Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/48

32 do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me.”

In ancient Rome a soldier was required to swear allegiance to his general The Latin word for this oath

was sacramentum, and our English word sacrament is derived from it. Among the Jews it was an ancient custom for the master of a feast to pass each guest a cup of wine. But the Eucharist does not commemorate a Roman soldier's oath, nor was the wine, used on convivial occasions and in Jewish rites, the cup of our Lord. The cup shows forth his bitter experience, — the cup which he prayed might pass from him, though he bowed in holy submission to the divine decree.

“As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and is gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it.”

The true sense is spiritually lost, if the sacrament is confined to the use of bread and wine. The disciples

had eaten, yet Jesus prayed and gave them bread. This would have been foolish in a literal sense; but in its spiritual signification, it was natural and beautiful. Jesus prayed; he withdrew from the material senses to refresh his heart with brighter, with spiritual views.

The Passover, which Jesus ate with his disciples in the month Nisan on the night before his crucifixion,

was a mournful occasion, a sad supper taken at the close of day, in the twilight of a glorious career with shadows fast falling around; and