The remembrance or breaking of bread meeting, the observance of the Lord’s Supper, is
principally for the purpose of drawing out our hearts afresh with praise, worship, and thanksgiving
in response to the memory of Christ’s sufferings and death on our behalf. How worthy is our
precious Lord and Saviour, how worthy is our God and Father, that we should devote this period
of time each week in worshiping the Father for giving "His only begotten Son" and in praising the
Son for giving Himself for us!

I believe that in addition to what we give to the Father and the Son in this meeting, there is
something God gives to us in this meeting. As a brother stated at a recent Bible conference,
"Christ ministers Himself to us through the bread and wine." It is true that we do not go to the
remembrance meeting with the express purpose of getting something out of it for ourselves. This
point is well stated in the preceding article by F.W. Grant. At the same time, how can we spend
an hour meditating upon the sufferings of Christ for our sakes and go away without our hearts and
lives affected by it?

The very hymns that we commonly sing in observance of the Lord’s Supper often illustrate ways
in which Christ may minister to us at this meeting. Let us look at a few examples from Hymns for
the Little Flock (denoted by "LF") and Hymns of Grace and Truth ("GT").

In the hymn, On That Same Night Lord Jesus, we find some beautiful expressions concerning the
Lord’s suffering:

The depth of all Thy suffering
No heart could e’er conceive;
The cup of wrath o’erflowing
For us Thou didst receive;
And oh! of God forsaken,
On the accursed tree,
With grateful hearts, Lord Jesus,
We now remember Thee.

We think of all the darkness
Which round Thy spirit pressed
Of all those waves and billows
Which rolled across Thy breast.

The hymn concludes with the suggestion of a practical response in our hearts to such meditations:

Till Thou shalt come in glory,
And call us hence away,
To rest in all the brightness
Of that unclouded day,
We show Thy death, Lord Jesus,

And here would seek to be
More to Thy death conformed,
Whilst we remember Thee.

A similar sentiment is expressed in the hymn, How Beauteous Were the Marks Divine. We quote
the last three stanzas:

O who like Thee so humbly bore
The scorn, the scoffs of men, before!
So meek, so lowly, yet so high_
So glorious in humility!

Death_death that sets the prisoner free_
Was pang, and scoff, and scorn to Thee!
Yet love through all Thy anguish glowed,
And mercy in Thy life-blood flowed!

O wondrous Lord, my soul would be
Still more and more conformed to Thee,
With heart engaged, along the road,
To trace Thy footsteps, Son of God.

The hymn, We Bless Our Saviour’s Name, concludes with the stanza:

O let Thy love constrain
Our souls to cleave to Thee!
And ever in our hearts remain
That word, "Remember Me"

Lord Jesus! We Remember also concludes with the practical result in our lives:

From sin, the world, and Satan,
We’re ransomed by Thy blood,
And here would walk as strangers,
Alive with Thee to God.

In a similar vein, O My Saviour Glorified concludes with:

O my Saviour, glorified,

Turn my eye from all beside,
Let me but Thy beauty see_
Other light is dark to me.

Isaac Watts pointedly shows the incompatibility of the contemplation of the wondrous cross of
Christ and His transcendent love with our lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life:

When we survey the wondrous cross
On which the Lord of glory died,
Our richest gain we count but loss,
And pour contempt on all our pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that we should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, our God;
All the vain things that charm us most,
We’d sacrifice them to His blood.

Were the whole realm of nature ours,
That were an offering far too small;
Love that transcends our highest powers,
Demands our soul, our life, our all.

The following hymn gives the response in our hearts and lives to the love, "so great, so full, so
free" shown to us by our Saviour:

O blessed Saviour, is Thy love
So great! so full! so free!
Fain would we have our thoughts, our hearts,
Our lives engaged with Thee.

We love Thee for the glorious worth
Which in Thyself we see;
We love Thee for that shameful cross,
Endured so patiently.

No man of greater love can boast
Than for his friend to die;
Thou for Thine enemies wast slain!
What love with Thine can vie?

Thou wouldst like wretched man be made
In everything but sin,

That we as like Thee might become
As we unlike had been:

Like Thee in faith, in meekness, love,
In every beauteous grace;
From glory into glory changed,
Till we behold Thy face.

In O Head Once Full of Bruises we meditate upon the insults heaped upon the Lord Jesus at the
cross. And the greatest torment of all for our precious Lord "was our sins’ heavy load" which He
did "pay in blood." The hymn writer leads us, as a result of such meditation, to conclude with the
prayer:

Grant us to lean unshaken
Upon Thy faithfulness,
Until, to glory taken
We see Thee face to face.

In Oh, My Saviour Crucified, as we abide near our Saviour’s cross, "Gazing with adoring eye on
[His] dying agony," our hearts respond in the last verse:

Yet in sight of Calvary,
Contrite should my spirit be,
Rest and holiness there find
Fashioned like my Saviour’s mind.