§ CXXI.

Institution of the Eucharist.

According to the concurrent testimony of the three first evangelists, and the apostle Paul (I. Cor. xi. 23, et seq.) it was at the time of the last repast, whilst Jesus, was officiating, as head amongst his disciples, and dividing amongst them the unleavened bread and the wine, that he instituted a connection between this distribution and his approaching death. During the repast, he took into his hands a loaf, which, after invoking a blessing upon it, he broke, and gave to his disciples, saying, "this is my body;" to which Luke and Paul add, "given," or "broken for you;" immediately afterwards (according to Luke and Paul, when he had supped), he presented them with a cup full of wine, saying, "this is my blood of the new testament," or, according to Luke and Paul, "the new testament in my blood, which is shed for many" (Paul), "for you (Luke); and to which Matthew adds, "for the remission of sins." Paul and Luke, at the time of the distribution of the bread, have added these words, "this do in remembrance of me," and at the time of the distribution of the wine, Paul adds, "this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me."

It was long debated whether, from these expressions, we were to understand that there was a real transformation of the bread and the wine into the body and the blood of Christ; or whether we were to infer from thence an existence of the body and the blood of Christ with and under the elements of the bread and the wine; or, in fine, if they signify that the bread and the wine represented the body and the blood of Christ. This controversy may now be called an old one, and in the exegesis at least, there is no use in pursuing it any further, because it reposes upon a faulty disjunction of

ideas. It is only in passing into the more narrow western mind and into more modern times, that the idea which the ancient orientals had of the words "this is," has been subjected to these different possible significations; but if we would re-produce in our minds the primitive idea which dictated this expression we ought not in this way to retrench its meaning. Will it be said that the words in question indicate the actual transformation? This is too precise. Must we understand them in the sense of an existence cum et sub specie, &c.? This is too artificial. Shall we translate them "this signifies?" The idea is too confined and too timid. For the compilers of our gospels, the bread of the eucharist was the body of Christ. But if we had asked them: Is the bread changed? they would have answered, No. If we had spoken to them of eating the body with and as bread, they would not have understood us. If, in consequence, we had concluded that the bread only represented the body, they would not have been satisfied.

Further argument then on this subject is useless; we shall do better to investigate the more interesting questions which will arise out of the differences to be discovered in the respective narratives. According to all these accounts, Jesus represents his blood as the blood of the new testament, which was to be shed for the benefit of his followers (of many); thus he represents his violent death as a covenant sacrifice, as a supreme type of the bloody sacrifices of animals by which the old Mosaic covenant of Jehovah with the people of Israel was formerly confirmed (Exodus xxiv. 6, et seq.) To this Matthew has added, "for the remission of sins,' which to the idea of a covenant sacrifice, superadds the more extended idea of the sacrifice of expiation. The difference in the nature of these two ideas has excited critical doubts as to the truth of this addition, the more especially as the first evangelist is the only one who makes mention of it. Nevertheless, the two ideas are not incompatible; we find them combined in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix.15); and thus we are not perhaps entitled to pronounce a decisive judgment on the subject.

There is another question: did Jesus make this special and significative distribution of bread and wine to his disciples as a farewell token alone, or did he make it with the intention that even after his death his adherents should continue to celebrate it as a rite instituted in memory of him? If we were in possession of the narratives of the two first evangelists alone, we should have no grounds on which to raise an argument in support of this latter opinion; and this is conceded by orthodox theologians themselves. But the addition of Paul and Luke appears to be decisive of the question, "this do in remembrance of me." These words evidently prove that the intention of Jesus was to institute a commemorative repast, which, according to Paul, Christians were to celebrate till the time of his coming. But these additions, more than anything else, in these latter times, have led to the supposition that it is very possible that they were not originally derived from Jesus; that it is probable that at the time of the celebration of the eucharist in the first Christian communities, the president who made the distribution of the bread and the wine, exhorted the members to repeat on other occasions this supper, in memory of Christ, and that this ancient ritual of the Christians caused the addition of the words in question to the observations of Jesus. Olshausen dwells upon the authority of the apostle Paul against this conjecture, but he dwells upon it with too mystic an exaggeration to produce any effect. According to him, Paul, in saying, "I have received of the Lord," as good as asserted that he spoke in virtue of an immediate revelation of Christ, and that even Christ spoke by his mouth; but as Süskind has confessed, and as Schulz has recently most convincingly demonstrated, the locution, παραλαμβάνειν ἀπό τινος, may signify not only to receive immediately of any one, but, also, to receive mediately, and, consequently, by tradition. If Paul did not receive this addition from Jesus himself, Süskind, nevertheless, thinks it capable of demonstration that it must have been communicated, or at least confirmed, to

