When the Lord instituted the supper His own death was future, and the Holy Ghost not yet given, and the disciples could not understand what it meant. When He gave it to Paul for us (v. 23), His death was finished, and His resurrection had declared its value; for He was on high, able to give gifts, and pour out blessings upon His people down here.
It is well to recall to our minds what the meaning of this supper is, and what we do when we partake of it. We have now again broken the bread, and drank of the cup; and what has that meant? We have shown the Lord's death, and this will go on until He come. Death is an awful thing, and man does not like to think of it. It is the king of terrors to man; it is the wages of sin, the ending of all the pride of life, the end of flesh as fallen. Who among men love it, to show it forth? But this death is the Lord's death -- death of the Prince of life! Yes, He was once here, and man put Him to death; and He will come again to judge the quick and the dead. But our thoughts flow upon another line than this. They begin with God and the Father, who has enabled us to feed upon death, to find our aliment in it, to take it and bear it about in us continually. His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His way our ways. Mali rebelled, and God pointed His Son to the ruin, as the occasion in which He could glorify God and the Father. He came from the Father, the gift of God, to lay His life down. Never did the marvels of His person as Son of God and Son of man shine forth in their glories more preciously. As Son of God, He would give effect to His Father's counsels, carry out His Father's plans, though death and hell withstood Him. As Son of man, He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and could show His integrity -- obedient unto death, the death of the cross, and His fitness to be a ransom. What a combination of marvels came out in that death. Through His death He was to nullify him that had the power of death, that is, the devil -- His death led on to by Satan, in whose hour it was accomplished by man. He left the grave and the unseen world, as Gaza was left when Samson had been a prisoner, and took the gates and cross-bar upon his shoulder and carried them off. So He led captivity captive, and rifled the grave of its prey, and left it rent. His death proved, and showed out the principle of all man's actings here below; and the perfection of His human nature showed out the thorough evil in the human nature of all others. Crucified through weakness, He was obedient unto death, bearing the judgment (as the just One) of the many unjust. Man as such cannot feed on death, much less on the death of the Lord, the Prince of life. A saint can. We have, for we have found in His death our life. The Rock smitten gave forth living water. We have found in His death that in which we can have fellowship with God about sin. We judge that He alone could bear its penalty; we judge that He has borne it. We feed upon it, thinking with delight of how it is our Red Sea between us and Egypt, the world around us; how it is God's judgment passed upon all that we were. The table is the only place that rallies God's children here below; and here each time we come we feed on death. But then this is not confined to the table; it is our principle of life here below (2 Cor. 4: 10), and of God's actings towards us. (vv. 4-11) Are you in your daily practice thus feeding upon death, making His death your food? Shut in by His death as Israel, by the Red Sea on one side -- the prospect on the other is, "until He come!"
from Memorials of the Ministry of G. V. Wigram. Vol. 1. [Notes on Scripture; Lectures and Letters. Second Edition, Broom 1881 (First Edition 1880)]
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At Oxford he met John Nelson Darby and Benjamin Wills Newton. Dissatisfied with the established church, Wigram and his friends left the Anglican church and helped establish non-denominational assemblies which became known as the Plymouth Brethren.
Wigram had a keen interest in the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, which was of great interest to the emerging Brethren assemblies. In 1839, after years of work and financial investment, he published The Englishman's Greek and English Concordance to the New Testament, followed in 1843 by The Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance to the Old Testament.
With Wigram's help, Darby became the most influential personality within the Brethren movement. Wigram is often referred to as being Darby's lieutenant as he firmly supported Darby during moments of crisis. He also helped Darby fend off accusations of heresy, also in regards to the sufferings of Christ, in articles written in 1858 and 1866, which some considered were very similar to Newton's errors two decades earlier.
George Vicesimus Wigram was converted whilst a subaltern officer in the army, and in 1826 entered at Queen's College, Oxford, with the view of taking orders. As an undergraduate he came into contact with Mr. Jarratt of the same college, and with Messrs. James L. Harris and Benjamin Wills Newton, both of Exeter College, who were all destined to take part in the ecclesiastical movement with which Wigram's name is also prominently connected. This connection was strengthened from about the year 1830, when these friends, all Devonians, were associated in the formation of a company of Christians at Plymouth, who separated from the organised churches, and were gathered to the Name alone of Jesus, in view of bearing a testimony to the unity of the church, and to its direction by the Holy Spirit alone, whilst awaiting the second coming of the Lord.
Wigram was active in the initiation of a like testimony in London, where by the year 1838 a considerable number of gatherings were formed on the model of that at Plymouth.
In 1856 he produced a new hymn book, "Hymns for the Poor of the Flock," which for some twenty-five years remained the staple of praise in the meetings with which he was associated. Ten years after the first appearance of the hymn book edited by him he stood by J. N. Darby once again at a critical juncture, when the question of the doctrine maintained by the latter on the sufferings of Christ some further dissension occurred, though the teaching was vindicated. During the rest of his life he paid visits to the West Indies, New Zealand, etc., where his ministry seems to have been much appreciated. He passed away in 1879.