necessarily capable of the most facile and unbounded ubiquity. If this statement was true, it would be easy to account for the Real Presence, under the symbols of bread and wine, in the Sacrament, provided it could be demonstrated that a body, however subtile it may be, is exempt from the laws of matter, and therefore independent of finiteness TBE LORD'S SUPPER. 1\ or space ; but as it is taught that the glorified body of Christ has still flesh and blood, or the attributes of in- violate humanity, and, indeed, must have, to answer to the words of the institution, This is my body, this is my blood, etc., it still more plainly and certainly follows that the glorified body of Christ is no more endowed with the attribute of ubiquity than was his earthly body. But I shall now proceed to show that the glorified body of Christ is totally different from his crucified or primeval body. In the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, iii. 21, we are told that Christ "shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body," etc. In view of such positive teaching as this is, can any one longer doubt that the glorified body of Christ, however excellent and ethereal it may be, cannot have ubiquitous properties? Our bodies shall be hereafter like his glorified body. But, I may be allowed to ob- serve, that our bodies must still be the bodies of finite beings, and therefore restricted in their mobility ; and as they are to be like the Saviour's glorified body, the Saviour's glorified body must be likewise of limited presence, and cannot possibly be ubiquitous in the Lord's Supper, or simultaneously in widely separate and innumerable places. But as the Real Presence is afSrmed to be a presence of flesh and blood, This is my body, this is my blood, etc., I will now call atten- tion to the fact that Christ's glorified body has neither flesh nor blood. In 1 Corinthians, xv. 50, we find the apostolic com- munication on this subject couched in these decisive ^2 THE DOCTRINE OF words : " Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." Such authoritative teaching clears up, one should think, the whole matter, even to the conviction of the most ultra ubiquitarian ; for where there is no flesh and blood, as component parts of Christ's glorified body, there cannot, on any principle of correct reasoning, be a real bodily presence of his glorified humanity: from nothing, nothing is! There is, it seems, still one more fact needed to put this question forever, I trust, at rest, and this we have presented to us, in a most triumphant form, as well as force of expression, in Luke, xxiv. 36-40 : " And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled ? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts ? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I my- self: handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet." It appears from the purport of the preceding pas- sage, that Jesus, suddenly presenting himself among his disciples, they mistook him for a spirit, and were, accordingly, much affrighted ; and that, to undeceive' them, our Lord called attention to two important cir- cumstances, forcibly elucidative of some of the princi- ples of psychology, namely, that "a spirit hath not flesh and bones," as they saw him have ; and that a spirit — an inhabitant of the celestial world — cannot be seen THE LORD'S SUPPER. 73 and handled. This plain, solemn Christ-teaching ought to satisfy every impartial and intelligent person that the body of Christ in heaven is so entirely different from the body of Christ on earth that the doctrine of the Real Presence can no longer pretend to a sem- blance of a Scripture basis, or a just claim to the serious attention of mankind. Indeed, the bulvs^ark of Old Lutheranism, the Warthurg of its churchly strength and hope, can, it appears, hardly hold out much longer, unless it adopts, as I fondly hope it may, a different plan of defense 1 PARAGEAPH III. Christ sits on the Right Hand of God, and, therefore, his Gloriiied Body must, say the Advocates of a Real Presence, possess Ubiquity. Agreeably to the Form of Concord, " God's right hand is synonymous with omnipresence, and Christ, though sitting on the right hand of Grod, as God-man, nevertheless reigns over all things, and enjoys a rank or pre-eminence to which neither man nor angel can attain." Numerous passages of Scripture, treating of this interesting and absorbing subject, speak of the Saviour as " sitting pn the right hand of God" ; as " standing in the midst of the throne"; as " ascending up where he was before" ; as " coming to the Father" ; as " being received up into heaven, and sitting on the right hand of God"; as "ascending to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God," etc. The doctrine advanced in the above-cited passage from the Form of Concord, which is said essentially 1 li THE DOCTRINE OF to express Luther's views on the subject, is entirely conformable to the usual ideas which an enlightened mind entertains of God, considered as the absolute Deity, possessing the exalted attributes of infinity and omnipotence.* This exalted and adorable Being has, of course, no throne ; does not sit ; has no right hand, etc. ; and Jesus — our gracious and magnanimous Re- deemer — cannot, therefore, stand in the midst of the throne, or sit on the right hand of God. Such senti- ments and expressions are simply anthropomorphisms, to which a wise teacher will now and then adapt him- self, or, in other words, the language of man in a rude state, of society, whose God is the image or reflection of himself, possessing manners and observing practices similar to his own. To sit on the right hand of God, therefore, as Christ is said to do, can only mean to possess a rank imply- ing exceedingly great glory, honor, and power ; such glory, honor, and power, however, as are compatible with the relation and functions intermediate between a perfect Godhood, on the one hand, and a perfect manhood on the other. Hence the idea of Luther that Christ, as Logos or Son of God, in his hypostatic * Whether God is omnipresent in the infinitude of his being, or is omnipresent only in the operations of his laws, and therefore governs the world agreeably to these laws, which must, of course, be fixed and immutable, I do not pretend positiTely to decide, but incline to the latter idea, which requires man to humble himself before the Almighty, and learn his will, instead of dictating to him, and continuing in idleness, exclaiming, in the pithy language of the Proverbs, "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." THE LORD'S SUPPER. f 5 connection with humanity, can be, like the Father, everywhere present, or has absolute ubiquity, cannot be entertained for a moment, and I shall only add that I have already amply proved this hypothesis to be untenable, both from the laws of matter and from the similitude of our bodies with Christ's body in the celestial state, and shown that if our bodies shall be like his, as is emphatically taught, — it must follow that as we, being finite beings, cannot inhabit ubiquitous bodies, — his body must, consequently, also possess but local presence, or, in other words, be subject to mobility. But while I deem it unnecessary to go over ground already pretty thoroughly explored, I shall furnish a few more arguments from relevant sources, varying somewhat from the preceding more in traits of illustra- tion than in novelty of matter, and supplying, in some degree, new and interesting exhibitions of facts, as well as additional force of evidence upon the subject. These arguments thus characterized, though other Scriptures of equal cogency bearing upon the ques- tion might readily be cited, are based upon the follow- ing texts in the Gospel according to John : xii. 26, xiv. 2-4, and xvii. 24, which contain most welcome words, pregnant with profound thoughts, and conveying at once instruction and comfort to the devout and docile Christian: " If any man serve me, let him follow me ; and where I am, there shall also my servant be," etc. " In my Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that 76 THE DOCTRINE OF where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." " Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me," etc. In this interesting portion of Divine revelation, con- cerning the Christian's future existence and abode, the Saviour invites attention to the facts — which must be of paramount interest to the heavenward-bound pil- grim — that the victorious Christians shall hereafter be where their Lord is ; that our Lord has prepared a place for them, and will come and receive them unto himself — in the place prepared for them ; and that they shall then have an opportunity to behold the glory conferred upon him by the Father. Judging from this important and most gratifying intelligence, it is evident that not only the future, re- deemed man shall occupy a distinct abode, — a place in the Father's house, especially prepared for him by his Saviour, — but that the Saviour himself will occupy it with him, for his prayer is, " That those whom the Father has given him might be where he is." Hence as the Christian, a finite creature, is hereafter to share an abode in common with his Lord, though he is clearly in a condition which renders him incapable of ubiquity, being confined to place, it follows that our Lord, being similarly confined, must likewise be non-ubiquitous, he being, according to his own Divine teaching, a fellow-inmate of the same exalted and Elysian locality, the Father's house, and, therefore, evidently not in a state admitting of ubiquity. TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 11 THE LORD'S SUPPER IS A MEMORIAL. CHAPTER I. Christ our Passover. — The renowned anniversary institution among the Jews, denominated the Passover, was a divinely-ap- pointed feast or sacred festival, whose origin, accord- ing to Professor Lepsius, the eminent archaeologist, is traceable on the hoary page of history to the remote era, dating back thirteen centuries anterior to the birth of Christ. Its celebration, which was at once solemn and magnificent, occurred about the time of the ver- nal equinox, the season of nature's rejuvenescence in Palestine, and was accompanied with sacred rites and joyous demonstrations. The important object which was designed to be attained in its institution was, " To commemorate," writes the learned lexicogra- pher. Dr. Webster, " the providential escape of the Hebrews in Egypt, when God, smiting the first-born of the Egyptians, passed over the houses of the Israel- ites, which were marked with the blood of the paschal lamb." 1* 18 THE DOCTRINE OF The paschal lamb was selected by Providence as a suitable sacrificial offering on the momentous event which resulted in the deliverance of the Jews from a protracted and cruel bondage in the land of the Pha- raohs, as exuberant in fertility as it was illustrious in arts and sciences ; and it was through means of its blood, now become eminently precious, and of national significance, properly and seasonably applied — that the chosen people of Jehovah were taught to avert the doom which awaited the obstinate and chastised the guilty Egyptians. That the Jewish passover was typical of Christ, and that Christ must, therefore, possess passoverial func- tions, is the repeated and express teaching of the New Testament. Whence it follows that, as "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world," John, i. 29, Christ is the paschal lamb of the New Testament, whose blood is designed to save not a single nation merely, but a whole world "lying in wickedness." This, indeed, salient fact is generally rather insinuated than expressed, premised oftener than proved or illus- trated ; yet the Gospel furnishes testimony on this sub- ject which amply sustains the proposition, that Christ is indeed our passover. The first passage which contains a positive state- ment to this effect, and to which attention is here in- vited, is that in 1 Corinthians, v. 7, where the apostle, in true paschal style of preparation for the celebration of " the feast of unleavened bread," exhorts his readers to purge out the old learen, that they might be a new lump, " For," continues he, " even Christ our pass- TBE LORD'S SUPPER. t9 over is sacrificed for usr" This text, though concise, is lucid and directly to the point, and not only recalls to mind the passover-festiyal and the customs of the Jews, observed preparatory to its celebration, but it also un- mistakably conveys the weighty idea, that Christ is foreshadowed or represented by that ancient and ven- erable Jewish festival : Exodus, xii. 15. If, now, we compare the peculiarities by which the paschal lamb was required, by the Divine lawgiver, to be distinguished, in order to be suitably qualified for so sacred and important a purpose, or the conduct which was to be carefully observed towards it at the festival-board, with the corresponding traits apper- taining to Christ, our paschal sacrifice, or similar for- bearance manifested towards him on the cross, we shall not hesitate to recognize a decided typical con- nection. Having enjoined. Exodus, xii. 46, that the paschal lamb, in its individual distribution, appropri- ated either to a single family, sufficiently numerous, or divided among several households of the required number, Exodus, xii. 4, should be consumed by the participants, within the limits of the domicile dedicated to the festive solemnity, and that no part of it should be " carried abroad," the celestial legislator adds : " Neither shall ye break a bone thereof" In Numbers, ix. 12, the prohibition, not to break a bone of the passover-lamb, is repeated, and thus, consequently, increased force and significance added to it by the repetition. These— passages find their antitype in the Gospel recorded in John, xix. 32, 33, 36, and are thus admirably illustrated : " Then came the soldiers, and 80 THE DOCTRINE OF brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs : for these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken." To be properly fitted for the passover-offering, the paschal larnb had to be " a male of the first year," a male a year old, and " without blemish." (Exodus, xii. 5.) The exact similitude to this requirement, if we except the age of the lamb, is at once recognized in the description of Christ, our passover, given by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, ix. 13, 14: "If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the puri- fying of the flesh : how much more shall the blood ot Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God ?" If, now, we advert to the First Epistle of Peter, i. 18-19, we shall find an ascription, though somewhat amplified, of paschal at- tributes to Christ, essentially corresponding to the pre- ceding quotation : " Ye know that ye were not re- deemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." From all these instances of a close agreement of cir- cumstances and identicalness of design, between type and antitype, it is evident that Christ is to mankind what the paschal lamb was to the Jews, and that he is emphatically our passover. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 81 I shall next proceed indisputably to establish the fact, that the Jewish passover was a memorial, or, in other words, that it expressed mnemonic design, and for this purpose simply refer to Exodus, xii. 25-2T ; " And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you. What mean ye by this service ? that ye shall say. It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." Here the inquiry of the successive gen- erations of Hebrew posterity, about the meaning of the paschal rite, finds solution in reminiscence, which addresses itself to the memory as a great and solemn fact living in history; and each time the Jews cele- brated the passover, they did it in remembrance of the momentous event which resulted in the emancipation from Egyptian servitude. Hence the Lord's Supper, being pre-eminently our passover-festival, is likewise a memorial, — that is, it is commemorative of the stupen- dous act in the vicarious life of Christ, culminating in the death of the cross, in our emancipation from sin, and death, and hell. These most striking facts I shall bring out more prominently, in a comparison of the words in Exodus, xii. 11 : " And ye shall eat it in haste ; it is the Lord's passover," with those of our Lord in the words of the sacramental institution, " Take, eat, — this bread ; — this is my body." Now the words, It is the Lord's passover, 82 THE DOCTRINE OF cannot mean that the paschal feast which the Jews were urged to eat in haste was the passover itself, in a literal sense, for in the words which immediately follow we read : " For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night," etc. Hence the paschal feast, to be eaten in haste, was not literally, but only in a metonymic sense, the passover, while the Lord only was the real passover ; for it was " he that passed through the laud of Egypt, and smote all its first-born both of man and beast," and his will that expressed itself in the enact- ment, " The blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are : and where I see the blood, I will pass over you," etc. Of this terrible, punitive act of the Lord, on the one hand, and of his signal mercy on the other, the passover-feast, which was to be eaten in haste, was merely a memorial, and, therefore, the phrase. It is the Lord's passover, is elliptical, and means that it denotes, signifies, or represents the Lord's twofold passage, bearing alternatively punishment or blessing in its train, through the guilt-stained land of Egypt. No Jew, with ordinary intelligence, could possibly have understood it otherwise, or could have been stupid enough to think that he was eating the Lord himself, who only was, properly speaking, the passover, and of whose passover the Jewish feast was simply a yearly, hebdomadal, and reminiscent celebra- tion. Now, who is so blind as not to perceive a most palpable and striking likeness between the injunction. Eat in haste ; it is the Lord's passover, and the words, Take, eat ; this is my body ? If the former is mne- monic in its design, as is certain beyond a shadow of THE LORD'S SUPPER. 83 a doubt, the latter must be so too, for they are essen- tially the same in import as well as in phraseology, and alike celebrate momentous soterial events, which are facts boldly standing out in history, and can be known and appreciated only through the historic chan- nel of memory. I therefore feel myself amply war- ranted in assuming the position that the words, This is my body, etc., affirmed of the sacramental bread, have the sense of mean, denote, symbolize, my body, etc., and can no more be taken literally, or inter- preted to imply an actual eating of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, than the words, Eat in haste ; it — the paschal feast — is the Lord's passover, and thus made to imply the eating of Jehovah ! I add, that when human devices assume so extravagant and appalling a character as to make it necessary to point out, at once, their absurdity and dangerous tendency, it seems to become incumbent on an author to employ language which may wear the semblance of irrever- ence, without, however, a remote intention that such should be the case, and which is, therefore, to be attrib- uted to the urgency of the occasion, or the desperate nature of the subject. 84 THE DOCTRINE OF CHAPTER 11. Christ, the Pounder of the New Testament. In entering upon the subject of the present chapter, we meet with new, and, I conceive, forcible arguments in favor of the position advanced in these sheets, and carrying with them overwhelming evidence against the tenableness and even plausibility of the doctrine of the Real Presence. Attention is called, in the first place, to the term cup in the Lord's Supper. Of it, our Lord says, " Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the New Testament," etc. Here we meet with a repeti- tion of the rhetoric figure called metonymy, which has the distinguishing peculiarity that it substitutes one word for another. Thus, the cup cannot be " the blood of the New Testament," as it is simply a chalice or sacramental vessel, designed to convey the wine to the communicants ; nor can we " drink of it," for we neither do nor can drink cups of any sort, whether sacred or profane. Clearly, then, the name cup here is the substitute for the wine in the cup: this people can and do drink; and this must, therefore, have been meant when the disciples were requested by our Lord, agreeably to a rhetoric trope, to drink of the cup. But even the wine itself is a metonymy ; for it can no more be Christ's blood than the cup, but is a substitute in the Syriac language, in which the Saviour spoke when he instituted the Lord's Supper, for such phrase as the THE LORD'S SUPPER. 85 following: this signifies, this represents, etc., my blood. This exposition, it really seems, ought to be regarded and hailed as plain, natural, true, nay, self-evident, by every intelligent and truth-loving mind. If now we pass in review the words of the sacra- mental institution, in reference to the bread, we shall find that Jesus designated it as Ms body, and hence discover a striking analogy, both of expression and import, between the bread, the cup, and the wine; and as the latter are tropes, — shown to be such, — and gen- erally instinctively taken as such by the majority of mankind, being not literally what they are affirmed to be, but what they figuratively imply to be, it follows that the former — the bread — must be interpreted in the same way, and mean, not what it is ostensibly affirmed to be, but what it signifies or represents. Nor, I pre- sume, can it be deemed an easier matter to eat the real body of our Lord, in the hostia or consecrated wafer, than to drink of the cup ; the one being fully as in- comprehensible and impracticable as the other. As, therefore, the cup denotes the wine, and the wine the blood of Christ, shed or poured out for us, " for the remission of sins," in founding the New-Testa- ment scheme or economy of grace, so the bread denotes the body of Christ, given for us ; and both the bread and the cup or the wine are incidents or conditions in the same paramount proposition, that Christ is about to die for us, and thus, in his death, to give his body and shed his blood sacrificially in our behalf, as essential to the plan to institute the New Testament dispensa- tion, and hence to open the way of salvation to sin- 86 THE DOCTRINE OF ful, heaven-destined man. Such being the fact in the case, the body and the blood of Christ are to be sought and found on the cross, whither, accordingly, the Lord's Supper points our faith and our hope, and where only the eucharistic commemoration of the ex- piatory Christ-sacrifice can softly and safely lay our weary, fainting souls in the mercy-breathing bosom of the great Redeemer. I will only further remark here, that the important theme of the mnemonic feature in the Lord's Supper — at once so singularly expressive and prominent — will be briefly resumed in the sequel of this chapter. In the treatment of the present subj^ect, it will be necessary to direct our inquiry with more immediate reference to "the blood of the New Testament." In making contracts or covenants, especially of a solemn, religious character, it was anciently the prac- tice, both among Jews and Gentiles, to ratify them with the blood of sacrificial victims. The staining of the posts and lintels of the doors of the Hebrew houses, with the blood of the paschal lamb, was simply the seal and symbol of a sacred contract between Je- hovah and the Chosen People, the meaning of which was: if you thus use the blood of the paschal lamb as you have been directed, you shall be saved ; but if you do not use it thus, the appalling and inevitable fate of the doomed Egyptians will await you I With a view further to illustrate and confirm this interesting subject, on which hinges so much valuable exegesis, attention is invited to Exodus, xxiv. 1-8, where we find the record of a covenant or testament THE LORD'S SUPPER. 