him by an apostle, and he thinks himself capable of tracing, after the manner of his school, by a series of abstract divisions, certain lines of demarcation, by which he pretends that it is impossible that any inauthentic legend can have entered into the composition of this passage. But the rigorous authenticity which belongs to Our time cannot be looked for in the infancy of a religious society whose communities, separated from each other by considerable distances, and having no regular connection with each other, were reduced on most occasions to have recourse to simple oral communications. Neither ought we, in order to maintain that the words "this do in remembrance of me," are a posterior addition to the words of Jesus, either to argue from false reasons; (such, for example, as that, in instituting a commemorative feast in his own honour, Jesus must have done violence to his humility), or to lay too much stress upon the silence of the two first evangelists, in opposition to the testimony of the apostle Paul.

Perhaps this point may be decided by another question-Why did Jesus make this special and significative distribution of bread and wine to his disciples ? The orthodox opinion of the divinity of the person of Christ requires that we should consider it impossible that there could have arisen in his mind any successive, or sudden, and particularly any contingent, plans and designs, having no previous existence. In consequence, with the prescience of his destiny, and with the knowledge of his entire plan of salvation, there existed in Jesus from the beginning, the project of instituting the supper, and of instituting it as a commemorative feast for his church; and, in this sense, the allusions in respect to this rite attributed to Jesus in the sixth chapter of the fourth gospel, have been frequently quoted, to prove that he must have thought of its institution for a year previously, at the least.

The support, however, to be derived from this passage is not very great; for, from our previous investigations, it will be recollected that these allusions, which

were absolutely unintelligible before the institution of the Lord's Supper, could not have emanated from Jesus himself, but must have been the work of the Evangelist. Moreover, to suppose that from the beginning, or at least from the commencement of manhood, every thing in Jesus was predetermined and foreseen, would appear to destroy the reality of his human nature. And thus rationalists, who take up the opposite position, maintain that Jesus had no idea before the evening in question either of the act itself, or of the symbolical observations of which it is constituted. According to these authors, Jesus, on seeing the bread broken and the wine poured out, was inspired with the sentiments of his approaching and violent death; he saw in the bread an image of his body, about to be crucified; in the wine an image of his blood, about to be shed; and he gave utterance in the presence of his disciples to this sudden impression. Dismal forebodings like these must naturally have been stronger in the mind of Jesus in proportion to the imminence of his impending fate. And it would appear that he was fully convinced of this at the time of the repast, since, according to the narratives of the three synoptics, he assured his disciples that thenceforward he should no more taste of the fruit of the vine till he should drink it new in the kingdom of his Father. As there is no reason to imagine in this case any pledge of abstinence, it necessarily follows that he must have foreseen that his earthly career was drawing to a close. But, in Luke, before he gave this assurance with respect to the wine, he had asserted that he would eat no more Passover, "until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God." From this it might be inferred that originally the words "fruit of the vine," may have signified, not wine in general, but, in particular, the wine of the Passover; an opinion which receives further support from the phrase employed by Matthew, who says, not the fruit of the vine, but "this fruit of the vine." Jesus, in accordance with the ideas of his time, more than once spoke of eating and drinking in the kingdom of heaven; and it is possible that he