blessing, told of the coming Redeemer? Therefore, if the Sacrament occupy the place in the Christian dispensation which they did in the Jewish, must it not be expiatory also? If it be connected with the Sacrifice of the Lord retrospectively in the same way that they were prospectively, it should necessarily, I think, be of the same character as they."

In the two last Chapters of the Appendix I have drawn out more fully, and with more dogmatic precision, what I believe to be the truth on the doctrine of Sacrifice, and on the Eucharistic Sacrifice in particular; and to these Chapters the reader is referred for a further prosecution of the subject dealt with in the above criticism.

CHAPTER VII

OF THE COMMEMORATION OF THE DEAD IN THE OFFICE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION

"But ye are come

to the spirits of just men made perfect.""-HEB. xii. 22, 23

N the Prayer for the Church Militant there are three great features, the Oblation, the Intercessions, and the Commemoration of the Dead. Of the two first of these we have spoken sufficiently. The last is a feature which requires further development than the passing notice which we took of it in an earlier Chapter.

The concluding clause of the Prayer, to which we refer, "And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom," was added at the last Review of the Office, all mention of the dead having been in abeyance from the time of the Second Book of Edward VI., from which intercession for the spirits of the departed righteous (such as had found place in the First Book) was carefully expunged, until the year

1662, when the English Liturgy received its finishing touches. It shall first be pointed out how the addition is justified by Holy Scripture.

In the context of the passage which stands at the head of this Chapter, the Apostle is warning Christians to beware lest they despise their privileges, and, by apostatizing for the sake of worldly comfort or advantage, recklessly throw them away. This would be to imitate the conduct and the fate of profane Esau, "who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright." For, says he (this seems to be the connexion of thought), your privileges as Christians are high and great,—far greater than those of the Church under the Law. And then he proceeds to enumerate them. They (the Hebrew Christians) had not come to a literal mountain, which might be touched; but to a spiritual eminence, in whose high and celestial atmosphere they had communion with God, with Christ, with angels, with the entire Church of God, whether now in warfare, or at rest, and specifically with the spirits of just men made perfect. Such is the general scope of the argument. We will now fasten our attention on this particular part of it, which makes for our present purpose,

"Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect." Observe first the difference of this representation of Christian privileges from those which are commonly current. Our usual religious parlance places our privileges in the future. Holy Scripture places them in the present. It is the popular phraseology to say, "Good Christians shall come to Heaven hereafter." Scripture rather says, "Good Christians are come to Heaven already." The word is (and the translation is here strictly accurate) "Ye are come" (or "Ye have come") "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels ;"-not "Ye shall come." They had already come, the Apostle says, to a Society, to a Community; and he shows very plainly to every thoughtful reader what are the characteristics of the

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Society. It is an unseen, invisible, spiritual Society, one which cannot be reached or apprehended by the senses. But it may be said: "The Church is the Society in question; and is not the Church visible? 66 can it not be seen? When a Christian Congregation "meets for worship, is not the Church then visible?" Doubtless there are members of the Church, who are still in the flesh; and these we may of course see, and effect a meeting with them in the body. But the bodily meeting, the being assembled in one place, is not the ground of our union even with these. The ground of our union lies much deeper. It consists in our having, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all," in our all belonging to the Body of Christ, in our all being made partakers of one Spirit, and having all one hope of our calling. But the recognition of Christ, faith, hope, acknowledgment of God as Father, membership in the Lord's Body, these things are all spiritual, internal, hidden; and though Christians meet together on earth for Divine Worship, it is not as men in flesh that they meet together, but as having an union of mind, heart, hope, and being under the influence of the one Spirit of God. The Society therefore of Christ's Church is essentially spiritual, although certain members of it may accidentally have a local connexion, and be clustered together bodily in one and the same spot.

But then this introduces a new thought. Invisible beings may have a true communion with us in the Church of Christ. Why not, if the Church is spiritual and in no sense bodily, if it recognise merely our eternal and not our temporal relations? If angels adore the same Lord, and are earnestly waiting for the same final manifestation of Him as we, if angels, by His appointment, succour and defend us upon earth, are they not in some sufficient sense members of the same Community, although we see them not? And what of the spirits of the departed righteous? Is it not easily concluded from the premises already laid down, that

our communion with them must be far closer than it was before they were delivered from the burden of the flesh? For then certainly much of sinful infirmity hung about them, which intercepted their view of Christ, and impeded grievously their communion with Him. Now they are with Him in Paradise. Now they see Him no more in a glass darkly, but face to face. Now they drink in joy from the consciousness of His presence and favour, and are full, as they never were before, of love and praise. So far from separating them from Him, Death has just eliminated from their nature the one element which did separate them,which was sin. And accordingly their sympathy with us in our hope of glory, their desire for our salvation, the spiritual concern which they feel in us, must be stronger far and more fervent than ever.

And we must be nearer than ever to them, when we perform spiritual actions. For in the performance of those actions we draw nigh to Christ, with whom they are. In prayer we seek His face, and converse with Him. In reading or hearing His holy Word, He communes with us. In public worship, when we are gathered together in His Name, we place ourselves in His immediate Presence. But the closest intercourse of all, which can be enjoyed with Him upon Earth, is that which is vouchsafed to penitent and believing souls in the Holy Communion.-When, therefore, the spirit of the living Christian by any of these means of access draws nigh to the Throne of Grace, there is then between him and the spirits of just men made perfect a real nearness, the thought of which should be most consolatory to those whose friends have fallen asleep in Jesus. They are then breathing the same atmosphere of communion with Christ, which those breathe who are with Him in Paradise. The radii of a circle, in approaching the centre, cannot but, in the nature of things, draw near to one another; and two hearts, though separated by oceans and mountainsyea, though separated by that greater gulf which divides the seen from the unseen world,—if both approach that

great centre of attraction in the spiritual world, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," cannot but really and truly draw near to one another, though there may be no outward visible token of such

nearness.

Such, then, is the doctrine of Holy Scripture on the subject of our communion with the spirits of just men made perfect. Now every doctrine of Scripture meets, while it regulates, some instinct of the human heart. It is, for example, an instinct of the heart to long for some true sympathy with us from Him who is the object of our worship. The assurance of this sympathy we find in the doctrine of the Incarnation; and here the instinct in question has its legitimate satisfaction. But it is regulated, as well as satisfied. Like all our instincts it is apt, through the perversion of our nature, to mislead us and from indulging it too freely, and without restraint from the Word of God, has come Mariolatry and similar corrupt practices of the Church of Rome. Again, it is an instinct of our nature to long for some outward visible sign of spiritual truths, for some appeal to the senses by the Religion which we adopt. When this instinct goes astray, and is under no regulation from the Word of God, it leads to idolatry. But the Word of God provides for the satisfaction of this instinct, and for its regulation at the same time, by the appointment of the two Sacraments. Here God admits an appeal to the senses, and indicates how far such an appeal may properly go.Now there is in our nature a craving, which has manifested itself in various forms at various times, for some intercourse with the spirits of the departed, some tokens from them, some assurance of their reality,with the departed generally, apart from any special relation in which they may have stood to ourselves. In all ages and in all countries tales have been current of apparitions of the dead,-pure inventions most of them, but showing by their popularity, and by the ready credence lent to them, the strong hold which this instinct has upon the human mind. But may it not