87 made between God and the Jewish people. Having been intrusted by Jehovah with the terms and object of the covenant which he was about to establish with the Israelites, Moses descended from the craggy heights of Mount Sinai, and appearing among the people, who were anxiously, perhaps impatiently, awaiting his re- turn, he told them " all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments : and all the people answered with one voice, and said. All the words which the Lord hath said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt- offerings, and sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins ; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people : and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." In the Epistle to the Hebrews, ix. 19-22, we find a concise statement of the extensive range and signifi- cant import of this ancient and impressive custom, especially verified by reference to Jewish history, and hence learn still further, that contracts or covenants were ordinarily hallowed and confirmed as late even as the first century of the Christian era through the in- strumentality of bloo'fl : the blood denoting, at the same 88 THE DOCTRINE OF time, as has been already stated, that the party in the contract that should break or violate the conditions of the covenant, which it was possible only for the Israel- ites, the weaker and peccant party of the contracting powers, to do, should fare no better than the slaugh- tered victim whose blood was spilled on the solemn occasion. " When Moses," thus writes the sacred his- torian, " had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, be took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood ; and without shedding of blood is no remission." Now, it was substantially in conformity to this He- brew custom that Christ instituted the New Testa- ment ; that, to render it valid, he died, ay, gave his body and shed his blood, "to cleanse us from all sin" ; that all that should faithfully observe the conditions of the contract thus entered into with the Saviour should be saved ; but that all, on the contrary, that should re- ject or violate it, should forfeit their interest in his vicarious death, and perish miserably, without the pale and without the hope of redemption. A main question, therefore, arises. In what way or with what sentiments ought we to celebrate this ex- piatory or vicarious death of our Lord when we gather around the sacramental table ? The Symbolist brother confidently replies, We celebrate ft worthily, in fact, in THE LORD'S SUPPER. 89 the only worthy and eminently proper way, if we par- take orally of the Saviour's body and blood in, with, and under the external signs of bread and wine 1 Not thus, I am thoroughly persuaded, teaches the Lord Jesus Christ. On the contrary, he says, Luke xxii. 19, " This is my body," — denotes my body: "this do in remembrance of me." Clearly, then, the Lord's Supper is to be regarded as a memorial rite, and must, accordingly, be chiefiy, though, as I shall show here- after, not exclusively, valued as a mnemonic institu- tion. Confirmatory of these views, both apparently as scriptural as they are reasonable, St. Paul writes, 1 Corinthians, xi. 23-26, That he had received his in- formation on the subject of the institution and design of the Lord's Supper " of the Lord," — evidently imply- ing that it was by a special revelation. And what does the Lord say to the Apostle communicants should sedulously aim to impress upon their minds when they devoutly participate in the solemn sacramental feast? I answer, That Christ's body was broken — on the cross, of course — for them, or, in other words, that the Saviour died for them, and that they should diligently and rev- erently observe two things in reference to this impor- tant fact, both whenever they came together to cele- brate the Lord's Supper and while they lived : first, remember that Christ died for them, and humbly and immovably obey his sacred injunction, " Do this in re- membrance of me'' ; " This do ye, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me"; and secondly, that, "As often as we eat this bread" — not the Saviour's veritable body and blood — " and drink this cup," we should " sho w 8* 90 TBE DOCTRINE OF the Lord's death" — proclaim it to the world — " till he come." To sum up, in a few words, the pith and drift of this very opportune Pauline communication of a Divine and special revelation to the Christian Church, on the proper nature and design of the Lord's Supper, I may state that its language is at once simple and easily understood ; that it cannot but prove satisfac- tory and convincing to the candid searcher after truth;' and that, finally, as must be evident to even an ordinary understanding, it possesses the inappreciable advantage as well as the delightful assurance to have the approbation of God and the triumph of truth on its side. THE LORD'S SUFFER: 91 SEOTIOlisr XII. TEE LORD'S SUPPER, beside being a COMMEMORATIVE ORDINANCE, is also a MEANS OF GRACE. That the Lord's Supper is eminently a commemo- rative rite I have clearly shown, I think, in the im- mediately preceding chapters, both from the natural purport of its language and the plain object of its in- stitution. It being, as is demonstrable, as a Christian rite, a kind of parting memento affectionately confided by Christ to his followers, — a sacred keepsake, virtu- ally, inscribed with the parting words of the Saviour- friend, Forget me not ! That it is, however, at the same time exceedingly well adapted to promote the paramount interests of a pious and holy life, in the sincere and zealous believer, there can be no reason- able doubt. It is peculiarly fitted to carry back the exercise of memory on the rapid wings of time to the tragic scenes enacted on the cross, where Christ, ex- piring, impressed the blood-stained seal of hope and pardon — the sign-manual oihxs.W.agdiom — onihe Magna Gharta of his world-redemption : the wonder and glory of the love of God to man. While thus the agonies and death of Christ are recalled vividly to the mind of the communicant, the Sacrament awakens in it the most profound gratitude towards the gracious 92 TS£1 DOCTRINE OF and magnanimous Redeemer. It seasonably brings home to us in a most pertinent and forcible manner, while surrounding the sacramental table, the signifi- cant fact, that we all have urgent need of a Saviour; that the Saviour has died for all, irrespective of person or race; and that, in the sight 'of God, we are thus far, at least, equal, and should, therefore, love each other with the sincere affection of a common Christian brotherhood. Besides, the hearts of the communicants — under the holy and blessed sacramental influence — are melted with devotional fervor ; the affections drawn out and sanctified ; and the soul, being in effect now happily laid open, it is suitably prepared for gra- cious Divine influences, thus emphatically receiving the comfort and encouragement which Christians so greatly need to a successful prosecution of their high and holy vocation, while their faith is rekindled and strengthened, and the hope of everlasting life, together with the assurance of the Divine favor, lives and flourishes with renewed and ever-increasing vigor in their upward-bound souls, sanctified and blessed of God. Animated by such views, and governed by senti- ments like these, Professor S. S. Schmucker, in his " Elements of Popular Theology," writes thus of the Lord's Supper as a means of grace : " The Lord's Supper is a symbolic and affecting exhibition of the facts of the atoning death of the Son of God, and of the various momentously interesting relations of that death to the moral government of the world and the salvation of sinners. Nor are these truths any the less affecting, when these outward ordinances — the Lord's THE LORD'S SUPPER. 93 Supper and Baptism — are the signs by which they are presented to the mind, than when described in words." The views here expressed by this eminent divine, I venture to remark, agree essentially with my own, nor are they less accordant with those advanced by the learned and eloquent Mosheim, in his " Ecclesiastical History," etc., when treating of the rites and ceremo- nies used in the Christian Church during the first cen- tury : "The rites instituted by Christ himself," he assures us, " were only two in number, and these were designed to continue to the end of the Church here below, without any variation. These rites were bap- tism and the holy supper, which are not to be consid- ered as mere ceremonies, nor yet as symbolical repre- sentations only, but also as ordinances accompanied with a sanctifying influence upon the heart and the affections of true Christians," etc.* Of faith and repentance I shall not speak here, as they are universally admitted to rank pre-eminently among the means of grace, emphatically of saving grace too, and to be in respect to human agency in redemption what the death of the Saviour — its Divine, supernatural element, is — a sine qua non, or, in other words, an indispensable condition. Though the Lord's Supper is especially instrumental in procuring for us * It was not until some time in the second century of the Chris- tian Church, according to Mosheim, that the notion that the Lord's Supper was a saving ordinance began to develop itself to any con- siderable extent. That notion was, therefore, sacramentally consid- ered, abnormal and repugnant to the plain letter of the eucharistic institution, and, of course, merits no further attention in this place. 94 THE DOCTRINE OF rich and varied Divine blessings, and hence peculiarly efficient as a means of grace, I may observe that, in the enlarged sense of the term, every rite or institu- tion claiming a scriptural origin, and thus having the Divine sanction, is suited to be promotive of the at- tainment of Christian graces or heavenly gifts : as the use of prayer, psalmody, reading the Scriptures, at- tendance on homiletic instruction, etc. Providential visitations too, manifested in strikingly adverse or pros- perous events, are often powerful and very enduring means of grace, constraining the impenitent to reflect and pause in their wild and headlong career, and to ask. What must we do to be saved ? or filling the pious soul with unspeakable joy and gratitude, under a lively sense of the great and unmerited goodnessof God. For every agency of the kind here pointed out, or implied, is well adapted to spiritual instruction, edification, and improvement, while, at the same time, it facilitates the acquirement of a frame of mind, properly prepared for the benign influences of the Holy Spirit, that at once enlightens, renews, and sanctifies the heart, and thus effectually restrains and preserves it from sin and its allurements. Though Christ is not bodily present in the Lord's Supper, as I have shown and shall still continue to show, is he not present at all, thus rendering this ordinance a more thorough and effectual meaus of grace, conferring blessings far greater than it can otherwise do ? Yes, he is present in the Lord's Sup- per, though in a pre-eminent degree, as he is present in all heaven-appointed means of grace, and, therefore, THE LORD'S SUFFER. 95 in a maimer similar to his promised presence with his followers, or, in other words, with his Church. (Mat- thew xxviii. 20.) Wherever his word is, or his Sacraments are, or wherever any of the scripturally appointed or approved ordinances are properly ad- ministered, there is he, manifesting himself through the inherent moral power of these select vehicles of Divine grace and approval. Hence, as I am under necessity, in virtue of honest, conscientious convic- tions, peremptorily to reject the dogma of the Real Presence, I feel myself likewise constrained, in con- sequence of its decided unscripturalness, most em- phatically to protest against the sacramental doctrine of a mystic or supernatural presence considered as some- thing altogether distinct from Christ's presence gener- ally, as it is manifested through his appointed and, therefore, sanctioned and sanctified means of grace.* * The doctrine of the " Mystic Presence,'' aa set forth by Dr. Nevin, is really, as this learned divine teaches, the doctrine of Calvin; but, notwithstanding Calvin's authority, it is clearly founded upon bare assumption, as it is, I conceive, entirely unsupported by evangelical sanction. Hence, though it should be conceded that Calvin, accord- ing to the distinguished author of the Mystic Presence, " was,emphati- cally the great theologian of his age," such concession must not make ua ignore the fact that one ia our master, rabbi, or teacher, even Christ, 6ur only and divinely-appointed creed-maker, and "that all we are brethren," learning only of Christ, our sufficient and only master. (Matthew, xxiii. 8.) I will only add, that whatever is essential to our salvation dares not be obscured by mysticism, otherwise it ia an enigma, not a revelation, and therefore incompetent to be ranked among the means of saving grace, or the redemptive instrumentalities of the Lord Jesus Christ. 96 THE DOCTRINE OF I THE USE OF BLOOD, as FOOD, is forbidden in SCRIPTURE, and cannot, there/ore, constitute a part of the Real Presence. CHAPTER I. Its Prohibition in the Old Testament. What God at one time absolutely prohibits to be dietetically used, he cannot, under any circumstances, at another, enjoin to be so used ; and, therefore, the use of blood, as food, being thus prohibited, blood cannot form a part of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper, unless it can be shown that it is not impossi- ble for the same thing to be or not to be ; an art which, it seems, the Jews in Isaiah's time could boast to pos- sess, when they " put darkness for light, and light for darkness." I shall now cite .authotity from the Old Testament to prove that blood is absolutely prohibited as an article of food, and that the penalty annexed to the violation of the law on this subject is death. The first instance of a prohibitory enactment on this subject is recorded in Genesis, ix. 3-6, and is con- tained in these words : " Every moving thing that liveth, shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb TEE LORD'S SUPPKJR. 9t have I given you all things. But 'flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I re- quire ; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man ; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man," etc. However exegetes may differ in their exposition of this remarkable passage, it is clear that blood, used as food, either alone or in connection with flesh eaten without depletion, is peremptorily prohibited, while death is declared to be the inevitable penalty of a violation of the Divine prohibition ; and that, as inci- dental to a barbarous age, cannibalism was one of the savage forms in which the bloody meals of those days were wont to be indulged. We next turn to Leviticus, iii. 17 ; vii. 26, 2.f ; xvii. 10, 14 ; six. 26. The words contained in these por- tions of Scripture reiterate and confirm the Divine statute against the dietetic use of blood. They are the following : " It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood ; ye shall eat no manner of blood : whatsoever soul it is that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people. And whatsoever man there is of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood, I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people ; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof. Ye shall not eat anything with the blood." These are plain words, plainly spoken, and will, no 9 98 THE DOCTRINE OF doubt, be plainly enough executed. Passing on to Deuteronomy, xii. 16, 23-25; xv. 23, we again find the statute against the use of blood, as food, renewed and in full force, and notice that while flesh diet was allowed to be freely indulged in by the Jews, the com- mand to them was : " Only ye shall not eat the blood, ye shall pour it upon the earth as water ; only be sure that thou eat not the blood, for the blood is the life, and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh. Thou shalt not eat it ; thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water. Thou shalt not eat it ; that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord," etc. In this place the fourth verse of the sixteenth Psalm also demands a brief notice. This Psalm was regarded by Luther, as well as by many other theologians of his time, as Messianic, an honor which has not grown obsolete, and as such I shall consider it on this occa- sion. The words relevant to the subject are : " Their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer.'' These drink- offerings were libations made in honor of the gods, and consisted of blood, or of blood mixed either with wine or water. A part of the offering was drunk, and the remainder poured out at the foot of the altar, sacred to the object of this mode of religious worship. Christ positively declares that he will not pollute his lips by tasting or offering such bloody libations : he will not drink it, this drink-offering of blood 1 And can it be possible that he " who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," can so alter his mind or change THE LORD'S SUPPER. 99 his conduct, that in the New Testament, and in an in- stitution emphatically sacred to himself, he can, with proper Divine consistency, require of his disciples to drink his blood ? Never, no, never I CHAPTER II. Its Prohibition in the New Testament. In the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we find that certain Judaizing teachers propagated the doctrine among the Christians of the city of Antioch, in Syria, that Gentile converts to Christianity must submit to the ancient Hebrew rite of circumcision, otherwise their conversion could not be regarded as valid, nor their pretensions to an honorable position among the Christians as at all pertinent or well- founded. The circumstance caused considerable dis- turbance as well as not a little bickering and animosity among the zealous and alike determined adherents of the adverse parties ; and, in order to settle the dispute as well as to put an end to a very unamiable state of feeling among the contendents, it was at length re- solved that the case should be carried up for decision to the church at Jerusalem, in which Peter — the Ce- phas among the Apostles — played a conspicuous part, and James the Less, brother of our Lord, occupied the honorable position of president. Accordingly, the An- 100 TBE DOCTRINE OF tiocbian Christians made choice of Paul and Barnabas, together with some other notable persons, to go up to Jerusalem and lay the matter before the Apostles and Elders of that place for final adjudication. They ex- ecuted their important commission with no less fidelity than alacrity and success. Their arrival being duly announced, " the Apostles and Elders came together to consider the matter." A vehement dispute arose in this nascent ecclesiastical council, and Peter found it necessary to make a speech, full of energy and per- tinent remark, and in which he most emphatically took side with the liberal party, whose motto was. Progress, and bore down with power and emphasis against the unfortunate opposition, while he decidedly repudiated the narrow-mindedness and bigotry of an obsolete and effete formalism. James generously and wisely sided with his bold and energetic colleague, and the result was, that a decree was promptly issued which restored peace to the distracted church at Antioeh, and secured a final triumph to the Pauline standpoint of Chris- tianity. This decree, with some repetition, incidental elucidations, and concise introductory remarks, is thus expressed : " Known unto God," writes St. James, the venerable apostle, and brother of Jesus, " are all his works from the beginning of the world. Wherefore, my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God ; but that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood," etc. " Then," thus proceeds the sacred narrative, " pleased it the Apostles and Elders, THE LORD'S SUPPER. 101 with the whole Church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch, with Paul and Barnabas, namely, Judas, surnamed Barsabas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren : and they wrote letters by them after this manner. The Apostles, Elders, and Brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia. For- asmuch as we have heard that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words sub- verting your souls, saying. Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law, to whom we gave no such com- mandment: it seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and Paul ; men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent, therefore, Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things ; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication ; from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." What is to be especially noticed here is, that the authors of this primordial decree in the Christian Church, consisting of "the Apostles', Elders, and the Brethren'' of the Christian society at Jerusalem, did not act altogether in self-reliance, but sought and found succor through the gracious and opportune instru- mentality of the Holy Ghost ; for thus it is asserted in the decree, " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, 9* 102 TSE DOCTRINE OF and to us." Thus Peter, occupying a position in the foremost rank among the apostles ; James the Less, brother of our Lord ; the Christian elders and brethren of the Church at Jerusalem ; and the Holy Ghost from heaven, unite with one accord in the prohibition of the use of blood as food, either alone, or still retained in the defunct bodies of the strangled animals, employed as food.* Moreover, God, as Elohim or Jehovah, pro- hibits the use of blood as an article of diet in Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; as Christ, in the six- teenth Psalm, — by his example ; and as the Holy Ghost, in the Acts of the Apostles ; and yet, after all this overwhelming mass of testimony, of heaven and earth combined, on the subject, we are told that Christ requires us to recognize and to drink his blood in the Lord's Supper ! Alas, what strange hallucination I * When the Antlochian Christians are required to abstain from things strangled, "We are to understand," writes Dr. Clarke, "the flesh of those animals which were strangled for the purpose of keep- ing the hlood in the hody^ as suoh animals were esteemed a great deli- cacy." THE LORD'S SUPPER. 103 siEomoisr v. THE APOSTOLIC DEORBE, ACTS, XY. 1-29, PEOHIBITINO THE USE OF BLOOD, AS AN ARTICLE OF. FOOD, IS STILL IN FORGE. It has been argued, both in aDcient and more recent times, that the apostolic decree, prohibiting the use of blood as an article of food, was designed to be only of temporary obligation ; that it was simply intended to arrest certain evils prevalent in a part of the Church at the time of its promulgation ; and that, of course, it ceased to have validity as soon as the cause which gave rise to it ceased. The subject is one of no ordinary interest, and I am happy to be able to avail myself of a part of a most thorough and excellent disquisition, the object of which is its complete Illustration, by Dr. Delaney, in a work entitled "Revelation examined with Candor."* His reasoning is so cogent, his style so pithy and pointed, and his polemics so calm and courteous, that, with the truth all on his side, he must necessarily obtain an easy and complete triumph. "But to proceed," writes the Doctor, " if this decree met only a temporary necessity, how long did this ne- cessity last ?" To this Dr. Hammond answers, that * See Dr. Clarke on the Acts of the Apostles. 