I

The starting point for such an historical inquiry into the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist as is here contemplated must necessarily be found in the institution of the Sacrament by our Lord Himself. In approaching the starting point there are three preliminary considerations to be borne in mind, the Person of Him who instituted the Sacrament, the preparation for the institution which God had mercifully vouchsafed, and the place which the administration filled in the earliest Christian life as shown in the New Testament records.

1. No inquiry into Christian doctrine may forget Him who is the centre of distinctively Christian thought and the way by which Christian faith has its access to the Father. When the Lord Jesus instituted the Eucharist He was really and perfectly Man. All that makes up a human body and all that comprises a human soul were His both in outward appearance and in inward reality. He was also truly and eternally God. There was no loss or diminution to His Godhead and no maiming of His Manhood when in the mystery of the Incarnation the one eternal divine Person of the Son of God made human nature His own. In Him there is, not only to a pre-eminent degree but also after a unique method, the union of God and man. The words which He speaks, besides being human, are the words of God. The actions which He performs, besides being human, are the actions of God. It is the central motive of His life that in it God and man are to be made at one and to hold communion. Here is the verity apart from which the Christian religion does not exist. Only by remembering it can there be hope of understanding the meaning of what He does at the institution of the Eucharist, as at other times.

2. When the Eucharist was instituted, the idea of communion with God by means of a sacred meal had long been familiar. Among the Greeks this idea underlay the mystic food and drink in the mysteries of Eleusis. All over the world it has furnished the highest point of savage rites. God, who “left not Himself without witness” in the Gentile world, and did not destroy that image of God in man which human sin had marred, enabled the dim yearnings of heathen thought to find, amid whatever distortions, the vestiges of a great truth. For the Jew the central place of worship was the place of meeting between God and man, where God would dwell; the sacrifice which men offered was the bread of God; sacrifices in some instances led up to the meal of the worshippers; the altar of propitiation was the table of communion; Melchizedek, the “priest of God Most High,” “brought forth bread and wine”; the personified Wisdom of the Books of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus invited to a mystic meal described in one passage as of bread and wine. In the case of the Apostles this idea had been further emphasised by our Lord Himself before the Eucharist was instituted. It permeated the miracles of the feeding of the five thousand and of the four thousand. It was drawn out at length by our Lord in the discourse recorded in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. “I am the bread of life.” “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven.” “The bread which I will give is My flesh.” “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life.” “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him.” “He that eateth this bread shall live for ever.”

3. The references in the New Testament to the administration of the rite of the Eucharist are of that incidental and passing character which implies an ordinary and recognised part of Christian life. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians St. Paul speaks of it as an ordinance of Christ and an habitual element in the worship of the Corinthians. In the Acts of the Apostles “the breaking of bread” is so connected with “the prayers,” and “breaking bread at home” is so associated with “continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple,” as to indicate that the Eucharist was observed in the Apostolic Church; and a like conclusion can be inferred from the breaking of bread by St. Paul at Troas on the first day of the week. Thus, without including the meal at Emmaus and the meal on the ship after the shipwreck of St. Paul among celebrations of the Eucharist, there is sufficient indication of its place in the habitual round of Christian life.