the guest, the traveller, so in His worship He chose the most homely elements of food. How great is the contrast with the sacred emblems of other religions-the bulls, the goats, the white horses, the jewels, the robes. It is the servants, the inferiors, the precursors, who need these appendages to mark them. The True Master is known by the simplicity of His appearance, the plainness of His manners and His dress.

Parting

meal.

3. He chose also this particular occasion, His parting supper, His farewell meal, as the foundation of His most sacred ordinance, to show us that here, as elsewhere, His religion was to be part of our common life, not separated from it-that the human affections of friend for friend, the sorrow of parting, the joy of meeting again, are the very bonds by which union and sympathy are formed. The very name of supper reminds us that our holiest religious ordinance sprung from a festive meal, amidst eating and drinking, amidst weeping and rejoicing, amidst question and answer. It proves that amongst the means of Christian edification, not the least are those interchanges of hospitality where man talks freely with man, friend with friend, guest with guest. Many such a meal has ere this worked the blessed work of even a Christian sacrament. How wise is that advice given by a great humourist of our age," not less wise than he was witty, that bishops should compose the differences of their clergy not by rebukes, but by meeting at the same social table. How many a quarrel, how many a heart-burning, how many a false estrangement, might in like manner be reconciled and done away with by the Sacred Supper, which is the prototype and ideal of all suppers, of every chief meal of the day everywhere. "The supper,' says Luther, which Christ held with His disciples when He gave them His farewell, must have been full of friendly heartintercourse; for Christ spoke just as tenderly and cordially to them as a father to his dear little children when he is obliged to part from them. He made the best of their Sydney Smith.

infirmities and had patience with them, although all the while they were so slow to understand, and still lisped like babes. Yet that must indeed have been choice friendly and delightful converse when Philip said, "Show us the way," and Thomas said, "We know not the way," and Peter, "I will go with thee to prison and to death." It was simple, quiet table-talk; every one opening his heart, and showing his thoughts freely and frankly, and without restraint. Never since the world began was there a more delightful meal than that.' It is the likeness, the model, of all serious conversation, of all family intercourse, of all social reciprocity.

Its future meaning.

4. And lastly, He gave all these things a new meaning. Here, as elsewhere, what He touched He vivified, what He used He transformed and transfigured. It might have been otherwise. We might have inherited only the Paschal feast-the blessing of the natural gifts-the social meal. But He did more than this. He tells them that it is Himself who is to live over again in their thoughts every time they break that bread and drink that wine. What those common earthly sustenances are to their bodies, that His Spirit must be to their souls. This was what the Apostles needed at that moment of depression. They felt that He was going to leave them; He made them feel that He would still be with them. It was to be a memorial of His death, but it was also to be a pledge of His life. Five versions have been handed down to us of the words which He used-one by St. Matthew, one by St. Mark, one by St. Luke, one by St. Paul, a fifth is found in the oldest Liturgical forms of the early Church, differing from the others. In the Fourth Gospel, whilst the words are not given at all, their substance extends through the whole of that parting discourse which is in their account a substitute for them. This variety of narratives, whilst it shows the slight value which those early times attached to the letter, shows also the essential spirit of the whole transaction. This is my Body.' This is my Blood.' This is the New Testament.'

'I am the vine.' 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.' It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come to you.' What the Apostles are imagined to have felt as they heard those words is represesented by their questions and answers. In various forms they longed to know whither He was going they asked Him to show them the Father-they asked that He would manifest Himself to them and not to the world. But, one and all, amidst all their failings, they were cheered and strengthened. They felt that they had not parted with Him for ever. The very manner in which He broke the bread was enough to bring Him back to their recollections. They recognised Him by it at Emmaus and on the shores of Gennesareth.

It was

not only as they had seen Him at the last supper, but at those earlier feasts where He had blessed and broken the bread and distributed the fishes on the hills of Galilee. The Last Supper was in fact a continuation of those meals. It belonged to the future side of His life; that is, as He Himself had explained to them, not the flesh, which profited nothing, but the words which were His spirit and His life. Not only these expressions, but many others yet stronger, repeat over and over the truth which that last supper taught. Christ's own inmost self would remain always the life and soul of the Church and of the world. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of you.' 'Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren you did it to me.' Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.'

6

It is also the glorification of the power of Memory. Each one may think of those who are gone, and whose bequests we still desire to carry on. Each one, as at the Lord's Table we think of the departed, and think also of any friendless one to be comforted, of any institution needing help, of any suffering one to be cheered, may hear the voice, whatsoever it may be, nearest and dearest, or highest and Renan, Vie de Jésus, 302, 303.

holiest, in the other world, saying, ' This do, in remembrance of Me.' Remembrance-recalling of the past—is the moral, mental, spiritual means by which the Last Supper' becomes 'the Lord's Supper.'

They who believe in the singular mercy and compassion shown in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, or in the toleration and justice due to those who are of another religion, as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, they, whether they be Christian in name or not, whether they have or have not partaken of the sacrament, have thus received Christ, because they have received that which was the essence of Christ, His spirit of mercy and toleration.

It is the simple fact, which no one of whatever creed disputes, that Christ has been, and is still, the Soul of Christendom, and to His life we go back to recover our ideal of what Christianity is that wherever we meet any good thought or deed, any suffering or want to be relieved in any part of the world, there we touch a hand that is vanished-there we hear a voice that is silent. It is the hand, it is the voice, of our Redeemer. Other teachers, other founders of religions, have cared that their names should be honoured and remembered. He cared not for this, if only Himself, His spirit, His works, survived-if to the poor, the suffering, the good everywhere, were paid the tenderness, the honour due to Him. In their happiness He is blessed, in their honour He is honoured, and in their reception He is received. It is the last triumph of Divine unselfishness, and it is its last and greatest reward. For thus He lives again in His members and they live in Him. Even those who have most questioned and most doubted acknowledge that 'He is a thousand times more living, a thousand times more loved, than He was in His short passage through life, that He presides still day by day over the destiny of the world. He started us on a new direction, and in that direction we still move.'

It used to be said in the wars between the Moors and the Spaniards that a perfect character would be the man who had Renan, Vie de Jésus, p. 421.

the virtues of the Mussulman and the creed of the Christian. But this is exactly reversing our Lord's doctrine. If the virtues of the Arabs were greater than the virtues of the Spaniards, then, whether they accepted Christ in word or not, it was they who were the true believers, and it was the Christians who were the infidels.

When the Norman bishops asked Anselm whether Alfege, who was killed by the Danes at Greenwich, could be called a martyr, because he died not on behalf of the faith of Christ, but only to prevent the levying of an unjust tax, Anselm answered-' He was a martyr, because he died for justice; justice is the essence of Christ, even although His name is not mentioned.' The Norman prelates, so far as their complaint went, were unbelievers in the true nature of Christ. Anselm was a profound believer, just as Alfege was an illustrious martyr. When Bishop Pearson in his work on the Creed vindicates the Divinity of Christ without the slightest mention of any of those moral qualities by which He has bowed down the world before him, his grasp on the doctrine is far feebler than that of Rousseau or Mill, who have seized the very attributes which constitute the marrow and essence of His nature. When Commander Goodenough, on one of the most edifying, the most inspiring, deathbeds which can be imagined, spoke in the most heroic and saintly accents to his sailors and friends, there were pious souls who were deeply perplexed because he had not mentioned the name of Jesus. It was they who for the moment were faithless, as it was he who was the true believer, although, except in a language they did not understand, he had not spoken expressly of the Saviour with whose Spirit he was so deeply penetrated.

Such are some of the ways in which the life of Christ is still lived on the earth.