My Dear Brother:I have had it on my heart to share with you a few thoughts in connection with
the Lord’s Supper_ that solemn and precious remembrance of Christ. First of all, there is great
importance in seeing clearly the object and character of that great central meeting which gives its
character to all other meetings. It is described for us in a simple manner in The Acts, and there
we see the primary object of that meeting:"Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples
came together to break bread" (20:7). It does not say, as we sometimes hear, "to a worship
meeting." Worship, no doubt, they would; but that was not what was present to their minds. It
was their Lord who was before them_Him of whom the bread spoke.

The purpose of coming together should be distinctly before our minds. We must be simple in it.
In two opposite ways this simplicity may be destroyed, and the character of the meeting be
lowered and souls suffer. Let us spend a little time in the consideration of this.

First, when we come together, after six days of warfare in the world (would that were always
spiritual warfare, and that we realized the world as an enemy’s country simply), we are apt to
come full of our spiritual needs, to be refreshed and strengthened. We may not use the term, but
still the idea in the Lord’s Supper to us thus will be that it is a "means of grace." We bring jaded
spirits and unstrung energies to a meeting where we trust the weariness will be dispelled and the
lassitude recovered from. We come to be ministered to and helped. We require the character of
it to be soothing and comforting, speaking much of grace and quieting our overdone nerves for
another week before us, in which we know too surely that we shall go through the same course
exactly, and come back next Lord’s day as weary as before, with the same need and thought of
refreshment. We come with the same self, in fact, as an object, and scarcely Christ at all, or
Christ very much as a means to an end, and not Himself the end.

This is the evil of this state of things:Christ is not in any due sense before our soul, but rather it
is our need, which He is to be the means of supplying. No doubt there is a measure of truth in this
view of the Lord’s Supper. Can we come ever to Him without finding refreshment from the
coming? Does He not, blessed Lord, delight to serve us? Do not the bread and wine speak of
refreshment ministered_"Wine that maketh glad the heart of man … and bread which
strengtheneth man’s heart"?

Surely all this is true. But true as it is, it is not this that gathers us. Does not "to show the Lord’s
death" have a deeper meaning? His own words, "Do this," are not for the regrouping of your own
strength, but, "in remembrance of Me." Thus this sacramental use of Christ, as I may term it
(common as it really is, alas, among those who think that they have outgrown sacraments)
essentially lowers the whole thought of the Lord’s Supper. The remembrance of Christ is
something more and other than what I get by the remembrance; something more than the
strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ If we make ourselves
the object, will that lead to blessing for us? What honor has Christ in all this? And what must be
the character of meetings to which languid and wayworn souls come, seeking a stimulating cordial
to return to what seems only too sadly indicated to be the main business of their lives?

We may have to approach this subject from another side. Let us look now, however, at the other
way in which our souls may be tempted from the simplicity of the remembrance of Christ.

When we look at the worship of heaven, in that picture which so often tempts our eyes in
Revelation 5, it is the simple presence of the Lamb slain that calls out the adoration of those
elders, in whom some of us have learned to recognize our representatives. Worship with them was
no arranged, premeditated thing, but the pouring out of hearts that could not be restrained in the
presence of Him who had redeemed them to God by His blood. And here is the mistake on our
parts when we think we can make worship a matter of prearrangement, while it is, in fact, a thing
dependent upon the true remembrance of the Lord.

There will be blessing on the one hand and worship on the other in proportion as our eyes are
taken off ourselves and fixed upon the object which both ministers the one and calls forth the
other. Blessing there will be; for how can the sight of Him do otherwise than bless? And worship
there will be; for this is the true and spontaneous response of the heart to the sight of One who,
being the Son of God, yet loved us, and gave Himself for us. The great point pressed, therefore,
in Scripture is remembrance:"This do in remembrance of Me." "Ye do show the Lord’s death."

Of course, we are not to forget that while our eyes look back upon the Lamb slain, it is from the
hither side of His resurrection that we contemplate this. "The first day of the week" speaks of
resurrection out of death, and gives Him back to us in all the reality of a living person. While we
remember His death, we do it in the glad knowledge of His resurrection, and with the Lord
Himself in our midst. Who could celebrate the Lord’s death but for this? Who could sound a note
of praise did He not Himself first raise it? He says, "In the midst of the Church will I sing praise
unto Thee" (Heb. 2:12). Death, but death passed, do we celebrate; death which, thus seen, is only
the depths of a living love which we carry with us, unexhausted, inexhaustible, unfathomed and
unfathomable.

"A Lamb as it had been slain" is the object of the elders’ worship. The Living One bears with Him
forever the memorials of His blessed death. The cross is not only atonement effected for us, but
the bright and blessed display of God manifest in Christ, and for us, in every attribute displayed.

(From Letters on Some Practical Points Connected with the Assembly.)