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re. We also find from these passages that there is a real presence of heavenly elements. These are the body and blood of Christ. Not indeed that body as it was in its state of humiliation, when it was subject to weakness, hunger, thirst, pain and death. But that glorified, spiritual, resurrection body, in its state of exaltation, inseparably joined with the Godhead, and by it rendered everywhere present. And this body and divinity, we remark in passing, were already present, though veiled, when the God-man walked this earth. Peter and James and John caught a glimpse of it on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is of this body, and blood, of which Peter says, 1 Peter i. 18, 19, that it is _not a corruptible thing_, and of which the Apostle says, Heb. ix. 12, "_By his own blood he entered in once into the Holy Place_" (that is, into heaven), and of which Jesus spoke when He said, "_Take eat, this is my body_ ... _this is my blood_." Of this body and blood, the Scriptures affirm that they are present in the sacrament. The passage which sets forth the _double_ presence, that of the earthly and heavenly elements, which indeed sums up and states the Bible doctrine in a few words, is 1 Cor. x. 16. There Paul affirms that the bread is the communion of Christ's _body_, not of His Spirit or His influence. If the bread is the communion of, participation in, or connection with His body, then bread _and_ body must both be present. It takes two things to make a communion. They must both be present. It would be absurd to speak of bread as a communion of something in no way connected with it. As we have already said, the plain sense of the words of this passage is, that the bread is a connection with, or a participation in Christ's body, and so with the wine; so much so that whoever partakes of the one must, in some manner, also become a partaker of the other. The bread, therefore, becomes the medium, the vehicle, the conveyance, that carries to the communicant the body of Christ, and the wine likewise His blood. And this, we repeat, without any gross material transmutation or mixing together. The bread and wine are the earthen vessels that carry the Heavenly treasures of Christ's body and blood, even as the letters and words of the Scriptures convey to the reader or hearer the Holy Spirit. This is the clear, plain, Bible doctrine of the Lord's Supper. There is nothing gross, carnal, Capernaitish or repulsive about it.
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