§ 139. Christians in partaking of the Lord’s Supper experience a peculiar strengthening of the spiritual life; for therein, according to the institution of Christ, His body and blood are administered to them.
- Our paragraphs ought in every case to contain simply the expression of our Christian consciousness; hence at this point we must start with the experience we ourselves have of this sacramental action, and (proving that we do not regard the experience as a purely personal thing) expect all believers to have. Only thereafter can we take up the further question how this experience first originated. The two questions hang together only in this respect, that the experience would not repeat itself perpetually, or at least the interpretation and treatment of the subject would have taken a quite different line, if there had not been some need which thus found satisfaction. To keep touch with the previous Doctrine, the subject of the present one would be utterly devoid of content if the salvation beginning with rightly administered baptism were so conferred that automatically it sustained itself unimpaired and adequately secured its own growth. The analogy of all life, however, argues the contrary; and it lies in the indissoluble bond between entrance into the living fellowship of Christ and entrance into the fellowship of believers that each of these two must be supported by the other. But just for that reason the mode in which the Church coexists with the world, as well as the hampering influence of the world on the Church, demands that this fellowship should periodically be nourished and strengthened; and it is the satisfaction of this need that believers seek in the sacrament of the altar. If now we provisionally regard the fellowship of believers with each other and the fellowship of each individual with Christ as being each of them separate and by itself, the latter fellowship will be fortified against the influences of the world by every moment of devout self-recollection in the believer’s life, during which on the one hand he closes his heart to worldly influences and on the other presents Christ to himself, out of Scripture—for it is always out of Scripture, directly or indirectly, that the thing is done. Over and above this, the fellowship of believers with each other is strengthened by every energetic and affecting manifestation of Christian love in any sphere of the common life. But each of these kinds of fellowship should influence the other; therefore between lonely contemplation and common active life there lies that intermediate sphere which we describe by the general term, public worship. This, viewed on one side, is simply the common life itself, withdrawing from outward activity to communicative representation of what is inward; viewed on the other side it is simply contemplation itself, moving out of privacy and expanding into the communal. Here, therefore, the two kinds of fellowship unite—that of believers with each other and that of each soul with Christ; and hence it is clear that everything that takes place here must have effects on both; while at the same time every effect one kind of fellowship has on the other seems necessarily to emanate from this intermediate sphere and to pass through it. It is to this sphere that the Lord’s Supper too belongs; for Christ instituted it as a communal act, which, while it is a presenting of Himself, is certainly a strengthening of both kinds of fellowship. For this reason, in the Church it is invariably celebrated in gatherings of the congregation: every other sort of celebration is an exceptional case, which ought also to be representative of the congregation assembled together.
But as it is only through trust in what other people profess as their experience that the individual can come to have the same experience as his own, we are led back by an unbroken tradition to the beginnings of the Church, and to the Supper itself as Christ held it with His disciples. Now from of old the essential thing has been held to, be the bestowal of Christ’s body and blood, and elsewhere He makes participation in His flesh and blood essential for having life. These two, accordingly, are the principal points which have first to be discussed—namely, how the Supper as the bestowal of Christ’s body and blood is related to the purely spiritual participation, and how the Supper as an element in public worship is distinguished from other parts thereof.
- To begin with the second point, it is pretty clear that Christendom as a whole in its public teaching and practice has from of old regarded the Supper as the climax of public worship.1 The rounded whole of our united experience in public worship would seem to us incomplete unless at definite points—and most often at the highest and holiest points—the Supper held its place as the most intimate bond of all. Similarly we should feel it to be a morbid thing—whether in the case of individuals or of entire congregations—if any other element of worship were to have attributed to it a greater power of sustaining and heightening blessedness than the Supper has. But we cannot rest satisfied with this; we must inquire as to the specific difference between what has come to be practised in the Church (even though it were with an unerring sense for the common good) and what Christ has thus ordained; and the difference appears to be this. In all other elements of public worship the aforesaid twofold effect on the fellowship of believers with each other and on the fellowship of each with Christ respectively is unequal; and for that reason they seem one-sided. The more markedly an individual stands out and draws others to himself, or the more powerfully a common mood of feeling finds expression and is heightened by being communicated to others, the intenser is the reaction on the common life. But what the effect on the fellowship of each soul with Christ will be depends on the personal spontaneity with which each brings that which has been publicly represented and expressed to bear on his relation to Christ and inwardly digests it. Each of the two kinds of effect, that is, depends on something else; hence one may be strong while the other is weak. In the Supper, on the other hand, it is impossible for the two to be separated or distinguished; the Supper rests on nothing that is individual or peculiar, which might turn the effect to one side or the other; nor does the distributing minister exert any personal force on the receivers, or the receivers individually exert any special and inward spontaneity. Rather it is simply the whole redeeming love of Christ to which we are pointed there; and as the distributing minister is nothing more than the organ of Christ’s institution, the receivers uniformly find themselves simply in a state of completely open receptivity for Christ’s influence. Without the special interposition of any individual, therefore, every effect flows directly and undividedly from the Word of institution in which the redeeming and fellowshipforming love of Christ is not only represented but made newly active, and in trustful obedience to which the sacramental action is ever anew performed. It is in this undivided and exclusive immediacy and in the resulting freedom of its effects from dependence on changing personal moods and circumstances, that the Supper differs from all other elements of public worship.