The Mystical Presence

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 edition. Excerpt: ... and it will be impossible to avoid the feeling that it requires to be understood in a higher sense.* What the Passover signified prophetically, and in the way of shadow, is here exhibited under the character of a real and actually present salvation. For the paschal lamb, Christ solemnly substitutes himself. The Old Testament sacrament is made to give way to the power and glory of the actual grace, it was employed to foreshadow. Participation in the promise, is to become now particpation in the fact itself. "This is the Lord's Passover," said Moses to the Jews at the time of its institution; and so as it was observed, from year to year in subsequent time, this word was still repeated, "It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses!" (Ex. xii. 11, 27). This did not mean of course, that the paschal elements were themselves this ancient deliverance. But it did mean, that they were something more than a mere Fourth of July commemoration in the c?se. They were, in pledge and seal, the very covenant itself, such as it was, which that occasion served to ratify, as the shadow of blessings to come. In contrast with all this, and in fulfilment of its true meaning at the same time, Christ, with direct reference to his own expiatory death now immediately at hand, makes himself over to his disciples in the sacrament of the Supper. "This is my body, broken for you--this cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for many, for the remission of sins." Did he mean that the elements themselves were his body and his blood, literally taken 1 Of course not. Did he mean then only, that they were a figure of a certain truth, comprehended! n his...