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you feel sure that if you eat not the flesh of Christ, and drink not of his blood, you can have no life in you—if you do come, and yet treasure up the wrath of your bad heart,—what then? Why, the previous damnation is increased; you cannot then "discern the Lord's body;"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John iv. 20.) Then do these two things:

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1. Be reconciled to thy brother.

2. Then come and offer thy gift.

1. Be reconciled by forgiveness, if you are the injured person; by restitution, if you are the injurer.

By forgiveness, "not seven times, but until seventy times seven." (Matt. xviii. 22.)

By restitution, even as Zacchæus: "If I have done wrong to any man, I restore him fourfold." (Luke xix. 8.)

2. To conclude, and sum up all, the Church now addresses the impenitent:

Therefore if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table; lest, after the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you full of all iniquities, and bring you to de

struction both of body and soul.

"Know ye not," says St. Paul, "know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.)

There is no ambiguity here. These cannot

inherit the kingdom of God; neither can they therefore partake of the holy sacrament of the Lord's body. They surely would not presume; but if they should presume, then must they be warned of the danger. Lest they should presume we warn them, but not altogether to abstain-even these-but to abstain until such time as they are penitent. Even the greatest of criminals-the adulterer or the murdererwe would not altogether refuse, but only until such time as the condition of repentance is fulfilled. "Repent you of your crimes, or else come not to that holy table."

"But what is this," exclaims the fearful Christian, "Satan entering into Judas? Do I understand you rightly, to compare the inadvertent and accidentally unworthy communicant to Judas, who wilfully denied his Lord?" No. Let us clear this up. It refers only to the impenitent; to the obstinately and wilfully impenitent, and none else. St. John asks our Lord, who it is that shall betray him, and our Lord replies, "He it is to whom I shall give a sop, after that

I have dipped it: and when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot." (John xiii. 26.) But here the giving of the sop was before the institution of the Lord's Supper, and therefore can in no way involve the conclusion that Satan entered into the heart of Judas, because he had received the sacrament of the Eucharist unworthily. Whether Judas partook at all of the bread and wine is a very great question; certainly there is nothing to show that he did; on the contrary, we may very well suppose that after the delivery of the sop he went out, as it was foretold, and betrayed his Lord, and therefore was not at the institution at all. Satan, then, entered into him without reference to the sacrament. He entered into him, because he had a wicked, and a faithless, and an avaricious heart, and this he had before-long before. He was wilfully impenitent. He was obstinately and knowingly a sinner. He did despite to the spirit of grace; and it is indeed a fearful thing to think of, that any one who will do as he did, witness the means of grace

continually within his reach, and yet continually reject them, will lay open the door for the entrance of Satan. If you presume to come, wilfully a sinner, Satan will enter into you, as at all other times, and possess your body; but he does not come in consequence of the sacrament so despised, any more than he does of any other means of grace similarly despised. If you refuse to come, you are no better off than if you come; and if you come you are no safer than if you refused; therefore, in either case beware, and in either case repent.

But now we come to the third and last class of persons to whom the warning is issued. Those who are neither found entirely in the first, nor entirely in the second, but partly in both neither penitent, nor impenitent, but wavering. And this is a very large class. The timid, the fearful, the scrupulous; those who have strong feelings of sin, and are backward to come to God from alarm;-those who would come to him at one time, yet fly from him at another;-those who strive to serve

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