104 TSE DOCTRINE OF it lasted till the Jews and Gentiles were formed into one communion. And St. Augastine says that it lasted till the time that no carnal Israelite appeared in the chm'ch of the Gentiles ; and again, that it lasted till the temple and the Jewish polity were destroyed. To all this, I answer, that if the two first opinions are ad- mitted, then the necessity of observing the apostolic decree continues to this day : first, because the Jews and Gentiles are indisputably not yet fully formed into one communion ; and secondly, because there was never any time wherein there was not some carnal Israelite in the church; and I think it must be notori- ous to many of my readers, that there are some such even in this part of the Christian Church, at this day: and so doubtless in every Christian Church over the face of the whole earth; and therefore both these opinions are wild and unsupported. As to the third opinion, namely, that the necessity of observing this decree lasted only till the destruction of the Jewish temple and polity, I answer, that what- ever may" be thought of the necessity of this decree, it is evident that the wisdom of it, and the advantage of that abstinence which was due to it, extended much further. Since, without this, that calumny, imputed to Christians, of killing infants in their assemblies, and drinking their blood, could never be so easily and so effectually confuted ; for nothing could do this so thoroughly, as demonstrating that it was a fundSf mental principle with Christians to touch no blood of any kind ; and what could demonstrate this so effect- ually as dying in attestation to the truth of it, as it is THE LORD'S SUPPER. 105 notorious, both from the apologists and the ecclesi- astical historians, that many Christian martyrs did? But it is further urged that this apostolic decree was only given to the Jewish proselytes, and, consequently, that the necessity of abstaining from blood and things strangled related to them only ; this, they tell us, ap- pears, "in that the Apostle, when he preached in any city, did it as yet in the synagogues of the Jews, whither the Gentiles could not come, unless they were proselytes of the gate." Now this opinion, I think, will be sufficiently confuted by demonstrating these two things : first, that before the passage of this decree St. Paul preached Christianity to the whole body of the Gentiles, at Antioch ; and secondly, that this decree is directed to the Gentiles at large, and not to the Jewish proselytes. This transaction at Antioch — the preaching of Christianity by St. Paul to the whole body of the Gentiles — happened seven years before the decree against blood and things strangled was passed by the Apostles at Jerusalem. Can any man in his senses doubt, after this, whether the Apostles preached to the Gentiles before the passing of that decree ; when it appears, from the words now recited, that the Apos- tle s not only preached to the Gentiles, but preached to them in contradistinction to the Jews? And does any man know the Jews so little as to imagine that when the Apostles turned to the Gentiles, from them, the Jews would after this suffer those Apostles to preach to the Gentiles in their synagogues ? Besides, the text says, that the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region, Acts, xv. 23 ; consequently 106 TBE DOCTRINE OF the Apostles were so far from confining themselves to the Jewish synagogue that they were not confined eren to the extent of that ample city, Antioch, but preached throughout the whole country. This opinion, then, that the Apostles preached only to the Jews and proselytes before the passing of the decree against blood at Jerusalem, is demonstrably false ; and if they preached to the Gentiles at large, to whom else can that decree be directed ? It is directed to the Gentile converts at large ; and who can we imagine those converts were but those to whom Christianity was preached, that is, the Gentiles at large ?* But this is yet further demonstrated from St. James's sentence, in this fifteenth chapter of Acts, upon which the apostolic decree is founded. His words are these : " Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God : but that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. For Moses of old time hath rn every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." Acts, XV. 21. What then ? What if Moses had those that preached him in the synagogues every Sabbath ? Why then there was no necessity of writing upon these points to any of those who were admitted into the synagogues ; because they knew, from the writings of * The Jews, being already in possession of astringent code of laws interdicting the dietetic use of blood, needed no new enactment on the subject, Acts, xv. 21. — G. TBE LORD'S SUPPER. lOT Moses, that all these things were, from the foundation of the world, unlawful to the whole race of Adam : Genesis, ix. 3-6. The substance of the Apostle James's sentence is. That we write to the Gentile converts upon these points. Acts, XV. 20 ; for Moses hath those of old time in every city, that preach him, — that is, there is no neces- sity of writing to any Jewish convert, or to any prose- lyte convert to Christianity, to abstain from those things ; because all that are admitted into the syna- gogues — as the proselytes are — know all these things sufficiently already ; and accordingly, upon this sentence of St. James, the decree was founded and directed. Acts, XV. 28, 29 : doubtless, froni the nature of the thing, directed to those whom it was fitting and neces- sary to inform upon these points, — that is, those who were unacquainted with the writings of Moses ; for the decree, as far as it contained a direction to certain duties, could give no information to any others.. An objection is also raised against this doctrine from the conclusion of the decree. Ye do well ; insinuating that though they should do well to observe it, yet they did no ill in not observing it. I answer, that doing well, in the style of Scripture, as well as common speech, is acting agreeably to our duty ; and doing well in necessary things must certainly be acting agree- ably to necessary duty ; and certainly the same duty cannot be at the same time necessary and indiffer- ent. The objection is farther added, that if the points contained in this decree are not parts of the Mosaic law, the decree has no relation to the question in debate ; 108 THE DOCTRINE OF for the debate was, whether the Geatile converts to Christianity should be obliged to observe the law of Moses ? My reply is, that the decree hath the clearest relation to the question ; inasmuch as it is a decision that the Gentile converts were not obliged to observe the law of Moses. It hath, at the same time, a plain relation to the point in question; for what could be more proper than to take occasion to let the Gentiles know that they were obliged to the observance of such duties as were obligatory antecedently to the law of Moses, Genesis, ix. 3-6, though they were exempted from that law ? Beside this, it is urged that the decree could only oblige those to whom it was directed, — that is, the Gen- tiles of Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicla. As if the decree, and the reason of it, did not equally extend to all Gentile converts throughout the whole world. And as if this doctrine was only taught and received in those particular regions ; when it is evident, beyond a possibility of being denied or doubted, that all Chris- tians, in every region of the earth, were taught, and actually embraced, the same doctrine, at least, for the first three hundred years after Christ. rinally, it is objected that this dispute could not have happened otherwise, except between Gentile and Judaizing converts ; and consequently, the decision of it must have respect to the conduct, which it was then necessary the Gentiles should hold, with regard to the Jews, who could not converse with them upon the basis of a friendly communication ; could not sit at meat, etc., unless the Gentiles abstained from blood, etc. ; THE LORD'S SUPPER. 109 consequently that this necessity has now ceased. My answer to this, admitting the premises, is, I must own I cannot see how this conclusion follows from them, as long as there are Jews and Mohammedans in the world to be converted to the Christian religion.* * From Bruoe's Travels, according to Burder's " Oriental Cus- toms," it appears that when he visited Abyssinia, the natives prac- ticed eating blood, not only of slaughtered animals, but of such as were still alive, exsecting or cutting out slices of meat from the rump of a cow, " thicker and longer than our ordinary beef-steaks." Antes, in his " Observations on the Manners and Customs of the Egyptians," thus confirms the foregoing statement : " I have heard not only Bruce's servant, but many eye-witnesses, often speak of the Abyssinians eating- raw flesh." How prone the Israelites were to the crime of eating blood, not- withstanding the severe penalties, which were denounced against the practice, is shown by reference to 1 Samuel, xiv. 32, 33. 10 110 THE DOCTRINE OF SECTIOISr -vi. THE DISCOURSE OF THE SAVIOVR, IN JOHN, VI. 32- 63, IMPARTIALLY EXAMINED, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH DIRECT REFERENCE TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE IN THE LORD'S SUPPER. The memorable incident which, it seems, gave rise to the discourse of our Lord, recorded int John, vi. 32- 63, may be recognized in the thirtieth and thirty-first verses of that important chapter. The Jews asked the Divine teacher to give them a sign calculated to accredit the authenticity of his mission, as Moses did to their ancestors, when he gave them "bread — manna — from heaven." Our Lord denied that that manna was heaven-bread, in the higher and proper sense of the term, and assured his sign-seeking and hyper-skeptic countrymen that he alone had the real, life-giving and saving heaven-bread, the spiritual manna, descending from the empyrean abode of bliss, far transcending, in preciousness and enduring excellence, all Arabia's manna, though eminently a God-given gift. The Capernaitic discourse, so called from the fact that it was delivered at Capernaum, a principal city of Galilee, is remarkable for its eminently figurative lan- guage, owing to which, it has often proved the puzzle THE LORD'S SUPPER. HI and the discomfiture of the exegete. Yet the difficulty, properly to interpret it, is doubtless more to be ascribed to a want of just appreciation of the genius of Orien- tal language, which is emphatically prolific and, oc- casionally, even exuberant, in the use of tropes, as has been already shown, and as is here at once, so forcibly and in so remarkable a degree, exemplified in the rhetoric composition before us. But, it may be said, if the Orientals are so familiar with such extraordinary phraseology as that which the Saviour used in his Capernaitic discourse, how is it that, ac- cording to the sacred writer, neither his Jewish nor his Christian hearers understood the true meaning and drift of his words, though they were both natives of the East; and besides, his intimate disciples — espe- cially the Apostles — had already had considerable opportunity to familiarize themselves with his some- what frequent and excessive indulgence in the employ- ment of tropes, which might at first, in some measure, bewilder or startle an Occidental audience ? If, in- stead of an Apostle, a secular historian should record the fact that the Jews, Instead of instantly compre- hending the aim and force of the fiowery expressions of our Lord, used on this occasion, had, on the con- trary, manifested profound perplexity, exclaiming, " How can this man give us his flesh to eat ?" — or, that many of the Saviour's disciples, of whom it seems better things might have been expected, instead of readily affiliating in sentiment with the Oriental modus loquendi of their Divine and beloved rabbi, appear to have been fully as obtuse, in respect to an intelligent 112 TEE DOCTRINE OF and profitable appreciation of the important truths that were proclaimed to them, as the carnal and indocile Jews, and to have betrayed an ignorance and inapti- tude of learning not at all inferior to their unregener- ate countrymen, exclaiming, " This is a hard saying ; who can hear it ?" — I should feel hesitancy to credit the statement, so implausible does it seem, at first blush, to a person living in the light of the nineteenth century, yet who humbly presumes to include himself among an audience to whom the Capernaitic discourse is ever addressed, and to whom it must always be a topic of the highest interest as well as priceless value. The remarkable modes of expression in this striking discourse, which merit a brief yet careful attention in this connection, are, that Christ is " the bread of God" ; that he is " the bread of life" ; that " he that cometh to him shall never hunger, and he that believeth in him shall never thirst." Moreover, that he is "the living bread" ; that " whoever eats this bread — the spiritual manna — shall live forever" ; that the bread which he gives his followers is his flesh, which he gives " for the life of the world"; that unless we "eat his flesh and drink his blood" — metonymic expressions, for subsisting psychologically on the fruits of his redemption — " we have no life in us," but that, on the contrary, " eternal life " will be our reward ; that his flesh and blood are meat and drink indeed; that, finally, " if we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we dwell in him and he in us" : are psychologically one in sentiment and in aspiration. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 113 That these words are figurative and have a spiritual import, though they do not imply supernatural and incomprehensible mysteries, as Luther and others teach, must, I think, be evident to most persons of re- flecting and intelligent minds. Does not our Saviour declare in the plainest and most emphatic language, that the bread which he gives us is his flesh, — that is, the fruit of the sacrifice of himself for the life of the world ? In the death of the cross, he gave his flesh for us, and in thus giving it, — that is, in thus giv- ing himself, — his followers cannot, of course, eat and drink his flesh and blood literally, but they can and shall eat and drink them spiritually, through means of faith and holy living, — that is, appropriate mentally and morally, or, in other words, psychologically, the bless- ings which he procured for us, by becoming a sin- offering in our behalf on Golgotha. I may add, that the sense of these expressions is strikingly analogous to that of the words in the Lord's Supper, This is my body, which is given for you ; this is my blood, which is shed for you, etc., the meaning of which has been sufficiently demonstrated to be figurative. The words in this discourse which are regarded by literal inter- preters as especially favoring the idea of oral mandu- cation — receiving and masticating in the mouth the carnal body of Christ, — a mode of eating the Saviour's body which, it is boldly asserted, is incomprehensible and supernatural — are the following: "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father ; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." The plain, unsophisticated sense of which is, that as Christ, as 10* 114 TBE DOCTRINE OF Saviour, lived through means of the Father's grace, so we should live through his grace, which, by the use of a trope, he calls eating him. In other words, we shall live by him — by his grace or redeeming gifts, procured for us in his death — after the manner in which he lived by the Father, in the possession of "the Spirit without measure." We can no more literally eat Christ than Christ could literally eat the Father ; for the word so, in the text, implies parity in the mode of living by the Father and by the Son, and therefore, as this mode of living is only practicable spiritually in the one case, it must needs be only practicable spir- itually in the other. This view of the subject, I am satisfied, will finally triumph over all opposition, and become the universal sentiment of the Church. Again, Christ says, if we eat his flesh and drink his blood "we shall dwell in him and he in us." The ad- vocates of a Real Presence may well pause and reflect, in the commanding presence of these words ; for surely not an incomprehensible supernatural eating and drink- ing of a corporeal hypostasis will here satisfy sound exegesis, but a spiritual apprehension only of the text can do it justice. I will only observe, that we recip- rocally dwell in Christ and Christ in us, if "the same mind is in us that was in him" : then we are his spir- itual offspring, in the same sense in which Paul calls Timothy "my own son in the faith." Moreover, Christ assures his disciples, that "they should see him ascend up where he was before." Of course, after as- cension, his body would be no longer present or access- ible, and an oral manducation of it would be thence- THE LORD'S SUPPER. 115 forth plainly impossible. Maybe, after that astounding event, their eyes were somewhat opened I Finally, the Saviour clearly settles this question himself, in a man- ner that admits of neither doubt nor gainsaying, in these emphatic and decisive words: "It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing : the words that I speak unto you," — in this Capernaitic discourse, — "they are spirit, and they are life."* * It may not be either without interest or profit to hear Zwingliua' opinion on the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John, illus- trating, at the same time, the nature and design of the Lord's Supper. " Among bis confidential correspondents," writes Professor Mayer, in bis " History of the German Reformed Church," " was Mattheus Alber, pastor of a church in Reutlingen. To this man he imparted his opinion on the words of the institution in the Lord's Supper, Take, eat; this is my body, etc., and the argument, at length, by which be maintained it. It was based chiefly upon the discourse of Christ, in the sixth chap- ter of John, where the Lord speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He granted that Christ had no reference in that place to the eucharistic supper, but observed that he there spoke of an eating of his flesh and a drinking of his blood, by which nothing of a material nature was intended. The Lord calls himself the bread of life, and declares that whoever eats of this bread shall never die; and he presently explains in what sense it is that he calls himself a living food, and in what sense this living food may be eaten : ' The bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world;' and, 'Whosoever believeth in me hath eternal life.' His flesh is, therefore, become the food of the soul so far as it is delivered to death for the world's salvation ; and to eat his fiesh, and to drink his blood, is to believe in him; to believe that he was offered to God as an expiatory sacrifice for our sins, in his flesh, — that is, in his human nature. Hence when the Jews took offence at his words, be- cause he insisted on the necessity of eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, if they would have life, he remarked, in explanation of his meaning, ' It is the spirit that q^uickeneth : the flesh profiteth no- thing.* *What,' says Zwinglius here, 'can bo more forcible than 116 THE DOCTRINE OF In John, iv. 10, 14, 23, 24, we find a close analogy, both in expression and doctrine, to the language and tenets set forth in the Capernaitic discourse. Had the Samaritan woman asked it of Christ, he says, "He would have given her living water" ; adding, that "who- ever drank of the water that he would give him should never thirst," etc. What else can these propositions denote but Christ-indoctrination and the abundant so- terial blessings and graces, incident to the vicarious death of Christ ? The phrase, " living water," cannot, of course, be understood literally, as water is not alive, being a fluid destitute of organic structure, and it must, therefore, imply the means of salvaticJn, with which the Redeemer so richly and beneficently provides his followers. In short, the expressive epithets which the Saviour applies to the proffered water of salvation, at the patriarchal well, must be interpreted spiritually, and in a manner readily comprehensible by the human mind ; for the Christian religion, in its God-given pu- rity, is eminently a spiritual mode of worship, and as such only approved and blessed by God : it is the highest and best form of worship to which, in the providence of God, the human race has yet attained ; it is, in fact, the sublime, soul-ennobling worship of God, " in spirit and in truth," observed and fully re- alized only by "the true worshipers"; a worship em- these words to overthrow all the figments of an essential bodily flesh of Christ in the Sacrament ? If the eating of his flesh in this sense would be useless, could Christ have designed to give us his flesh to eat in the Sacrament? Would he give what he declares to be use- less?'" TBE LORD'S SUPPER. Hf phatically sought and inculcated by God, for " God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" : not in an insensate routine of dead formalism, or hypocritical disguise and delu- sive parade. The water which our Lord gives the believer has never been seen or tasted as water, in the common acceptation of the term ; but as a spiritual blessing, a heavenly gift, conferring everlasting life, it has and ever is. To the foregoing investigation, I add the interesting passage of Scripture found ia Proverbs, ix. 1-5. Here Wisdom is personified, and she has a " house" with " seven pillars "; has "killed her beasts" ; "mingled" — spiced " her wine" : to heighten its color and improve its flavor ; and " furnished her table." The feast being thus prepared. Wisdom's messengers are sent forth to invite the guests ; ay, " she hath sent forth her maidens : she crieth upon the highest places," in the more prominent localities, " of the city, Whoso is simple," — lacks under- standing and the principles of a religious and virtuous life, — " let him turn in hither ; come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled." Here the sacred writer, famous in gnomic lore, represents the means through which we attain to Divine knowledge and a holy life as wine, bread, and the flesh of beasts, — as a soul-feast ; aiid the tropical language which he employs is of the same bold and striking kind as that which we have met in different parts of the Gospel according to John, and subjected to a concise though somewhat elaborate scrutiny. There is wine, here blood ; there the flesh of slaughtered beasts, here the 118 TBE DOCTRINE OF flesh of the Son of man ; there bread, here water and bread. Such lively and picturesque phraseology is ex- tremely beautiful. How grand, yet how simple I how flowery and animated, yet how earnest and solemn, are the style and structure of such sublime and instructive modes of teaching I It was especially the language in the Capernaitic discourse that attracted the notice and claimed the at- tention of the Reformers, in reference to the words in the Lord's Supper supposed to be indicative of a Real Presence. According to the Symbolical Books (see Ludwig's fifth edition of the Book of Concord, page 493 and page 69^),* the body and blood of our Lord, in the Lord's Supper, are not partaken of in a crass, Ca- pernaitic, but in a supernatural and celestial manner, — not in the least intelligible to anybody; yet, notwith- standing this, in their capacity of the real body and blood of Christ, given and shed for us, for the remis- sion of sins. What astounding doctrine ! The identi- cal body and blood of Christ, as they existed at the crucifixion, are orally eaten and drunk, and thus die- tetically consumed like common aliment, etc. ; and yet Luther and the Concordists reject a Capernaitic eat- ing and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood, believed by the Jews and many of the Christian disciples, who composed the audience of our Lord's Capernaitic dis- course, to be absolutely inculcated by the Saviour. * This is the editios of the Book of CoDOord, always referred to, ic this Work, unless otherwise stated. TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 119 What strange contradiction 1 Nay, indeed, I may say, what crude and groveling notions ! But let us hear Luther, as he writes on this subject, in the Larger Catechism : " In consequence of the declaration of our Lord, This — the bread — is my body ; this — ^the wine — is my blood, etc., you may rest con- tent, and bid defiance to a hundred thousand devils, together with all the accompanying crew of fanatics, when they interpose their objection and say, 'How can bread and wine be the body and blood of Christ?' etc. In. spite of such cavil and opposition, — which are not of the slightest weight, compared with Divine wisdom, — Christ's assurance is true and must endure : Take, eat : this is my body ; drink ye all of this : this cup is the new testament in — of in the original — my blood," etc. This view is reiterated and confirmed in the Form of Concord, page 588. In conclusion, it may be stated that the Reformer not only lays great stress upon the words. This is my body, etc., in the Lord's Supper, but also repeatedly appeals, to show the propriety for so doing, to St. Au- gustine's axiom, " Accedat verbum ad elementum, et fit sacramentum," — that is, the words. This is my body, added to the sacramental bread and wine, constitute a sacrament. Hence, that a sacrament may be thus constituted, it seems the words of Christ must be taken literally, notwithstanding the body and blood of our Lord are said not to be manducated or eaten cor- poreally, but spiritually, and in a supernatural and incomprehensible manner, though they are orally brought, like ordinary food, under the proper influence 120 THE DOCTRINE OF of the digestive organs. All this, it seems, happens thus, or is brought about in this way, for the sake of sacramental effect ! Alas, it is difficult to go forth from the bosom of a corrupt Church without bearing away with us some spot or wrinkle! Romanism, once firmly fixed in the soul, though renounced and abhorred, no Christian chemistry can ever quite neutralize or ob- literate I THE LORD'S SUPPER. 