The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 368

ception, imagination, associative and suggestive functions, reasoning and conclusions reached, are all very intimately identified with its operations. Memory is the first of the intellectual powers to attain perfection, as jndgment is the last, and this law of rapid maturity would seem to indicate, by its exceptional character, that momory sustains a very near relation to the growth of our moral nature. It is clear that the Lord Jesus adopted the method of storing facts in the minds of the twelve apostles and leaving them in latency, the truths in these facts being reserved for subsequent realization. And it is equally certain that one of the chief offices of the Holy Ghost, as ,he Executive of the Father and the Son, was "to bring all things" to their "remem- brance." Naturally, indeed, a past was formed in the memories of the twelve, but it icas made a spiritual past by the Divine agency of the Spirit as a Remembrancer. Furthermore, the apostles were to be witnesses, or testifiers: "Ye also shall bear witness;" but the importance of the Spirit as a Remembrancer exhibits itself in this that, out of the miscellaneous mass of facts deposited in the memories of the twelve' a selection was to be made, for, according to the fourth Gospel, there were " many othe; things which Jesus did" that were not "written," while those "written" were such "' 1rnre adapted to Christian faith. It seems, then, that memory was inspired by the Holy Ghost in accordance with the principle contained in the words, "These are \\'ritten "-only these-" that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God• :rnd that believing ye might have life through his Name." Aside, however, from th~ aflostles, is there not a principle here which is recognized by the Spirit in all its gracious administrations? Memory is ordinarily the starting-point in religious life \\'hen that life becomes positive and decided. It enters largely into conviction for sin and into repentance. Further back than recollection extends, impressions of God's ;;ooduess and the need of Christ for pardon and peace were made on the soul, and there they lay like old deposits in the ~trata of the globe, till the Holy Ghost uncovered them rn our consciousness. God keeps for us bis witness in this faithful register of the past. Without being Platonists on the subject of reminiscence, or accepting all that Words- worth teaches in the grand 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Early Recollections of Childhood,' we may well b~lieve that memory is the master-organ through which grace is iml'arted to men. A simple hymn of Dr. Watts', or Mrs. Barllauld's learned in childhood; the little prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep;" and most of all," Our Father which art in heaven," taught by a mother's lips; our first sight of death; our first walk in a graveyard ;-come back to us in after years, and suddenly the hard grip of the world on our hearts is relaxed, and the "little child is set in the midst" of life's scenes, and we know that Jesus has set it there for our restoration to its lon;:?:-lost imago. ~o wonder, then, that it should have pleased the Lord Jesus to make the Holy l::iupper an institution appealing to memory. There, in that upper room, a few hours on earth re1naining to him, the past three years with his disciples were gathered in a few most solemn moments. The righteoHsness of bis perfect life of obedience, all he had taught and <lone and suffered, had come into this final interview, and were going forward into his expiatory death. The motive and blessedness of the act in the celebration of the Eucharist are drawn from" In remembrance of me." Christ in all his fulocss, Christ in his one personality as Son of God and Son of man, Christ in the entire compass of mediation, is in this "me." .At the same time, the act shows forth the "Lord's death till he come," and accordingly is prospective. As a natural fact, memory is the great feeder of the imagination, and is ever exciting it to picture the future. Except for memory, the imagination could not exist, or, if existing, would be a very imperfect because torpid faculty. As a religious organ, the medium as we have seen of the Spirit, the memory stimulates the imagination and qualifies it to "show the Lord's death till he come." St. Paul mentions first the "remembrance" in connection with the broken body and again with the blood, an<l then comes the idea of showing, or pro- claiming. Uf course, the supper had to be a memorial before it could be an anticipation, but the order in,·olves more than chronological st'quence. It is an inner order of ideas, and it states, we think, with force and precision tho relativity of these ideas. If this analysis be correct, then the determinative idea. in the institution is its memorial character (remembrance), and by this idea we are to judge its nature and influence. Yet not alone by this abstractly viewed, since memory is supplemented by imagination aud it3 vivid sense of futurity. From this point of view we understand why St. Paul oR. XI. 1-34.] THE FIRST EPISTLE 'fO THE CORINTHIANS.