I need not make any observation, by way of explaining what is so very plain and well understood in common life, as that of a cup. Neither, indeed should I have thought it necessary to have detained the reader over the word, had that been all that I proposed from it. But as the word cup is sometimes, and indeed, not unfrequently in Scripture, used figuratively, I thought it proper to attend to what is implied in the term. Sometimes the cup is placed for sorrow, and sometimes for joy, and the lot or portion of a man is called his cup. Hence, the Psalmist speaking of the blessings of grace in the Lord Jesus, calls them, the cup of salvation. (Psalms 116:13) And Paul, when describing the blessedness of union with Christ, and communion in consequence thereof with God, calls the ordinance which resembles it, a cup. "The cup which we bless (saith he,) is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16) Sometimes it is made use of to intimate a participation in suffering. "Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem! which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out." (Isaiah 51:17) And as this, no doubt, under the language of prophecy, referred to Christ, so in open language the Lord Jesus himself, speaking of his soul-exercises, calls it a cup. (Matthew 26:39-42; John 18:11)