121 S IE] C T I O 3Sr VII. THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE, IN THE LORD'S SUPPER, MUST BE, FOREVER, RETAINED; FOR THE book: OF CONCORD, OF WHICH IT FORMS A PART, IS REQUIRED TO BE SUBSCRIBED. CHAPTER I. students and Ministers, at Present received into the German Evan- gelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States, are obliged to subscribe all the Symbolical Books or Con- fessions of Faith. The time is not very remote when the creed of this Ministerium was rather undefined and vacillating than clearly expressed or accurately understood; and it would have been impossible to recognize its tendency or utterance as, in any degree, implying general unan- imity. Its faith in "the commandments of men," as doctrines of the Church, had suffered signal decay, while the affectionate fellowship, love, and good-will subsisting among its members, shone out with re- splendent lustre. Doubtless opinions still differ, but differences of opinions are seldom elicited, or forced to the surface, while usually sufficient concord prevails to insure harmony in counsel and unity of action. 11 122 THE DOCTRINE OF Circumstances, in regard to this subject, have materi- ally altered, and this Ministerium, once lenient and forbearing almost to excess, exercises, at present, con- siderable rigor in its administration, manifesting, in the opinion of some, a spirit not quite compatible with liberty of conscience, or the character of our free in- stitutions. Formerly indifferentism, to a considerable extent,, distinguished its dogmatic views, and few, per- haps, of its members thought either of the necessity or the expediency of subscription to a creed ; but stu- dents who are now received into this Ministerium, after a course of preparatory training, are required, as soon as the solemn act of their ordination is com- pleted, to subscribe unto its ample creed or confession of faith. The same creed-subscription is demanded of those ministers who have heretofore labored outside of the pale of this Ministerium, and who now apply for ad- mission to membership. In neither case, however, as far as is known to the writer, is this fact formally announced in the constitution of this Ministerium, but the truth is, notwithstanding, as it is here stated. " When Evangelical Lutheran ministers," says the constitution of this Ministerium, " who have been ordained by any other Ministerium in the United States, or in any foreign country, or lawfully ordained ministers of another Christian denomination, apply for reception into this Ministerium, they shall produce satisfactory evidence that they have maintained an unblemished character in their previous ecclesiastical relation, and be subjected to a colloquium with the THE LORD'S SUPPER. 123 Examining Committee, in order to establish their agreement with the Confession and usage of this Min- isterium." At their fastallation, the Professors in the Philadel- phia Seminary are required to make the following enunciation of their faith, according to Article 2, Sec- tion 3, of the Constitution of the Seminary : " I believe that the unaltered Augsburg Confession is, in all its parts, in harmony with the Rule of Faith, and is a correct exhibition of doctrine. And I believe that the Apology, the Catechisms of Luther, the Schmalkald Articles, and the Formula of Concord, are a faithful development and defence of the Word of God, and of the Augsburg Confession. And all my teachings shall be in conformity with His word and the above con- fessions." What is especially noticeable here is, that the con- fessions of faith enumerated in this article are put upon a parity with the word of God ; they conform now, and the idea held out is, of course, that they always will conform, which is erroneous, indeed he- retical ; for an appeal from the human creed to the Scriptures should always be deemed in order, and will never be refused, except where ecclesiastical despotism prevails. "All questions concerning the faith of the Church and the administration of the Sacraments," we are informed in the second chapter of this constitution, " shall be decided in accordance with this Rule, and with these Confessions." This Rule and these Con- 124 THE DOCTRINE OF fessions are thus described :* "This Synod confesses that the Canonical Books of the Old and New Testa- ments are the Word of God, given by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and are the clear, only, and sufficient Rule of Faith ; that three General Creeds, the Apos- tles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian, exhibit the faith of the Church universal, in accordance with this Rule ; — that the unaltered Augsburg Confession is,f in all its parts, in harmony with the Rule of Faith, and is a correct exhibition of doctrine ; — and that the Apology, the two Catechisms of Luther, the Schmal- kald Articles, and the Formula of Concord, are a faithful development and defence of the doctrines of the Word of God, and of the Augsburg Confession. "J * Though I have already pointed out the nature and extent of the creed of this Ministerium as the true and literal expression of Sym- bolical Lutheranism, jet I deem it not improper or superfluous to lay it onoe more before the reader in the Ministerium's own language. t " In the year fifteen hundred and forty," writes Schott, in his " Unaltered Augsburg Confession," " Melanohthon published a Latin edition of the Augsburg Confession, in which he left out of the 10th Article, treating of the Sacrament, the words : adsint et distri^ buantur, and in their stead, added : exAi&eanfur/ so. that the whole passage read as follows : De ccena Domini docentj quod cum pane et vino vere exhiheantur corpus et sanguis Christi vescentibus in ccena Domini ; but the words, et improbant secus docentes, therefore the opposite doctrine is rejected — which were directed against Zwingli's and Calvin's followers, — he entirely left out." The meaning of this is, that, instead that the body and blood of Christ are really present in, withj and under the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, the bread and wine only exhibit or represents the body and blood of Christ. J Here we are told that the inspired word of G-od "is the clear and BufScient rule of faith." If this is so, why is the Christian THE LORD'S SUPPEB. 125 CHAPTER- II. By Subscription to an Unalterable Creed Progress in Religious Knowledge is stayed, and Violenoe done to Conscience. Religious associations cannot exist, or its members act in concert, unless they have views and feelings, to a certain extent, in common. "Can," writes the Prophet Amos, " two walk together unless they are agreed ?" But, to a mutual agreement to carry out the principles of the gospel and accomplish all the good that is in our power, according to the measure of Divine grace vouchsafed to us, it is neither necessary nor required that we should unconditionally obligate our- selves to a perpetual observance of a Confession of Faith. The human mind is God-destined to progress- ive development ; and to fetter and inthrall it by ab- solute submission to human opinion, however worthy of attention such opinion may be deemed to be, is a Church pestered and rent with so many conflicting human creeds? If the Scriptures are the only rule, it is clear there can be no other, and why, then, offer another ? Nay, if the Scriptures are the clear, only, and sufBlcient rule of faith, we have no need of the interposi- tion of the authoritative ipse dixit of a St. Augustine, a Thomas Aquinas, a Luther, or a Calvin. Yet I consider it both a pleasure and a duty to listen to the teachings of learned and pious men of past ages, and to entertain with proper respect their opinions as evidences of private, Christian convictions, but not as a regula fidei or rule of faith ! 11* 126 THE DOCTRINE OF criminal encroachment upon the rights of conscience, engraven in the soul by the hand of God himself. Man's action must be free, otherwise it lacks the at- tributes of humanity, and is destitute of responsibility. What Milton writes of the freedom of the spirits in heaven, to stand or fall, is literally applicable to man- kind, and properly deserves a notice in this place. In his "Paradise Lost," the stern poet thus sings: " Not free, what proof could they have given sincere Of true allegiance, constant faith or love, Where only what they needs must do appeared ; Not what they would ? What praise could they receive ? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When will and reason (reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd. Made passive both, had served necessity, Not me ?" etc. If human creeds are irrevocably to bind the soul, the Bible ceases to have formative power in our reli- gious investigations, and it can no longer be counted among the agencies of our salvation. In such case it be- comes, first, superfluous, and secondly, obsolete, when the pope — Protestant or Roman Catholic, it matters little — will say to the friend and the pupil of the Bible as Pio Nono did to his youthful chaplain, Gavazzi, — now Father Gavazzi, the controlling spirit of the Free- Church movement in Italy, — when the latter, in a dis- course in the Church of St. John Lateran, on the day this pope was to assume the tiara or triple crown, spoke in favor of circulating the Holy Scrip- tures. Summoned into his presence, the pope, among other reprimands, thus addressed the incipient reformer : THE LORD'S SUPPER. 127 " Tou spoke* of the circulation of the Holy Scriptures ; are you mad ? The Bible is a theological work, to be locked only in the libraries of ordained priests. Would you revolutionize the world, young sir ?" Thus, where creedism prevails, as is now too much the case, even among Protestant denominations, who appear to prefer an inane ritualism to the untihseled worship taught in the gospel, instead of a direct, quick- ening Bible influence, the Bible must, sooner or later, meet a fate similar to that which has befallen it in papal countries, where — in rare cases only — a special license from the bishop can authorize the reading of it, and where the people have become the easy prey of designing priests. There is no other alternative ; we are free only in as far as "the Son of God makes us free," John, viii. 36 ; he failing us, through Jesuitic craft or idolatrous devotion to human authority, we are inevitably doomed to spiritual degradation and slavery : when the Ark of God fell into the unclean hands of the Philistines, Israel's polar star was quenched in night ! Let us, then, hold fast, with Her- culean grasp, what has been intrusted to our care, as God's best gift to man, — the Bible, " that no man may take our crown," Revelation, iii. 11. If unconditional subscription to creeds is to control the convictions and the duties of the theologian, he has no need to pass through a long and laborious course of study to qualify himself for the proper dis- charge of the functions of his office. All he needs, to * See Lutheran Observer, June 21, 1872. 128 TBE DOCTRINE OF be an orthodox and efScient minister, is implicitly to yield assent to the confession of faith prescribed by his religious association, and in his pulpit and cate- chetical exercises servilely impart and disseminate its peculiar doctrines and institutions. If any of these are unscriptural, they are unscrupulously handed down to distant ages, as chaff among the wheat, and, for errors in faith or practice, there is no remedy. The Real Presence, for example, must not be doubted ; man's utter moral impotence not suspected ; and his uncon- ditional predestination not questioned. Under such appalling circumstances, it is needless to exhort the miaister to study to show himself " approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," 2 Timothy, ii. 15. The Bible, being kept in the background, or, in a doctrinal point of view, altogether ignored, human opinion henceforth supplants the oracles of Grod, and the inquiry is virtually no longer. What do the Scriptures teach, but what teach such men as Luther, or Calvin, or Wesley, or Menno, or Swedenborg ? etc. Their opinions have for centuries been oracular in a large portion of Christendom, and, being the received and honored Shibboleths of the different sects, who are indebted to them for their denominational existence, they will be, as unalterable rules of faith, — instead of advancing with the progress of biblical light, — inviola- bly transmitted to future ages : the wheel of time can move only in the old rut, which is deemed safe, in proportion as it is deep and muddy 1 The attempt to bind the believer, for all time-to THE LORD'S SUPPER. 129 come, to the opinions of men of former ages, is un- scriptural, unprotestant, and unreasonable. Luther, though, unhappily, not always consistent in his views, more than once expressed the generous sentiment that, rather than his writings should draw away the atten- tion of mankind from the Bible, he wished that they might all be committed to the flames. Then, heed- ing such wise teaching, let us beware that subscription to creeds does not petrify our church-life, or swathe the living in the mouldy bands of the niched mummy. Unconditional creed-subscription often exercises a very pernicious influence upon the mind and fortune of the subscriber. If he continues true to his traditional creed, he is, of course, past improvement, and, like the barren Jig-tree, he may justly be supposed to " cumber the ground "; if, on the contrary, he extends his researches beyond it, and finds the word of God and his confessions of faith at variance, he will either suppress his discoveries, and thus dissemble, in order to continue in the undistarbed enjoyment of his present relations, or he will, like a true man, boldly avow his altered sentiments, and, in so doing, be sure to be branded as a heretic. The consequence is, a blight is henceforth shed upon his career. Alas that such is the case, but an " offence " like this, in the language of Shakspeare, " is rank ; it smells to heaven 1"* * In a Sermon on Steadfastness in Doctrine and Duty, " Delivered at the Opening of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Annual Conven- tion of the German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsyl- vania and Adjacent States, Easton, Trinity Sunday, June 4, 1871, by Charles P. SchaefFer, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological 130 THE DOCTRINE OF Seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, at Philadelphia," the inviolable perpetuity of the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church is thus set forth and inculcated. On page 6, the Professor says of Luther and his associates in the Reformation, that when God charged them with this commission, "they never could have accomplished the great work assigned to them unless he had endued them with a living and irresistible faith." From this announcement, the conclusion seems necessarily to follow, that what the Reformers taught, thus "endued," must be as much God's word as the Bible itself. For a faith that is, at the the same time, God-given, living, and irresistible, must rank among the highest species of faith, and cannot, therefore, admit anything superior to it. Of course, the creed of the Reformers must have binding force equal to that of the Bible itself. Again, on page 7, the Professor writes : "We are willing to make every reasonable concession to others for the sake of peace, and for the purpose of conciliating them, but let none ask us to deny or sup- press any of the holy doctrines of our Church," etc. From this statement, I infer that there is little hope that the doctrine of the Real Presence will be erased from the Articles of Faith of old Lu- theranism without a severe struggle. Finally, agreeably to what the Professor asserts, pages 14 and 15, the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures and of the Symbolical Books are of equal authority, and hence, "Our creed must be maintained in its absolute independence, without any increase or diminution suggested by the views of men." No advancement in religious knowledge can be made, since God "hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son," Hebrews, i. 2. Comment here is useless,* and I will only add that, according to Professor Sohaeffer, the Confession of Faith, sacred to Old Lutheranism, appears to be as fixed and immutable as the immortal laws of the ancient Medes and Persians, or like the haughty reply of Pilate to the chief priests of the JewSf " What I have written, I have written," John xix. 22. In the seventeenth paragraph of the twentieth chapter of the fourth book of his " Essay Concerning the Human Understanding," Locke thus writes on servile or implicit submission to received opin- ion : " The last wrong measure of probability I shall take notice of, and which keeps in ignorance or error more people than all the other together, is that which I mentioned in the foregoing chapter; THE LORD'S SUPPER. 131 I mean the giving up our assent to the common received opinions, either of our friends or party, neighborhood or country. How many men have no other ground for tl»ir tenets than the supposed hon- esty, or leariling, or number, of those of the same profession ! As if honest or bookish men could not err, or truth ■were to be estab- lished by the vote of the multitude !— yet this, with most men, serves the turn. The tenet has had the attestation of reverent antiquity, it comes to me with the passport of former ages, and therefore I am secure in the reception I give it : other men have been, and are of the same opinion, and therefore it is reasonable for me to embrace it. A man may more justifiably throw up cross and pile for his opinions, than take them up by such measures. All men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. If we could but see the secret motives that influence the men of name and learning in the world, and the lead- ers of parties, we should not always find that it was the embracing of truth for its own sake that made them espouse the doctrines they owned and maintained. This at least is certain, there is not an opinion so absurd which a man may not receive upon this ground. There is no error to be named which has not had its professors j and a man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if he thinks that he is in the right way whenever he has the footsteps of others to follow." 132 THE DOCTRINE OF SEOTIOIsr VIII. THE BIBLE, NOT MAN OR HUMAN DIOTATION.IS THE ONLY AUTHORITY IN FAITH AND CHRISTIAN LIFE:, A PRINCIPLE OF INTERPRETATION WHICH, IN THE PRESENT LIGHT OF EXEGESIS, MUST PROVE FATAL TO THE DOGMA OF THE REAL PRESENCE. When Christ appeared in Palestine, clothed in the exalted character of Saviour of the world, he pro- claimed the glad tidings of the gospel, with rare ex- ceptions, to the illiterate Jews, — " the lost sheep of the House of Israel," — whose adaptedness for hear- ing the Divine word consisted simply in a sincere desire to be instructed in the principles of the Chris- tian religion, and in the possession and exercise of plain common sense. It happened occasionally that the Saviour, as I have already stated in another place, used phrases or introduced subjects which were not immediately intelligible by his audience, and then, finding that he was not understood, or being asked for an explanation of the discourse or saying with which he had entertained them, he readily complied with their wishes ; and thus his instructions seem, in most cases at least, to have been properly appreci- ated, and to have produced a salutary, if not always THE LORD'S SUPPER. I33 a saving, influence upon the hearts of his unsophisti- cated hearers. Only those who came to him, not to learn, but to scoff and cavil, went away dissatisfied or unameliorated. Otherwise he taught his hearers with so much plainness of manner and simplicity of style, that the most ignorant or stupid must needs have un- derstood him. Commentaries and notes were as little known as they were needed in those pristine days of Christ-teaching, and the Divine mission of the Son of God could be well enough understood without such helps as the Heidelberg Catechism, the Articles of the Synod of Dort, or the Form of Concord. What, man, erring, sinful man, is to be saved, and Christ, who, animated by sentiments of mercy towards him, comes expressly from heaven to save him, fails to make him- self intelligible, without the exegetical aid of a Luther or a Calvin, a Scott or a Henry, a Rosen miiller, a Tholuck, a Lange, and a multitudinous host of other ancient and modern expositors ! What strange, what stupendous, delusion ! It is time, high time, for mankind to wake up to the fact, that whatever is really essential to our salvation is palpable to the most ordinary understanding, and that what is beyond the power of common sense com- prehension is not included in the means or conditions of salvation, but is simply matter for learned specula- tion or philosophic disquisition. For in what does it properly and mainly consist? In this, that Christ is our Saviour; that, accordingly, we must put our trust in him in order to be saved, and do what he requires of us, as far as is possible, or God gives us grace ; that if 12 134 THE DOCTRINE OF we do thus, God will deal mercifully towards us, and forgive us our sins : this, I conceive, is the sum of the whole matter, in a few words ; and to comprehend it, observe it, and realize it, man is, — with the aid of the Holy Ghost, ready to co-operate with him in the attain- ment of all truth appertaining to his salvation, — fully competent. Of these indisputable facts the Apostles were well aware, and when, therefore, they wrote their epistles to individuals or congregations, or to Chris- tians composing more numerous bodies, such as those designated as strangers, elect, scattered over different parts of Asia Minor, 1 Peter, i. 1-2, they habitually invited their attention to the prominent facts in the Christian system of redemption, and exhorted them diligently to conform to them in their thoughts and actions ; thus, with the implied or expressed assisting grace from on high, making sure of their salvation. It would be exceedingly strange, indeed, if the heaven- sent teachers of salvation, and among these the ador- able Son of God himself, had taught a way of salva- tion which nobody could understand without the pre- sumptuous interposition of uninspired man, and that too only after the lapse of generations and centuries ! What, to come to save, and to suffer and die to save, and yet not save, because nobody can form a proper idea either of the meaning or the terms involved in the plan of salvation without the dicta of human de- vices or the creeds of sects 1 Preposterous I Man's competence to an intelligent appreciation of the design and conditions of the New-Testament system of re- demption is clearly set forth in the duty which Christ THE LORD'S SUPPER. I35 and the Apostles enjoined upon him, in the repeated admonitions personally to investigate the sense and scope of the word of God. To this fact I shall now call attention.