the reply of Jesus expresses His innermost thought: "She is come to anoint My body aforehand for the burying." His death fills His mind, and it is to be a death which will leave no chance for assuaging the grief of the living by the last tender ministries to the dead. And He rejoices to see His own acts of sacrifice reflected in the gracious act of the woman; the love that surrenders life feels comforted by the kindred love which covers with grateful fragrance the body so soon to be lifeless. But there is an even finer touch, showing the faith that lived in the heart of disaster. Jesus, while He anticipates death, anticipates universal fame and everlasting remembrance. His gospel is to be preached "throughout the whole world," and the woman's act is to be everywhere "spoken of as a memorial for her." This consciousness of His universal and enduring import is a note of the sayings which belong to His last days, and stands indissolubly associated with His approaching death. His words are to abide for ever; His gospel is, like the temple of God, destined for "all peoples." And these things He speaks of as simply and confidently as He speaks of His death.

1

ii. But the most solemn and significant of all His utterances concerning His death are the words spoken at the institution of the supper. And here we must strictly limit ourselves to their theological import; their sacramental interpretation lies outside our present purpose; so does the interesting question which has been recently raised, whether we owe the change of the Supper into a permanent sacrament to Jesus or to Paul, and whether the suggestive cause of the change was Jewish custom or Greek mysteries. This question requires a broader and more searching treatment than it has yet received. The later action of the mysteries, and the tendencies that created the mysteries, upon the ideas of the Supper, of the elements, the conditions, the

1 Mark xiii. 31.

effects, and the modes of observance, may be established by various lines of proof; but we see no reason to doubt that the Supper had become a Christian custom before Christianity had felt the delicate yet subduing touch of the Hellenic spirit. This question, however, does not affect ours, which is simply, "What did Jesus mean by the words He used as to His own death at the institution of the Supper?"

In the several narratives the formulæ are not quite identical. As has been often remarked, there are two main versions-that of Paul and Luke on the one hand, and that of Matthew and Mark on the other; but even the versions which are alike significantly differ from each other, and as significantly agree with a representative of the independent tradition. Thus the formula for the bread is simpler in Matthew (Λάβετε, φάγετε· τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ σῶμά μου), and Mark (who omits φάγετε), but more detailed in Paul (τοῦτό μού ἐστιν τὸ σῶμα τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν· τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν), and most detailed in Luke (τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ σῶμά μου τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν διδόμενον· τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν). The variations affect both the theological and the sacramental idea, the former in Tò ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν, the latter in τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν. In the formula for the wine, the cross agreements and differences are still more instructive. Mark is simplest: τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου τῆς διαθήκης τὸ ἐκχυννόμενον ὑπὲρ πολλῶν. Matthew changes ὑπέρ into περί, and adds εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. Paul says: τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι ; while Luke combines Matthew and Mark with Paul, thus: τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡικαινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου, τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυννόμενον.

These variations are easily explicable, and show, so far as the sacramental idea is concerned, that the validity of the ordinance did not depend on any uniformity in the formula used; for words so freely altered could not be conceived

to possess some mystic or magic potency capable of effecting a miraculous change in the elements. As concerns the theological idea, the difference in the terms represents no contradiction or radical divergence in the thought. Paul and Luke say, "the new covenant in His blood"-i.e., the covenant which stood in the blood, or had therein the condition of its being. Matthew and Mark say, "this is the blood of the covenant "-i.e., the blood which gives it being and character, which is its seal and sanction. They agree in their idea of the covenant, though Paul and Luke think of it as "the new" in contrast to "the old," while Matthew and Mark think of it, absolutely, as sole and complete. Paul says nothing as to the persons for whom the blood has been shed; Luke says, "for you"; Matthew and Mark, "for many." But the difference here is formal. Paul means what the others say, while the "you" is only the personalized and present "many," the "many" the enlarged and collective "you." Matthew alone definitely expresses the purpose for which the blood was shed-" unto the remission of sins"; but this only made explicit the idea contained in the vπèp vuôv and the véр or even the περὶ πολλῶν; for what other idea could the consciousness of the disciples supply save that the blood shed" for them," or "in reference to many," was shed "in order to remission of sins"? The phrasing varies; the language is here less, there more, explicit, but the thought is throughout one and the same.

III.

What, then, did the words which our authorities thus render mean on the lips of Jesus? We cannot be wrong, considering where it stands, in regarding this as the weightiest, most precise, and defining expression which He has yet used concerning His death. The form under which He first conceived it was as an integral part of His

work as Messiah, yet as a fate He endures or suffers at the hands of the elders and chief priests. The next form under which He conceived it was as the spontaneous surrender of Himself "as a ransom for many." But here these two forms coalesce in a third, which is at once their synthesis and completion. His death has (a) at once an historical and an ideal, a retrospective and a prospective significance; it ends one covenant and establishes another; (B) it has an absolute worth irrespective of the form it may assume or the means by which it may be effected, for though inflicted by men, it is endured on behalf of man; and (7) its express purpose is to create a new, an emancipated people of God.

new.

A. But in order that these ideas may be understood they must be interpreted through His experience, the facts and factors that had shaped and were shaping His thought. The covenant which He established stands as "the new " in explicit antithesis to the "old," and finds its constitutive condition and characteristic in His blood. He dies at the hands of the old covenant, but in so dying He creates the This makes His death, as it were, the concrete expression of the antithesis of the covenants, and at the same time represents the inmost fact of His own conscious experience. While possessed by the feeling of radical unity with His people, He was as an alien to the actual system under which they lived. He consciously incorporated their most distinctive religious ideas, but He was as consciously in conflict with the men who claimed to be the official representatives and only authorized ministers of the old religion. The degree in which He embodied those ideas was the measure of His antagonism to the men, and theirs to Him. To be the Christ of prophecy was to be the Crucified of Judaism. This was the tragedy of the situation: the Jew had been in order to produce the first, but once He was there the Jew did not know Him, would not

love Him, had no room for Him, could do nothing with Him save compass His death. The words of Caiaphas, though preserved only in the Fourth Gospel, express the thought of his class as broadly written across the face of the Synoptic history: "It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." This was but the official version of what Jesus Himself had foreseen and so often foretold. His reading of the religion was the direct contradiction of theirs; both could not live together, and the only way in which they could effectually contradict His contradiction. was by His death. But at this point, as to what was to be accomplished by His death, He and they radically differed; they thought that by the cross He was to die and they were to live, but He believed that they were through His death not to live, but to die. This idea fills His later teaching; it is the moral, not simply of the Apocalyptic discourses, but of the parables already noticed, of His words to the women of Jerusalem, and of His lamentation over the city. It was the supreme Nemesis of history. What fate save death could happen to the system whose reward to its most righteous Son was the cross?

B. But this is an indirect, and, as it were, negative result of His death; the direct and positive is the new covenant which is established in His blood. We need not concern ourselves with the idea of "covenant"; enough to say, it is here held to denote a gracious relation on God's part expressed in a new revelation for the faith and obedience of man. What does very specially concern us is what Jesus says as to His blood. It must be explained. through the moment and all its circumstances. He had strongly desired to eat the Passover with His disciples before He suffered,5 and He had sent Peter and John be3 Luke xxiii. 28-31.

1 xi. 50.

2 Supra, pp. 20, 21.

4 Matt. xxiii. 38; Luke xix. 43, 44.

5 Luke xxii. 15.