LORD'S SUPPER. A term widely applied to the principal sacrament of the Christian Church. This name, however, appears originally to have referred to the agape or love-feast (see AGAP,E) which was closely connected, if not com bined, with the celebration of the sacrament in the early Church. and was probably used by Saint Paul in this sense in T. Cor. xi. 20; but it can hardly be said to have been known in the earliest times as a name for the sacrament it self. The commonest designation then was eucha rist or thanksgiving (see Luke xxii. 19: 1. Cor. xiv. 16; I. Tim. ii. 1). It was employed by Ignatius in his epistles (a.n. 107), by Tremens, who says that the bread after consecration "is no longer common bread, but eucharist," and by Justin Martyr (A.D. 140). Another term em ployed in the English and American prayer-books is Iloly Communion, from the Greek soacovta (I. Cur. x. 16, where it means communication or impartation). The designation 'Lord's Sup per,' however, is in very general use at the present time, because of its appropriateness in taking the mind back to the time and place of .the institution.
As described in the synoptic Gospels and in 1. Cor. xi. 23-27, the sacrament was instituted by Christ on the eve of His passion, at the last sup per or paschal feast which He kept with the Twelve. During the progress of the meal He transformed the Jewish Passover into the New Passover, the Holy Eucharist of the Christian Church. There is no mention by the evangelists of the eating of a lamb, but we are told that the Saviour took one of the small loaves or cakes of unleavened bread and broke it. saying. "Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you; this do (o• offer) in remembrance (or for a me morial) of Me;" and that later He took the cup and said: "Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood of the new testament (or covenant) which is shed for many for the remission of sins." For a discussion of the New Testament notices concerning the institution, see the article GOSPEL, paragraph The Lord's Supper.
As to its origin, then, the great sacrament was wholly Jewish. Any other suggestion, accord ing to a most recent authority, is quite unhis torical. "It was developed out of the rites and associations of the paschal sacrifice and meal." As the Jewish Passover was a memorial of the deliverance of God's ancient people from the bondage of Egypt and of their covenant relation ship with Him, so the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper became a solemn memorial of man's emancipation from the thraldom of sin and his place in the new covenant of the Sa viour's blood.
But the Passover of the Jews, with their other sacrificial rites, was akin to religious customs which are universal, and the Christian Passover may likewise be said to contain elements which are common to all religions. Sacramental wor ship, in some form or other, is the almost uni versal heritage of mankind. It is the divine consecration of a human instinct. It is the embodiment and expression of a universal idea— the union of the outward and inWard, the visible and invisible, the human and the divine, in some concrete form.
Some theologians have traced an analogy be tween the Christian sacraments and the Greek mysteries. They have even discussed the ques tion whether the ide,g which are most char acteristic of the mystery-worship were directly borrowed by the Church, or arose spontaneously in the latter under the same influences which produced them in the former. Others, again, have repudiated any connection between the eucharistic feast and the 'sombre, cruel, and revolting ceremonies' of the heathen forms of worship, and .Tustin Martyr says that in the mysteries of Mithra "the evil spirits have in stituted by imitation a rite similar to the Chris tian eucharist." Clearly the institution and establishment of the sacrament marks an epoch in both sacred and profane history. When the sacrifice of sacri faces had been offered upon the cross and pre sented in heaven by Him who was both victim and priest, the whole system of animal sacrifices passed away. By A.D. 112, as we learn from Pliny's letter to Trajan, a practice consecrated to the Jews by the associations of centuries and observed by the Creeks and Romans front remote antiquity had disappeared. Sacrificial terms remained, but they grouped themselves around a remarkable and significant rite. The Lord's Supper was spoken of as a rpoo.Oopd or oblation, as a Buck or sacrifice, and as an dvdupncrts or memorial. The term hostia, victim, host, crystal lized the same idea for later times.