Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/514

LORD'S PRAYEB. 456 LORD'S SUPPER. pear to have taken this view, which is the one adopted in the Itevised Version. The extent to which this prayer was original Avith Jesus lias been keenly disputed. It was once claimed that He drew all its material from current Jewish prayers. This was met by a counter-denial of as sweeping a character. The truth is that some of the phrases, e.g. 'Our Father' (in a more restricted .sense), and some of its ideas were already at hand. Jesus' origi- nality lay not only in the new elements He contributed, but in what He omitted (of the ordinary prayer-forms current in His day) and in the remarkable arrangement of the whole. Jesus did not intend this prayer to be used as a fixed or liturgical form, but as a model suggestive of what true prayer should be. But inevitably, and in very early time, it came to be so used. There are" hints that this was the case even in New Testament times. The earliest Church manual, the Didache (see Teaching of THE Twelve Apo.stles) (c.lOO a.d.), includes it, directing that it be said thrice each day. The most ancient liturgies, with one exception, con- tain it, giving it a place in the eucharislic ser- vices between the consecration of the elements and the communion. The liturgical use led to the addition of the doxology, the earliest known form of which (in the Didache) is "For Thine is the power and the glory forever." The (longer) doxology in common use is not found joined to the prayer in any writer before Chrysostom. BiBLioGKAPHY. Of the very large literature, the following works are of special importance. Many of the Fathers, e.g. Tertullian. Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Jerome, wrote on the Lord's Prayer. Extended expositions of its teaching are given in the great catecliisms such as Luther's, the Heidelberg, the Westminster, the catechism of the Eastern Church, and others. Jlodern scholarly discussions are oflfered by Tho- luek, Berfipredh/t (Hamburg, 1833) ; Kamp- hausen, Das Oehct des Herrn (Elberfeld. 1,SG6) ; Wendt, The Teaching of Jckus (Eng. trans.. New York, 1892) ; Weiss, The Life of Jesus (Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1883-84) : Lightfoot. On a Fresh Revision of the cw Testament (London, 1881) ; Cook, Deliver Us from Evil, A Letter to the Bishop of London (London, 1881); id., A Second Letter, etc. (London, 1882) ; Chase, The Lord's Prayer in the Earl;/ Church, in Texts and Studies, vol. i. (Cambridge, 1891) ; Jannaris, "The English Version of the Lord's Prayer," in the Contemporarji Review (1894): Plummer, in the Hastincfs Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii. (New York, IflOO) ; Nestle, in EncijcJopwdia Bihlica, vol. iii. (London, 1902). LORD'S STJPPER. A term widely applied to the princijial sacrament of the Chri.stian Church. This name, however, appears originally to have referred to the ayape or love-feast (see Agap.e) which was closely connected, if not com- bined, with the celebration of the sacrament in the early Church, and was probably used by Saint Paul in this sense in I. Cor. xi. 20; but it can hardly be said to have been known in the earliest times as a name for the sacrament it- self. The commonest designation then was eucha- rist or thanksgiving (see Luke xxii. 19: I. Cor. xiv. 16; T. Tim. ii. 1). It was employed by Ignatius in his epistles (a.d. 107), by Irenoeus, who says that the bread after consecration "is no longer common bread, but eucharist," and by Justin Martyr (a.d. 140). Another term em- ployed in the English and American jn-ayev-books is Holy Communion, from the Greek KoifuHa (I. Cor. X. 16, where it means communicatiun or impartation). The designation 'Lord's Sup- per,' however, is in very general use at the present time, because of its appropriateness in taking the mind back to the time and place of the institution. As described in the synoptic Gospels and in I. Cor. xi. 23-27, the sacrament was instituted by Christ on the eve of His passion, at the last sup- per or paschal feast which He kept with the Twelve. During the progress of the meal He transformed the Jewisb Passover into the New Passover, the Holy Eucharist of the Christian Church. There is no mention by the evangelists of the eating of a lamb, but we are told that the Saviour took one of the small loaves or cakes of unleavened bread and broke it, saying. "Take, eat; this is My body which is given for you; this do (or offer) in remembrance (or for a me- morial) of Me;" and that later He took the cup and said: "Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood of the new testament (or covenant )_ which is shed for many for the remission of sins." For a discussion of the New Testament notices concerning the institution, see the article Gospel, paragraph The Lord's Supper. As to its origin, then, the great sacrament wa3 wholly Jewish. Any other suggestion, accord- ing to a most recent authority, is quite unhis- torical. "It was developed out of the rites and associations of the paschal sacrifice and meal." As the Jewish Passover was a memorial of the deliverance of God's ancient people from the bondage of Egj-pt and of their covenant relation- ship with Him, so the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper became a .solemn memorial of man's emancipation from the thraldom of sin and his place in the new covenant of the Sa- viour's blood. But the Passover of the Jews, with their other sacrificial rites, was akin to religious customs which are universal, and the Christian Passover may likewise be said to contain elements which are" common to all religions. Sacramental wor- ship, in some form or other, is the almost uni- versal heritage of mankind. It is the divine consecration of a human instinct. It is the embodiment and expression of a universal idea — the union of the outward and inward, the visible and invisible, the human and the divine, in some concrete form. Some theologians have traced an analogy be- tween the Christian sacraments and the Greek mysteries. They have even discussed the ques- tion whether the iden= which are most char- acteristic of the mvstery- worship were directly borrowed by the Church, or arose spontaneously in the latter under the same influences which produced them in the former. Others, again, have repudiated any connection between the eucharistic feast and the 'sombre, cruel, and revolting ceremonies' of the heathen forms of worship, and -Tustin JIartyr says that in the mysteries of jMithra "the evil spirits have in- stituted by imitation a rite similar to the Chris- tian eucharist." Clearly the institution and establishment of the sacrament marks an epoch in both sacred and profane history. When the sacrifice of sacri-