* ^ In the Reformed Church Messenger of the 2d of February, 1872, appears an article on Dr. Krauth's " Conservative Beforraation," by J. W. N., — that ia, I presume, by Dr. J. "W. Nevin. The following extract, though concise, essentially represents the writer's views, as stated in that article, on the rank and use of the Bible in the Chris- tian Church : "Neither Luther, nor Zwingle, nor Melanchthon, nor Calvin pro- fessed at all to stand upon the principles of the Bible and private judgment in any such naked view as that taught in a late number of the ' Catholic "World,* on Authority in Matters of Faith. They had a very clear sense of Christianity as a Divine historical fact, which had come down to them through the general life of the Church along with the Bible, on objective matters of faith in this form, which was for them older and deeper than the text of the Bible," etc. Here we cannot but notice the assertion of a principle which favors the introduction into the Protestant Church of a kind of Christian Talmudism. The Beformers, I remark, unanimously re- jected, as dogmatic authority, the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, and made the Bible the sole normative ground in matters of faith and a Christian life; but this fact, I regret to say, does not seem to satisfy Dr. Nevin. Christianity, in his opinion, it appears, is sound and unexceptionally orthodox only then when it combines the traditions of a corrupt Church with the word of God ! The indi- vidual, either as clergyman or layman, has no interpretative Scrip- ture rights; these, alas! are vested only in the dominant party, or the proper hierophants of the Church. The Divine afflatus is, ac- cording to the Gospel, the free gift of God to every believing, peni- tent soul, made by Christ "a king and priest unto God," Revelation, i. 6, v. 10 ; but the Church, in its modest sacerdotal capacity, lays ex- clusive claim to the exalted prerogative, and hence man must no longer presume to exercise his Christian functions autonomically, as it is fit that he should, but he must — to be saved— renounce all claims 136 ^^-^ DOCTRINE OF In John, V. 39, Jesus bids the Jews "search the Scriptures," adding that "they bore testimony of him." to free agency, and ever humbly sit at the feet of some infallible Gamaliel ! In common with many others, I have been led to think that the writers of the New Testament were inspired men, and that the Reve- lation, transmitted to us in the G-ospel, was the true and all-sufficient word of God; buti.t appears now that I was wrong, and that as the Jew had his Talmudic reveries beside the Old Testament, so the Christian must have his in addition to the New! It is a question perhaps not easily solved, whether the Pilates of the palace or the teachers in the sanctuary have done most harm to the Son of God ! The gist of the position advanced by Dr. Nevin seems to resolve itself into the following propositions : There is an outward testimony in behalf of the Holy Scriptures and the Church, — the testimony of the Holy Ghost, obtained immediately from the source whence is de- rived the Christian Revelation itself; in consequence of this testi- mony, faith is produced, and this faith, thus produced, becomes, in a most important sense, an independent witness of the truth of Reve- lation. Scripture and the Church, therefore, only serve to bring Christ into view in his historical aspect; but they cannot originate the faith that sees in him the " Son of the Living God" : this can come only from the light of his own presence by the power of the Holy Ghost. Such faith has the assurance that it is true as well as the object towards which it is directed. It says to Scripture and the Church: "Now I believe, not because of your saying; for I have heard and seen for myself, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." I have always been led to. think that the Holy Ghost influenced the human mind through the Gospel, and not by means of a new and independent Revelation, made by our Lord Jesus Christ, in virtue of a special economy of grace, through the Holy Ghost, in contradis- tinction of the written word of God, Luther's exegesis on sanetifica- tioD, in the third article of the Apostles' Creed, is decidedly averse to the Doctor's hypothesis. As to the Westminster Catechism, to which Doctor Nevin refers for authentication of his views, it clearly testifies against a dualistic Revelation in the Christian system of redemption ; THE LORD'S SUPPER. J 3Y Even these priest-riddea Jews are deemed capable of making an accurate investigation of the writings of the for it teaches that the " inward work of the Holy Spirit bears witness hy and with the Word in our hearts."- The following specimen of Protestant pravity deserves to be held up to the serious consideration and profound disgust of every evan- gelical Christian j a Christian who loves Christ more than Loyola, and sets a higher value upon the Gospel than upon papal practices, wickedly aiming to overthrow the authority of Divine revelation, and to rob the followers of Christ of the inalienable right of private judgment. In the Lutheran Observer of the 1st of March, 1872, I find, on page 3, an article from the pen of J. H. W. Stuckenberg, — meaning, no doubt, the distinguished Lutheran clergyman bearing that name, — entitled " From St. Louis to Rome. Professors Baumstark and Preuss.*' " On the 12th of September, 1869, H. Baumstark, professor of the theological seminary of the Missouri Synod, at St. Louis, en- tered the Romish Church ; and on the 25th of last January, Doctor Preuss, professor in the same seminary, followed in his footsteps. These facts should certainly lead the members of that Synod, and all who bear the Lutheran name, to serious reflection. Tractarianism in the Episcopal Church led more than three hundred English min- isters, and many laymen of that Church, into the Romish Church. These facts speak more eloquently and convincingly than all asser- tions that Tractarianism does not lead to Rome. In the German Re- formed and Lutheran Churches there arc similar tendencies, which only the blind fail to see, and which it is wicked to conceal. "Several months ago, I read some statements which seem to throw light on the tendency in the St. Louis Seminary. I read them to a Missouri Synod man, and he urged nie to publish them. But I re- frained from doing so, because I thought that the publication of those statements might serve only to foster useless controversy. But I believe it to be a duty now to publish them, so that men may seo what the tendency in the theological seminary in St. Louis is. "About the same time that Professor H. Baumstark went from that seminary into the Romish Church, a brother of his, in Germany, also * See Reformed Church Messenger, March 20, 1872. 12* 138 THE DOCTRINE OF Old Testament, in respect to matters appertaining to their salvation. Paul and Silas, having been treated with much contumely at Thessalonica, the brethren found his way to Rome. They then puhlished a book, entitled 'Our Ways to the Catholic Church/ in -which they give an account of their change. Some statements made in this book, by the former Missouri professor, are very significant. From «> German religious monthly, which gives a review of the book of the two brothers, I take the fol- lowing account, given by H. Baumstark. He says that in St. Louis he became a devoted and grateful pupil of Prof. Walther, who, on the whole, occupied the same standpoint he had thus far held. There was, however, one thing in the theological seminary at St. Louis which surprised him, namely, the entire neglect of the study of the sacred Scriptures. Baumstark says: 'Of all the various subjects taught in the Lutheran theological seminary, — of which dogmatics took up most of the time, — exegesis was not at all represented. For the two hours a week which were assigned to this subject were taken up with dictations of explanations of old Lutheran theologians on the Sunday gospels and epistles.' But why was the study of the Scriptures so neglected ? Perhaps the following statement of Baum- stark will make the answer evident. He declares that in St. Louis he heard for the first time the principle announced, 'that the Sym- bolical books are not to be interpreted by the Scriptures; but, on the contrary, the Scriptures are to be interpreted by the Symbolical books : daae nickt die SymhoUachen Buecher nach der Schrift auszulegen seieji, eondern umffehehrt die ScJirift nach den Symboliachcn Bueehem." These are the statements of one who was a student in the Mis- souri institutions, then a preacher and zealous defender of the exclu- siveness of the Missouri Synod, and afterwards a professor in their theological seminary. They throw a flood of light on the tendencies in the seminary, and also on the course of Baumstark and Preuss. With such facts before us, it does not seem strange that the step from the seminary into the Romish Church is so easy. The only wonder is that men, teaching such doctrines and thus treating the Scriptures, still claim to be Lutherans. And when such men claim to be the only representatives and authoritative interpreters of Lutheranism, we can only regard them with pity. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 139 "sent them by night to Berea." "These Bereans," we are told, " were more noble than those in Thes- salonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so": Acts, xvii. 10, 11. These singularly judicious Bereans, thus employing reason and personal research to ascertain the truth of the doctrine proclaimed to them by these distinguished missionaries, deserve, on account of this wise and em- inently proper conduct, in relation to a matter of so much importance to their salvation, to have a monu- ment erected to their memory more durable than brass, more precious than gold, and high as the heavens. Owing to this praiseworthy searching of the Scrip- tures, the Bereans found that the apostolic teaching was true, and they believed: Acts, xvii. 12. There would, doubtless, be vastly more Christian faith, not hypocritical faith-seeming, if it was based upon the result of candid personal investigation, instead of blind confidence and servile submission to hereditary, often unbiblical, dogmas of a Church. Again, 1 Thessalonians, v. 21, St. Paul enjoins it as a paramount duty on all Christians, to " prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." To do this involves not only the ability to judge what is good, but also the right to reject or accept as 'is deemed proper, thus forming an independent decision, and being the absolute arbitei's of our action. "Behold," writes the same indefatigable Apostle, in his Letter to the Romans, ii. 17, 18, "thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and 140 TIIE DOCTRINE OF knowest his will, and approvest — after proper dis- crimination — the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law," etc. This praise, thus lavished upon the Jews at Rome, seems well deserved, and implies a habit of carefully searching the Scrip- tures, independently of " the commandments of men" and "the traditions of the elders." High encomiums are bestowed by the Apostle of the Gentiles, in 1 Corinthians, ii. 15, 16, on the wise and exemplary practice of the judicious follower of Christ to self- determine his individual faith, asserting, " That he that is spiritual — has the mind of Christ — -judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." In the following passage, recorded in 1 Corinthians, vii. 23, the Christian is exhorted, by all means, to maintain his religious independence as well as personal integrity, and never to lose sight of his individual responsibility, in these emphatic words : " Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men." With slight variation of expression, this timely and salutary warning is thus repeated, by the same Apostle, in Galatians, v. 1, where he says : " Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty where- with Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." I add, that whether the yoke is a Jewish yoke, as was the case here, or is a Christian yoke, threatening us, as at present, on all sides, it behooves us, according to the freedom-loving Apostle, to be upon our guard, and resolutely, as well as at all hazards, to stand fast in our Chris1>given liberty. The text, in 2 Timothy, iii. 16, 17, next claims a brief attention. It relates especially to the TEE LORD'S SUFFER. 141 Christian minister, and shows conclusively that he, in his individual capacity, has not only a perfect right to use the Scriptures in spite of sacerdotal control or ec- clesiastical prescription, but that he can use them most profitably and savingly. The words are the following: " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness : that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." Finally, though this Scripture declaration of equal rights is, by no means, confined to the foregoing teach- ing, I shall call attention to but one more text, relevant to this interesting and important subject, recorded iii Romans, xiv. 4, where the Apostle thus nobly asserts the absolute individual independence of every Chris- tian in matters of faith and practice, without regard to Synod, Ministerium, or "the thunders of the Vati- can." " Who art thou," thus writes the intrepid Apostle, "that judgest another man's servant? To his own master, he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand." Bible Societies send the word of God, translated, I am informed, into one hundred and forty-eight lan- guages and dialects, everywhere, without comment or proviso, and thus indorse as well as premise uncon- strained personal research. It is through means of these philanthropic institutions that there circulate at this time forty-three millions of copies of the word of God among no less than six hundred millions of human beings. Here the very cheering fact is presented to our notice, that the Holy Scriptures are disseminated 142 THE DOCTRINE OF among about one-half of the inhabitants of the globe, without a priestly veto prefixed or a party creed ap- pended to them ; and yet these humane and indefat- igable societies seem to think that the myriad souls to whom they are sent may be saved 1 Thus, then, I think I have demonstrated that the Bible, not man or human dictation, is the only authority in faith and Christian life.* * In the Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer, of April, 1835, C. E. Stowe, Professor of Biblical Literature in Cincinnati Lane Seminary, in an article on ''Expository Preaching,'' etc., gives utterance to the following truly evangelical and admirable senti- ments : "Again — if there is an authorized interpreter of the Bible, his interpretations must be understood by the common laws of lan- guage; and why can we not understand revelation itself by the com- mon laws of language as well as the interpreter of revelation ? What is the value of a revelation that cannot be understood without an authorized interpreter? And what is the use of an authorized in- terpreter to a revelation that can be understood without one ? One or the other is certainly needless ; and so needless an expenditure of means does not look like the simplicity of the Divine economy in other things. The Bible gives no hint of any such power of author- itative interpretation, and reason rejects the whole theory as entirely repugnant to its own nature." The Professor adds : " The language of the Bible is the language of men, otherwise it would be of no use to men. And it is to be un- derstood just as all other human language is understood. It is ad- dressed to the common sense of men, and common sense is to be con- sulted in its interpretation." THE LORD'S SUPPER. I43 SECTIOlSr I2C. GREEDS ARE NECESSAR Y ONL Y WHERE THERE ARE SECTS, BUT SECTARIANISM IS FORBIDDEN, 1 CO- RINTHIANS, I. 10-13, ///. 3-11; THEREFORE CREEDS ABE FORBIDDEN. THIS BEING THE CASE, THE DOGMA OF THE REAL PRESENCE OCCUPIES FOR- BIDDEN GROUND, AND IS ITSELF, OF COURSE,— AS HUMAN PRESCRIPTION,— FORBIDDEN. Many persons are of opinion that sectism is de- sirable as a powerful incentive to Christian zeal and activity, or, at least, as a necessary means to elicit emulation among the different denominations of Chris- tians, and thus to call forth the latent energies of the faithful, as well as cherish and promote a lively in- terest and proper enthusiasm in the cause of religion generally ; but such views, though they are not en- tirely devoid of truth, are altogether antagonistic to the spirit and design of Christianity, and deserve no notice, except in so far as they are an evidence of the remarkable manner in which truth and error may happen to converge towards incidental points of ap- proximation. Religious creeds can be necessary only in sectdom ; or, in other words, when the Church of Christ is in a state of sectism : torn asunder, and bleeding from 144 THE DOCTRINE OF wounds, inflicted by mad factions contending for the mastery. Then it is that lines of demarkation are re- quired, and distinctive Shibboleths, as watchwords and symbols of recognition, must needs be introduced and scrupulously observed. But as sectism is, as I shall soon have occasion to show, contrary to the Scriptures, and, besides, a grievous and most deplora- ble evil, as well as a willful and wicked disintegration and distraction of the body of Christ, so, of course, all human creeds are not only superfluous and unne- cessary, but absolutely criminal ; for they are an ex- press and open violation of "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," Ephesians, iv. 3. " Nur der Glauhens-Zwang maclit Sekten und erhaelt eieJ' The origin of sects, except where persecution has done its demoniac work, is, in every instance, owing to impure motives or false principles of religion. Pride, obstinacy, ambition, hatred, etc., and, therefore, unholy passions, have ordinarily given rise to the hydra-headed monster of sect-Christianity : the glory of the vulgar, the contempt and pity of the enlightened. When it is affirmed that creeds are necessary to meet and reconcile the discrepant views prevalent among the various divisions of the Christian Church, and thus to secure harmony and combined activity among these creed-bound professors, the position is false, and the end sought to be attained is far from being always realized, as the following facts will suf- ficiently testify. In 1577 the famous Form of Concord was composed, "in which," writes Haweis, the ec- THE LORD'S SUPPER. 145 clesiastical historian, " the real manducation of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist was established, and heresy and excommunication laid on all who refused this as an article of faith, with pains and penalties to be enforced by the secuUr arm," etc. Here we meet with the disagreeable fact, so often marring the mani- festation of religious life, that instead of a peaceful, voluntary agreement in this dogma of " the real man- ducation of the body and blood of Christ," secular compulsion is resorted to, and unanimity of faith en- forced by acts of violence and injustice. So far, indeed; was this Form of Concord from reconciling the dis- cordant elements in the Lutheran Church, especially from suppressing the much-dreaded and heartily-hated crypto-Calvinistic and Zwinglian views on the Lord's Supper, that the seeds of contention and animosity germinated with renewed vigor, while the rage of parties surged and foamed with redoubled violence, in consequence of which this celebrated Form of Con- cord obtained the sarcastic title of Concordia Discors, — the Concord of Discord. Of this remarkable Symbolic production, Mosheim speaks in these expressive words : " It immediately met with a warm opposition from the Reformed, and also from all those who were either secretly attached to their doctrine, or who at least were desirous of living in concord and communion with them, from a laudable zeal for the common interests of the Protestant cause. Nor was their opposition at all unaccountable, since they plainly perceived that this Form removed all the flattering hopes they had entertained of seeing 13 146 TEE DOCTRINE OF the divisions that reigned among the friends of re- ligious liberty happily healed, and entirely excluded the Reformed from the communion of the Lutheran Church. Hence they were filled with indignation against the authors of this new Confession of Faith, and exposed their uncharitable proceedings in writing full of spirit and vehemence. The Swiss doctors, with Hosplnian at their head, the Belgic divines, those of the Palatinate, together with the principalities of An- halt and Baden, declared war against the Form of Concord. And accordingly from this period the Lu- theran, and more especially the Saxon doctors, were charged with the disagreeable task of defending this new creed and its compilers in many laborious pro- ductions. Nor were the followers of Zwingle and Calvin the only opposers of this Form of Concord: it found adversaries even in the very bosom of Lutheran- ism, and several of the most eminent churches of that communion rejected it with such firmness and resolu- tion, that no arguments or entreaties could engage them to admit it as a rule of faith, or even as a means of instruction. It was rejected by the churches of Hessia, Pomerania, Niiremberg, Holstein, Silesia, Den- mark, Brunswick, and others. Frederick the Second, King of Denmark, as soon as he received a copy of the Form in question, threw it into the fire, and saw it consumed before his eyes. The ill fate of this famous confession, in the principalities of Lignitz and Brieg, is no less matter of history." It is surprising that people, claiming to be Christians of a high order of virtue and intelligence, should, by THE LORD'S SUPPER. 