Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Criticism and interpretation
Lord's Table to-day, and it will be still and still more His table on
that great Communion-Day when all our earthly communions shall be
accomplished and consummated in heaven.
2. All that Mansoul did in connection with that great feast was to
prepare the place where Diabolus at one time had held his orgies and
carried on his excesses. Her Prince, Emmanuel, did all the rest; but He
left it to Mansoul to make the banqueting-room ready. When our Lord
would keep His last passover with His disciples, He said to Peter and
John, Go into the city, and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher
of water, and he will show you a large upper room furnished and prepared.
There is some reason to believe that that happy man had been expecting
that message and had done his best to be ready for it. And now he was
putting the last touch to his preparations by filling the water-pots of
his house with fresh water; little thinking, happy man, that as long as
the world lasts that water will be holy water in all men's eyes, and
shall teach humility to all men's hearts. And, my brethren, you know
that all you did all last week against to-day was just to prepare the
room. For the room all last week and all this day was your own heart,
and not and never this house of stone and lime made with men's hands. You
swept the inner and upper room of your own heart. You swept it and
garnished its walls and its floors as much as in you lay. He, whose the
supper really was, told you that He would bring with Him what was to be
eaten and drunken to-day, while you were to prepare the place. And, next
to the very actual feast itself, and, sometimes, not next to it but equal
to it, and even before it and better than it, were those busy household
hours you spent, like the man with the pitcher, making the room ready. In
plain English, you had a communion before the Communion as you prepared
your hearts for the Communion. I shall not intrude into your secret
places and secret seasons with Christ before His open reception of you to-
day. But it is sure and certain that, just as you in secret entertained
Him in your mother's house and in the chambers of her that bare you, just
in that measure did He say to you openly before all the watchmen that go
about the city and before all the daughters of Jerusalem, Eat, O friends;
drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. Yes; do you not think that the
man with the pitcher had his reward? He had his own thoughts as he
furnished, till it was quite ready, his best upper room and carried in
those pitchers of water, and handed down to his children in after days
the perquisite-skin of the paschal lamb that had been supped on by our
Lord and His disciples in his honoured house that night. Yes; was it not
amazing to behold that in that very place where sometimes Diabolus had
his abode, and had entertained his Diabolonians, the Prince of princes
should sit eating and drinking with His friends? Was it not truly
amazing?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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