had performed the servile office of washing His disciples’ feet.
In its social aspect as well as in other respects the Lord’s Supper is the antitype and counterpart of the Passover, but in this as in its other aspects it is of far deeper and holier significance, and the symbol not of a family or national union, but of the union of mankind. It is difficult to imagine how any harsh distinctions between man and man could long maintain themselves against its equalizing and reconciling power. Nor has it failed to accomplish its object in this respect where it has been administered according to the intention of its founder. Where it has been administered in a way quite different from His intention, its efficacy could not be expected to be so great. During the feudal ages the relations between the lord and the serf were almost as unchristian as those between the modern slave-owner and his slave. But during the feudal ages the Supper of the Lord, as well as the worship of which it was the centre and the culmination, had lost its primitive character. It had ceased to be a communion in the full sense of the word, and had become a sort of magic rite administered to each member of the Church by the priest, the talisman and chief support of sacerdotal power.
In few countries were the people more oppressed and degraded by feudal tyranny down to the time of the Reformation than in Scotland. After the Reformation the lower classes were socially raised; and all classes have since become united in a remarkable degree, considering that the political institutions of the country
