Last Supper

“ Some authors, in discussing love's divers places of vantage ground, are eloquent in praise of a dinner-table—others eulogise supper: for my part I lean to the breakfast,—the complexion and the feelings are alike fresh—the cares, business, and sorrows of the day, have not yet merged in prudence and fatigue—the imaginativeness of the morning dream is yet floating on the mind—the courtesies of coffee and chocolate are more familiar than those of soup and fish. ”

“ On this love alone depend the law and the Word; and if “thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour,” this is the celestial festival in the heavens. But the earthly is called a supper, as has been shown from Scripture. For the supper is made for love, but the supper is not love (agape) ; only a proof of mutual and reciprocal kindly feeling. “Let not, then, your good be evil spoken of; for the kingdom of God is not meat and drink,” says the apostle, in order that the meal spoken of may not be conceived as ephemeral, “but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” ”

“ After the Spirit was poured out, as well as before, while they were waiting for him, they continued instant in prayer; for prayer will never be superseded till it comes to be swallowed up in everlasting praise. Breaking of bread comes in between the work and prayer, for it has reference to both, and is a help to both. The Lord's supper is a sermon to the eye, and a confirmation of God's word to us; and it is an encouragement to our prayers, and a solemn expression of the ascent of our souls to God. ”

“ An excellent breakfast at nine o'clock, a sumptuous dinner at two, tea and punch in the afternoon, and an elegant little supper, divided the day most happily for those whose stomachs were never unprepared. ”

“ Our company gathers at the welcome sound; the monks form a procession; the pilgrims trail on; all moving with a hungry solemnity to the crypt, where we find the long tables groaning, as at dinner, with the pound of black bread, the salt sprat, the onion parted into four small pieces with a knife, and the copper tureen of quass. Our supper is the dinner served up afresh, with the same prayers, the same bowing and crossing, the same bell-ringing, and the same life of saint. The only difference is, that in the evening we have no barley-paste and no stale milk. ”

“ A Representation of Our Union with Christ.—The Supper represents the death of Christ not as a mere drama, remote from us, but as a death on our behalf. In the Supper we do not merely witness the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine; we partake of the bread and wine ourselves. ”

“ The social evening, in those old days, began after the five-o'clock tea and ended with the nine-o'clock supper. This was a great meal, always. The cloth was spread for it as for dinner, and chairs drawn up and carving-knives flourished. The cold joint, with pickles, cold fowl, meat pie, the occasional crab or lobster, the cucumber in its season, any left-over trifles of sweet pastry and creams, cheese—with beer, of course—that was the meal which our forebears found it possible to sleep on, and (which is much more surprising) some of their descendants enjoy without discomfort to this day. ”

“ Moreover it may be said, that the paschal lamb was eaten in their families, whereas the outward supper now is celebrated in public places for worship. We find, that the apostles, “Breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart;” which implies an usual meal or eating. And certainly they do well, who daily at meals remember Christ and his sufferings: for the spiritual supper, which is the thing required, ought to be partaken of by every true Christian ”

“ After the customary programme of riding to allay the curiosity and excitement of the people, I obtain bread, fruit, eggs, butter to cook them in, and charcoal for a fire, the elements of a very good supper for a hungry traveller. Borrowing a handleless frying-pan, I am setting about preparing my own supper, when a respectable-looking Persian steps out from the crowd of curious on-lookers and voluntarily takes this rather onerous duty out of my hands. ”

“ Now, as I had often to begin work by first frying at one or two o’clock in the moonlight, and as it would have a greedy sound if the next attack on eatables were to be called “second breakfast,” the only true way of settling this point was to consider the first meal to be in fact a late supper of yesterday, or at any rate to regard it as belonging to the bygone, and therefore beyond inquiry, and so to ignore this first breakfast altogether in one’s arrangements. ”

“ Surely there was some magic word that had survived even the centuries of illiteracy. Something equivalent to the "bread and salt" of all illiterate peoples. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted, "Food! food!" ”

“ You will soon learn, if you have not learned already, to give up the heavy American breakfast, and so will be hungry by noon. That gives you the fresh of the morning free, with little digestive work to dull your activity, and the lovely evenings from five to eight or nine. If you wish to go out romancing by moonlight, the supper is just enough to content, without clogging. ”

“ The "great supper" is the divine banquet of Holy Communion, in which we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. On another occasion our Lord said: "I am the bread that came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." The parable of the "great supper" is, therefore, very appropriately chosen as the Gospel for this Sunday in the octave of the magnificent and triumphal festival of Corpus Christi. ”

“ In one thing we agree with him, that there is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we are guilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in the morning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at evening twilight, a breakfast. ”

“ The pressure of the business allotted to the hours of daylight is over. The memory and the conversation of each one who comes to the feast, are richer by the history of another day. It is sometimes hard to “make talk” for the breakfast table. The talk of the six o’clock P.M. dinner, or supper, or tea, makes itself. ”

“ The supper eaten at nightfall is no impediment, as you may imagine, to the appetite's returning; above all, if the going to and from church has made the devout eaters feel some little shafts of the sharp and biting north-wind. ”

“ After supper, a meal which revolted every sense, there had been as many hours to be got through with as he found wakeful, an empty stomach often adding to the number of them, and the only resource for passing the time had been reading, which had often been well-nigh impossible for sheer physical discomfort. ”

“ I reached the hospice at about six o’clock, a bright moon shining upon me, and found a capital supper awaiting me, which I enjoyed exceedingly.
How one enjoys one’s supper at one’s inn, after a good day’s walk, provided one has the proud and glorious consciousness of being able to pay one’s reckoning on the morrow! ”

