byterate, as the belief in the paramount necessity of Baptism became stronger, as the population of Christendom increased, the right was extended to Presbyters, then to Deacons, and at last to laymen, and, in defiance of all early usage, to women. And thus it has happened by

one of those curious introversions of sentiment which are so instructive in ecclesiastical history, that whilst in Protestant Churches which lay least stress on the outward rite, the administration is virtually confined to the clergy, in the Roman Catholic Church, which lays most stress on the rite, the administration is extended to the laity and to the female sex. This is a formidable breach in the usual theories concerning the indispensable necessity of the clerical order for the administration of the sacramental rites, and it is difficult to justify the difference in principle which in the Roman Church has rendered the practice with regard to the sacrament of Baptism so exceedingly lax, with regard to the sacrament of the Eucharist so exceedingly rigid.

Such are some of the general reflections suggested by the revolutions through which the oldest ordinance of the Church has come down to our day. They may possibly make that ordinance more intelligible both to those who adopt and to those who have not adopted it. They may also serve to illustrate the transformation both of letter and spirit through which all sacred ordinances which retain any portion of their original vitality must pass.

CHAPTER II.

THE EUCHARIST.

It is proposed to give an account of the primitive institution of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper-unquestionably the greatest religious ordinance of the world, whether as regards its almost universal adoption in the civilized world, or the passions which it has enkindled, or the opposition which it has evoked.

Unlike many of the records of the Gospel story, which from the variety and contradiction of the narratives, and from the question as to the date and authorship of the Gospels, are involved in difficulty, the narrative of the Institution of the Lord's Supper is preserved to us on the whole with singular uniformity in the three first Gospels, and more than this, it is preserved to us almost in the same form in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and in that case is one of the few writings of the New Testament of which the authority has never been questioned at all, and which belongs to a date long anterior to any of the Gospels, and which is therefore at once the earliest and the most authentic of any part of the Gospel History. What St. Paul tells us about the Last Supper is a fragment of the Gospel History which all critics and scholars will at once admit. "The Supper was universally instituted or founded by Jesus." 1 There is nothing startling, nothing difficult to accept in the account no miraculous portents, no doctrine difficult of apprehension - but it contains many 1 Strauss's Life of Jesus.

His

of the best characteristics of Our Lord's discourses deep affection to His disciples - His parabolical mode of expression His desire to be remembered after He was gone His mixture of joyous festivity with serious earnestness. It contains also by implication the story of His arrival in Jerusalem, of His betrayal, and of His death. We have enough in this to build upon. No one doubts it. Every one may construct from it a Christianity sufficient for his belief and for his conduct.

By dwelling on the original form we pass out of the midst of modern controversy to a better, simpler, higher atmosphere. It is said that a great genius in France,1 when on the point of receiving a first communion in the years which followed the first Revolution, was overwhelmed by the distracting and perplexing thoughts suggested by all the doubts which raged on the subject, but was restored to calm by fixing the mind on the one original scene from which the Christian Eucharist has sprung. Let us do the same. Let us go back to that one occasion, out of which, all are agreed, both its unity and its differences arose.

It was not, as with us, in the early morning or at noonday, but in the evening, shortly after sunset — not on the first day of the week, nor the seventh, The time. but on the fifth, or Thursday, that the Master and His disciples met together. The remembrance of the day of the week has now entirely perished except in Passion Week. It was revived in the time of Calvin, who proposed in recollection of it to have the chief Christian festival and day of rest transferred on this account from Sunday to Thursday. But this was never carried out, and the day now remains unremembered. The remembrance still lingers in the name when we call it a supper

1 Memoirs of George Sand.

из

-the Lord's Supper-and still more in Germany, the Holy Evening Meal. For such it was. It was the evening feast, of which every Jewish household partook on the night, as it might be, before or after the Passover. They were collected together, the Master and His twelve disciples, in one of the large upper rooms above the open court of the inn or caravanserai to which they had been guided. The couches or mats were spread round the room, as in all Eastern houses; and on those the guests lay reclined, three on each couch, according to the custom derived from the universal usage of the Greek or Roman world. The ancient Jewish usage of eating the Passover standing had given way, and a symbolical meaning was given to what was in fact a more social fashion, that they might lie then like kings, with the ease becoming free men.1

The ele

There they lay, the Lord in the midst, next to the beloved disciple, and next to him the eldest, Peter. Of the position of the others we know nothing. There was placed on the table in front of the guests, one, two, perhaps four cups, or rather bowls. There is at Genoa a bowl which professes to be the original chalice

ments.

a mere fancy, no doubt — but probably representing the original shape. This bowl was filled with wine. mixed up with water. The wine of old times was always mixed with water. No one ever thought of taking it without, just as now no one would think of taking treacle or vinegar without water. Beside the cup was one or more of the large thin Passover cakes of unleavened bread, such as may still at the Paschal season be seen in all Jewish houses. It is this of which the outward form has been preserved in the thin round wafer which is used in the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches. It was the recollection of the unleavened bread of the Israelites

1 Maimonides, Pesach, 10. 1; Farrar, Life of Christ, ii. 278.

when they left Egypt. As the wine was mixed with water, so the bread was probably served up with fish. The two always went together. We see examples of it in the earlier meals in the Gospel, and so doubtless it was in this last. Close beside this cake was another rec. ollection of the Passover-a thick which was supsop, posed to be like the Egyptian clay, and in which the fragments of the Paschal cake were dipped. Round this table, leaning on each other's breasts, reclining on those couches, were the twelve disciples and their Master. From mouth to mouth passed to and fro the eager inquiry, and the startled look when they heard that one of them should betray Him.1 Across the table and from side to side were shot the earnest questions from Peter, from Jude, from Thomas, from Philip. In each face might have been traced the character of each receiving a different impression from what he saw and heardand in the midst of all this the majestic sorrowful countenance of the Master of the Feast, as He drew towards him the several cups and the thin transparent cake, and pronounced over each the Jewish blessing with those few words which have become immortal.

Let us see then from hence the details of the first institution of the ordinance.

1. It was the ancient Jewish paschal meal. He showed by thus using it that He did not mean to part the new from the old. He intended that there should be this connection, however slight, with the ancient Israelite nation. The blessing which He pronounced on the cup and the bread was taken from the blessing which the Jewish householder

Its connection with Judaism.

1 In this respect the picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci gives a true impression. The moment represented is that in which, as a bombshell, the declaration that one of them should betray Him has fallen among the Apostles. It is not a picture of the Last Supper, so much as the expression of the various emotions called forth by that announcement.