the Lord's .Supper of the Christian Church? Our limitations forbid any Irealment in detail of whtit is still a very vexed question, ll must be ad- mitted that the materials are scanty and not free from ob.scurity. The diflercnce, e.g., between the Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel as to the actual time when the Lord held His Last Supper, whether the meal was an ' anticipated Passover ' or Pa.s.s- over itself, is well known. Kefcrring to the rei)eated attempts to harmonize them, Duchesne sensibly remarks ; ' It is wiser to acknowledge that, on this point, we are not in a jjosition to reconcile tlie evangelists' (op. cit. p. 209, n. 4). And why trouble, when even the fact that the Lord instituted some memorial observance for His disciples is itself open to question? Wilder extremists see in the Supper, not a simjile memorial instituted naturally by Jesus and sug- gested by the circumstances of the time, but the influence of mystery-religions and strange cults with their eating aiul drinking of a god.
One thing is pretty certain. There was a meal in .some form or another associated with Christi- anity from the very beginning. In Ac 2*'- the xXdiTis ToC SproK, ' the breaking of the bread,' sug- gests a distinctive custom of the first disciples. Still more in 20' is it apparent that this custoni was observed 'on the first day of the week,' and it becomes a more definitely religious ordinance. More than all we have fortunately St. Paul's treat- ment of a crying scandal in the (ihurch at Corinth which incidentally gives us some light on the prac- tice of the times (I Co 10""- ll"*-)- From the first, apparently, the commemoration (Eucharist) was observed in connexion with a common meal to symbolize and to foster fraternity (Agape). The Apostle's action here was to set a hedge round the commemoration and rescue it from the disgraceful abuses which attended the common meal. It dis- tinctly contributed to the ultimate separation of the Eucharist as a purely religious and symbolic feast, although at the time of the Didnche (c. A.D. 100) the Agape appears still to have been associ- ated with it (§ 10), at any rate in certain localities. But St. Paul's mention of the 'cup of blessing' (1 Co 10'^), coupled with the fact that he had already seen in the Paschal lamb an illustration of Christ, makes it clear that he at any rate viewed this ordinance as the Christian counterpart of the Jewish Passover. Edersheim (XT'", London, 1887, ii. 511) is very decided as to this relation, and even goes so far as to venture the opinion that the broken bread was none other than the aphikomen or unleavened cake eaten at the close of the meal. A. C. McGifi'ert (A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, Edinburgh, 1897, p. 70) seems hardly consistent in saying there is no indication in our sources that the Lord's Supper was viewed as thus related to the Jewish Passover, as he remarks, ' It can hardly be doubted, in other words, that it was believed, at any rate at an early day, if not from the beginning, in the church of Jerusalem, that Jesus had commanded them to do as they actu- ally were doing.' If Jesus gave the command He gave it at the Paschal meal, or at least in close association witli it. ' Whether in the words and acts of Jesus there is an implied reference to the Passover or not, the association of the Eucharist with the Passover was a natural one, though we may have to admit that the Paschal features in the language of St. Paul represent the later re- flexion of a period when the idea of Christ as the true Passover (1 Co 5'', Jn 19^') had influenced the conception of the institution ' (art. ' Eucharist ' in ERE v. 543»). We may notice that really St. Paul's language is separated from the Crucifixion only by a score of years or so, no great interval after all. It is the more natural to think, con-
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sidering the relation of Christianity to Judaism, tliat we liave liere a close point of connexion between the old and the new.
6. Passoyer and Easter.— The true celebration of Easter, the festival of onr Lord's resurrection, was, as we liave seen above, a thing of weel<ly occurrence. ' The lirst day of tlie week ' became established even in the Apostolic Cliurch as tlie special day of joj-ful commemoration on tlie ]iart of Christians. In that they were most shai'iily in contrast with tlie Jews. But whatever obscurity may hang round the original connexion between the Paschal feast and the Eucharist, there can be no question that when Easter came to be observed, as it was ob.served at the same season of the year, — in spring — it was regarded as the counterpart of the Jewish Passover. Speaking of the movable feasts, Duchesne saj's : ' Dans ces ffites, comnie en tant d'autres choses, I'Eglise est, .\ un certain degr6, h^ritifere de la Synagogue. L'anmie eccl6si- astique n'est autre chose que la combinaisou de deux calendriers, I'un juif et I'autre chr(iticn. Au ealendrier juif correspondent les fetus mobiles, au calendrier chr^tien les fetes fixes ' (Urigincs dii culte chrdtieyi*, Paris, 1909, p. 225). After observing that tliis symmetry must not be pressed too far, he remarks : ' Les chretiens ne conserviirent point toutes les fetes juives ; et quant k celles qu'ils retinrent, ils y attachferent do bonne heure une signification appropriee ii leurs croyances. . . . On ne conserva que celles de P'lques et de la Pente- c6te' (ib.).