feature of the Communion Office,-one which brings out a distinct and separate aspect of Christ's sacrificial work, which we are now commemorating. The sin of the soul has penetrated into and defiled the soul's tenement, the body. Hence comes our liability to disease, and the sad enfeebling of our mental powers by the defectiveness or impaired action of some one bodily organ in each one of us. When the soul is sanctified,

when the will receives a new direction, and the affections a new tendency,-the impulse flows on towards, and reaches the body, the members of which are thenceforth yielded as instruments of righteousness unto God. It is true, indeed, that the body is "sinful," and therefore intrinsically unworthy of this glorious consecration. But through our union with Christ (the union which by a faithful reception of this Sacrament is cemented) the sinful body is made clean by Christ's Body (the Body in which He bore our sins upon the Tree), even as the sinful soul is washed, through the spilling of the Blood of Christ in expiation of sin. Purified through this union, the body becomes fit to be a sacrifice, and accordingly is yielded unto God in the words of the Post-Communion Prayer: "Here we offer, and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee."

Such is the doctrinal significance of the clause before us. God grant it may not be to us a barren dogma, but that we may carry it out to its legitimate practical results! Surely if the body shares in the blessings of Redemption, and receives the dignity of a consecration to God, it should be hallowed by temperance, soberness, and chastity. And more than this. It is not only to be the subject of restraint, but to be made to minister actively in the service of God. Does it do this in each one of us? Do the feet carry us on errands of mercy, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction? Do the hands engage willingly in profitable labour, and having by that labour gained more than suffices for our own wants, are they opened freely in the relief of distress? Are the eyes sanctified by being fixed on the

glorious works of God, while the mind takes occasion to glorify the Creator? Or, if we are far from landscape and scenery, are they employed in reading the Law of the Lord, and in scanning with thoughtful prayer His wonderful testimonies? Are the ears opened to the glorious harmony of praise, which Nature in her every district is sending up to the Throne of God,-opened to holy and wise counsels, closed against flattery and sinful enticement? Do we invoke God's watch over our mouth, and His custody of the door of our lips, and do we also watch that whatsoever passes out of that door may be pure and sincere at all events, and (as much as possible) useful and edifying?

Lord, whose feet carried Thee swiftly to the house of mourning, whose hands gave health to the infirm, and blessing to the little children, whose eyes, as Thou stoodest at the sepulchre, were suffused with tears, whose ears were pierced with revilings for our sakes, in whose mouth was no guile, and whose lips were full of grace; let us not be backward to yield to Thee the service of all our members, and do Thou preserve them blameless unto that day, when Thou shalt change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto Thy glorious Body, according to the working whereby Thou art able even to subdue all things unto Thyself.

CHAPTER IV

OF THE FIRST PART OF THE PRAYER OF
CONSECRATION

"This do in remembrance of me."-LUKE xxii. 19

WE

E have now reached the culminating point of the whole Rite. The Consecration and Administration of the Elements may be called the nucleus of the Ordinance, round which grow up and gather the various

are to pass.

forms of Devotion through which we have passed, and And as the seed contains the germ of the whole plant, so this central part of the Office is a little miniature, or short draught of the whole. All that is to be known about the Lord's Supper is given us here in brief and abridgment.

Before making the actual celebration of the Death of Christ, the minister produces his warrant for making it. This is done in the first part of the prayer of Consecration, upon which alone we shall at present have time to comment: "Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious Death, until his coming again." In the second Chapter of his Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul speaks slightingly of will-worship. By will-worship is meant the paying homage to Almighty God after a fashion devised by ourselves, and not dictated by His Word. It is the worshipping Him according to the leanings of our own will, not according to the intimations which He has been pleased to make to us of His. Because will-worship is so offensive to God, and because we may not presume without sin to devise other methods for His service than He has Himself appointed, therefore we are careful in all our solemn acts of Religion, to quote (if I may say so) the authority on which we proceed. Hence in the Absolution of the daily Morning and Evening Prayer, the function is not fulfilled without first reciting the authority on which it is exercised, and its conformity with the revealed mind of God: "Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath given power and commandment to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent," &c., &c. And in the Office for the

Solemnization of Matrimony you will find God's Institution of Marriage in the time of man's innocency, and the sanction given to it by Christ's Presence, and first miracle that He wrought in Cana of Galilee, placed in the forefront of the Service.-On a principle precisely similar, when we are about to make before God the memorial of the Death of Christ, by breaking bread, and blessing wine, we recite our authority for so doing, and produce our warrant. And the warrant is this, that "Christ did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death." Great must have been the satisfaction of the pious Israelite in thinking that the worship of the Tabernacle had been expressly prescribed by God, and that a model of all its furniture had been shown to Moses in the Mount. And our satisfaction may reasonably be great in reflecting that this holy Ordinance is a memorial designed, not by man, but by the Lord Himself; by One who knows our nature and our wants better than we ourselves know them; and who took care, before He left us, to furnish us richly with all those means of grace, which we should need as channels of communication with Him during the time of His absence. It would not have been otherwise than pious and devout, if the Lord had left behind no memorial of His Death, to appoint and observe some season for calling it specially to mind, and reviving our impressions in connexion with it. But upon such an observance we could not have hoped for any special blessing, although the state of mind from which it took its rise would doubtless have been acceptable to God. As matters stand now, may we not most surely expect that the special grace and Presence of our Lord will accompany our observance of His own Institution, if only our state of mind be in keeping with the occasion?-And again, if will-worship be offensive to God, how must He resent any interference even with the details of the Ordinances, which He has prescribed for our edification! If Christ has said, "Drink ye all of this," how offensive, what an insult

to His authority must it be to say that none but the officiating Priest shall drink of it, under the sorry pretext that desecration is thereby hazarded by spilling some particle of the wine! One form of will-worship is, no doubt, to invent something where God has prescribed nothing. But surely it is another and more culpable form to alter and abrogate, where God has expressly prescribed.

Our Liturgy is very exhaustive (though very brief) in its treatment of subjects; and therefore the warrant for the celebration of the Holy Supper is not barely stated in the passage before us; on the contrary, the Ordinance is carried up to its source, and down to the terin prescribed for it. As a warrant for thus commemorating the Lord's Death, we have His own institution and command. What is the nature of the Death thus commemorated? What is the source and origin of it? For how long is the commemoration appointed to last? All these questions are summarily, but completely, answered in the section of the Prayer now before us. The death of Christ is a "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." It had its origin in the "tender mercy" of God, who gave His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. It is to be commemorated in this manner, until the second Advent of the Saviour supersedes the necessity for it," till He come."

1. The Death of Christ is declared to be a sufficient sacrifice for sinners; a perfect oblation on His part (an oblation in which was no flaw nor blemish); and a full satisfaction to God. The sinner requires something,-a sacrifice. Christ presents something,—an oblation. God demands something, a satisfaction. See how exact the language is, and how it appears to have been written for the purpose of rebutting, and putting out of court the evasions of modern Rationalism. Observe that the aspect of Our Lord's Death as an example, because it was not the leading or main feature of it, is dropped altogether, does not present itself at all upon the field of view. Most true it is