The two most instructive writers on the sacraments are Calvin and Waterland. The latter, in his very elaborate treatment of the Eucharist, offers some remarks upon the point before us. "There can," he says, "be no just bar to frequency of communion but the want of preparation, which is only such a bar as men may themselves remove if they please; and therefore it concerns them highly to take off the impediment as soon as possible, and not to trust to vain hopes of alleviating one fault by another.... The danger of misperforming any religious duty is an argument for fear and caution, but no excuse for neglect; God insists upon the doing it, and the doing it well also.... It was no sufficient plea for the slothful servant under the Gospel that he thought his master hard to please, and thereupon neglected his bounden duty, for the use he ought to have made of that thought was to have been so much the more wakeful and diligent in his master's service. Therefore in the case of the Holy Communion it is to very little purpose to plead the strictness of the self-examination or preparation by way of excuse either for a total, or for a frequent, or for a long neglect of it. A man may say that he comes not to the Table because he is not prepared, and so far he assigns a good reason; but if he should be further asked why he is not prepared when he may, then he can only make some trifling, insufficient excuse or remain speechless."[11]
[11] Waterland, _Works_, iv., p. 781.
The positive counsel Paul gives regarding suitable preparation for participation in this Sacrament is very simple. He offers no elaborate scheme of self-examination which might fill the mind with scruples and induce introspective habits and spiritual hypochondria. He would have every man answer the plain question, Do you discern the Lord's body in the Sacrament? This is the one cardinal point on which all revolves, admitting or excluding each applicant. He who clearly understands that this is no common meal, but the outward symbol by means of which God offers to us Jesus Christ, is not likely to desecrate the Sacrament. "This is My body," says the Lord, meaning that this bread will ever remind the communicant that his Lord freely gave His own body for the life of the world. And whoever accepts the bread and the wine because they remind him of this and bring him into a renewed attitude of faith is a worthy communicant. The Corinthians were chastened by sickness and apparently by death that they might see and repent of the enormity of using these symbols as common food; and in order that they might escape this chastening, they had but to recall the institution of the Sacrament by our Lord Himself.
The brief narrative of this first institution which Paul here inserts gives prominence to the truth that the Sacrament was intended primarily as a memorial or remembrance of the Saviour. Nothing could be simpler or more human than our Lord's appointment of this Sacrament. Lifting the material of the Supper before Him, He bids His disciples make the simple act of eating and drinking the occasion of remembering Him. As the friend who is setting out on a long absence or is passing for ever from earth puts into our hands his portrait or something he has used, or worn, or prized, and is pleased to think that we shall treasure it for his sake, so did Christ on the eve of His death secure this one thing: that His disciples should have a memento by which to remember Him. And as the dying gift of a friend becomes sacred to us as his own person, and we cannot bear to see it handed about by unsympathetic hands and remarked upon by those who have not the same loving reverence as ourselves, and as when we gaze at his portrait, or when we use the very pen or pencil worn smooth by his fingers, we recall the many happy times we spent together and the bright and inspiring words that fell from his lips, so does this Sacrament seem sacred to us as Christ's own person, and by means of it grateful memories of all He was and did throng into the mind.