the blood of the heifer was sprinkled upon them, and thereby bound themselves to be obedient to the Mosaic institutions, and as God thereby graciously bound himself to confer upon them all its promised blessings on condition of that obedience ; so, in the Lord's supper, those who receive the cup profess to embrace the covenant of grace, and bind themselves to obedi- ence to the gospel ; and God binds himself to confer on them all the benefits of redemption. In receiving the cup, there- fore, they receive the pledge of their salvation. The death of Christ, which is so often compared to a sin-offering, is here, as well as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, compared to a fede- ral sacrifice. The two, however, do not differ. The death of Christ is the latter only in virtue of its being the former. It ratifies the covenant of grace and secures its benefits, only be- cause it was a propitiation, i. e. because it was a satisfaction to divine justice, as is so clearly taught in Rom. 3, 25. 26. Every time, therefore, the consecrated wine touches the be- liever's lips, he receives anew the application of the blood of Christ for the remission of his sins and his reconciliation with God. If the Bible says we are sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, 1 Peter 1, 2, why may we not be said to receive his blood ? If the former expression means the application of the benefits of his sacrificial death, why may not the latter mean the reception of those benefits ? Here, as elsewhere, the diffi- culty is the want of faith. He who by faith appropriates a divine promise recorded in the word, receives the blessing promised ; and he who in the exercise of faith receives the sacramental cup receives the benefits of the covenant of which that cup is the symbol and the pledge. But what is faith ? or rather, what is it that we are required to believe, in order to experience all this ? 1. We must believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that he loved us and gave himself for us. 2. That his blood cleanses from all sin. 3. That in the sacrament he offers us, with the symbols of his broken body and his shed blood, the benefits of his death ; and that he will certainly convey those benefits to all those who hold out even a trem- bling hand to receive them.
In Luke, after the words in my hlood^ it is added, which is shed for you. In Mark the explanation is, which is shed for many ; and in Matthew, still more fully, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. These are different forms of expressing the sacrificial character of the death of Christ. Though it was the blood of the covenant, yet it was at the