Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

an outward visible part and an inward invisible part. It will conduce to clearness if we begin with the latter :

1. The Inward Gift.

"What is the inward part or thing signified ?” "The Body and Blood of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper."

Thus clearly and distinctly and confidently does our Church Catechism assert that what is given us in the Holy Communion is the Body and Blood of Christ. And the words "verily and indeed taken and received " seem to be inserted purposely to exclude any metaphorical interpretation of the terms Body and Blood.

This is clear; but no less clear is it that in these questions and answers of the Catechism, our Church is most careful to keep distinctly apart this inward spiritual feeding on Christ's Body and Blood, and that outward visible feeding on bread and wine; our Church teaches us that the two go on concurrently,' and that we are not to have one without the other, but the two are not to be confused; (it would, in the language of the xxviiith Article, “overthrow the nature of a sacrament” to suppose the two parts made one. But of this presently).

Of the outward and visible feeding we are not now speaking; let us fix our thoughts exclusively on the inward spiritual feeding, and reverently inquire what we

1 “Concurrently” is Hooker's word, borrowed perhaps from the ovvrpéxeɩ of Greg. Naz. Or. 40, and a most helpful word it is; in fact, the key to our Church's doctrine of the Sacraments.

[ocr errors]

are to understand by it. Holy Scripture must be our teacher.

Twelve months before the institution of the outward visible sign, our blessed Lord had spoken at some length of this inward spiritual feeding on His Body and Blood.

The discourse is given in the sixth chapter of St. John. The whole of that discourse is anticipatory,—not anticipatory, necessarily, of the institution of the Eucharist, but assuredly anticipatory of that gift or grace of spiritual food which Christ intended to bequeath to His Church, and which He was subsequently pleased to secure to His Church by a special form of conveyance in the Eucharist.'

But of that special form of conveyance there is no mention in this chapter; our Lord speaks exclusively of an inward spiritual grace. What is it? Let the tenor of the discourse guide us to an answer.

Christ is first speaking to the Jews in their synagogue -in dark sayings, as usual. They had asked for bread from heaven like that which Moses had given. Christ replies that God will give them the true bread from heaven, of which the manna from the sky was only a type: He had come down from Heaven, He was the true bread from Heaven.

The Jews murmur at our Lord's thus speaking of Himself as One who had come down from Heaven. Our Lord replies that none can receive this truth of His Divinity unless he be "taught of God;" and that to those

1 "Fateor nihil hic dici quod non in Coenâ figuretur ac verè præstetur fidelibus; adeoque Sacram Cœnam Christus quasi hujus concionis sigillum esse voluit."-Calvin on John vi.

K

who thus receive Him, He will be (as He had before said) a life-giving food:-"I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven; if any man eat of this Bread he shall live for ever."

At this point, namely in the 51st verse, our Lord introduces a new thought.-His thought heretofore has been simply, "I am bread," " he that eateth Me." Now, for the first time, He mentions flesh, and two verses later flesh and blood; and now for the first time He uses the future tense :- "The bread that I will give is My Flesh, which I will give for the life of the world;"-pointing to a definite time when He would give the world this bread. What is the meaning?

Clearly the meaning is that, as He then and there stood before them, He could not be their food: that His death was necessary,—the mention of the flesh and blood as in a state of separation implying death, and not only death, but sacrificial death:-"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ;"—meaning, "Unless you feed on My sacrifice, you cannot be partakers of my Divine Life.”

To the Jews in the Capernaum Synagogue all this was unintelligible, and to them no further explanation was given. Afterwards, alone with His disciples, He finds that they too had failed to understand Him.

To them He vouchsafes an explanation (in v. 63). And first, of His having come down from Heaventhat is, of His Divinity-He promises them a convincing proof in His approaching Ascension.

Then, as to the life-giving efficacy of His flesh, He explains the necessity of its sacrifice and consequent glorification.

His mere flesh, as it then was, could have no such efficacy; it must be glorified and spiritualised. Then, and then only, could it be life-giving food. "The words I have been using "—or rather, "the things I have been speaking of-Flesh and Blood-are spirit and life." By the flesh which they were to eat He meant the spiritual substance, and by the blood which they were to drink He meant the vital principle of His glorified Humanity.1

1 The interpretation of the 63d verse here given is that of St. Athanasius (Ad. Serap. iv. 19), and is approved by Bengel and by Stier. Zuingle and others have understood the verse to mean that Christ's words and doctrine were the bread on which we are to feed ; and that He called them "flesh and blood" metaphorically; and some of the Fathers seem to countenance the notion, but it is observable that where they do so, they are speaking to the uninitiated. As, for example, Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechetical Lectures (xvi. 13, 14). But surely this is too cold an interpretation, and altogether insufficient (as Hooker says) to sustain the weight of those many sentences that speak of our incorporation with Christ, of our being in Him and He in us! Besides, if this were really all that our Lord intended, it would be not merely explaining, but explaining away-retracting-all that He had said before. St. Athanasius seems to give us the key to the passage, when he tells us that by the word "Spirit" in this verse, our Lord meant, not the Third Person of the Trinity, but His own Divine nature (Tǹ davтoû lebτnta). was by virtue of this that His Human Body ascended to Heaven; and it was by virtue of this, that this same Body became a life-giving food to mankind. So St. Paul: "The last Adam was made a quickening Spirit," I Cor. xv. 45. (And so Athanasius again, vol. ii. p. 1012, Ed. Migne, “πνεῦμα γὰρ ζωοποιοῦν ἡ σάρξ ἐστι τοῦ Κυρίου.”) He paraphrases Christ's words, "What I have been speaking of is Spirit, and is Life; see p. 346, infra. So Newman (on Justifi

It

Thus we have in the Capernaum discourse the doctrine of that inward and spiritual feeding on Christ, of which the Eucharist (instituted twelve months afterwards) is our surest means and pledge.

And by the help of that discourse we are in a position to define (as far as so great a mystery may be defined) the inward spiritual feeding, vouchsafed to us in the Eucharist.

What is it? It is twofold:

It is (1) such a participation in the sacrifice made once for all by Christ upon the cross,-in His Body as then given, in His Blood as then poured forth,-as makes us (2) participators of His Body glorified, and of His divine Life, so that thereby "we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we are one with Christ and Christ with us."

If, in reference to the first, any ask, How can we now partake of Christ's Body in that state of dissolution in which it was once, but is no longer?- we answer, Partaking of the sacrifice means partaking of the benefits of the sacrifice, which are abiding.

And if, in reference to the second, any ask, How can Christians in several places partake of the glorified Body of Christ, when it is "against the truth of a Body to be at one time in more places than one "?—we answer : -We do best to abstain from all speculation about the nature of the glorified Body of Christ. Suffice it to cation, p. 242): "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; this is what I spoke of when I said that whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood shall have eternal life. I spoke of the Spirit of My glorified Body."

1 Bishop Thirlwall, in an appendix to his Charge of 1866, de

« PoprzedniaDalej »