“ We adjourned soon after the first ballet, and wended our way back to the restaurant, where supper was already awaiting us.
I must confess to enjoying that supper. For about ten days we seemed to have been living, more or less, on nothing but cold meat, cake, and bread and jam. It had been a simple, a nutritious diet; but there had been nothing exciting about it, and the odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man. ”

“ You need double the supply that the secular orders do when they fast, for your digestion is twice as active as theirs. Supper is now a sadly scanty meal; it consists simply of fish, bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish! not miserable as to quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary dish during the forty days of Lent, always excepting bread [Pg 387] and wine ad libitum. Fortunately, the friars are wise and provident; the slender supper is foreseen and provided against at dinner, which consists of four dishes. ”

“ Suppers are not bad, if we have not dined; but restless nights naturally follow hearty suppers, after full dinners. Indeed, as there is a difference in constitutions, some rest well after these meals; it costs them only a frightful dream, and an apoplexy, after which they; sleep till doomsday. Nothing is more common in the newspapers, than instances of people, who, after eating a hearty supper, are found dead a-bed in the morning.
Another means of preserving health, to be attended to, is the having a constant supply of fresh air in your bed-chamber. ”

“ There is, of course, the informal supper, at which the dishes are all placed on a table together, as for a supper at a large ball. Meats, dressed salmon, chicken croquettes, salads, jellies, and ices are a part of the alarming mlange of which a guest is expected to partake, with only such discrimination as may be dictated by prudence or inclination. But this is not the "sit down," elegant supper so worthy to be revived, with its courses and its etiquette and its brilliant conversation, which was the delight of our grandmothers. ”

“ Supper is a repetition of the morning meal, except that the coffee looks thinner, the tincup more rusty. I force myself to swallow a mouthful by shutting my eyes. It tastes like greasy dishwater, with a bitter suggestion of burnt bread. ”

“ I will only have the sweet of your feast, and the bitter I will leave to you. Spread out your panther skins; go and sleep off your drunkenness. If your feast has to last till winter, you need rest—rest for your hoarse throats, rest for your drunken legs, rest for your heads, muddled with wine. ”

“ Dinner is eaten at twelve o’clock, and supper at seven. At breakfast we get coffee without sugar or milk; for dinner, mutton-broth, a piece of roast kid, pastry prepared with oil or a dish of cucumbers, and, as a concluding course, roast or spiced mutton. Twice in the week, namely on Fridays and Saturdays, we have fast-day fare; but if the feast of a particular saint falls during the week, a thing that frequently occurs, we hold three fast-days, the one of the saint’s day being kept as a time of abstinence. ”

“ What the Lord’s Supper is, we know as well as we know the meaning of any word ever used: as well as we know what the Lord’s prayer means. The Lord’s Supper is not every meal or any partaking of any food, but a Supper that is particularly so—eminently so. ”

“ I peril myself upon the assertion that this is not a heavy supper for a man who has been busy all day till dinner in reading, writing, walking or riding—who has occupied himself between dinner and supper in the discussion of a bottle or two of sound wine, or any equivalent—and who proposes to swallow at least three tumblers of something hot ere he resigns himself to the embrace of Somnus. ”

“ It is so entirely rational and natural, that the cultivated and refined should meet for the purposes of social enjoyment after the business of the day has terminated, that the supper has only given place to the same meal under another name, and at hours little varying from those of the past. ”

“ Hunger unites man to nature in the ever-recurring inspiration to food, followed by the ever-alternating ecstasy of digestion. Morning tunes his heart to joy, for the benison of breakfast awaits him. The sun scales heaven to light him to his noonday meal. Evening wooes him supperwards, and night brings timeless sleep, to waft him to another dawn. Eating is earth's first law, and heaven itself could not subsist without it!"
So Balder Helwyse and the cook feasted gloriously that afternoon, in the back pantry, and they solemnly installed the partridges among the constellations! ”

“ Such have an altogether false conception of the Holy Supper, who regard it as a mere feast at which a person does but commemorate Christ’s sufferings and death. No, the Holy Supper is the exalted and holy mystery, in which Christ with the consecrated bread gives us his body to eat, and with the consecrated wine gives us his blood to drink, even the same body which he took on himself from the virgin Mary and gave in death for our sins, and the same blood which he shed upon the cross for the remission of our sins. ”

“ Others, whose healthy looks would belie the dispensing physician, compound between the Church and their stomachs by adding an ounce of bread to the cup of chocolate which, under the name of Parvedad, our divines admit as a venial infraction. There is, besides, a fast-day supper, which was introduced by those good souls the primitive Monks at their evening conferences, where, finding that an empty stomach was apt to increase the hollowness of their heads, they allowed themselves a crust of bread and a glass of water, as a support to their fainting eloquence. ”

“ We would make neither more nor less importance of the Lord's Supper, only just what Christ made of it to His disciples and to plain people through all time. Let us try and possess the ancient feeling that possessed the disciples when they sat at table with the Master, and, stripped of ecclesiastical emblazonment, we touch the Supper in its primitive simplicity as instituted in the upper room with the shadow of death shrouding the Founder of the Feast. ”

“ The rector liked fruit to his breakfast. He belonged to a generation who made breakfast an important meal; an occasion for the feast of wit as well as of palate; for the consorting of choice souls, the first freshness upon them and the dew still sparkling upon the laurel that binds the poet’s brow. The breakfast hour is one when the mellow beam of good repose shines still in the eye, mitigating the sarcasm of the man of humour, enhancing the charm of the man of elegant parts, ripening the wits of the learned. ”

“ At last daylight comes, and we have breakfast, without a word being said as to the future. The meal is as solemn as a funeral. After breakfast, I ask the three men if they still think it best to leave us. ”