Chapter XX · The Upper Room — J. C. Ryle
THE paper which begins at this page requires a few words of prefatory explanation. It consists of fifty-one questions about the Lord’s Supper, with special reference to points which are the subject of much dispute and controversy in the present day. It supplies fifty-one answers to these questions, chiefly drawn from the New Testament, and the Articles, Communion Service, and Catechism of the Church of England. It contains, in addition, some valuable extracts from the writings of standard English divines.
It is a painful fact, and one which it is impossible to deny, that the principal cause of differences among Churchmen at this moment is the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Whether that blessed ordinance is to be regarded as a sacrifice or not, whether the Lord’s Table is an altar or not, whether the officiating clergyman is a sacrificing priest or not,—whether there is a corporal, material presence of Christ’s body and blood in the consecrated elements of bread and wine or not,—whether these elements and the Lord’s Table ought to be regarded with as much lowly reverence and honour as if Christ was bodily present or not,—all these are questions which are continually coming to the front. To speak plainly, they seem likely to divide the English clergy into two distinct parties, and to rain the Church of England!
Nor is this all. It is another painful and dangerous fact that the great majority of English lay Churchmen seem utterly unable to understand the very serious nature of the question which is dividing the clergy, and the doctrinal consequences which are bound up with it. Most lay Churchmen can only see that the service in some churches is more ornamental and musical than in others, and that in some there is more importance attached to the Lord’s Table, and to flowers, decorations, gestures, dress, and postures, than in others. But they can see no further. They cannot, or will not, perceive that the ceremonial actions in administering the Lord’s Supper, about which the clergy disagree, are not mere ornamental trifles, as some suppose. So far from being “trifles,” they are the outward and visible expressions of a most mischievous doctrine, which strikes at one of the first principles of the Reformed Church of England. They think all earnest, eloquent, zealous, hard-working clergymen cannot be far wrong. And when you tell them that there is an avowed determination among many clergymen to unprotestantize the Established Church, to get behind the Reformation, and to bring back the Romish Mass and the Confessional, you are too often smiled at as an alarmist, and are not believed. It is my deliberate conviction that unless English lay Churchmen can be awakened to see the real nature of the existing differences about the Lord’s Supper, there will come in a few years the disestablishment, the disendowment, and the disruption of the Church of England. Half the lay Churchmen seem so absorbed in politics, or fine arts, or cotton, or iron, or coal, or corn, or shipping, or railways, that you cannot get them to look at religious questions. Of the other half, too many are crying “Peace, peace.” when there is no peace, and insisting that every “earnest” clergyman should be allowed to” do what is right in his own eyes, to break the law, and to be let alone. In short, unless a change comes soon, our candlestick will be taken away, and our Church will be ruined.
The paper now in the reader’s hands is a humble contribution to the cause of truth about the Lord’s Supper. It is truth as I find it in the New Testament, truth as I find it in the authorized formularies of our Church, truth as I find it in the writings of our greatest English divines;—it is this truth which I advocate in these pages.
- Is the Lord’s Supper a subject of primary importance in the Christian religion? Do not thousands of Churchmen live and die without receiving it? Do not the majority of church-goers turn their backs on it, and always go away when it is administered? How is this?
Nothing can possibly be of small importance which the Lord Jesus Christ ordained and appointed. Our Lord most distinctly commanded His disciples to “eat bread” and “drink wine” in remembrance of Him. What right has any Christian to disobey this commandment? No doubt a man may be saved, like the penitent thief, without having received the Lord’s Supper. It is not a matter of absolute and indispensable necessity, like repentance, faith, and conversion. But it is impossible to say that any professing Christian is in a safe, healthy, or satisfactory condition of soul, who habitually refuses to obey Christ and attend the Lord’s Table. If he is not fit to be a communicant, as many say, he is confessing that he does not live as he ought to do, and is not fit to die and meet God. It is very difficult to see what habitual non-communicants will be able to say for themselves in the judgment-day. There is a judgment to come, a judgment of things left undone which we ought to have done, as well as of things done which we ought not to have done.