new covenant only to those who are actually in covenant relation with God. As regards those who have never been convicted of their sins; or those who once knew Christ as their Redeemer, but have now apostatized, and yet presume to partake of the Lord's supper with an impenitent and unbelieving heart; these receive nothing else but bread and wine; and the apostle declares that he who does not discern the Lord's body from common food, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor. xi. 27, 29); that is, that he, so long as he remains in this impenitent state, is adding to his innumerable sins the guilt of rejecting the only atoning sacrifice, and therefore "eateth and drinketh damnation to himself;" just as to him who rejects the gospel, that which is, in itself, a savor of life unto life, becomes a savor of death unto death.

We have now seen that the sacrament of the Lord's supper is not only a symbolic rite, commemorative of Christ's sacrificial death, but a covenant act by which we appropriate to ourselves all the benefits of the atonement, and enter into a personal, vital union with Christ (which union is symbolically represented by eating bread and drinking wine). The partaking of the Lord's supper ought not merely to remind us of Christ, as though he was absent; for then it would only be a means of strengthening the Christian's faith and of renewing his love to him, and would have no greater importance than the hearing of a gospel sermon. According to this view, it would not be Christ meeting the believer and imparting himself to him, but the believer ascending, as it were, into heaven, and bringing Christ down. Hence faith would not merely be the condition but the cause of the union with Christ, and thus the ordinance would lose the nature and design of a sacrament.

This is the defective side of Zuingli's view, and Luther was right in objecting to it. But he went to the other extreme, when he asserted that the sacramental union with Christ takes place independently of the co-operation of man, and only by means of the consecrating words, once uttered by Christ, and repeated in the consecration of the elements.

This view ascribes to the elements the power of imparting to the communicant Christ's body and blood the moment he receives them, whether he be a believer or not. According to this view, the reception of Christ's body and blood is unconditionally made the consequence of the partaking of the consecrated elements; but whether the eating of Christ's body and blood will have a saving or damning effect, is said to depend upon the character of the communicant. The truth lies between Zuingli's and Luther's views, and is to be deduced from the proposition, that Christ manifests his actual presence in the eucharist, and imparts his own self to the communicant.

This presence and self-communication of Christ does not consist, as Luther taught, in that he unites himself bodily with the bread and wine, and thus communicates his body to our body; but in that Christ, as the God-man, reveals and communicates himself to the believing soul in all his life-giving and saving power; just as the vine reproduces itself, its sap, juice, and strength, in every branch. It is true, that this selfcommunication is not confined to the sacrament, but begins as soon as we enter into a personal, vital union with Christ, through regeneration, and continues so long as we do not drive him out by hardness of heart and wilful apostasy. The difference between other manifestations of Christ's presence in the soul, and that which takes place by means of this sacrament, is simply this, that in the latter the Lord guarantees to the believing communicant a new communication of his full salvation so positively that we dare not doubt it. As the Israelite received a new assurance of the blessings of the covenant as often as he appropriated to himself the typical sacrifice by eating of the paschal lamb; -so the personal and vital union, into which true believers have entered with Christ by appropriating the benefits of his propitiatory death, is renewed, sealed, and strengthened as often as they partake of the emblems of his broken body and shed blood. The apostle Paul expresses the same idea, when he says: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which VOL. XIX. No. 74.

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we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. x. 16.) As there can be no appropriation of the merits of Christ's death, except through a personal and vital union with Christ, so there can be no other vital union with Christ, except through the appropriation of the benefits of his atonement. The communion of the death of Christ and the personal, vital union with Christ, sustain a necessary reciprocal relation to each other. This cardinal truth is the central idea of the doctrine of the Lord's supper. In the solemn moments of his last meal, which he introduced by some remarks concerning his impending bodily separation from his disciples, our Saviour intended to seal, by the sacrament, the personal, vital union, into which the believer enters with him by virtue of his atoning death and through faith.

