The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-06-16
THE LORDS SUPPER.

LIE LOhD . OOFfEh.
The Lords Supper at its institution
presented no difficulties to the minds of
the disciples. AS Jews they were &C
customed each Sabbath eve-as the
Jews are to-day accustomed all over
the world each Sabbath eve-to spread
white cloth, and place thereon cup
of wine and cake Of bread; and, when
the Sabbath commenced (i.e., at about
six o'clock, sunset, on Friday EVENING",
to invite every son Of Israel in the
house to draw near and partake, as a
bond of brotherhood, in memory Of the
deliverance from Egypt, and in thank
fulness for Gods good gifts of corn
and wine. Our Saviour, the same
night he was betrayed, in a precisely
similar manner, took the cup and the
bread, and after he had given thanks
and partaken himself, passed them to
his disciples, but he added new mean
ing to the act. From being done in
memory of the bondage in Egypt it was
changed to "Do this as often as ye
drink it (i.e., each Sabbath) in remem-
brance of me-" Yes, the common cup
passed from hand to hand was now no
longer to be the symbol and the pledge
of brotherhood in the b,ood-ie., in the
life-of Christ. No man was to wipe
the cup, no man to refuse to drink after
his neighbor, whether his neighbor was
Jew, or Greek, Scythian, bond or free;
everyone was to be on an equality as a
Christian brother, exactly as it was
then, and exactly as it is now, between
Jew and Jew when the cup is passed
round at the commencement of the
Sabbath in every Jewish home. The
heather Greeks and Romans, however,
knew nothing Of these Jewish customs.
They only knew of wine poured out in
the temple on the altar as an oblation
to Jupiter and the other gods. Accord
ingly, the notion of sacrifice, and of
wine poured out in oblation upon the
altar, gradually crept in among the
heather converts in connection with
the Lords Supper. Thus, at this hour
in the Roman Catholic church, the
priest, who calls himself the servant Of
Christ, pours out his oblation of wine,
at what is styled the sacrifice of the
mass, precisely as his predecessor, who
used in the old times to call himself
the servant of Jupiter, poured out his
oblatiOn of wine on the altar at the
heather sacrifices. This seems to have
been pretty clearly understood at the
time of the Reformation, for we read
that on June IL, 1850, 1.-THE altar at st.
.Paul's (London) was taken down and
table erected in it's place, signifying in
the change that the body of the Saviour
was no longer broken and offered in
the sacrament, but that human beings
merely partook together of innocent
bread and wine" Yes, that is the
whole point; the communion is not the
symbol of the body and blood of Christ
offered on the altar to appease an angry
God as heather sacrifices were offered
on the altar to appease the irate
deities. perhaps, indeed, since the
mass is a sham sacrifice, we might
more nearly compare it to cheating
Saturn with stone, and by this trick
saving his children from his rapacity)
No, the communion is human" COM
munion, a communion of the members
of the brotherhood in Christ, who par
take together Of innocent bread and
wine"
The earliest Christian records place
the whole matter in the clearest posi-
BILE light. The Lords supper was a
real supper, SO very real that some of
the Christian converts ate and drank
thereat good deal too much, so that st.
Paul is obliged to reprove them, and to
bid those who are hungry and greedy
to eat at home. Throughout there is
not in its observance a thought of
sacrifice offered to God, any more than
in the cup and the cake, used then by
the Jews in the evening at the COM
mencement of every Sabbath, and used
now all the world over by the Jews in
this nineteenth century in the evening,
at the commencement of every Sabbath,
is there any idea of sacrihcial meaning
or import; there is brotherhood and
thankfulness only. The notion that |
the crime of the cruciaxion was a
sacrifice well pleasing to God, and the
notion that the sham sacrifice of the
mass (hoc est corpus, the "hocus
poeus'D, which is supposed to repeat