147 resorting to compulsory means, presume to impose their peculiar religious views upon the rest of man- kind, thinking, doubtless, in the blindness and extrava- gance of their unholy zeal, to do God a signal service. In principle at least, such bigoted and unamiable con- duct, often aggravated by perfidy of purpose, is on a par with the cruel and bloody deeds of "the Holy Office," and it, therefore, behooves us sedulously to guard against it, lest we too become tainted with the intolerance of ultra-montanism. When will Chris- tians learn that strict unanimity of dogmatic views is as impossible as it is undesirable and pernicious ? God has ordained that the human mind should differ in its individual manifestations of powers and modes of action, as well as in the idiosyncrasy of its disposition and its passions. Human sentiments, interrogated by Revelation, are as naturally various and distinctively individual as the song or the color of the bird ; the anatomy, the locomotion, or the habits of the different rapacious or gentle beasts ; the form and structure of the foliage of the separate families or even of the same species of trees; or, linally, the flavor and use of the manifold fruit-productions of the vegetable king- dom. Unanimity in religious views, were it practicable, would inevitably result, like unalterable creed-subscrip- tion, in an insurmountable barrier to all Christian ad- vancement. I am willing, therefore, that even the crass and unbiblical doctrine of the Real Presence should have free scope among religionists, if opinions, more con- sonant with evangelical Christianity, and calculated to secure a healthy tone of sentiment, cannot be consci- 148 THE DOCTRINE OF eatiously entertained ; fov it is far preferable to allow, and even to foster, diversity in dogmas, than to aim at universal sameness, and thus make " the waters of life" a stagnant pool, "the bread of heaven" a mouldy, worm-eaten loaf. If professors did not differ in their religious convictions, they could have no distinct Chris- tian consciousness, no personal amenability; and they would, therefore, appear before the bar of God as a huge multiple monster, animated by one insensate, de- generate soul, worthless on earth, and unfit for heaven. When our Lord and the Apostles inculcate unanimity of religious belief, they simply mean a general consent to the proposition that Christ is our only Saviour, and that we must all look to him or his way of salvation in order to be made God-like and happy ; or, in other words, to be saved. It by no means denotes that all Christ's followers must contemplate these truths in precisely the same manner, or carry them out in an absolutely uniform and literally concordant method. All the heterogeneous views which are now professed by the multitudinous sects which divide and disgrace Christendom, under the assumed sanction of human creeds, could just as well be expressed or cherished within the pale of a common brotherhood of Christians, provided Christian charity and forbearance were, as is fit they should be, mutually and cordially practiced. It is evident that mankind cannot be of one mind on the all-important but variform subject of religion, from the fact attesting the existence of so many sects, arrayed against each other in hostile attitude, or dandling in sham-love ; all divided by diverse and often conflicting THE LORD'S SUPPER. 149 creeds : and yet mea speak of existing unanimity : a thousand sects or modes of religious manifestations are said to exist and flourish in the various regions of the globe, and there must, therefore, be a thousand diverse unanimities among the religionists of the earth ! Hence, instead of any longer vaingloriously boasting of their orthodox creeds or immaculate con- fessions, their numerical strength, and prosperous condition, let the various Christian sects who have virtually seceded from the pale of the Christian Church — considered as Christ's body — discard their inimical and often irreconcilable Shibboleths,* and, humbly re- ^ Sectarianism is a powerful obstacle to the prompt and successful promulgation of the Q-ospel in heathen lands, and everywhere cor- roborates the Apostle's assertion, that the sectarists, instead of dis- playing the " stature of the fullness of Christ," are — according to 1 Corinthians, iii. 1 — carnal, and mere habea "in Christ." "There is still," writes C. Edwards Lester, in his work, "The G-lory and Shame of England," "another obstacle to the spread of Christianity, not only in India, but in all portions of the pagan world, of which it gives me pain to speak. I refer to the sectarian- ism of the missionaries; and I speak of it with the greatest pain; for I do not love to blame those self-denying men who have been willing to exchange the friends, the literature, the happiness of an English or an American home, with all the sweet charities of domes- tic life, for the dark abodes of idolatry, etc. : but I have felt this mat- ter most deeply, and I must allude to it. " There is, in fact, I believe, far less sectarianism among mission- aries than among those who send them; and, in illustration of this, we have only to look over Great Britain and America, and enumerate the hundreds of sects, and listen to their strifes, controversies, and bickerings. Still, the missionaries are by no means free from this unhallowed spirit; and the heathen is not so blind but that he can see how repugnant to the precepts of Christ is the very existence of 13* 150 'TBE DOCTRINE OF penting of their sins and follies, return to the fold of Christ — I mean of course the s/ieep-fold of Christ, not sects. Christ declared tliat a kingdom divided against itself could not stand. " The heathen find two missionaries among them from England or America, to teach the same great system of faith, — belief in the same Saviour and preparation for the same heaven j and yet the Baptist spreads the Lord's Table, and forbids his brother to come to the feast !* Perhaps his brother has come from a distant station, and called to take him by the hand and rest awhile in his house. They will pray together, weep together, and appear to love each other,* but they cannot sit together at the great Christian Feast. Will the Hin- doo call this caste f or what? "A fact was related to me by a missionary who had been several years in India, which is in point. I had, said he, baptized, by sprinkling, a native in India, and he seemed to understand the na- ture and feel the power of Christianity. Being obliged to leave my station for awhile, u. Baptist brother, at ray request, came to take charge of my school during my absence. On a certain occasion he was conversing with the native to whom I alluded on the subject of baptism. Ascertaining that I had performed that rite upon him, the Baptist entered into an argument to convince him that he had not been baptized; that, whatever I might have said, he could be sure that he had not been baptized; and that, if he would be saved, he must be immersed. The poor heathen shook his head, saying, 'Ah! Boodah is a better God!' and returned to the embrace of J^is idols. I saw him after this, and told him that I would im- merse him if he chose; for I considered the form of baptism of little consequence. But he replied, 'I can't tell who speaks the njost wisely; though I am certain you cannot both have the same religion.' " It is well known that the Baptist Church in America, after many bitter complaints, has seceded from the American Bible Society, be- * This 18 a good deal like refusing to exchange pulpita or to, commune with Christians who entertain no sympathy for the dogma of the Real Presence. — G. TEE LORD'S SUPPER. Iftl the M)oZ/-fo]d of "Holy Mother Church," — and doing towards each other as they wish others should do to- wards them, live in the unity of the spirit and the bonds of peace, through Jesus Christ, each honestly founding his faith upon the evidence of a personal Scripture research, and so governing his walk and con- versation as to be both recognized and respected by all sincere followers of Christ as a worthy member of the same " holy universal Church." If this is not done, and done speedily too, Romanism will inflict a grave and fatal injury upon the Protestant Church, as its Jesuitic chicanery and intrigues are ever, with hypo- critical fawning, and guise of fraternal sympathy and regard, doing all it is possible for self-interested cun- ning to do to sow the baneful seeds of discontent in the niinds of unsuspecting Protestants, too often vacil- lating and unsatisfied in their miserable, disintegrated state of a deplorable sectism, and to create a morbid longing for a return to the ample, loving bosom of Romanism. The option is between Christ and Belial, cause they would not print a new edition of the Bible, and change the phraseology of those parts which speak of baptism ! "The Established Church have good bishops and ministers at their missionary stations, but they deny the validity of all other ordina- tions. They tell the heathen that the Scotch or the American Pres- byterian or Baptist missionary is no minister; no ambassador of Christ; has no right to admiAster the sacred ordinances of the Church. It makes the heart sick to contemplate these things. The pagan looks on, and more firmly adheres to his idols." Scores of similar examples of a wicked and hateful sectism might readily be adduced, but, for the present, at least, the foregoing in- cidents may suffice. 152 THE DOCTRINE OF what say you? Will you be one in Christ, tolerating, in the spirit of love and magnanimity, diversities of views, while all cleave to Christ, as their only hope, and all strive to excel each other in ofBces of love and good works, thus verifying and sanctifying your title to the Christian name, — and stand'? or continue divided, and /aZZ, never again to rise ? For a divided, social body cannot prosper or endure, as is plain from our Lord's teaching, Matthew, xii. 25 : " Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desola- tion ; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." The Apostles of our Lord were presumptively all Christians — Judas I have no authority to judge — and followers of the Redeemer ; but how differently were their opinions of Christianity expressed, and how di- verse, therefore, must have been their modes of faith I The Christology of Paul and John is, by no means, the same, while again it is strikingly different from that of Peter and James. The latter exhibited Chris- tianity from a purely practical standpoint ; the former indulge in the theological contemplations common to the Oriental or Gnostic philosophy. Where the Apostles differ in their method of teaching the Gospel there is room for speculation and the use of logic, but where, on the contrary, they agree, our faith will be fixed and positive, and our#bedience prompt and cer- tain. Thus there is unity in diversity, and even a Judas may have his name in the Church record. For, is he bad, where should he go to become good? is he not already in the Church ? 'And is he good, he will THE LORD'S SUPPER. I53 neither need nor desire to go where he cannot be any better. * * " Truth," writes D*AubignS, "may be compared to the light of the sun. The light comes from heaven colorless, and ever the same ; and yet it takes different hues on earth, varying according to the ob- jects on which it falls. How dull would be this visible creation if all its boundless variety of shape and color were to give place to an unbroken uniform'ity ! And may we not add, how melancholy would be its aspect if all created beings did but compose a solitary and vast uniti/ ! "The unity which comes from Heaven doubtless has its place, but the diversity of human nature has its proper place also. In religion we must neither leave out God nor man. Without unity, in Christian principle, your religion cannot be of God; without diversity, it can- not be the religion of man. And it ought to be of both. Would you banish from creation a law that its Divine author has imposed upon it, namely, that of boundless diversity ? ' Things without life giving sound,' said Paul, ' whether pipe or harp, except they give a dis- tinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped V 1 Corinthians, xiv. 7. In religion there is a diversity, the result of distinction of individuality, and which, by consequence, must subsist even in heaven,'' etc. But it is Robinson, the worthy pastor of the emigrants of the May- Flower, and distinguished founder of the Independents, whose views eminently express the true Scripture standpoint of a normal Chris- tian society or church. I quote from the remarks of the editor of the Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer in the April number of 18.35 : " From the 'Apology' of Robinson, it appears that in regard to the rule of faith, they — the Independents — entirely disclaimed human authority, and distinctly maintained the right of every man to judge of the sense of the Scriptures for himself, of trying doctrines by them, and of worshiping according to his apprehension of them. In July, 1620, Robinson preached a sermon which 'breathed a noble spirit of Christian liberty.* * I charge you,' said he to the parting congregation, 'before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I am very confident that the Lord has more truth to break forth out 154 TBS DOCTRINE OF I shall now proceed to lay before the reader the important lessons which St. Paul imparts on this interesting and momentous theme, in 1 Corinthians, i. 10-13, iii. 3-11 ; and then, commending the subject of this article to the serious and prayerful attention of the Christian public, leave it to its doom, guarded sa- credly and safely in the hands of God. The Apostle thus pithily expresses himself, in the pathetic language of grief and expostulation : " Now I beseech you, breth- ren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you ; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided ? was Paul crucified for you ? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul ?" Turning to the other passage, we find this eminent servant of Christ discoursing in this lucid and impressive manner of solemn and stern rebuke : "Teare yet carnal: for whereas there is among you en- vying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men (men of the world) ? For while one saith, I am of Paul ; and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal ? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but of his holy word. I beseech you reoQember it as an article of your church covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God.'" THE LORD'S SUPPER. I55 ministers hy whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man ? I have planted, Apollos watered ; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one : and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are laborers together with God: ye are God's hus- bandry, ye are God's building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master- builder, I have laid the foundation, and another build- eth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ," etc. 156 THE DOCTRINE OF SOME OF THE DOGMAS OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH HAVE FALLEN INTO DESUETUDE : A FACT WHICHEN- C OUR AGES THE HOPE THAT THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE MAY, EVENTUALLY, MEET WITH A SIMILAR FA TE ; B UT IN THE MEANWHILE, THE VEN- ERABLE PARENT OF PROTESTANTISM MAY IN SOME MEASURE JUSTLY CLAIM SUPERIORITY OF PRAC- TICE XER THEOR Y. CHAPTER I. " Immersion, in Theory, is a Lutheran Mode of Baptism j in Practice, it is not observed. In a concise treatise appended to the Smaller Cate- chism, and embodied among the symbols of faith, in the Book of Concord, entitled "Das Taiifbuechlein," or the Baptismal Formulary, and addressed by Luther "To all Christian Readers," the Reformer gives a minute account of the liturgic services to be observed at the baptism of a child, and carefully points out the proper mode of conducting the solemn administration of this sacred and important rite. A number of striking ceremonies prescribed in this formulary — derived from the devices of a hoary and superstitious age, — I forbear to notice further than to THE LORD'S SUPPER. - 1517 remark that, at present, they are considered, in.the words of England's immortal dramatist, " more hon- ored in the breach than in the observance." After a repetition of various extraordinary liturgical observances — taught in this formulary, and formerly ad- hered to with scrupulous exactness — we at length arrive at that stage in the baptismal solemnities when the im- pressive sacramental act is to be consummated, and the officiating priest to take the child and immerse it in the water of the Lavacrum or font, saying, as he discharges this part of his sacred functions, " I bap- tize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," etc. This mode of baptism Luther still seems to have approved, seven years after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to the Emperor Charles V., at the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, in his Schmalkald Ar- ticles, page 308, in quoting — while treating of baptism — the words in Ephesians, v. 26 : "That he — Christ — might sanctify and cleanse it — the Church — with the washing of water by the word." This view of baptism, I may state, is evidently but a repetition of the doc- trine of immersion, still practiced in the earlier period of the Reformation, and doubtless referred to in the Smaller Catechism, where, in the third paragraph on baptism, in proof of what he is saying, Luther calls at- tention to the passage in Titus, iii. 5, where the doctrine is advanced that we are saved "by thewashing of regen- eration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." I do not wish, however, to be understood to assert that Luther inculcated baptism by immersion only, but what I 14 158 THE DOCTRINE OF design especially to impress upon the reader's attention is, that the Reformer devotes a separate treatise to this mode of baptism, while in other parts of his Con- fessional Works he only speaks of baptism generally, without allusion to any specific mode after which it should be administered, with the single exception, as far as I am aware, of a passage in his Larger Cate- chism, page 447, where he speaks of the doubts of cavilers as to the efficacy of the sinall quantity of water employed in baptism, " Saying, how can a handful of water do any good to the soul ?" In short, there seems to be no doubt that, in the era of the Reformation, bap- tism by immersion was the common mode, and that the exception to this practice was comparatively rare, and resorted to only in cases of emergency.* *'■ In the American edition of the New Edinhurgh Enoyclopsodia, TOl. iii., part ii., page 236, appears an article on Baptism, by Rev- erend James Nicol, in which the following interesting facts commend themselves to our earnest and respectful attention: "It is impossi- ble to mark the precise period when sprinkling was introduced. It is probable, however, that it was invented in Africa in the second century, in favor of clinics. But it was so far from being approved by the church in general, that the Africans themselves did not account it valid. The first law for sprinkling was obtained in the following manner. Pope Stephen III., being driven from Borne by Astulphus, King of the Lombards, in 753, fled to Pepin, who, u, short time before, had usurped the crown of France. Whilst he re- mained there, the Monks of Cressy, in Brittany, consulted him, whether, in a case of necessity, baptism, performed by pouring water on the head of the infant, would be lawful. Stephen replied that it would. But though the truth of this fact should be allowed, which some Catholics deny, yet pouring or sprinkling was only admitted in cases of necessity. It was not till lull that the legislature, in a council held at Kavenna, declared immersion or sprinkling to be indif- THE LORD'S SUPPER, 159 Such being the case, why is this Baptismal Formu- lary, teaching immersion with so much detail and rigid precision, to be subscribed by the Evangelical Lutheran ministers of the Symbolic School, or required to be treated as an article of faith, if it is not to be carried ferent. In this country — G-reat Britain, however, sprinkling was never practiced, in ordinary eases, till after the Reformation ; and in England, even in the reign of Edward VI.j trine immersion, dipping first the right side, secondly, the left side, and last, the face of the infant, was commonly observed. But during the persecution of Mary, many persons, most of whom were Scotsmen, fled from Eng- land to Geneva, and there greedily imbibed the opinions of that church. In 1556, a book was published at that place, containing ' The form of prayers and ministration of the sacraments, approved by the famous and godly learned man, John Calvin, in which the administrator is enjoined to take water in his hand and lay it upon the child*s forehead.' These Scottish exiles, who had renounced the authority of the Pope, implicitly acknowledged the authority of Cal- vin ; and, returning to their own country, with Knox at their head, in 1559, established sprinkling in Scotland. From Scotland this practice made its way into England in the reign of Elizabeth ; but was not au- thorized by the established church. In the Assembly of Divines, held at Westminster, in 1643, it was keenly debated whether immersion or sprinkling should be adopted; twenty-five voted for sprinkling, and twenty-four for immersion ; and even this small majority was obtained at the earnest request of Doctor Lightfoot, who had acquired great in- fluence in that assembly. Sprinkling is therefore the general practice of this country siHce 1643. Many Christians, however, especially the Baptists, reject it. The Greek Church universally adhere to immer- sion." Comparing these very significant facts with Luther's Immersion Formulary, noticed in the text, and his almost total silence on other modes of baptism, the conclusion seems warranted that immersion was the ordinary or prevalent form, in which the sacrament of bap- tism was administered in Germany daring the period, at least, of the Lutheran Reformation. 160 THE DOCTRINE OF out in practice ? The doctrine of the Real Presence, also subscribed, is held to be inviolable, both in theory and in practice, and made a cardinal or central dogma of faith, while the doctrine of sacramental immersion is coolly and habitually ignored. What daring foe has presumed to make this breach in the pristine faith of Lutheranism ? Besides, what good reason can be assigned, that Luther's opinion, that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are the real, humanlike body and blood of our Lord, should be held in greater esteem and veneration than his injunction to the min- istering priest in " the Taufbuechlein," — ^the Baptismal rormulary, — "To take the child and immerse it in the water"? Such discrimination is tantamount to hon- oring Luther's authority in the one Sacrament, and treating it with disrespect and neglect in the other ; and yet all the dogmas in the Book of Concord, both great and small, are to be subscribed, and, of course, it should seem, rigidly carried out I This, I conceive, is evidence of great inconsistency, yet it encourages the hope that faith in the Real Presence may eventually be recognized only in history.* * That the Anabaptists found it expedient to repeat the rite of bap- tism upon those who came over to their communion, is, I presume, no proof that only or mainly non-immersion modes of baptism were in vogue in the age of the Keformation, but rather denotive of the fact that the first baptism had been administered to infants instead of adults. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 161 CHAPTER II. Auricular Confession appears among the Articles of Faith in the Book of Concord, but is, at least in this Country, not observed. As an article of faith, auricular confession is not practiced by any of the different branches of the Lu- theran Church in this country, not even by the Mis- sourians, — at least not in their aggregate capacity, though, to judge from former statements in this Work, they seem to oscillate somewhat inauspiciously between Wittenberg and Rome, and to be most likely, there- fore, to give it a prominent place in their liturgic observances. Prior to the union of the Protestant Churches in Prussia, auricular confession was a chief part of the ritual of the Lutheran Church. Instead of it, there has been introduced in this country the "Order of Service, Preparatory to the Lord's Supper": a change in this dogma similar to that now observed in the Prussian empire. Those, therefore, who have hereto- fore reproached the Lutheran Church in the United States with devotion to this papal relic of a past age, may hence be supposed to be undeceived. According to the eleventh article of the Augsburg Confession, private absolution, or, in other words, auri- cular confession, is to be retained in the liturgic service of the Lutheran Church. In Schott's '' Unaltered Augsburg Confession," we read that "private abso- r 14* 162 TBE DOCTRINE OF lution ought to be retained in the churches, and not be rejected entirely." This is not at all, I conceive, a correct statement; for the Augsburg Confession does not say a word about not " entirely rejecting'" private absolution, but, on the contrary, it requires that it should be retained, and not suffered to fall into disuse. The Latin copy of this Confession, by Miiller, simply says: " Quod absolutio privatajn ecclesiis retinenda sit," — thatis, that private confession should be retained in the churches, without the admonition not to reject or suffer it to fall into disuse, and also without Schott's addition, that it should be retained, " and not rejected entirely." Evidently Luther wished auricular confession to be retained in the Church, as one of its most important and useful articles of faith. Thus, in the Scbmal- kald Articles, page 309, he expresses himself in the following emphatic language : "As absolution, or the pardoning power of the keys, is an important means of comforting and tranquillizing sin-stricken and dis- quieted souls, and is, besides, one of Christ's institu- tions, it is to be wished that confession or absolution might by no means be suifered to fall into disuse in the Church, especially on account of bruised and ten- der consciences, as also on account of the ignorant youths, in order that they may be examined and instructed in the doctrines and duties of the Christian religion."