UNCOLLECTED PROSE
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
_The Lord's Supper _The Editors to the Reader _Thoughts on Modern Literature _Two Years before the Mast._ A Personal Narrative of Life at
Sea.
_Social Destiny of Man: or Association and Reorganization of
Industry. _Michael Angelo, considered as a Philosophic Poet, with
Translations. _Essays and Poems_. By JONES VERY.
_Walter Savage Landor _Transcendentalism _The Senses and the Soul _Prayers _Fourierism and the Socialists _Chardon Street and Bible Conventions _Agriculture of Massachusetts _The Zincali: or an Account of the Gypsies of Spain.
_Ancient Spanish Ballads, Historical and Romantic.
_Tecumseh; a Poem_. By GEORGE H. COLTON.
_Intelligence _Harvard University_.
_English Reformers _Poems_. By ALFRED TENNYSON.
_A Letter to Rev. Wm. E. Channing, D. D._ By O. A. BROWNSON
_Europe and European Books _The Bible in Spain, or the Journeys, Adventures, and
Imprisonments of an Englishman in an attempt to circulate the
Scriptures in the Peninsula_.
_Past and Present_ By Thomas Carlyle.
_Antislavery Poems._ By JOHN PIERPONT. Boston: Oliver Johnson. 1843.
_Sonnets and other Poems._ By WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
_America -- an Ode; and other Poems._ By N. W. COFFIN.
_Poems by_ WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.
_A Letter _The Huguenots in France and America _The Spanish Student. A Play in Three Acts_. By H. W. Longfellow.
_The Dream of a Day, and other Poems_. By JAMES G. PERCIVAL.
_The Tragic---------------------------------------- _The Lord's Supper
The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. -- ROMANS XIV. 17.
In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful
of controversy than the Lord's Supper. There never has been any
unanimity in the understanding of its nature, nor any uniformity in
the mode of celebrating it. Without considering the frivolous
questions which have been lately debated as to the posture in which
men should partake of it; whether mixed or unmixed wine should be
served; whether leavened or unleavened bread should be broken; the
questions have been settled differently in every church, who should
be admitted to the feast, and how often it should be prepared. In
the Catholic Church, infants were at one time permitted and then
forbidden to partake; and, since the ninth century, the laity receive
the bread only, the cup being reserved to the priesthood. So, as to
the time of the solemnity. In the fourth Lateran Council, it was
decreed that any believer should communicate at least once in a year
-- at Easter. Afterwards it was determined that this Sacrament
should be received three times in the year -- at Easter, Whitsuntide,
and Christmas. But more important controversies have arisen
respecting its nature. The famous question of the Real Presence was
the main controversy between the Church of England and the Church of
Rome. The doctrine of the Consubstantiation taught by Luther was
denied by Calvin. In the Church of England, Archbishops Laud and
Wake maintained that the elements were an Eucharist or sacrifice of
Thanksgiving to God; Cudworth and Warburton, that this was not a
sacrifice, but a sacrificial feast; and Bishop Hoadley, that it was
neither a sacrifice nor a feast after sacrifice, but a simple
commemoration. And finally, it is now near two hundred years since
the Society of Quakers denied the authority of the rite altogether,
and gave good reasons for disusing it.
I allude to these facts only to show that, so far from the
supper being a tradition in which men are fully agreed, there always
been the widest room for difference of opinion upon this particular.
Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I
was led to the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an
institution for perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with
his disciples; and, further, to the opinion, that it is not expedient
to celebrate it as we do. I shall now endeavor to state distinctly
my reasons for these two opinions.
I. The authority of the rite.
An account of the last supper of Christ with his disciples is
given by the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
In St. Matthew's Gospel (Matt. XXVI. 26-30) are recorded the
words of Jesus in giving bread and wine on that occasion to his
disciples, but no expression occurs intimating that this feast was
hereafter to be commemorated.
In St. Mark (Mark XIV. 23) the same words are recorded, and
still with no intimation that the occasion was to be remembered.
St. Luke (Luke XXII. 15), after relating the breaking of the
bread, has these words: This do in remembrance of me.
In St. John, although other occurrences of the same evening are
related, this whole transaction is passed over without notice.
Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew
and John, were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that
occasion. Neither of them drops the slightest intimation of any
intention on the part of Jesus to set up anything permanent. John,
especially, the beloved disciple, who has recorded with minuteness
the conversation and the transactions of that memorable evening, has
quite omitted such a notice. Neither does it appear to have come to
the knowledge of Mark who, though not an eye-witness, relates the
other facts. This material fact, that the occasion was to be
remembered, is found in Luke alone, who was not present. There is no
reason, however, that we know, for rejecting the account of Luke. I
doubt not, the expression was used by Jesus. I shall presently
consider its meaning. I have only brought these accounts together,
that you may judge whether it is likely that a solemn institution, to
be continued to the end of time by all mankind, as they should come,
nation after nation, within the influence of the Christian religion,
would have been established in this slight manner -- in a manner so
slight, that the intention of commemorating it should not appear,
from their narrative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the mind of
the only two among the twelve who wrote down what happened.
Still we must suppose that the expression, _"This do in
remembrance of me,"_ had come to the ear of Luke from some disciple
who was present. What did it really signify? It is a prophetic and
an affectionate expression. Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his
countrymen, celebrating their national feast. He thinks of his own
impending death, and wishes the minds of his disciples to be prepared
for it. "When hereafter," he says to them, "you shall keep the
Passover, it will have an altered aspect to your eyes. It is now a
historical covenant of God with the Jewish nation. Hereafter, it
will remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. In years to
come, as long as your people shall come up to Jerusalem to keep this
feast, the connection which has subsisted between us will give a new
meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary of
my death." I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of such
language from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine
that he was willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory
should hallow their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe
that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living
generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating,
and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial
feast upon the whole world.
Without presuming to fix precisely the purpose in the mind of
Jesus, you will see that many opinions may be entertained of his
intention, all consistent with the opinion that he did not design a
perpetual ordinance. He may have foreseen that his disciples would
meet to remember him, and that with good effect. It may have crossed
his mind that this would be easily continued a hundred or a thousand
years -- as men more easily transmit a form than a virtue -- and yet
have been altogether out of his purpose to fasten it upon men in all
times and all countries.
But though the words, _Do this in remembrance of me_, do occur
in Matthew, Mark, or John, and although it should be granted us that,
taken alone, they do not necessarily import so much as is usually
thought, yet many persons are apt to imagine that the very striking
and personal manner in which this eating and drinking is described,
indicates a striking and formal purpose to found a festival. And I
admit that this impression might probably be left upon the mind of
one who read only the passages under consideration in the New
Testament. But this impression is removed by reading any narrative
of the mode in which the ancient or the modern Jews have kept the
Passover. It is then perceived that the leading circumstances in the
Gospels are only a faithful account of that ceremony. Jesus did not
celebrate the Passover, and ...
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