e blood _shed_ for many for the remission of sins?' Wherefore the
association with the Passover sacrifice? Wherefore the declaration
that 'this is the blood of the Covenant,' unless all tended to the
one thought--His death is the foundation of all loving relationships
possible to us with God; and the condition of the remission of
sins--the Sacrifice for the whole world?'

This is the point that He desires us to remember; this is that which
He would have live for ever in our grateful hearts.

I say nothing about the absolute exclusion of any other purpose of
this memorial rite. If it was the mysterious thing that the
superstition of later ages has made of it, how, in the name of
common-sense, does it come that not one syllable, looking in that
direction, dropped from His lips when He established it? Surely He,
in that upper chamber, knew best what He meant, and what He was doing
when He established the rite; and I, for my part, am contented to be
told that I believe in a poor, bald Zwinglianism, when I say with my
Master, that the purpose of the Lord's Supper is simply the
commemoration, and therein the proclamation, of His death. There is
no magic, no mystery, no 'sacrament' about it. It blesses us when it
makes us remember Him. It does the same thing for us which any other
means of bringing Him to mind does. It does that through a different
vehicle. A sermon does it by words, the Communion does it by symbols.
That is the difference to be found between them. And away goes the
whole fabric of superstitious Christianity, and all its mischiefs and
evils, when once you accept the simple 'Remember.' Christ told us
what He meant by the rite when He said 'Do this in remembrance of
Me.'

II. And now one word or two more about the other particulars which I
have suggested. The past, however sweet and precious, is not enough
for any soul to live upon. And so this memorial rite, just because it
is memorial, is a symbol for the present.

That is taught us in the great chapter--the sixth of John's
Gospel--which was spoken long before the institution of the Lord's
Supper, but expresses in words the same ideas which it expresses by
material forms. The Christ who died is the Christ who lives, and must
be lived upon by the Christian. If our relation to Jesus Christ were
only that 'Once in the end of the ages He appeared to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself'; and if we had to look back through
lengthening vistas of distance an