here presented between the establishment of the earthly national theocracy, which was accomplished by the release of the Jews from earthly bondage and their formation into an independent people, and the establishment of an universal theocracy in a spiritual form, which consisted in releasing its members from the spiritual bondage of sin, and their formation into an internally independent community or church of God. If this subject is viewed in the Pauline spirit, it will be evident, that all this can be properly fulfilled only in vital communion with the Redeemer, apart from which nothing in the Christian life has its proper significance, and that the commemoration of Christ's redeeming sufferings can never be adequately performed except in vital communion with him. The solemn remembrance of Christ's sufferings is the leading idea in this holy ordinance, though the consciousness of communion with him is necessarily connected with it. And communion with Christ necessarily presupposes his redeeming sufferings, and their personal appropriation. Baptism also introduces believers into his communion as baptism into the death of Christ.

With respect to the manner in which Paul conceived the relation to exist of the outward signs to the body and blood of Christ, we must not forget that the latter are considered merely as being given for the salvation of mankind. Under this view the form in which he quotes Christ's words is im

This can only

portant. He says, "This cup is the καινὴ διαθήκη, which was established by the shedding of my blood." mean: The cup represents to you in a sensible manner the establishment of this new relation. And by analogy the first TOTÓ ÈσTɩ must be interpreted "It represents my body."

1 Those who advocate the metaphorical interpretation of the expressions used in the institution of the Supper, are very unjustly charged with doing violence to the words, by departing from the literal meaning. If the literal interpretation of the circumstances and relations under which anything is said, be contrary to the connexion and design of the discourse, this literal interpretation is unnatural and forced. And this is certainly the case in the interpretation of these words of our Lord, for since Christ was still sensibly present among his disciples when he said that this bread was his body, this wine was his blood, they could understand him as speaking only symbolically, if he added no further explanation. Moreover, they were accustomed to similar symbolical expressions in their intercourse with him; and this very symbol receives its natural interpretation from another of Christ's

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Though he afterwards says that whoever eats or drinks in an unworthy manner, that is, with a profane disposition, is not one who is interested in or recollects the design of the holy ordinance, so that, as Paul himself explains it in v. 29, he does not distinguish what is intended to represent the body of Christ from common food-that such a one sins against the body and blood of the Lord. But from these words we cannot determine the relation in which the bread and wine were considered by Paul to stand to the body and blood of Christ, for the sinning of which he speaks, as the connexion shows, consists only in the relation of the communicant's disposition to the holy design of the ordinance. On the supposition that only a symbolically religious meaning was attached to the Supper, this language might be used respecting those who partook of it merely as a common meal. what he afterwards says, that whoever partook of the Supper unworthily, partook of it to his condemnation, is by no means decisive, for this relates only to the religious state of the individual. Whoever partook of the Lord's Supper with a profane disposition, without being penetrated with a sense of the holy significance of the rite, by such vain conduct passed the sentence of his own condemnation, and exposed himself to punishment. Accordingly, in the evils which at that time affected the church, the apostle beheld the marks of the divine displeasure.

And

In the 10th chapter of the same Epistle, the apostle speaks of the Lord's Supper, and declares to the Corinthians that it was unlawful to unite a participation in the heathen sacrifices with Christian communion in the Holy Supper. He points out that, by participating in the heathen sacrifices, they would relapse into idolatry. These sacrifices bore the same relation to the heathen worship as the Jewish sacrifices to the Jewish cultus, and as the Lord's Supper to the social acts of Christian worship. And in accordance with this fact he says, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ ?"-this can only mean that it marks, it represents this communion, it is the means of appropriating this communion; for the rite is here viewed discourses, (see the chapter on John's doctrine; also Leben Jesu, p. 644, and Lücke's Essay.)

in its totally corresponding to the idea, in the congruity of the inward with the outward, in the same sense as when Paul says that as many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.' As to the two other points with which the Lord's Supper is here compared in its relation to Christianity, the essential is only the communion marked by it for the conscience; respecting the kind of communion nothing more can be ascertained from these words.

Since the Supper represents the communion with Christ, a reference is at the same time involved to the communion founded upon it of believers with one another as members of the one body of Christ. With this view Paul says, 1 Cor. x. 17, "For we being many are one loaf and one body, for we are all partakers of that one loaf;" that is, as we all partake of one loaf, and this loaf represents to us the body of Christ, so it also signifies that we are all related to one another as members of the one body of Christ.2

The idea of the church of Christ is closely connected in the views of Paul with that of the kingdom of God. The former is the particular idea, which may be referred to the latter as the more general and comprehensive one. The idea of the church is subordinate to that of the kingdom of God, because by the latter is denoted either the whole of a series of historical developments, or a great assemblage of co-existent spiritual creations. The first meaning leads us to the original form of the idea of the kingdom of God, by which the Christian dispensation was introduced and to which it was annexed. The universal kingdom of God formed from within, which is to embrace the whole human race, or the union of all mankind in one community animated by one common principle of religion, was prepared and typified by the establishment and development of a nationality, distinguished by religion as the foundation and centre of all its social institutions, the particular theocracy of the Jews. The kingdom of God was not first founded by Christianity as something entirely new, but the original kingdom of God, of which the groundwork

