Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill JESUS AS A SIGN A sign is some visible thing which represents an invisible reality greater than itself. Christianity has three of these signs. Two of them we call sacraments. They are Baptism and the Lord's Supper. In baptism the outward and visible act of applying water to an individual who has been presented for the purpose of undergoing the rite, represents an invisible act indefinitely greater than itself. So also the visible act of one who partakes of the Lord's supper represents an indefinitely greater invisible act. Water is invaluable as a food and also as an instrument of cleansing. Associate it with a cleansing agent in a Turkish bath institute and it means physical cleansing for all who come and submit to certain conditions. But associate water with one who is authorized to use it in baptism, and let him apply it to the persons of those who are presented for the rite, and the act of the baptizer represents that invisible act of the Holy Spirit, by which He purifies the hearts of those who believe in God as the God of their personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Bread is invaluable as a sustainer of physical life, and unfermented wine is the very life of the grape—the very life of the grape plant itself, indeed, since it produces the seed, or plants in embryo, of all future vineyards. Unfermented grape juice and bread taken together, therefore, are a sign of, or represent, physical life and its sustenance. And when you set portions of them apart for use in connection with the spiritual religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the rite which we call his Supper, they then represent him as at once the Spiritual life and the spiritual nourishment of all those who continously receive him by obedient faith, just as obediently they partake of the bread and wine t...