72 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



that men can enjoy fellowship one with another in com- 

 munion with God their Father, and that they may thus 

 become partakers of the divine nature. Here, indeed, we 

 have the Atonement The atonement in its simplest and 

 most primitive form to be sure, but none the less true, 

 perhaps even all the more true, on that account. The 

 at-one-ment of God and man realised in animal sacrifice. 



Now it is quite easy to see that this thought of human 

 fellowship in divine communion, which sacrifice was 

 originally intended to express, was a thought capable 

 of being spiritualised and ennobled, and, as a matter 

 of fact, this is exactly what happened. Under the 

 influence of the prophets of Israel it was spiritualised 

 and ennobled more and more until, on the occasion of 

 the Last Supper, our Lord led His disciples to realise 

 something of the full depth and significance of sacrifice. 

 On that occasion of awful solemnity, when their Lord 

 and Master broke bread with them for the last time 

 before His Crucifixion, they were privileged to enter 

 sympathetically into the Divine Sorrow and to realise, 

 as they had never done before, what it was to become 

 partakers of the divine nature, which nature is Love, 



I do not think it is possible for us to understand 

 what happened, if we do not appreciate how perfectly 

 simple and natural it all was. Our Lord was celebrating 

 the Passover with His disciples, and the ceremony was 

 that of the ordinary Passover Feast, Now the disciples, 

 though they obviously did not realise the full meaning 

 of the scene in which they were taking part, did realise 

 that they were on the eve of a terrible catastrophe, and 

 that their Lord and Master was about to be taken from 

 them. And as they sat sorrowfully around the board, 

 our Lord took the passover cake, and, after the cus- 

 tomary benediction, handed it round, adding, however, 

 to the benediction the words, ** Take, eat. This is My 

 Body,'* And the cup, in like manner. He handed round, 



