However, the question of preparedness will come more fully before us as we proceed with our subject; I shall therefore state another principle connected with the nature of the Lord's Supper, viz., that there is involved in it an intelligent recognition of the oneness of the body of Christ. "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread." Now there was sad failure and sad confusion in reference to this point at Corinth: indeed, the great principle of the Church's oneness would seem to have been totally lost sight of there. Hence the apostle observes that "when ye come together into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper, for every one taketh before other _his own_ supper" (I Cor. xi. 20, 21). Here, it was isolation, and not unity; an individual, and not a corporate question: "_his own supper_" is strikingly contrasted with "_the Lord's Supper_." The _Lord's_ Supper demands that the body be fully recognized: if the one body be not recognized, it is but sectarianism: the Lord Himself has lost His place. If the table be spread upon any narrower principle than that which would embrace the whole body of Christ, it is become a sectarian table, and has lost its claim upon the hearts of the faithful. On the contrary, where a table is spread upon this divine principle, which embraces _all_ the members of the body _simply as such_, every one who refuses to present himself at it is chargeable with schism, and that, too, upon the plain principles of I Cor. xi. "There must," says the apostle, "be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." When the great Church principle is lost sight of by any portion of the body, there must be heresies, in order that the approved ones may be made manifest! and under such circumstances it becomes the business of each one to approve himself, and so to eat. The "approved" ones stand in contrast with the heretics, or those who were doing their own will.[XII.]