The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

eat bread." Here is the idea, first, of sacrifice as the inseparable constituent
in the covenant; then, of joint participation in the sacrifice by eating of it,
by the parties partaking in the covenant through it.
5. The relations of sacrifice to sacrament.
The idea of sacrifice under the Old Dispensation sheds light upon the
nature of the Lord's Supper. "Without the shedding of blood is no
remission." The slaying of the victim by shedding its blood, by which
alone its death could be effected, was properly the sacrifice. After the
sacrifice was made, two things were essential to securing its end: first, that
God should receive it; second, that man should participate in it. The
burning of the sacrifice by fire from heaven was the means of God's
accepting it on the one side; and eating of it, the means of man's
participating on the other. The truth is, that the sacrifice of the Old
Testament resolves itself into the very elements which we find in the Lord's
Supper. The Altar was the Table of the Lord, and the whole conception of
sacrifice runs out into this, that it is a covenanting Supper between God
and man.
The sacrifice, through the portion burnt, is received of God by the
element of fire; the portion reserved is partaken of by men, is
communicated to them, and received by them. The eating of one portion of
the sacrifice, by the offerer, is as real a part of the whole sacred act as the
burning of the other part is. Man offers to God; this is sacrifice. God gives
back to man; this is sacrament. The oblation, or thing offered, supplies both
sacrifice and sacrament, but with this difference, that under the Old
Dispensation God received part and man received part; but under the New,
God receives all and gives back all: Jesus Christ, in His own divine person,
makes that complete which was narrowed under the Old Covenant by the
necessary limitations of mere matter. But in both is this common idea, that
all who receive or commune in the reception of the oblation, either on the
one part as a sacrifice, or on the other as a sacrament, are in covenant; and
in the light of this alone is it, that not on Calvary, where the sacrifice was
made, but in the Supper, where the sacrifice is applied, the