My vesture'--these be the viands, not without bitter herbs, that are
laid on the table which Christ spreads for us. They are parts of the
sacrifice that reconciles to God. Offered to Him they make our peace.
They are parts and elements of the food of our spirits. Appropriated and
partaken of by us they make our strength and our life.

Brethren! there is little food, there is little impulse, little strength
for obedience, little gladness or peace of heart to be got from a Christ
who is _not_ a Sacrifice. If we would know how much He may be to us, as
the nourishment of our best life, and as the source of our purest and
permanent gladness, we must, first of all, look upon Him as the Offering
for the world's sin, and then as the very Life and Bread of our souls.
The Christ that feeds the world is the Christ that died for the world.

Hence our Lord Himself, most eminently in one great and profound
discourse, has set forth, not only that He is the Bread of God which
'came down from heaven,' but that His flesh and His blood are such, and
the separation between the two in the discourse, as in the memorial
rite, indicates that there has come the violent separation of death, and
that thereby He becomes the life of humanity.

So my text, and the whole series of Old Testament representations in
which the blessings of the Kingdom are set forth as a feast, and the
parables of the New Testament in which a similar representation is
contained, do all converge upon, and receive their deepest meaning from,
that one central thought that the peace-offering for the world is the
food of the world.

We see, hence, the connection between these great spiritual ideas and
the central act of Christian worship. The Lord's Supper simply says by