When I forget Thee, like a sun-parched land Which neither rain nor dew from heaven hath wet, So my soul withers, and I understand Wherefore Thou gavest me this high command Not to forget.
When I forget the death which is my life. How weak I am ! how full of fear and fret ! How my heart wavers in a constant strife With mists and clouds that gather round me rife, When I forget !
Ah, how can I forget? And yet my heart By dull oblivious thought is hard beset, Bred in the street, the meadow, or the mart: Yet Thou my strength and life and glory art, Though I forget.
I will remember all Thy Love divine; Oh meet Thou with me where Thy saints are met, Eevive me with the holy bread and wine, And may my love, 0 God, lay hold on Thine, And ne'er forget.
And not to-day alone, but evermore Oh let me feel the burden of the debt — The load of sorrow that the Master bore. The load of goodness that He keeps in store, And not forget I^
11.
For what He has Done.
The memory of Christ is the memory of One who closed His perfect life by the sacrifice of Himself ; who sealed His testimony with His blood. It is indeed this, more than aught else, that tlie
* John Watson, The Upper Room, 78. = Walter C. Smith, Poetical Works, 494.
440 IN REMEMBRANCE
symbols which we use in this Sacrament bring home to us. It is to this that the words Christ uttered at His last supper chiefly point. " This," said He, " is my body which is given for you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." A death for us, a body wounded, blood poured forth — this is what we are especially reminded of here. " Why was that body wounded ? Why was that blood shed ? " Does any one ask ? He who asks will find plenty of excellent doctrines to give him abundant answer : but what appears always as the living centre of truth within all doctrine, and far above all, is the simple fact that that death was endured, that that sacrifice was offered ; the simple fact that He who lived the perfect life and brought to us the saving message of a Father's love knew that it was needful for our salvation that He should bow His head and die ; knew that, without that death, sin in us could not be conquered, and death for us could not be overcome, and that therefore out of His true love to us He was content to die, that we through Him might live, that we, believing in His love and truth and seeing these to be stronger than even death itself, might thereby be rescued from the love and power of our sins, and might be reconciled to the Father, of whose love the Son's self-sacrifice was the Divine expression.
^ It happened once that a family had a father who was a benefactor to the State and did such service that after his death a statue was erected in a public place to his memory, and on the pedestal his virtues were engraven that all might read his name and revere his memory. His children mingled with the people as they stood in that square and listened to their father's praise with pride. But their eyes were dry. This figure with civic robes, cut in stone, was not the man they knew and loved. Within the home were other memorials more intimate, more dear, more living — a portrait, a packet of letters, a Bible. As the family looked on such sacred possessions, they remembered him who had laboured for them, had trained them from first years, had counselled, comforted, protected them. All he had done for the big world was as nothing to what he had done for his own. When they gathered round the hearth he built, on certain oc- casions they spoke of him with gentler voices, with softened eyes while the strangers pass on the street. This Father is Jesus, and we are His children whom He has loved unto death.^ * John Watson, T?ie Upper Hoom, 84.
ST. LUKE XXII. 19 441
1. We commemorate His death. — He gives us as a remem- brance of Him that which inevitably recalls Him as He died. It is His body broken, His blood poured out, that He sets before us. He does not give us a picture of Himself as He is now and as John saw Him in vision. He does not appeal to our imagina- tion by setting before us symbols of unearthly majesty. He desires to be remembered as He was upon earth and in the hour of His deepest humiliation. And it is obvious why He does so. It is because in His death His nearness to us and His actual involvement in our life and in all our matters is most distinctly seen. It is because that is His most characteristic action; the action in which He uttered most of Himself, all that was deepest in Him and all that it most concerned men to know. And as we prize that portrait of a friend which brings out the best points in his character, even though it is old and he has changed much since it was taken, so do all the friends and followers of Christ think of Him as He was in His death. They believe He is alive now, and that now He is clothed with such manifest dignity and beauty as must attract boundless regard and admiration ; but yet it is to the humble, self-sacrificing, bleeding Christ their thoughts persistently turn. It is there they find most to humble, most to encourage, most to win, most to purify, most to bind them to their Lord.