* The Confessors teach on this subject, how- * Among the religious dogmas in the Book of Conoord, auricular confession bears the rank and significance of a sacrament. In this TBE LORD'S SUPPMR. 163 ever, that " it is not necessary, in private or auricular confession, to enumerate all our sins or misdeeds, inasmuch as such an attempt would be, at any rate, impossible. Psalm xix. 12: 'Who can understand his errors ? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.' " The German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States, has very materially modified and improved the dogma of auricular confes- sion, both in regard to its form and import, and given it an air and expression more adapted to the advanced intelligence and liberal Christian views of the present age. The "General Synod of the Evangelical Lu- theran Church in the United States of America," I may remark, in passing, has long since impressed upon this institution the more marked insignia of an evan- gelical character. In the Lord's Supper, the doctrine of the bodily presence of Christ in, with, and under ths sacramental bread and wine, is taught, believed, and — as far as feasible — carried out : this is consistency, and as such, at least, praiseworthy ; but the question recurs. Why are Lather and his coadjutors in the faith implicitly obeyed in one thing and not in another ? If private confession has become obsolete, and is thus no longer light Luther clearly regarded it, without, however, an express de- claration to that effect. In his opinion, it is inseparably connected with the office of the keys, and, therefore, to be retained and held sacred. But it is Melanchthon who indubitably established this point, in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, page 193, where he thus writes of this institution : " Hence the true sacraments of the Chris- tian Church are Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and Ahaolution." 164 ■ THE DOCTRINE OF an element in Christian discipline or appreciated as a means of grace, let it be erased from the list of the Church's confessions of faith; and, above all, let sub- scription to it cease, and the reputation and efficiency of the Church be no longer impaired by the unjust imputation of Romish practices. It should be observed that confession of sin, as it is now recognized and practiced, is no longer private but public ; not in the confessional and in the saintly ears of a priest or " Father Confessor," but in the house of Grod, and to God, agreeably to the " Order of Service, Preparatory to the Lord's Supper," mentioned above, embodied in the Hymn Book of the "Evangelical Lu- theran Ministerium of the State of New York," pub- lished in ] 834. The pastor, now happily in the place of the priest, has nothing further to do than — after a public and general confession of sin by the congrega- tion — to announce the gracious purpose of God, for Christ's sake, to forgive the sins of all those who are truly penitent, and resolved henceforth to lead a sober, righteous, and godly life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the " Church Book" of the Ministerium of Penn- sylvania it is stated, under the head of Confession, " That we receive absolution or forgiveness of sin through the pastor as of God himself," and this state- ment is strictly Lutheran, or in exact conformity with the Reformer's teaching upon this subject, in the Smaller Catechism ; but in my humble opinion, it ever behooves frail humanity to bear in mind that nothing that they can do is "as of God himself," and that, TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 165 therefore, God cannot have vouchsafed to it such plenary- authority. Not even in the name of God should the office of the keys be executed, but simply and exclu- sively in virtue of the teachings of the Gospel of Christ. The assumption to absolve or forgive sins "like God himself," is based upon the power or office of the keys, Matthew, xvi. 19 ; John, xx. 23. Now, to whom was the power or office of the keys intrusted ? I answer, To the Apostles, and not to Christian ministers ; for these are neither Apostles nor the successors of the Apostles. The distinction between them is clear and decisive. In Ephesians, iv. 11, we read: "And he gave some apostles, and some pastors and teachers,'' etc. Christian ministers unite in their functions the offices of pastor and teacher, and, hence, they are min- isters and not Apostles. Their endowments, too, are very different from those of the Apostles : these ministers of Christ were inspired and wrought miracles. Is the min- ister gifted with such endowments ? If he is, let him show that he is inspired by proving himself to be infallible. Can he perform miracles, then let him " raise the dead or cast out devils," etc., Matthew, x. 8, and thus convince the world that he possesses the extraordinary power of the Apostles, or that his pretension to the exercise of the office of the keys is not a sham. Destitute of the supernatural gifts of the Apostles, the minister cannot forgive sins "like God himself." In short, the minister is neither an Apostle, nor divinely gifted like an Apostle, and beside this, the power or office of the keys ceased forever when the apostolic mission itself ceased. I repeat, that they who claim to represent the 166 THE DOCTRINE OF Apostles in the administration of the oiSce of the keys must demonstrate their apostolic authority by apostolic deeds like the following, to be entitled to credence : Matthew, x. 5-8 ; Mark, vi. 13 ; Acts, ii. 43 ; iii. 7 ; v. 12; ix. 34-41, etc. I shall here give a synopsis of the manner in which auricular confession is to be conducted, according to Luther's Smaller Catechism, as it appears in the Book of Concord, to enable the reader to compare it with the present form which the confession of sin has as- sumed. In the first place, the penitent is directed to address himself to the priest or " Father Confessor" ; secondly, deferentially to request him to hear his con- fession ; and thirdly, humbly to beseech him to absolve him from his sins. The priest bids him to proceed in the confession, and the penitent begins to give an account of his diverse relations and conditions in life ; of his manifold and grievous sins, both in respect to the omission of duty and the commission of evil ; adding that he is sorry on account of his shortcom- ings and transgressions, and therefore promises to amend his sinful ways ; humbly asking, in conclusion, the forgiveness of his sins, or, in other words, sacra- mental absolution. To this confession of sin and expression of deep humility the priest responds : "God be merciful to thee, and strengthen and confirm thee in the faith, amen." In addition to this part of his func- tion, the priest is thus to interrogate the penitent : "Dost thou indeed believe that my forgiveness is the same as God's forgiveness ?" " Tes, reverend father," responds the penitent, "I do ;'' and the priest, THE LORD'S SUPPER. Igt in reply to this assurance, again says : "As thou believest, so be it unto thee ; I absolve thee of thy sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen. Go in peace !"*. I conclude by observing that the desuetude into which auricular confession has fallen in the Lutheran Church is ominous of the fate of all dogmas not rest- ing upon a Scripture basis: "Every plant," says the Saviour, " which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up": Matthew, xv. 13. CHAPTER III. The Mass, or the Roman Catholic Ritual Service of the Lord's Supper. To judge from some remarks in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon appeared not unfavorably inclined to the idea that the word Mass is derived from the elliptic sentence, " Ite, missa est," — go, your sin is forgiven. It is, in short, the Romish ■^■" Rev. S. I. Mahoney, late a Capuchin friar in the convent of the Immaculate Conception at Rome, expresses himself in this wise, in his work entitled " Six Years in the Monasteries of Italy, and Two Years In the Islands of the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor'' : "On auricular confession is founded the vulgar belief of the great power of priests. It is natural for the human mind to regard with a degree of veneration the person of one who, it is led to think, represents the person of Jesus Christ in his ministerial olfiee, and who has the fac- ulty of forgiving or retaining the sins of the people," etc. 168 TSE DOCTRINE OF ritual observance in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and, as such, is a sad and disgusting carica- ture of the Gospel institution bearing this venerable name. The bread alone is administered to the com- municant, but not before it has been converted, by the solemn act of consecration, into the body and blood, soul and divinity, of Christ, or, in other words, into Christ himself, as a sin-expiating Saviour, and offered on the altar as a sacrifice for the actual sins of mankind, by the talismanic maneuvres of the priest ; for, according to the Romish theology, Christ made expiation only for hereditary sin, and thus failing to make complete expiation, the Romish Church has gen- erously condescended to assume the philanthropic task of completing the sacrifice by the miracle of tran- substantiation, and a constantly repeated immolation of Christ in the mass. In the twenty-fourth article of the Augsburg Confes- sion, the Confessors write: " We are unjustly accused of having abolished the mass. So far from this being the case, we may be allowed to state, without the charge of boasting, — for the fact is notorious, that we observe it with far more devoutness and solemnity than our adversaries: the people are instructed with great care and diligence in respect of the object of the insti- tution of the Holy Sacrament, and made to understand that it is especially designed to be used as the most approved and effectual means of healing and tranquil- izing their wounded and terrified consciences ; and thus to induce them to attend mass and participate in the communion. Besides, we carefully point out and THE LORD'S SUPPER. 169 correct the erroneous notions which generally prevail on the subject of the mass-ritual of the Sacrament. In the ritual observances of the mass we have not made any material change, except that in some places German hymns, in addition to the Latin, have been introduced, in order to enable us with more facility to instruct and improve the minds of the people, inasmuch as it should be the paramount object of all religious ceremonies to enlighten the minds of the worshipers, both as to their Christian faith and their solemn responsibili- ties," etc. If now we hear Melanchthon, in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, we shall meet, of course, with a more or less thorough indorsement of the use of the mass, and still find it to occupy a prominent place in the creed of pristine Lutheranism. " I observe by way of preface," he writes, "that we have not dis- carded the use of the mass, but that on every Sabbath and festival occasion it is celebrated in our churches, when the Lord's Supper is administered to all who desire it, provided they have first been to confession and received absolution. Christian exercises in read- ing, singing, and prayer, etc., likewise form part of the mass-service. We, however, no longer make use of private masses, but confine ourselves to such as are of general import, when it is customary for the people to commune, and this practice is not opposed to the commonly received custom on this subject," etc. Both in the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of that Confession, the Confessors severely condemn the Roman Catholic idea, that the mass has sacrificial 15 170 THE DOCTRINE OF or immolative virtue, and more than once declare that Christ alone — not the oblation or offering of a consecrated wafer of bread, is the true and only sin- offering, not only for hereditary, but for all actual sin. Owing to the manifold abuses which marred and dis- graced the mass-service or missal, Luther needed but time and reflection properly to recognize and abhor the papal institution, in all its various deformity and corrup- tion, and to denounce it as at once anti-scriptural and destructive to the best interests of the soul. Accord- ingly, in the Schmalkald Articles, just seven years after the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, he peremptorily rejected it as an institution entirely de- void of Divine authority, and therefore, though not without some redeeming traits, a mere human device, for which a scriptural, and hence a much better sub- stitute might be introduced. The fact is, the mass nourished and perpetuated the grossest superstition ; it had virtually become a brokers' institute, and, as such, a fruitful means of gulling the people and en- riching the priests. But let us hear the Reformer himself: "Let the people,'' says he, "be publicly taught that the mass — as a pageant of human inven- tion — may, without sin or detriment, be omitted; that none will be subjected to censure or inconvenience for neglecting it ; and that we may be saved without it in a manner not adverse to, but compatible with, the spirit and aim of Christianity. No doubt, by simply and steadily pursuing this prudent course, the mass — as it deserves, will soon fall into desuetude, not only among uneducated people, but also among the intelli- THE LORD'S SUFFER. lU gent, the pious, Ohnstian, and God-fearing part of the community. Especially will this be the case if they are told that it is an institution fraught with great peril to the soul, destitute of the sanction of God's word, and of purely human origination." He adds : "Inas- much, therefore, as the institution of the mass is simply of human device, and includes among its originators great knaves, who sought to use it as a means of obtaining Divine mercy, and thus expiating their own sins; and as this and nothing else was the primary end for which the mass has been instituted, it merits the unreserved rejection and condemnation of the Christian." What the mass is in its fully-developed enormity and height of blasphemous pretensions, the follow- ing communications will demonstrate. In the work entitled "A Synopsis of Dens' Moral Theology, Pre- pared for the Use of Romish Seminaries and Students of Theology," translated from the Latin by Doctor Berg, we read on page 414 what the canons of the Council of Trent decree concerning the sacrifice of the mass: "Whoever shall say that in the mass there is not offered to God a true and proper sacrifice, or that Christ's being offered is nothing else but his being given to us to be eaten, let him be accursed. Who- ever shall say that by these words. Do this in remem- brance of me, Christ did not appoint the Apostles as priests, or that he did not ordain that they and other priests should offer his body and blood, let him be accursed. Whoever shall say that the sacrifice of the mass is merely an offering of praise and thanks, or 172 THE DOCTRINE OF a simple commemoration of the sacrifice performed on the cross, and not propitiatory; or that it is of benefit only to the recipient, and that it ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, pen- ances, satisfactions, and other necessaries, let him be accursed," etc. The subjoined portraiture of this sinful and odious institution, by the author quoted on page 167, will serve to throw additional light upon its unreasonableness as well as unbiblical character and hurtful tendency. " The sacrament of the eucharist or last supper," says this writer, " is especially dwelt upon at unusual length, and propped by a host of arguments, — some taken from Scripture, others from tradition, others from revelations made by some departed saints to some monks in this world, and not a few, from miracles performed to give testimony of its institution in the sense in which it is understood by Roman Catholics. It is well known to every one — or if it is not, it should be known, in order to judge of the value of an anathema, that the Council of Trent anathematizes every one who will dare say that in the sacrament of the altar — thus the last sup- per is called, ' there is not really present the body and blood of Christ.' Roman Catholics believe, therefore, that after the words of consecration — according to the missal or mass-ritual, ' hoc est corpus meum,' this is my body — pronounced by the priest, the whole sub- stance of the bread is changed into the body of Christ, and likewise, that the whole substance of the wine is changed into his blood after the consecrating words 'hie est calix sanguinis mei,' etc., this is the cup of TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 173 my blood. It is evident that nothing can be more con- tradictory to Scripture or to common sense than this doctrine; the words 'this is my body,' 'this is my blood,' being mere figurative expressions, as any one may perceive who is not blinded by ignorance and superstition. Besides, such a transubstantiation — change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, is so opposite to the testimony of our senses, as completely to undermine the whole proof of all the miracles by which God has confirmed revelation. By it the same body is alive and dead at one and the same moment, and may be in a million difl'erent places, whole and entire, at the same instant of time ; while part of Christ's body is also made equal to the whole, etc. " On the belief, that the sacrament contains the real and very body and blood of Christ, is founded the sac- rifice of the mass, as it is styled, by which they — the priests, get their subsistence, and in which they offer Christ as a victim for the sins of the living and the dead. Although ' GhrisV — if the Apostles were not mistaken — 'was once offered — without need to be offered again — to hear the sins of Tuany,' and though ' we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,' Hebrews, ix. 28, x. 10, jet he is sacrificed a hundred thousand times every day throughout the Roman Catholic world, and three hundred thousand times on the day held in commemo- ration of his birth : there being three masses celebrated by every priest on Christmas-day. This computation is made upon the supposition that there are but one hundred thousand popish priests in the world, whereas 15* 174 THE DOCTRINE OF there are probably double or treble that number. A hundred thousand Christs, therefore, are made every day as soon as the words of consecration are pro- nounced by the priests ; and were it possible to divide each particle of the bread into a million separate parts, and transfer them to so many places apart, there would be present really and corporeally as many Christs as there are parts in the particle. A priest, therefore, in consecrating a wafer, makes as many Gods as there are infinitely small parts into which a consecrated wafer can be divided 1 No wonder, then, that men possessed of such extraordinary power, even that of making Him who made them, should be held in such veneration by all who believe in its reality. To nurture this belief, no devices, no ingenuity, are spared on their part. Being unable to fix the foundation of the mass on Gospel grounds, they must have recourse to fables and lying wonders, to prodigies and miracles," etc. While I have thus endeavored to exhibit a true por- traiture of the Roman Catholic institutions known as the mass and auricular confession, the idea that in having done so I have vindicated the Lutheran Church of this country, at least, against the unjust imputation of manifesting popish tendencies, in respect to these extinct articles of faith, gives me great pleasure. If the Lutheran Church, whose distinctive religious faith is more particularly found within the pages of the Book of Concord, will now resolve to repudiate the dogma of the Seal Presence, which offers so serious a barrier to free intercourse and mutual co-operation among the different branches of the Church responding to the THE LORD'S SUPPER. 175 name of Lutber, while, at the same time, it damages its own fair fame, in the judgment of a large and re- spectable portion of its fellow-citizens, it cannot fail to increase its prosperity, while it extends its reputation, and thus — as to numbers, efficiency, and usefulness, deservedly secure to it a rank in the religious world as enviable as it must be exalted I 176 TEE DOCTRINE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE REAL PRESENCE, IN THE LORD'S SUPPER, WAS THE CAUSE OF SOME TROUBLE IN THE EARLY LUTHERAN CHURCH. THE SOURCE OP THIS TROUBLE— WANT OF RELIGIOUS TOLERA- TION. Religious toleration, in the era of the Reformation, was little understood, and seldom practiced. Con- ferences convoked, or interviews appointed, for the laudable purpose of reconciling conflicting views of faith, not unfrequently resulted in only widening the breach between the contending parties, whose passions, by such well-meant measures, were often only the more inflamed, while their prejudices grew more inveterate. In this there is nothing surprising or even remarkable; for, generally, one individual thinks he has as good a right to his convictions as another, though it must be conceded that the convictions of one person may be more reasonable, and, therefore, more tenable, than those of another. From the very nature of the human constitution, it is iinpossible for all men to think and act alike, and the only available means that suggests itself to the reflecting mind, to live in peace and har- mony, is to have it mutually understood that every one shall be freely allowed to believe as Grod gives him grace, without the risk of subjecting him to censure or THE LORD'S SUFFER. 177 hostility from his neighbor. To realize this end — the paramount prerogative of man, distinctive human creeds, sanctioned and enforced by ecclesiastical au- thority, must be absolutely abolished, and the Bible alone adopted as common ground of faith and bond of fellowship. This is the recognized Protestant and only true principle of Christian brotherhood ; but, alas ! in practice it has never, or but in embryo, except in apostolic times, been carried out : this the wide extent and sadly disintegrated state of religious partyism clearly demonstrates, as it everywhere among us most forcibly attests the impotence and futility of its agency under existing circumstances, mainly the result of spiritual pride and sinful egotism. " The leading principle of the Reformation," writes Doctor Haweis, the ecclesiastical historian, " that the Bible alone contains the religion of Protestants, which every man is to read and consider, and thence alone to draw all the articles of his faith and practice ; and that nothing is binding upon the conscience but what is there clearly revealed, or necessarily deducible from the Scripture declarations. These are generally ad- mitted principles ; but the Protestant Churches have severally differed in the application of some of them, and manifested a most blamable bigotry and severity towards their brethren in enforcing their own inter- pretations of the Scriptures ; and that, oftentimes, ac- cording to their own acknowledgments, in matters not essential to salvation."