solemn festival in memory of a _dead_
lamb--the Passover lamb that was put to death for them, but never
came to life again. We keep our Christian sacrament in memory of the
Lamb of God, who died for us indeed, but who rose from the dead, and
is alive forevermore. As we keep this solemn festival, we may lift up
our adoring hearts to him and say for ourselves personally,

"O, the Lamb! the loving Lamb!
The Lamb of Calvary!
The Lamb that was slain, but liveth again,
And intercedes for me!"

And though they are both memorial services, yet this one thought
makes a world-wide difference between them. The bread and meat which
the pious Jew ate, when he kept the Passover, and the wine which he
drank on that occasion, would strengthen his body, but there was
nothing connected with those material substances that would do any
special good to his soul. It is different, however, with our
Christian festival of the Lord's Supper. And this difference is
clearly brought out in what we find in the catechism of our church on
this subject. In speaking of this holy sacrament, the question is
asked--"What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby?" And
the answer to this question is--"The strengthening and refreshing of
our souls, by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the
bread and wine."

Here we see that while the Lord's Supper is a memorial service
indeed, it is at the same time something more than that.

_And then, the actual bodily presence of Christ with them must have
compelled the apostles to understand the words he used on that
occasion, in this memorial sense_.

They could not possibly have considered him as meaning that the bread
and wine which he gave them at that solemn service did, in any
mysterious and supernatural way, become his actual flesh and blood;
because, these were already before them in the form of his own body.
And they could not be in his body and in the bread and wine, at the
same time. The sense in which Jesus first used these words--"my body"
and "my blood," was clearly the memorial sense. He meant his
disciples to understand him as saying "Take this bread in remembrance
of my body, which is to be crucified for you;" and "Take this wine in
remembrance of my blood which is to be shed for you."

This was what he taught the apostles when he first used these words
among them; and this was all he taught them; and we have no right to
use these words in any other sense till