236 I. CORINTHIANS 11, 33.34.

be connected, should be regarded as the occasion of satisfying hunger. The communion of saints and the commemoration of the death of Christ as a sacrifice for our sins, are the only legitimate objects which could be contemplated in the service. And by exhibiting the intimate fellowship with the Lord in- volved in the right use of this ordinance, and the dreadful consequences of unworthily participating, he has raised it to a purely religious service, and made it the highest act of wor- ship. From one extreme the church gradually passed over to the opposite. From regarding it as it had been in Corinth, httle more than an ordinary meal, it came to be regarded as an awful mystery, a sacrifice which the people were to wit- ness, and in which they were to adore the Redeemer as locally present in his corporeal nature under the form of a wafer ! So strong a hold had this unscriptural view taken of the mind of the church, that Luther found it impossible to emancipate himself from the belief of the local presence of Christ's real body in this sacrament. And even Calvin could not divest himself of the conviction, not only of its supernatural charac- ter, which all admit who regard it as a means of grace, but also of its being truly miraculous. It was only after a severe struggle that the Reformed church got back to the simple, yet sublime view of the ordinance presented by the apostle Paul. The danger has often since been that the church should go back to the Corinthian extreme, and look upon the Lord's supper as a simple commemoration, involving nothing super- natural either in its nature or efiects. Our only safety is in adhering strictly to the teachings of the Scriptures. The apostle tells us, on the authority of a direct revelation from the Lord himself, that while the ordinance is designed as a memorial of Christ's death, it involves a participation of his body and blood, not of their material substance, but of their sacrificial efficacy, so that, " although the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord's supper ; and yet are spirit- ually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses ; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual man- ner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death." Larger Catechism.