* * Doctor Haweis, having commented with much just severity on priestly intolerance and presumption, thus concludes : " Ye followers I'fS THE DOCTRINE OF This precious Protestant principle, recognizing the Bible as the only directorial authority — the norma normans, in matters of faith and life, and, therefore, granting to all alike the privilege of appealing to it in the last instance — Luther fully admitted, though he seems to have laid more stress upon human authority in the later, than in the earlier period of his reform- atory career. " When, at the Diet at Worms, the Chancellor of Treves, spokesman of the Diet, said angrily to Luther," vs'rites D'Aubigne, "You have not given any ansvrer to the inquiry put to you : you are not to question the decisions of the Councils, you are required to return a clear and distinct answer; will you, or will you not retract ? Luther then answered, unhesitatingly, Since your most Serene Majesty and your High Mightinesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this : I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the Councils, because it is as clear as noonday that they have often fallen into error, and even into glaring inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not con- vinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons ; if I am not satisfied by the very texts that I have cited ; and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything ; for it cannot be right for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Then turning a look on that assembly before which he stood, of the meek and lowly Jesus, mark the man that hates and injures his brother for his opinions : he is a murderer, in whatever church he is found !" THE LORD'S SUPPER. II79 aad which held in its hands his. life or death, he said : I stand here and can say no more ; God help me 1 Amen." This was, without doubt, the most sublime and manly pleading in behalf of liberty of conscience, as well as the most noble and undaunted appeal to the Bible, as the only normative religious authority, ever attempted by man. But did the heroic Reformer undeviatingly practice these exalted Christian princi- ples, thus fearlessly and admirably asserted in the presence of this august assembly, distinguished no less for its learning and power than for the splendor and magnificence of its rank? Not always. In this, however, he was far from being singular ; for — with perhaps few exceptions, his zealous coadjutors in the laudable work of the Reformation were as ready to refer to the Bible, as the source and index of our faith, as their illustrious leader, while, like him, they sometimes set up mere human opinions as the ultimate standard of truth, thus reversing in practice what in theory they abhorred and condemned. A few, among many instances, will justify the assertion. The doctrine of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper gave the first impulse to the spirit of discord and resistance among the Reformers, and proved to be one of the main causes of the schism which still dis- tracts the Protestant Church.* The literal interpre- tation of the words of the Lord's Supper, This is my * The Calvinistio view of the Lord's Supper tends to schism no less than the dogma of the Eeal Presence ; for its basis is as little scriptural, while its import is no loss unintelligible. 180 THE DOCTRINE OF body ; this is my blood, could not but prove a stumb- ling-block to all who, in conformity to a universally admitted mode of speech and the dictates of unbiased reason, recognized a metaphor in these expressions. The Literalists had an undoubted right to their opin- ions, but they had, by no means, an undoubted right to attempt to impose it upon others, or to refuse Chris- tian fellowship with those that entertained different views. The Bible, theoretically so justly honored and extolled, was, in a great measure, supplanted by the authority of human dogmas, and, instead of resorting to the former to explain and define the latter, these were, on the contrary, employed as the proper and only lawful means to unfold and ultimately determine the sense of the Bible. Intolerance was the necessary accompaniment or speedy consequence of such contra- dictory measures, and the persecutions, the abuses, and heart-burnings, which now and then marked the pro- gress and cast its Upas shadow upon the pretensions of the Reformation, were neither very few nor always very light. The unhappy dispute between Luther and Carl- stadt, concerning the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, was the sad cause of the violent rupture which — to the disgrace of nascent Protestantism, ended in the banishment of the latter, instigated, it is affirmed, by his distiuguished antago- nist, from the Electorate of Saxony. The words of Haweis, in relation to this affair, are : " I have before spoken of Luther's harsh treatment of Carlstadt, whom his interest with the Elector drove from his THE LORD'S SUPPER. Igl native land ; and whatever was pretended as the cause, the real one may be found in their disputes about the Eucharist." Schwenkfeldt, a Silesian knight and counselor to the Duke of Lignitz, a man of eminent learning and unblemished morals, animated by sentiments simi- lar to those of Carlstadt, had, it seems, the misfor- tune or the courage to differ from the great Reformer about some of the rites and doctrines which the latter had introduced into the Church, and especially about the tenet of the Real Presence, and likewise fell a vic- tim to the same intolerant spirit, as appears from Mosheim, who thus summarily states the facts in the case : " This nobleman," writes the historian, " sec- onded by Valentine Crantwold, a man of eminent learning, who lived at the court of the prince now mentioned, the Duke of Lignitz, — took notice of many things which he looked upon as erroneous and defective in the opinions and rites established by Luther ; and, had not the latter been extremely vigilant, as well as vigorously supported by his friends and adherents, would undoubtedly have brought about a consider- able schism in the Church. Every circumstance in Schwenkfeldt's conduct and appearance was adapted to give him credit and influence. His morals were pure, and his life, in all respects, exemplary. His exhorta-. tions in favor of true and solid piety were warm and persuasive, and his principal zeal was employed in pro- moting it among the people. By this means he gained the esteem and friendship of many learned and pious men, both in the Lutheran and Helvetic Churches, who 16 182 TBE DOCTRINE OF favored Ms sentiments, and undertook to defend him against all his adversaries. Notwithstanding all this, he was banished by his sovereign, both from the court and from his country, in the year 1528, only because Zwingle had approved of his opinions concerning the Eucharist, and declared ' that they did not differ essen- tially from his own,'" etc. At this critical stage of ecclesiastical affairs in the Lutheran Church, the Grypto-GalvinisHc troubles, which had, for some time, lain smouldering under the embers of persecution, broke out anew with great vio- lence, and soon embraced a wide extent of territory. The fastnesses of the rigid Lutherans — the Olympus of the Amsdorffs, the riacians, the Andreaeans, etc. — were menacfed with an attack from the puissant Titans that appeared amid the lurid scenes of strife. With the growth and apparent , danger of the Calvinistic leaven, the cruel spirit of intolerance became corre- spondingly more wary and relentless, and it, accord- ingly, put forth redoubled vigor for the impending con- test. Anxiously concerned for the orthodoxy of the Church, " The Elector of Saxony," writes Mosheim, " convened anew the Saxon doctors, and held, in the year 15T4, the famous convention of Torgau, where, after a strict inquiry into the doctrines of those who, from their secret attachment to the sentiments of the Swiss divines,, were called Crypto-Calvinists, he com- mitted some of them to prison, sent others into ban- ishment, and engaged a certain number, by the force of the secular arm, to change their sentiments. Peucer, who had been principally concerned in moderating the TEE LORD'S SUPPER. ]83 rigor of some of Luther's doctrines, felt, in a more especial manner, the dreadful effects of the Elector's severity. For he was confined to a hard prison, where he lay in the most affecting circumstances of distress until the year 1585, when he obtained his liberty," etc. Such conduct is suggestive of the warning in one of the stanzas of Pope's " Universal Prayer" : ** Let not ttis weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw. And deal damnation round the land On each I judge thy foe." Peucer, according to Haweis, was son-in-law of Melanchthon, and a man distinguished both for his learning and piety. He was Professor at Wittenberg, and had formed a considerable party among the Saxon divines, who adopted with him the sentiments of Zwinglius respecting the Lord's Supper, which, it may be observed, Melanchthon, in his later years, likewise embraced. Ten long and tedious years did the unjustly maligned and oppressed disciple of Christ suffer the severe hardships of imprisonment on account of his opinions, or, in other words, for conscience sake, while the cruel treatment which he received bore evi- dence that persecution, on account of religious senti- ments, is not altogether confined to the pale of blood- stained popery. At last, to put an end, as was fondly hoped, to the conflicting views which agitated and seemed even to threaten the existence of the Church, and to secure as great a degree of uniformity in faith and practice as it Ig4 THE DOCTRINE OF was possible, the famous Form of Concord was com- posed, in order to strengthen some of the weaker points in the Lutheran creed ; • to elucidate and define others with more care and precision ; to give a more positive shape and expression to its dogmas generally; and, finally, by declaring it to be the inviolable standard of true faith, to impress it with the indelible insignia of perpetuity. Thus rigid Lutheranism — as it was termed — was, at length, clearly set forth and firmly established ; and according to this formula of faith, thus contained and explained in the Book of Concord, " doctrines," as it is stated in the Introduction, "shall be adjudged, and whatever is contrary to the express declarations set forth in it, shall be rejected and con- demned." The terse and pertinent remarks of Scott on this subject, in his work entitled " Luther and the Lutheran Reformation," deserve to be here appended: "The great principle, that to God alone, and not to his fel- low-creatures, is a man accountable for his religious belief; and that, so long as he conducts himself as a ^peaceable subject, — citizen, — he is entitled to the full protection of the magistrate, — a principle the very op- posite of that which had been received and acted upon during the long reign of popery, was yet scarcely dis- covered by here and there a scattered individual : and almost ages more elapsed before it was to any con- siderable extent proclaimed and admitted. " It could not be expected that either governments or individuals should, in the age of the Reformation, speedily divest themselves of the system of persecution TBE LORD'S SUPPER. 185 which flowed from the maxims of so many preceding ages, and still retaiaed its hold upon the mind, even after the original error on which it was founded had been detected and renounced. They were incapable of at once tracing to its just consequences the discovery which they themselves had made. If other professedly Christian bodies, not Roman Catholics, long retained the persecuting spirit, it was mainly because they found it so difficult wholly to eradicate the seeds of in- struction which they had received from the hand of popery," etc. Calvinism, too, — likewise still, more or less, under pre-Reformation influence, — can, by no means, boast exemption from acts of intolerance, as I shall briefly demonstrate.* * Serretus, a Spanisli physician, a man of versatile genius, exten- sive learning, and, as far as could be judged, of sincere piety, who could boast the friendship of many persons of ranlc and influence in France, Germany, and Italy, aroused the spirit of persecution against himself on account of his denial of the Divinity of the Saviour ; and passing through Switzerland, in order to seek refuge against the im- pending storm, in Italy, his career was suddenly arrested by the vigi- lance and severity of Calvin, " who," writes Mosheim, " caused him to be apprehended at Geneva, in the year 1553, and had an accusa- tion of blasphemy brought against him before the Council. The issue of this accusation was fatal to Servetus, who, adhering reso- lutely to the opinions he had embraced, was, by a public sentence of the court, declared an obstinate heretic, and, in consequence thereof, condemned to the flames," etc. Whether the dogma of the Myttioal Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper had anything to do with this cruel deed it is hard to say, but it is certain it did at least not prevent it. In his " Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der Spanischen Kegierung," that is, in his History of the Revolt of 16* 186 THE DOCTRINE OF the United Provinces of the Netherlands from the Spanish Govern- ment, Schiller writes : " The cruel oppression of the Catholics, in those places where the Calvinists had the upper hand, at length dispelled the existing delusion of the former, and induced them to withhold their support from a party of whose conduct, should they continue in the ascendant, they had reason to apprehend results detrimental to themselves." I pass on to the Church of England, whose creed is Calvinistic, and briefly call attention to the following facts, taken from Buck's "Theo- logical Dictionary." Having animadverted on the cruel persecutions of the Catholics in England, he adds: "Nor was the reign of Eliza- beth free from this persecuting spirit of the Catholics. If any one refused to consent to the least ceremony in worship, he was cast into prison, where many of the most excellent men in the land perished. Two Protestant Anabaptists were burned, and many banished. She also, it is said, put two Brownista to death; and though her whole reign was distinguished for its political prosperity, yet it is evident that she did not understand the rights of conscience ; for it is said that more sanguinary laws were made in her reign than in any of her predecessors, and her hands were stained with the blood both of Papists and Puritans. James the Pirst succeeded Elizabeth; he published a proclamation commanding all Protestants to conform strictly, and without any exception, to all the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. Above five hundred clergymen were imme- diately silenced, or degraded, for not complying. Some were excom- municated, and some banished the country. The Dissenters were distressed, censured, and fined, in the Star-chamber. Two persons were burned for heresy, — one at Smithfield, and the other at Lichfield. Worn out with endless vexations and unceasing persecutions, many retired into Holland, and from thence to America. It is witnessed by a judicious historian that, in this and some following reigns, twenty- two thousand persons were banished from England by persecution to America." I shall omit in this hasty sketch a notice of the dark and bloody scenes enacted in the reign of Charles the First, chiefly at the insti- gation of the persecuting Laud, a veritable demon in holy orders, and observe that the Presbyterians, when circumstances favored op- pression, did not altogether refuse to avail themselves of them. " The Presbyterians," writes Buck, " when their government cam© THE LORD'S SUPPER. 187 to be established in England, were not free from the charge of per- secution. In 1645 an ordinance was published, subjecting all who preached or wrote against the Presbyterian directory for public wor- ship to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds; and imprisonment for a year, for the third offence, in using the Episcopal book of common prayer, even in a private family. In the following year the Pres- byterians applied to Parliament, pressing them to enforce uniformity in religion, and to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy, schism, etc. ; but their petition was rejected," etc. I might here point out in detail, and show by numerous examples, the difference between Christians professing perfectible creeds and those adhering to unalterable confessions of faith. But a concise statement of facts will suffice. The Plymouth colony, in Massachu- setts, professed, as pupils of Robinson, a creed of the former kindj the colony of Massachusetts Bay, preponderatingly Calvinistic, one of the latter. The consequence of such diversity of views manifested itself in the ecclesiastical policy of the two embryo commonwealths : the Plymouth people were animated by a spirit of long-suffering and toleration, while those of Massachusetts Bay were dogmatic in their opinions and arbitrary in their religious government. It seemed as if Moses reigned in the|one place, in the thunders of Sinai, Christ in the other, through his own "exceeding riches of grace." Here was more of the Bible, there more of man's device. Hence the striking result !» Persecution, I may observe, is natural whore unalterable creeds prevail, and high mental culture only, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Christ, will foster principles of toleration and stay the hand of the persecutor. As soon as a religious association has attained tho conviction that it has the true faith, and which is, therefore, in- * Treating of tho Puritans, Bnck observes : " Those who formed the colony of MaBsachnsetts Bay, having never relinquished the principles of a natioual church, and of the power of tho civil magistrate in matters of faith and worship, were less tolerant than those who settled at New Plymouth, at Rhode Island, and at Providence. The very men, and they were good men too, who had just escaped the persecutions of the English prelates, now, in their turn, persecuted others who dissented from them, till at length the liberal system Of toleration, established in the parent country at the Revolution, extending to the colonies, in a good measure put an end to these proceedings." See also BiUical Repository and Quarterly Observer of April, 1835. 188 TEE DOCTRINE OF susceptible of improvement, so soon it harbors a spirit of intolerance ; for all that differ from it are, of course, in error and unfit religious companions : in fact, they are held to be ehurchly unclean. They are looked upon as standing in an inimical relation to God, not having been divinely inspired as have been their amiable judges, and on whom, therefore, the heavenly Father cannot smile, because they have not — without their fault, it should seem — the true doctrine, — ^that is, do not believe like their Shibboleth brethren. Such being the case, the inference is, — it is the bigot's inference, — that they have no business to cumber the ground, but, like weeds among the wheat, must be pulled up and cast out. Saints and sinners, what fellow ship can they have ? Yet it may be the latter are God-fearing, while the former, with complaisant mien and sluggard souls, are content with the lip-service of a ritualistic "Lord, Lord !" Alas, under similar circumstances, there are few men that would not light the diabolical torch of persecution ! Instead, therefore, of con- demning such religious aberration of a past age as evidence simply of extreme baseness of character, we should thank God for the supe- rior biblical and scientific light which illumines the nineteenth cen- tury; and while we deplore the wrongs and sufferings which an intolerant spirit, incidental, it is to be hoped, only to former ages, has inflicted upon mankind for opinion's sake, let us cast the broad mantle of Christian charity over the grim record of the bloody scene. THE LORD'S SUPPER. ]89 SIECTIOIsr 2CII. THE APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THE BIBLE AND OF OUR CO UNTR T. God, my fellow-citizens, speaks to us in the Bible, and should we not hear him ? Should we not hasten to learn of him what is his will, and in what consists owr duty ? Where the Bible is, there is light : we are God-taught, and free to worship according to the dic- tates of our consciences ; where it is not, there is spiritual darkness, and its inevitable consequence, — hierarchical tyranny. These truths are well understood and appreciated by-the Catholic Church of this coun- try. Hence, to acquire absolute dominion over you, they use every means in their power to banish the Bible from our common schools, and, having succeeded, it will soon be ejected from our homes and our altars. Can you contemplate with sinful indifference this foul attempt to rob you of the God-given treasure — the Bible, and then, thus robbed, pass into the spiritual slavery of papal despotism, more to be deprecated than war, famine, or pestilence? Arouse yourselves, my countrymen, and when the time comes — and it will not be either long or slow in coming — that shall " try men's souls", and decide the future destiny of the Republic, take your stand with the souls of Christian heroes on 190 THE DOCTRINE OP Bible ground, — it is holy ground, — and let your sacred battle-cry be. Liberty or Death ! Do you, now and then, call to mind, my fellow-citizens, that you possess a country unsurpassed in material resources, in the grandeur and variety of its scenery, and especially in its free and noble institutions, the pride of the nation, the gift of God and of the illustrious heroes of the Amer- ican Revolution, — our slavery-hating, freedom-loving , our thrice great and glorious ancestors 1 Ah, what hardships did they not endure, what blood and treas- ure did they not expend, in the sacred cause of civil and religious liberty ! Look around the wide world : " taken for all in all," you will not find a country so blessed, so distinguished for all the elements necessary to exalt a nation, — to make it great and happy. While you pray to the Giver of all good gifts that you may ever have a Bible, — open and free to all, as well as the touchstone of the faith of all, — pray also often and fer- vently for your country, that it may always be independ- ent, always free, always prosperous. Take heed, I beseech you, that political demagogues do not tamper with your civil rights, or Jesuits, by their insidious arts, undermine the nation's holy institutions, amid which the Star-spangled Banner still waves " over the land of the free and the home of the brave." Sing too of your country ; let the individual, let the family, let the nation join, in one universal chorus of freedom-inspired, freedom-defending patriots, in chanting the national anthem of freedom, — the death-song to tyrants, the pean of the free-born. Hark, they sing — God bless them : TEE LORD'S SUPPER. 191 " My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing j Land "wliere my fathers died. Land of the Pilgrims' pride. From every mountain's side Let freedom ring. " My native country ! thee. Land of the noble free. Thy name I love ; I love thy rocks and rills. Thy woods and templed hills ; My heart with rapture thrills Like that above. " Let music swell the breeze. And ring from all the trees. Sweet freedom's song ; Let mortal tongues awake, Let all that breathe partake ; Let rocks their silence break. The sound prolong. " Our fathers' God ! to thee. Author of liberty ! To thee we sing; Long may our land be bright With freedom's holy light; Protect us by thy might, Grep.t God our King !" Amen. THE END.