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

I look upon this fact as very natural in the circumstances of
the church. The disciples lived together; they threw all their
property into a common stock; they were bound together by the memory
of Christ, and nothing could be more natural than that this eventful
evening should be affectionately remembered by them; that they, Jews
like Jesus, should adopt his expressions and his types, and
furthermore, that what was done with peculiar propriety by them, his
personal friends, with less propriety should come to be extended to
their companions also. In this way religious feasts grew up among
the early Christians. They were readily adopted by the Jewish
converts who were familiar with religious feasts, and also by the
Pagan converts whose idolatrous worship had been made up of sacred
festivals, and who very readily abused these to gross riot, as
appears from the censures of St. Paul. Many persons consider this
fact, the observance of such a memorial feast by the early disciples,
decisive of the question whether it ought to be observed by us. For
my part I see nothing to wonder at in its originating with them; all
that is surprising is that it should exist among us. There was good
reason for his personal friends to remember their friend and repeat
his words. It was only too probable that among the half converted
Pagans and Jews, any rite, any form, would find favor, whilst yet
unable to comprehend the spiritual character of Christianity.

The circumstance, however, that St. Paul adopts these views,
has seemed to many persons conclusive in favor of the institution. I
am of opinion that it is wholly upon the epistle to the Corinthians,
and not upon the Gospels, that the ordinance stands. Upon this
matter of St. Paul's view of the Supper, a few important
considerations must be stated.

The end which he has in view, in the eleventh chapter of the
first epistle is, not to enjoin upon his friends to observe the
Supper, but to censure their abuse of it. _We_ quote the passage
now-a-days as if it enjoined attendance upon the Supper; but he wrote
it merely to chide them for drunkenness. To make their enormity
plainer he goes back to the origin of this religious feast to show
what sort of feast that was, out of which this riot of theirs came,
and so relates the transactions of the Last Supper. _"I have
received of the Lord,"_ he says, _"that which I delivered to you."_
By this expression it is often thought that a miraculous
communication is implied; but certainly without good reason, if it is
remembered that St. Paul was living in the lifetime of all the
apostles who could give him an account of the transaction; and it is
contrary to all reason to suppose that God should work a miracle to
convey information that could so easily be got by natural means. So
that the import of the expression is that he had received the story
of an eye-witness such as we also possess.

But there is a material circumstance which diminishes our