The Last Supper

“ When supper was really finished at last, and each animal felt that his skin was now as tight as was decently safe, and that by this time he didn’t care a hang for anybody or anything, they gathered round the glowing embers of the great wood fire, and thought how jolly it was to be sitting up SO late, and SO independent, and SO full; ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides, if he does not get dinner now, when will he get it? For most demonstrably he has taken nothing yet which comes near in value to that basin of soup which many of ourselves take at the Roman hour of bathing. No; we have kept our man fasting as yet. It is to be hoped that something is coming at last.
It does come,—dinner, the great meal of "coena;" the meal sacred to hospitality and genial pleasure, comes now to fill up the rest of the day, until light fails altogether. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have changed the Lord’s Supper into an offering for the living and the dead; they conjure the bread with five words,176 and persuade the people, that the bread is changed into flesh, and the wine into blood. ”

“ Miserable supper-lovers that we are, like the native Indians of America, a scattered and daily disappearing race, we wander among strange customs, and behold the innovating and invading Dinner spread gradually over the very space of time in which the majesty of Supper once reigned undisputed and supreme! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 was his favourite meal, because it came at his time of revelry, when his heart warmed over his gold; whenever he had roast-meat, he always chose to have it for supper. But this evening, he had no sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast round his bit of pork, twisted the string according to rule over his door-key, passed it through the handle, and made it fast on the hanger, than he remembered that a piece of very fine twine was indispensable to his “setting up” a new piece of work in his loom early in the morning. ”

“ This was the signal for supper for the rest of the guests.
A buffet supper is the saddest conclusion of a “rout”—it is almost somewhat humiliating to stand with one’s hat under one’s arm and the plate in one’s hand, after having had great difficulty to procure knife, fork, and all the other utensils employed in civilized nations for the business of eating! But humanity can even support this, and with a little care and patience it is possible gradually to get a complete supper, from a cup of soup to a fruit-ice. ”

“ Supper is generally an unnecessary meal, and, when either heavy, or taken at a period not long before that of retiring to rest, proves nearly always injurious, preventing sound and refreshing sleep, and occasioning unpleasant dreams, nightmare, biliousness, and all the worst symptoms of imperfect digestion. ”

“ It is not limited to the half-demolished joint—sad wreck of midday's meal. It may be as fair and harmonious as dinner itself, as noble a tribute to the artist, as superb a creation. Only the thoughtless and prosaic will dismiss it carelessly in the ordering, believing that any odds and ends will answer. Whatever is left over is to many the one possible conception of the late evening meal. But the gourmand, exulting in his gluttony, makes of it a work of art, good in the eating, good in the remembrance thereof. ”

“ Later, some people who had been instructed what to do came and brought the second man his supper, whereupon he sat up in his coffin and ate a hearty meal, saying to the other, "Aren't you going to eat pretty soon?" The sick man pondered over this, and asked if it was proper for a dead man to eat, and was answered that if he did not eat soon, he could not stay dead very long. ”

“ To-morrow is, yes, to-morrow is Thursday. Cold joint to-morrow, and a salad made with stale lettuce which we gets cheap; potatoes boiled plain and not mashed, and a apple dumpling to follow. The ladies is very particular that their pastry should be light. Miss Slowcum says she can't sleep a bit at night if her pastry is heavy. She called me Sarah Martha Ann the last time I made it, and she looked most vinegary. Yes, Miss Jasmine, the dinner's plain to-morrow, and I'll get up with the daybreak, and do my cleaning. I don't see why Aunt Flint shouldn't let me go with you, miss. ”

“ When the human child was in bed and asleep, Nurse went down to her supper, leaving the bath to be cleared away later, for it was a hot supper of baked onions and toasted cheese, and if you don't go to that supper directly it is ready, you may as well not go at all, for it won't be worth eating—at least so I have heard the kitchenmaid say. ”

“ Supper, supper, supper! 'Down came the little Foxes, in such a hurry for their supper! Clean pinafores! Spoons In their hands! And, when they got into the dining-room, there was ever such a white table-cloth on the table! ”

“ That their corning together into one place, is not to eat the Lord's supper; he saith not, This is not the right manner to eat; but, This is not to eat the Lord's supper; because the supper of the Lord is spiritual, and a mystery. Secondly, He blames them, in that they came together for the worse, and not for the better; the reason he gives of this is, vers. 21. For in eating every one hath taken before his own supper; and one is hungry, and another is drunken. ”