THE LAST SUPPER.

BY THE REV. F. A. COX, D. D. L.L. D.

ON the memorable occasion when a bush, burning but unconsumed, appeared to Moses at the back of Horeb, "the mountain of God," he heard the following words—“ Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." The vast circumference around, with the overarching canopy of a cloudless sky, became at once a temple of worship; the level desert was a pavement on which the footsteps of a present Deity were impressed; and the splendour shining from afar, was the repelling yet attracting glory of the Shekinah, which hereafter "dwelt between the cherubim." A moment before it was a dreary solitude-a moment afterwards it was a solitude and a desert still; but, astonishing as was the outward appearance of blazing light, the moral perceptions and associations of the soul, roused into action by the voice of Jehovah, rather than any merely external vision, converted the whole scene into the magnificent antechamber of heaven, and spread a celestial hue over all creation.

It is even thus, that the more spiritual manifestations of the new testament economy invest with majesty the meanest places, and impart surpassing interest to the simplest exercises of duty. and religion. The mind is conscious, through faith, of a miracle of grace and mercy analogous to that which the illustrious Hebrew witnessed, and which by its hallowed associations trans

forms the wilderness of time into the glorious abode of "the lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." The invisible is rendered visible; the shadowings of great conceptions become realities; and that which is infinite and eternal is brought, as it were, within the precincts of a finite mind.

This idea, susceptible of illustration by many of the observances of religion, is more especially realized in the administration of what is called by way of distinction, the last Supper. He who has not felt, in participating its simple elements, the sadness of sorrow sweetly commingling with the joys of pardon; he whose spirit has not been humbled by remembrances of sin, while it has been refreshed and animated by thoughts of redeeming love; he who has not risen above the sphere of mortal passions and human pleasures, and enjoyed the conscious elevations of a sanctified heart, even amidst its self-abasements and mortifications, till it was plain that "the tabernacle of God was with men,"—has never yet kept the supper of the Lord.

The place of its original institution suggests a subject of useful reflection; it was in "a large upper room" at Jerusalem, in the house of a man to whom the Saviour had commissioned his disciples to go and make the needful preparations for the passover. It is not places that ennoble acts, but acts that ennoble places. Lucian sarcastically remarks of the Egyptians, that in entering one of their temples, you would behold a prodigious magnificence of architecture, and in consequence have the mind excited to the highest expectations of the object of worship, when, lo, at the end of the splendid edifice, an ape would be seen to invite your adorations! But whatever may be our ideas of heathenism, there must be something ineffably worse than ridiculous to the omniscient observer, in the grandeur and decoration of edifices consecrated to religion, as associated with the mean and sinful passions which too often intermingle with the formalities of

Christian worship. Let imagination portray the "upper room" of the primitive sacrament, and see if it do not excel in glory all that the pomp of art could invent for adorning, by its beautiful accordance with the simplicity of that transaction which the Evangelists record. There were no marble pillars supporting the gothic arch and the fretted roof; no altar-piece of elaborate workmanship with a sculptured or a pictured back-ground to allure the sight; no gaudy-coloured window to intercept and modify the light, to aid the effect of sombre shadows upon the senses; no deep-toned organ pealing its sacred melody along the aisles, and echoing from the lofty building; no costly vestments to impose upon the eye, and attract the reverential gaze of spectators towards mitred and ermined administrators ;—but there were feeling, solemnity, purity, peace! It was the “guest chamber," befitting the "man of sorrows" with his few disciples, harmonizing with the moral greatness that chose for its birthplace the manger of Bethlehem, and held its hallowed festivity at an upper room in Jerusalem.

The time of this commemorative feast enhances the interest of it. "In the evening he cometh with the twelve." From the course of nature, as well as from the constitution of the mind, it is common for all persons to be conscious of the tranquillizing influence of this closing portion of the day. It is favourable to meditation, and supplies it with ample materials. It is the hour for mental repose, and peculiarly suited to concentrated and pious thought, to solemn and sacred purposes. It is then that transactions which have the stamp of heaven and eternity upon them seem peculiarly appropriate; for as the approaching shadows spread their mistiness and obscurity around, the future seems to be absorbing the present, and time appears to be passing the boundary line of the visible and the temporary, and stepping into the invisible and eternal.

But it is not so much the hour itself of this memorable evening, as its associate circumstances, that renders it so solemn and awful. It was a night of crime; "the same night in which he was betrayed;" and the treachery which opened the path to the Redeemer's crucifixion was not perpetrated by a foe who had tracked his steps, and watched his privacy, but by an avowed friend-a disciple, an intimate, a confidential officer of his little household-by Judas Iscariot! Just at the moment when the light of his countenance beamed with inexpressible benignity upon the circle of his chosen ones, and they were sharing the last supper, and participating the tokens of his love, the dark eye of the traitor scowled upon the Son of man, as Satan "looked askance" into the paradise whose happy tenants he planned to destroy; and his darker soul, having "covenanted" with the chief priests for "thirty pieces of silver," was carrying on the plot to its awful consummation. Thus were heaven's love and hell's malignity seen in surprising contrast, while the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge" of God counterworked mysteriously the efforts of the "wicked hands" that slew the "holy one and the just."

The party convened on this occasion, and the conversation that ensued, stamp it with a peculiar and impressive character. Were we to fancy a festive board surrounded with the potentates of the earth, and emblazoned with the insignia of their exalted rank, discussing the affairs of nations, and determining, so far as they could determine, the temporal destinies of mankind,—how intense would be the feeling with which we should read the record of such a convention! With what curiosity would every word be marked, and with what emotions would every proceeding be traced upon the historic page! But this meeting in the "upper room" of the holy city is infinitely more worthy of record and celebration, and, were we not "carnally minded," must be

regarded by all generations with sentiments of profounder interest. There sat, in all the majesty of meekness, and in all the glory of "grace and truth," the incarnate Son of God; and there were "the twelve,"-illustrious, not in worldly rank and station, but in the "honour that comes from God!" That wonderful life was now approaching its termination, which was given for the ransom of apostate millions, and which, in its benevolence and its revelations of truth and of character, shone upon beclouded man like a gleam of sunshine from the upper heavens but ere the blessed Jesus left this happy group, and the world where he was about to offer by his death the last real atonement for sin, he made himself eminently "known" to the favoured few in "breaking of bread." And these were the heroes whom the " Captain of salvation" had destined for the moral conquest of the world, and whose spirits he was now refreshing for the conflict by his presence and promises. The witnesses of his miracles, of the grandeur of his transfiguration, the almost greater grandeur of his humility and sorrows, and subsequently of "the decease" which he "accomplished," and the resurrection from the dead which he achieved—were there; and they were thus taught, first, to subdue themselves, to abase and mortify the corrupt passions of their nature, and then to subjugate to the yoke of Christ the rebellious children of men; and, with his transferred crown of thorns on their brow, fighting the good fight, to overthrow both human and Satanic usurpations, and win immortal empire for their Lord!

But of the holy and the happy number there was one—and as he partook of the simple meal, he said it, with premonitory solemnity, "Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me." What he uttered, they knew must be truth, however inconceivable and inexplicable; and with overwhelming sensations of grief and anxiety they inquired, each one for