This significance and design of the Lord's supper has not been sufficiently appreciated, as indeed all that the New Testament teaches us respecting the real, though spiritual, self-communication of Christ to the believer. Christ calls himself the vine, and the believers the branches: he says that "if a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." "I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you." "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him." The apostle Paul, speaking of the same personal, vital union of the believer with the Son of God, says: "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, of his bones," etc. (Eph. v. 30-32). He says, as man and wife are one flesh, so the believer and Christ are one. In 1 Cor. vi. 15, 17 he says: "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? ..... But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." Doubtless, the apostle intends to express more than a mere subjective union with Christ, when he says that "Christ dwells in your hearts by faith," that "no more he [Paul] lives, but Christ liveth in him," that "they are changed from glory to glory," that "their life is hid with Christ in God." This real, personal, and vital union of the believer with Christ is renewed, sealed, and strengthened at every celebration of the Lord's

supper. This idea This idea is beautifully expressed in the Palatinate Catechism, in the following words: "What does it mean to eat Christ's broken body, and drink his shed blood? It does not only mean to appropriate to ourselves, with believing hearts, the whole suffering and death of Christ, and thereby receive pardon of our sins and eternal life; but also to give thanks through the Holy Spirit, who dwelleth both in Christ and in us, and by whom we are more and more united with his blessed body; so that, though he is in heaven and we on earth, we are nevertheless flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, and are quickened and guided by one Spirit, as the members of our bodies are by the soul."

"THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME." These words, which are recorded only by Luke and Paul, contain the command, from henceforth to substitute for the passover the celebration of this ordinance; and we clearly see that whatever objective influence, on the part of Christ, may be ascribed to this sacrament, it is, nevertheless, conditioned by the subjective act of the communicant. Those who speak so harshly and contemptuously against this sacrament as a commemorative rite of Christ's death, ought to consider that, according to the inspired testimony of Luke and Paul, Christ himself expressly and prominently makes the commemoration of his death a design of the sacrament; hence their severe censures fall back upon its Founder. On the other hand, however, we must not forget, that even in the Old Testament it has a deep meaning of reality, when God speaks of recording his name in any place, and says of that place to his people: "I will come unto thee, and will bless thee" (Exod. xx. 24). Thus, if we remember him truly, he will surely remember us by coming to us to bless us. The same idea is expressed by the declaration of the apostle Paul: "Ye do show the Lord's death." Those approaching the table of the Lord, show forth to one another, and to the world, that they have part in the atonement by the death of Christ, and in his life; and through them the testimony of the church is continued "till he come."

ARTICLE VII.

THE DIVINE DECREES.

BY REV. D. T. FISKE, NEWBURYPORT, MASS.

THAT God has decreed or "fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass," is a doctrine which holds a conspicuous place in the history of dogmatic theology. It has been a prominent element in not a few of those great controversies which have agitated the church. Upon it, and the ethical and metaphysical problems intimately connected with it, has been expended much of the profoundest thought of every age. It has often been discussed with earnestness and eminent ability, though not always with Christian candor and charity. By many it has been defended on biblical and rational grounds, as one of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity; by others it has been rejected as contrary to reason and scripture, and as having no place in the Christian system. Some have claimed for it the highest practical value, while others have insisted that, if true, it is a purely speculative doctrine, having no connection whatever with the practical duties of religion; and yet others have branded it as a false dogma, fraught with all manner of mischievous tendencies. It is a doctrine which can be easily misrepresented and caricatured; and which has often been rejected through sheer misapprehension and prejudice; while it is manifestly held, in its true spirit and substance, by many persons who sedulously exclude the formal statement of it from their creed. Indeed we are persuaded that not a few of its most vehement opposers might, by an unprejudiced inspection, find all the essential elements of this doctrine among their most cherished convictions of religious truth. We are willing, moreover, to admit that the formal rejection of the doctrine, and the prejudice entertained against it, are in part, at least, traceable to the infelicitous manner in which it has sometimes been represented and defended. There