bring about reconciliation with a holy and offended God. This love, which, for all I know, the reader of these pages has never experienced, and which would of itself explain not communicating, must be experienced and not imagined. And until you do know it, and are constrained by it, your religious life is all outside the mark. All that can be said of you is that you are making a God of your religion. You have not yet found, and finding, loved your Saviour. Everything centres in Christ. All our hopes and possibilities of salvation centre in Jesus; not in formal church-going, religious observances scrupulously repeated, and that sentimental view of the Cross which finds facile expression in crosses worn as an ornament, but as you have learned the guilt of sin, which needed an Atonement, and have learned the lesson beyond that of that wondrous love which first loved you and constrained the Saviour to die that death, of which Holy Communion is a standing witness and a perpetual memorial. For such, who, though they may have been baptized, are frequent worshippers, and have seen many days, and have never realised their own exceeding sinfulness and felt that love of which Holy Communion perpetually reminds us, the Sacrament cannot have much meaning or value. They may perchance partake of it, but what spiritual benefit does such partaking ensure? We come to Christ for life, and to Holy Communion with life. We come to Christ for forgiveness, and to Holy Communion with forgiveness. Food and strength are for the living, not for the dead. The sinner by grace gets life in Christ, and from Christ, and has Christ for his life, and in Christ's ordinances His believing people derive fresh strength and grace; but unless Holy Communion is to degenerate into sheer superstition, if it is not to be regarded as a duty to be performed, but as the highest privilege to be enjoyed, we must come to it, not to have love so much awakened as deepened, we must come in an already realisation of that love which it memorialises, not to be disciples, but as disciples. No soul will gain refreshment, strength, and enabling from that holy ordinance who interprets "do this in remembrance of me" meaning nothing more than the carrying out last wishes, or as a mere attestation of our conviction that Christ died. It is a means of grace. It is not a mere outward act of profession, like some rosette or armorial bearing. We go to Holy Communion not to give but to receive. as In the course of these Addresses it will be my prayerful effort to show in what "worthy" and "unworthy" Communion consists, and in what sense only can Holy Communion be rightly designated the Eucharist, the highest of all acts of worship. It may be, God helping me, I may persuade some to communicate, who hitherto, from mistaken views as to what constitutes "worthiness," have never communicated. It may be I may dissuade others who, from mistaken views as to what constitutes "unworthiness,” frequently communicate; and of whom in both cases may this be truly said, "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you;" but I would lay this down as a starting point, we do not come to Holy Communion to be made Christ's disciples, but we come aright when we come as His disciples. We do not come to Holy Communion looking for some sign, expecting some miracle of grace, but we come to commemorate a sacrifice, the virtue of which we have already by faith, in some degree, however faint and imperfect, experienced; and seeking to be, by Communion with Christ, spiritually fed and strengthened, as our bodies are by bread and wine. And as they are assuredly not safe for eternity who, never having realised the guilt of sin, have not, as a matter of course, realised their need of a Saviourfor the one, in the order of grace, follows as effect on cause-so the first step towards any intelligent and profitable carrying out of this dying injunction is for us to pray that God the Holy Ghost, Whose work it is to "convince of sin," and to take of the things of Christ and show them to us, may both convince and teach our unbelieving hearts and blinded sense. "What I see not, that teach Thou me" is a short but pithy petition. It is a prayer I have known to have been blessed to many earnest souls seeking to know "the truth as it is in Jesus." Each one of us has a soul to be saved. That soul can be saved but in one way. By grace ye are saved. For each one of us Jesus died. For each one, standing apart from the rest, as grains of sand on the sea-shore, as individual leaves of an overshadowing tree, He died! This we may accept and believe theohow different this apprehension of the truth and of the end of His death when we can say, retically; but oh! "Yes, He died for me. And what does He He is My Lord and My God!" ask of us for whom He died? Some great thing? All He asks is that we would remember Him! The poorest and lowliest could not have asked less. "Remember who I am; remember what thou art; remember Me as thy Saviour; remember My love; remember Me as hating thy sin; remember Me as bearing thy sin." All He asks is that we would remember Him! What, if amidst all our memories, fragrant and tender, all treasured recollections, all vanished forms, all silenced voices, all latest and dying wishes; amidst all that nothing can obliterate or efface, Jesus is not to be found? What if there be no room in the inn of our hearts for Him? What if there be no habitual, abiding, constraining recollection of Him to Whom we owe all our hopes of salvation, and the homage of devoted heart and dedicated life! God, in His infinite mercy, have mercy on those who know not, who love not the Lord! God of His compassion forgive us when by sin and wilfulness or infirmity we have forgotten our Saviour's love! God, by His good Spirit, so deepen in our hearts the sense of sinfulness, and the sense of wondrous redeeming love, that Christ alone may reign supreme within us; and that as often as we see the Holy Table prepared, and recall the dying command, "This do in remembrance of Me," our reply may be― "According to Thy gracious word, In meek humility, This will I do, my dying Lord! I will remember Thee. B "Thy body, broken for my sake, "When to the cross I turn mine eyes, O Lamb of God, my sacrifice! "Remember Thee, and all Thy pains, Yea, while a breath, a pulse remains, "And when these failing lips grow dumb, And thought and memory flee; When Thou shalt in Thy kingdom come, Then, Lord, remember me!" Amen. |