1 The older Fathers of the church not illogically inferred, that there was a bodily participation of Christ at Baptism as well as at the Supper. 2 In 1 Cor. xii. 13, there may be an allusion to the Supper in the words [eis] ev veûμa ètoτioonμev, and in this case to the participation in the ev Tveûua proceeding from spiritual communion with the Redeemer; this may be also the case in 1 Cor. x. 34.

already existed, was released from its limitation to a particular people and its symbolical garb; it was transformed from being a sensuous and external economy to one that was spiritual and internal; and no longer national, it assumed a form that was destined to embrace the whole of mankind; and thus it came to pass, that faith in that Redeemer, whom to prefigure and to prepare for was the highest office of Judaism, was the medium for all men of participating in the kingdom of God. The apostle everywhere represents, that those who had hitherto lived excluded from all historical connexion with the development of God's kingdom among mankind, had become, by faith in the Redeemer, fellow-citizens of the saints, members of God's household, built on the foundation laid by apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; Eph. ii. 19, 20. The same fact is represented by another image in Rom. xi. 18. Christianity allied itself to the expectation of a restoration and glorification of the theocracy, which was preceded by an increasing sense of its fallen state among the Jews. Those who clung to a national and external theocracy, looked forward to this glorification as something external, sensuous, and national. The Messiah, they imagined, would exalt by a divine miraculous power, the depressed theocracy of the Jews to a visible glory such as it had never before possessed, and establish a new, and exalted, unchangeable order of things, in place of the transitory earthly institutions which had hitherto existed. Thus the kingdom of the Messiah would appear as the perfected form of the theocracy, as the final stage in the terrestrial development of mankind, exceeding in glory everything which a rude fancy could depict under sensible images, a kingdom in which the Messiah would reign sensibly present as God's vicegerent, and order all circumstances according to his will. From this point of view, therefore, the reign of the Messiah would appear as belonging entirely to the future; the present condition of the world (the αἰὼν οὗτος, οι αἰὼν πονηρός), with all its evils and defects, would be set in opposition to that future golden age (the alwv péλwv), from which all wickedness and evil would be banished. But in accordance with a change in the idea of the kingdom of God, a different construction was put on this opposition by Christianity; it was transformed from the external to the internal, and withdrawn from the future to the

present. By faith in the Redeemer, the kingdom of God or of the Messiah is already founded in the hearts of men, and thence developing itself outwards, is destined to bring under its control all that belongs to man. And so that higher order of things, which from the Jewish standing-point was placed in the future, has already commenced with the divine life received by faith, and is realized in principle. In spirit and disposition they have already quitted the world in which evil. reigns; redemption brings with it deliverance from this world of evil,' and believers, who already participate in the spirit, the laws, the powers, and the blessedness of that higher world, constitute an opposition to the αἰὼν οὗτος, the αἰὼν πονηρός. Such is the idea of the kingdom of God presented by the apostle as realized according to the spirit on earth; the kingdom of Christ coincides with the idea of the church existing in the hearts of men, the invisible church,2 the totality of the operations of Christianity on mankind;-and the idea of the alwy ouros is that of the ungodly spirit of the present world maintaining an incessant conflict with Christianity.

1 Deliverance from the ἐνεστώς αἰὼν πονηρὸς, necessarily accompanies redemption from sin. See Gal. i. 4.

2 This is the ǎvw 'Iepovσaλǹu, the mother of believers; Gal. iv. 26. Rothe disputes this interpretation (see his work before quoted, p. 290), but without reason. He is indeed so far right, that primarily something future is designated by it, as appears from its being contrasted with "the Jerusalem which now is;" but this future heavenly Jerusalem, which at a future time is to be revealed in its glory, is already, in a sense, present to believers, for in faith and spirit and inward life they belong to it; while the earthly Jerusalem is already passed away, they are dead to it, and are separated from it. From this it follows that the heavenly Jerusalem stands to them in the relation of a mother; the participation of the divine life by which they are regenerated, constitutes them the invisible church. The perfect development of this life belongs to the future; their life is now a hidden one; the manifestation of it does not fully correspond to its real nature. Though the idea of the invisible church is not expressed in this distinct form by Paul, yet in spirit and meaning it is conveyed in the above expression, as well as in the distinction which he makes in 2 Tim. ii. 19, 20; and when he forms his idea of the body of Christ according to this distinction, it entirely coincides with that of the invisible church. Hence, also, this idea was strikingly developed by the reformation which proceeded from the Pauline scheme of doctrine. And it is important to maintain it firmly against ecclesiastical sectarianism, against the secularization of the church, whether under the form of Hierarchy, of Romanism, or, what is still worse, the subordination of religion to political objects, the supremacy of the State in matters of religion, Byzantinism.