_For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come_.
When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be derived from Christ's Church, I spoke of them, as being, for the most part, three in number--our communion in prayer, our communion in reading the Scriptures, and our communion in the Lord's Supper; and, after having spoken of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for our consideration to-day.
The words of the text are enough to show how closely this subject is connected with that event which we celebrate to-day[13]: "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." The communion, then, with one another in the Lord's Supper is doing that which this day was also designed to do; it is showing forth, or declaring the Lord's death; it is declaring, in the face of all the world, that we partake of the Lord's Supper because we believe that Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us.
God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have made all spiritual blessing come to us immediately from himself. Without ascending any higher with the idea, it is plain that Christianity might have been made a thing wholly between each individual man and Christ; all our worship might have been the secret worship of our own hearts; and in eating the bread, and drinking the cup, to show forth the Lord's death, each one of us might have done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. I mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had Christianity, and a great number of Christians spread all over the world, but yet no Christian Church. But, although this is conceivable, and, in fact, is practically the case in some particular instances where individual Christians happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians,--as has been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries; and although, through various evil causes, it has become, in many respects, too much the case with us all; for our religion is with all of us, I am inclined to think, too much a matter between God and ourselves alone; yet still it is not the design of Christ that it should be so: his people were not only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death and brought to know and love the truth, in which relation Christianity would appear like a divine philosophy only, working not only upon individuals, but through their individual minds, and as individuals; but they were to be the Christian Church, helping one another in things pertaining to God, and making their mutual brotherhood to one another an essential part of what are called peculiarly their acts of religion. So that the Church of England seems to have well borne in mind this character of Christianity, namely, that it presents us not each, but all together, before God; and therefore it is ordered that even in very small parishes, where "there are not more than twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, or three at the least, out of these twenty communicate together with the priest." Nay, even in the Communion of the Sick, under circumstances which seem to make religion particularly an individual matter between Christ and our own single selves; when the expected approach of death seems to separate, in the most marked manner, according to human judgment, him who is going hence from his brethren still in the world; even then it is ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall communicate along with the sick man and the minister. Nor is this ever relaxed except in times of pestilence; when it is provided, that if no other person can be persuaded to join from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon special request of the diseased, the minister may alone communicate with them. So faithfully does our Church adhere to this true Christian notion, that at the Lord's Supper we are not to communicate with Christ alone, but with him in and together with our brethren; so that I was justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of those helps and blessings which we still derive from the Christian Church--from Christ's mystical body.