The Lord’s Supper is the medium of
a real communication with Christ, only in the case if BELIEVERS.
The object of the institution is to confirm and advance the new life, where it
has been already commenced. It has no power to convert such as are still in
their sins. The grace which it exhibits can be apprehended only by faith. Those
who come to the Lord’s table unworthily, as to a common meal, without being in
a state to discern the Lord’s body, eat and drink only judgment to themselves. They
receive in no sense Christ’s flesh and blood; but the bare signs only, by which
they are exhibited for the benefit of those who come in a right way. Nor is it
enough that the communicant be a regenerated person; he must be in the exercise
of faith at the time. A gracious state, accompanied with gracious affections in
the transaction itself, is the indispensable condition of a profitable approach
to the Lord in the holy sacrament. And yet, as before said, it is not our
faith at all that gives the sacrament its force; nor does this consist at all in
the actions of our faith or penitence, or love, or any other gracious
affection, that may be called into exercise at the time. These constitute not,
and create not, the presence of Christ in the case. On the contrary, this
presence forms itself the ground from which all such affections draw their
activity and strength. The force of the sacrament is in the sacrament itself.
Our faith is needed, only as the condition that is required to make room for it
in our souls. “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” said the blessed Saviour to the
women, who came behind him in the crowd, and touched the hem of his garment.
But the healing virtue went forth in fact wholly from his own person; and was
present there, as an ample remedy for all diseases, independently altogether of
any application that might be made to him for relief. The woman’s faith formed
the necessary condition only on her own part, for her becoming the recipient of
the grace which was thus at hand. So in the case before us. The virtue of
Christ’s mystical presence is comprehended in the sacrament itself, and cannot
be said to be put into it in any sense by our faith. This serves only to bring
us into right relation to the life, that is thus placed within our reach. Faith
puts not into the sacrament, what it has power instrumentally to draw from it
for our use. (John Williamson Nevin, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of
the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist [Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1846], 183)
