MAY 6TH, 1916

MAY 6TH, 1916

MY DEAR —, — ... I am glad to know your exercises in regard to the Supper. I can quite understand the desire that you have cherished in your heart as to this precious privilege, and I believe the Lord greatly appreciates your affection for Himself which has created and maintained the desire. Brethren used to have breaking of bread with invalids frequently in bygone years. I remember breaking bread once with an invalid sister myself along with two other brothers. But as time has passed on I think we have all been learning — I am sure you have as well as others — to regard the Supper less as individual privilege, and more as that which is taken up by the Christian company. I think as presented in Scripture it is, as beloved F.E.R. used to say, the rallying point for the Christian company.

It is that by which the saints are locally convened from time to time, and are thus found “in assembly”. Scripture supposes the whole Christian company as coming together to break bread. “When ye come together to eat”. Indeed I think the expression “come together” occurs four or five times in 1 Corinthians 11. It is the Lord’s way of bringing His own together so that their hearts may be in spiritual contact with each other, in blessed engagement with Himself in His pre-eminent love of which the assembly is the subject. He has a company here loved infinitely by Him, and He appointed ^[p. 67] the Supper to be eaten together by that company as expressing their appreciation of His love, not simply as blessed individuals, but as those who confess in thus eating it together the peculiar bond which makes them one.

Now amongst believers generally all the peculiar sweetness of this is lost. They take what they call “the communion”, but in their thoughts it is entirely individual. Pious souls take it in affectionate gratitude to their Saviour and Lord, and have Him before them in doing so, and no doubt find blessing. But there is not the thought of coming into heart-contact with His own, so as to be found in that blessed unity of responsive affection which is the true privilege of the Christian company, and which would, if known, result in a blessed unity of testimony to the absent One on the part of all His own. The more one thinks of what the Supper is in the heart and mind of Christ, the more is one impressed with the thought that it holds a peculiar and central place in the circle of His own. And the voice of His love in the Supper addresses itself to the whole company of His own. You will say, They do not all — respond. No, but they ought to. If the Supper is being eaten anywhere it claims on the Lord’s part the participation of every one who loves Him. There is nothing personal or private about it. If it is truly the Lord’s supper it is His call to His company to come together, and being together thus they are “in assembly”.

Now it is the consideration of all this, and much more might be added, which would hinder me (if I were confined at home) from desiring to have the Supper as a private and personal privilege. I should prefer to accept the ways and orderings of God for me, and recognise His hand in the deprivation. I would seek to be in spirit with the company who were eating the Supper, and would engage my heart with that which was before them. In this way I should expect to participate in their joy and gain, though not permitted to take my place in the body with them.

I have written freely just what is in my mind because you asked me; and not with any desire that you should look at it as I do unless the Lord commends what I say to your heart and judgment as being of Himself.

Yours very affectionately,

May 6th, 1916.