But we have not done yet; for if we believe that the two Sacraments were founded by our Lord Himself at the time and in the manner recorded in the Scriptures, there are certain very important results which follow.
Let us confine our thoughts to the Lord’s Supper. It was clearly declared at the time of its institution to be a memorial of the death and passion of our blessed Lord and Saviour. It was founded, moreover, on the night before His suffering, and that amongst men who were eye-witnesses of all that passed. Such is the statement of the Scriptures, which we now follow up by the fact that, from that day to this, wherever the name of Christ is named, there has never been a break in the observance of that memorial. Now what is the plain, simple, and obvious conclusion from all this? Is it not surely this, that the facts actually took place? The Lord’s Supper is a memorial of the crucifixion, and it was founded among persons who were eye-witnesses of the whole transaction. Now if these facts had never occurred, and if the Book recording them had not been a true Book, how could the memorial have ever got its hold on the Church? The truth of the Book is proved by the existence of the memorial. The Book and the memorial are bound the one to the other. They stand and fall together; they cannot be separated. But the memorial may be seen throughout Christendom as a visible fact. It is, and always has been, co-extensive with Christianity. It is at this present time open to the observation of any one; so, seeing the memorial, we believe the Book, and are fully, perfectly, and historically satisfied as to all the great facts of the crucifixion.
But we must not stop there; for the memorial is not merely a proof of the facts of the crucifixion, but is also a proof of the doctrine of the cross. We have found that the memorial could not possibly have been introduced at any subsequent date, but that its institution must be traced up to the fountain-head, even to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and those words of His, “Do this in remembrance of me.” But this is not the whole of the passage, and we must not forget those other words, “This is my body, which is given for you,” and, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” The memorial, therefore, is not merely a memorial of the death, but of the purpose of it, and of the great principle which underlies the whole. It is a monument of those two sentences, “given for you” and “shed for you.” If it were a granite column instead of a simple service, these would be the two sentences to be engraved upon it; or if men wished to make the inscription shorter still, they might be content with two words, and write “For you;” for these two words contain the pith and marrow of the whole matter. It is not, therefore, merely the fact that He died of which the Lord’s Supper is a divinely-appointed witness, but the fact that He died as a vicarious satisfaction for sin—“a propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” It is well for us, therefore, to look carefully at the certain and undeniable fact, that in this nineteenth century the Lord’s Supper is observed in some form or other wherever the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is known; to consider well the utter impossibility of its being introduced at any period subsequent to the foundation of the Gospel, or by any person except by Him who said, “This do in remembrance of me;” and so to accept the assurance of its testimony that the body there given was given _for us_, and the blood there shed was shed _for us_. Divine atonement then is the great truth visibly signed and sealed to us by God’s divine memorial; and when we kneel together before that table of His, we may accept for our own soul’s everlasting peace, not merely the fact that He died, but the truth that He died as a propitiation for our sins; that His body was given in our behalf, or _for us_, and His blood shed in our behalf, or _for us_; and that therefore, without any further propitiatory sacrifice, or any supplementary mode of reconciliation, believing in Him, we are perfectly, immediately, and eternally free.