ributed the
bread, he always said--"This is the bread of affliction." When he
distributed the flesh of the lamb, roasted for the occasion, he used
to say--"This is the body of the Passover."

But every one knows, and every one admits, that the Jewish Passover
was a _memorial_ service. It was kept in memory of the wonderful
deliverance of their forefathers from the bitter bondage of Egypt.
And the words used at that service were memorial words. And so, when
Jesus, a little while before, had given to his disciples the Passover
bread, saying--"This is the bread of affliction:" he did not mean to
say that _that_ was the very same bread which their forefathers had
eaten, in the time of their affliction in Egypt. What he meant to say
was--this is the bread which you are to eat in _memory_ of your
forefathers' trial and deliverance. And when he gave to each of them
a piece of the sacrificial lamb, saying, "This is the body of the
Passover;" he did not mean that in any mysterious, or supernatural
sense, _that_ was the very lamb of which their forefathers had eaten
on the solemn night of the Passover; he only meant that it was the
body of which they were to eat in memory of the Passover. The
Passover was a memorial service; and the words used at the Passover
were memorial words.

And so, when Jesus went on, from the last Passover of the Jewish
church, to the first sacramental feast of the Christian church, and
began by saying, "This do in _remembrance_ of me," what else could
the apostles possibly have thought, but that he intended this new
service of the Christian church to be a memorial service, just as the
old festival of the Jewish church had been? When he gave them the
broken bread, and said, "This is my body;" they could only have
understood him as meaning this is the memorial of my body. And when
he gave them the cup into which he had just poured the wine, and
said: "This is my blood;" they could only understand him as meaning
this is the memorial of my blood. And so, the sense in which he had
just before used the words employed in the Jewish festival must have
led the disciples to understand them in the same way when he used
similar words in the Christian sacrament. This is a good, strong
reason for thinking of this sacramental feast as a memorial service.

There is indeed, one point of difference between the Jewish Passover
and the Christian sacrament, when we think of them as memorial
services. The Jews kept their