"Emerson, Ralph W. - Uncollected Prose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

still with no intimation that the occasion was to be remembered.

St. Luke (Luke XXII. 15), after relating the breaking of the
bread, has these words: This do in remembrance of me.

In St. John, although other occurrences of the same evening are
related, this whole transaction is passed over without notice.

Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew
and John, were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that
occasion. Neither of them drops the slightest intimation of any
intention on the part of Jesus to set up anything permanent. John,
especially, the beloved disciple, who has recorded with minuteness
the conversation and the transactions of that memorable evening, has
quite omitted such a notice. Neither does it appear to have come to
the knowledge of Mark who, though not an eye-witness, relates the
other facts. This material fact, that the occasion was to be
remembered, is found in Luke alone, who was not present. There is no
reason, however, that we know, for rejecting the account of Luke. I
doubt not, the expression was used by Jesus. I shall presently
consider its meaning. I have only brought these accounts together,
that you may judge whether it is likely that a solemn institution, to
be continued to the end of time by all mankind, as they should come,
nation after nation, within the influence of the Christian religion,
would have been established in this slight manner -- in a manner so
slight, that the intention of commemorating it should not appear,
from their narrative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the mind of
the only two among the twelve who wrote down what happened.

Still we must suppose that the expression, _"This do in
remembrance of me,"_ had come to the ear of Luke from some disciple
who was present. What did it really signify? It is a prophetic and
an affectionate expression. Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his
countrymen, celebrating their national feast. He thinks of his own
impending death, and wishes the minds of his disciples to be prepared
for it. "When hereafter," he says to them, "you shall keep the
Passover, it will have an altered aspect to your eyes. It is now a
historical covenant of God with the Jewish nation. Hereafter, it
will remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. In years to
come, as long as your people shall come up to Jerusalem to keep this
feast, the connection which has subsisted between us will give a new
meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary of
my death." I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of such
language from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine
that he was willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory
should hallow their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe
that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living
generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating,
and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial
feast upon the whole world.