^ Those who have seen the Eussian Pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem have been impressed with the fervour with which they kiss the marble slab of anointing and other sacred objects connected with the Cross and Passion of our Saviour. So also in the shrines and churches at Moscow hundreds of peasants and ordinary business people can be seen at all hours of the day turning in to kneel for a few minutes and kiss some icon or picture of our Lord.^
2. We commemorate His death as the supreme act of His whole tvork of salvation. — The Supper is the symbol of Christ giving up His life for us not only as the highest expression of self- sacrificing love, but in a far deeper sense as the ground upon which our sins can be forgiven and the Divine life imparted to the soul. Christ's suffering for us differs from our suffering for one another by the whole diameter of human experience. No
1 F. S. Webster.
442 IN REMEMBRANCE
amount or degree of mere human suffering can atone for sin. Christ's suffering was unique in that it was redemptive. Like ours it was an example, but unlike ours it was a dynamic. Christ did not die for the world to show His love for it in the dramatic and useless way that Portia stabbed herself to show her love for Brutus ; Christ died to save the world as none other ever did or could. We cannot fathom the depth of the mystery of Christ's death for sin, but this we know, that by it our sins are forgiven and we are brought into oneness with God.
^ What was Christ's death ? It was a willing surrender of Himself into the hands of the Father, knowing at the same time that it was the Father's pleasure to bruise Him. It was a willing pouring out of all the hopes of the flesh founded on tho idea of the continuance of present things ; it was an acknowledgment of the righteousness of the judgment of sorrow and death, which, on account of transgression, God had laid on the flesh of which He had become a partaker. And at the same time, while it was a surrender of Himself in filial confidence into His Father's hands, it was also in full assurance that He was to be gloriously rewarded, by being raised triumphantly from the dead as the New Head and Fountain of life to the Eace, by taking hold of whom every child of Adam might be saved.^
Only to be as the dust that His wounded feet trod.
Only to know and to hear His love, like the deep-throbbing pulse in the bosom of God,
Slaying my sorrow and fear!
Lord, I remember the sins and the shadows, and yet
I remember the light of Thy face. Let me but die at Thy feet, and the black trembling horror forget,
And only remember Thy grace —
Forgetting the darkness that walked with me all the way,
The shadow that froze me to see, Only remembering the joy of the breaking of day
When my soul found Thee.^
3. We remember Him for what He has done in bringing us home to God. — In the Sacrament there is a meeting between God
^ Letters of Thomas ErsMne of Linlathen, i. 250. ' L. Maclean Watt, The Communion Table, 16.
ST. LUKE XXII. 19 443
and the soul, and the soul is taught to find its satisfaction in God. It is taught to look out of itself, beyond itself, for all that can change, and bless, and exalt, and ennoble it, and give it happiness. It is not taught to depend upon its own feelings, its earnestness of faith, its power of hope, its strength of love, or even its utter abnegation of self. It is not left to imagine that it can raise itself from its fallen state, and effect its own union with God. No, it is presented as in a state of hunger in this mysterious feast, craving for God, longing for the powers that are in God to be exercised upon it, and depending upon God's own act to unite Himself to the soul. And the soul knows that this union is possible, that it can be made one with God through God the Son having been made man, and having died, and risen, through the working of His life in itself. The faith of the communicant may be expressed in one single sentence, " Christ in me, the hope of glory."
^ Jesus, in Browning's beautiful phrase, " calls the glory from the grey " ; from the heart of death itself He plucks the promise of life abounding. They shall come to see that His Body has been given " for them," that His Blood has been the seal of a new friendship formed between them and their Father in heaven. In that holy feast they shall eat the one, and drink the other. Faith in Him will never die, while they do that.^
^ " He that dwelleth in me and I in him, eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood," that is, becomes Christ Himself, is a faithful repetition of His life and spirit in another and individual personality, is so transformed into His spiritual image that he can say with St. Paul, " It is not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." This is no mysterious, magical statement, but one in deep accordance with the experience of the human heart. No one who has loved another, or lost one he loved, who has felt the profound intertransference that passion makes, but will understand and value it. It gives a real force, a natural meaning to St. Paul's words, " the communion of the body of Christ." The observance of the Lord's Supper does not make that communion. It is the form among many others in which the idea of that communion is most visibly enslirined. But in enshrining that idea it enshrines another and a higher one — communion with God.^