to that of the other,—a ligament which gives them a sympathy, so that the health or decline of the one is instantly felt by the other. "He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?"

We must now trace the leading ideas brought before the mind in the conclusion of this Prayer, and their connexion with the earlier part of it. We have made the memorial of the Sacrifice of Christ before God; and have petitioned that by a due participation of this Ordinance we may reap all the benefits of His Sacrifice. What can be more appropriate than that we should be reminded that the Sacrifice of Christ, if really embraced by us, will not stand alone; that we too, having been washed in His Blood, and made kings and priests to God and His Father, must have, as priests, "somewhat to offer," based upon the ground of His perfect and alone meritorious Sacrifice? Accordingly, this "some what " here comes into view. It is, first, praise and thanksgiving, drawn forth from the heart and lips by the sense of God's pardoning love. "We earnestly desire Thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." But praise is not the only offering required of us. In every fresh act of Holy Communion there is a renewal of our Baptismal Covenant with God. And this Covenant is all summed up in one word, "self-sacrifice." We were in Baptism solemnly consecrated to God, both in body and soul. We repeat that self-consecration in the Holy Communion. these are the words in which we repeat it: "Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto Thee." As our Blessed Lord, after insti

And

tuting the Holy Supper, sanctified or consecrated Himself (see John xvii. 19) to do God's will on the Cross, and to "make a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world; so we also, in making the memorial of His Death, yield ourselves solemnly unto God" as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God." And the thought should follow us into our daily life, that we have put ourselves, and all that we have, at God's disposal, our hands to do His business, our feet to walk on His errands, our eyes to study His works, our ears to listen to His Word, our mouths to speak His praise, our minds to apprehend His Glory, our hearts to love His Perfections.

LECTURE VI.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST.

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?"-1 Cor. x. 16.

THE history of the Apostolic Church, as given in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles, may be said to be a model and miniature of all that was to come after in Ecclesiastical History. In the Apostles and their associates we find patterns of the different characters and endowments of Christians down to the end of time; after ages only offering feebler repetitions of what those holy men were. In St. John, the devout and meditative Christian; in St. Paul, the extensively active and in

fluential Christian; in St. Peter, the enthusiastic Christian, with strong will and abilities for administration; in Barnabas, the quiet and gentle Christian, whose voice soothes the mourner; in Apollos, the eloquent teacher, who kindles with his lofty theme; in Timotheus, the disciple who has imbibed the principles of true religion from a mother's precepts, combined with a mother's prayers, are respectively exemplified. And as it is with characters, so it is with heresies, contradictions, controversies, and movements in the Church. A little model and miniature of all these movements (very perfect and exact as models and miniatures are) is to be found in the primitive Church, while yet it was under inspired government. There was a Rationalistic party in the Sadducees. And there was a Romanizing party,— Romanizing, I mean, in tendency and spirit, before the Church of Rome was ever heard of,-among the Pharisees. There was a strong Antinomian party, denounced and censured by St. James. There was a strong party who stood up for justification by human merit, demolished a thousand times over by St. Paul, so that one would think (although the event has not justified the anticipation) that they never could have held up their heads again. There was a philosophical party called Gnostics, who adulterated the faith by spurious admixtures of Rabbinical and Oriental speculations, against whom St. John, the great speculative divine of Inspiration, directed all his strength. And, finalyl, there was in those days the Free-grace and Free-will controversy (called in these modern times Calvinistic and Arminian), which the holy Apostles left without any logical adjustment, making statements which looked in both directions; so that the result of all Biblical research on that

moot point has been well and tersely summed up thus: "Calvinists and Arminians are both right and both wrong; they are right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny."

And was there any controversy on the subject of the Eucharist in the time of the Apostles, as there has been much since? No formal controversy on this great subject even showed its head,-much less came to a crisis, till the eighth century of the Christian Era. But still there were the elements of Eucharist controversy in the Apostolic Church, though they were not for a long time to receive their full development. Modern views on the ✈ subject err either in excess or defect; the Lord's Supper is either unduly exalted (which is the tendency of all Roman and Romanizing Theology), or unduly depreciated (which is the error of the Protestant sects). Now it is clear that the last of these errors found itself represented in the Corinthian Church in the time of St. Paul. Their flagrant desecration of the Ordinance could not possibly have consisted with any high view of it. Those who snatched their own portion of the common Supper, before the communicants had fully assembled, and the entertainment had been formally opened, could not have regarded with much reverence the sacred In. stitution, which was to form part of that supper. They looked upon it too familiarly (though one would think the very solemn words of Institution would have acted as a sufficient safeguard against desecration); the Ordinance had dropped in their estimation to the level of a very common thing. Accordingly, St. Paul sets himself to put it on a higher level in their minds, that it might be out of reach of their desecration. For before he

enters on their abuse of it in the eleventh Chapter, he expounds, in another connexion, the nature and dignity of the Sacrament in the tenth: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the Communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ?" And still in the eleventh Chapter he harps on the dignity of the Ordinance; he speaks of their eating and drinking unworthily, in consequence of their not discerning the Lord's Body, i. e. not appreciating the mystery of it, not distinguishing between it and a common meal. And the guilt incurred by an irreverent and undiscriminating reception is painted by him in these frightfully strong colours: "Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord." And he points out that this guilt would be, and in their case had been, followed by certain temporal judgments of God upon the offenders, sickness and death, which judgments, he says, were corrective, and designed to bring the Corinthian Church to a right mind. "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh" (the word "damnation" in our Authorized Version, which has given rise to so much false alarm, is well known by all scholars to be a thoroughly inaccurate rendering) "a judgment unto himself." The kind of judgment is immediately explained in the verse next following: "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep" (i. e. sleep in death). And the merciful design of the judg ment (which was in order to avert eternal condemnation) is subjoined: "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned "