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THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.

This is about all that our congregations hear as to the meaning of that beautiful article in our creed,-the belief in "the Communion of Saints;" and is it therefore a matter for wonder that they exhibit so little of that real oneness of spirit, that brotherly communion with each other, and that desire to know and help each other onward on the way to their eternal home, that would cheer many a pilgrim through the thorny and rugged paths of life? No minister ought to rest satisfied with the weekly and mere formal gathering of his people in the house of God; he ought to endeavour to find some plan by which he may knit them more closely together in mutual and spiritual love. If it is a pastor's duty to endeavour to know those amongst whom he ministers, and to manifest a shepherd's care and tenderness to all the flock the Chief Shepherd has committed to his oversight, surely he should strive to make the sheep more like members of the same fold than they now are. In this we cannot but think that the ministry has been wanting;-had it been faithful in expounding both the duty and privilege of the mutual communion of believers, much might have been accomplished in making Christ's people more kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.

But let not the ministry have all the blame of the coldness and stiff indifference, which it is so painful to witness and to feel in churches under the most evangelical ministry. We must now go from pew to pew, and we shall find much that separates the people of God from each other-much of that sinful conformity to the world, and that strict adherence to the principles and practices ruled by society, but which is all sadly in opposition

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to the principles and practices en joined by the whole spirit of the christian faith. How is it that so few communicants know each other? How is it, that people, even in the same grade of life, although they may continually kneel together at the table of a common Lord, yet, if they have not been what is termed, regularly introduced, are nearly as much strangers as if they lived in different countries? How is it that in our christian communities so much of what may most properly be termed the principles of caste, prevail,-forming an almost impenetrable barrier against the interchange of that communion which should exist between the members of one Church? The difficulty does not so much lie in our being kind and courteous to the actual poor and needy amongst our brethren. Here the line of demarcation is so distinct, that we can pay the benevolent visit, relieve distress, enter into the little joys or sorrows, and give the friendly greeting, without the fear of overstepping the limits of conventional propriety, or without the hazard that our christian demeanour will be taken an undue and improper advantage of. Not so, however, with the intermediate grades between the poor and the rich, the comparatively dependent and the independent classes. It is here that Society places a gulph, which even christian people are backward to attempt to pass over; and the consequence is, that although we attend the same church, join in the same prayers, listen to the same teaching, and may be fellow communicants, we are too completely estranged from each other.

Surely something ought to be attempted to alter this state of things. If we are brethren and sisters in Christ

Jesus, ought we not to manifest our relationship to each other, and to let the world see that we are not ashamed to be known as fellow-members of the same family?

We are no levellers of the proper distinctions which our varied lots in life must occasion; but we are confident that the House of God is not the place where the usages of society should interpose those barriers which keep fellow-worshippers at a distance from each other. In the Church of England we have far too few, if we have any, opportunities of that social christian intercourse which would serve to bind us together in affectionate solicitude for each other's temporal and spiritual welfare. If we had occasional meetings of this character, they might be so wisely managed as not to give any occasion for the breach of those proprieties which the true Christian, of every rank, will ever study to preserve. But the pulpit must begin; our congregations must see and hear, from the conduct and voice of him who should be the earthly centre of union amongst them, what should be the character of that fellowship which should bind all together. We all live too much under the influence of that artificial state of society which keeps fellow Christians aloof from each other, and prevents us from realizing that love of the brethren which

we shall find laid down in Scripture as one of the marks of the true Church of Christ. We should do well to study this subject more closely than we have hitherto done, remembering, that though many, we "are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." It may possibly be allowed us to return to this subject in a future number, when we may point out some methods by which all classes in our congregations might be more brought together for christian communion; in the meantime, let none of our readers cast aside the consideration of the question as an unprofitable subject, or its results as impossible to be attained. Other portions of Christ's Church make the attempt to fulfil their Master's injunctions, and seek to walk together as brethren. True, the sins of false brethren, and human infirmities of varied kinds, often mar and sever the holiest ties, and bring reproach upon many a band of Christians: but the imperfections incident to fallen, and even regenerate humanity, are no valid pleas why we should shrink from endeavouring to promote something more substantial in its results, and more general and beneficial in its application, than our present very partial exhibition of a living and active belief in the communion of saints.

C. A.

Dibinity.

THE DYING THIEF AND THE ALL-SUFFICIENT SAVIOUR. and thus offer Himself, through death the just for the unjust, a ransom of infinite value for the redemption of His Church. It was a time of unequalled and of unspeakable interest. On the event of that hour, the salvation of the Old Testament Church had proceeded prospectively. On that hour depended the fulfilment of all the splendid promises of blessing to the Church in later times, and the salvation of unnumbered millions of souls. On that hour, and the faithful fulfilment of the eternal purpose of God in it, rested the efficacy of the grace of the Almighty towards a fallen world; and the possibility of the salvation of one single soul, out of the countless multitudes that rise into being on the earth, from its commencement to its decay. And in that hour of seeming weakness and depression, the incarnate Word chose to put forth the striking and characteristic manifestation of His mercy. In that hour of solemn pause, during which He hung in the agonies of death, He willed to give forth to the world a glorious exhibition of the power that He wielded,— -even in the hour of voluntary suffering; and to exhibit in practical and unquestionable language the richness and fulness of that blessing which His death was to procure.

"To day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." These are words directly calculated to give the poor, perishing sinners of mankind the highest degree of encouragement in looking at the revealed Salvation. It is calculated to beat down and silence the proud self-righteous objections of the human heart to the freeness of God's mercy. It speaks, at the very crisis of the accomplishment and perfection of that mercy, a language which cannot easily be misunderstood.

At the moment when this event occurred, the incarnate Word, who had been foretold as the deliverer of man, by means of His atoning death, was hanging upon the accursed cross. He had reached the awful point to which prophecy had looked with deepest interest. His holy form was, at that moment "wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities." Led on by the instigation of the old serpent, the devil, the unbelieving and rebellious Jews had taken Him, and, with wicked hands, had crucified Him. But their wickedness was over-ruled according to the determinate counsel and foreknow ledge of God. And the very event, which appeared to men and devils a subject of triumph, was about to accomplish the promised redemption, and deliver an unnumbered multitude of souls from hell and everlasting death. The Redeemer had bowed meekly and submissively to the suffering-for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame;-and He now awaited patiently, in His agony, till the moment when He saw it meet to lay down His human life, to give up the ghost,

There were two malefactors, thieves, crucified with Jesus,-on either side one, and Jesus in the midst. Mark the wonderful condescension of the eternal Word, the ever-blessed God,thus, in the hour of His humiliation, to be ranked with transgressors. He was executed among the refuse of the prisons: and mark also, in this very point, the glorious triumph of omni

potence. That act of His enemies, which was meant to degrade Him, and bring His cause into contempt, that His name might be cast out as evil, was made use of by Him as one of the most effective means of illustrating the riches of His salvation, and pouring round the dark scene of His dying agony an inextinguishable glory.

Jesus Christ had said, "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." "Verily, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." And this power to quicken is thus explained in John i.,—“To as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. . . . which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Now the event before us is an instance of the exercise of this power. The same Almighty power which called Zaccheus and Matthew the publican, was put forth on this occasion, to turn a dying thief, effectually and savingly, in the moment of his last agony, to the only possible means of deliverance from everlasting misery. The wretched man was at the very verge of his mortal career, expiating on earth the guilt of his sins against society by a public and ignominious death,,-a death, in terms of his own confession, justly merited. And he was about to enter upon the eternal world, where, if he had no practical and living hold upon the promised salvation of the Scriptures, his lot would be an eternity of suffering. It was in that awful crisis that Jesus put forth His mighty power, and bade him live for ever.

We are not admitted to know all the workings of the Saviour's converting and sanctifying spirit upon the heart of this man: but evidently, in the same way as the hearts of Matthew, and Zaccheus, and Saul, and Lydia, and multitudes of others, were opened by His power, so was it the case with this crucified malefactor. The act is not to be judged of by the time which it takes, but by the manifest efficiency with which the change is wrought. Previously the man was a wicked man, receiving the just reward of his deeds, but as he hung on the cross, by the side of the Redeemer, his heart opened to the influence of grace. This effect appears to have been intimately connected with the interesting fact of the Saviour's patient sufferings. That cross, which should be preached as the grand means of arresting the attention of the world, by its deep and unrivalled interest, and of saving that world by its power, was witnessed by him. That which other and believe, he saw. He saw the Man of Sorrows led as a "lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb," opening not His mouth. He saw the meek and lowly bearing of the blessed Jesus, in all the gradations of His mortal agony. And though all this may be seen and scorned, for we have ample proof, that both by sinners in the pride of their prosperity, and by sinners in the agonies of death, that cross may be seen only to be reviled:-the other crucified thief united his railings with those of the Pharisees;—yet where the Lord pleases to give effect to the external features of that inimitably interesting scene, and where He awakens in the heart a comparison of the features of that scene with the moral

men are to hear

THE ALL-SUFFICIENT SAVIOUR.

state of the individual so considering it, then it becomes the means of turning the soul from sin to holiness, from death to life, and from hardness of heart to sincere contrition and repentance.

In this way the object of the Redeemer's mercy is introduced to us. While others reviled the blessed Jesus, as He hung upon the cross, this man was led by the Saviour's mercy, even in the midst of his own agonies, to consider the case and conduct of Je

sus.

It

The fact of His innocent, holy, and useful life was well known. was known to His false accusers: it was known at the issue of His trial; known to this unhappy sufferer, for he said, "This man hath done nothing amiss." He was evidently comparing the case of Jesus with his own; and the meekness and patience of the innocent Sufferer with his own melancholy lot, as suffering justly, and about to be hurried, with the load of his guilt upon him, into eternity. This appears to have been the train of reflection by which he was led to the Saviour. When he heard his companion railing at Jesus, he was roused by it, and rebuked him: "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the reward of our deeds." Here are the elements of a better state of mind,the evidences of a mind under Divine and gracious teaching. There is evidently the fear of God, the sense of his own awful enormities, the confession of his own guilt, and a degree of impression of the innocence and consequent superiority of Christ. These are not the natural feelings of a malefactor at the close of life. Taken alone, and without the direct testimony of Christ to his salvation, they

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might not have been sufficient to warrant us in the assertion of his penitence, and future safety: but yet, when a wicked man, a man of lawless and unholy habits, wakes to a sense of guilt, and to a sincere admission of the justice of the lot he is to suffer, and a practical fear of God,—and all this arising from and connected with a serious consideration of the sufferings of Jesus, these are moral characteristics, so adverse to his previous habits, and so unlikely to be the moral manifestations of a soul about to be eternally separated from God, that, as far as we can rely upon them, they are calculated to give hope. The natural course is, that the life that has been spent in sin, ends in reviling, and in more desperate ungodliness.

But the manifestation of the saving change in the dying thief does not end in what we have stated. We have

only noticed so far the process of thought by which his mind was led to the reception of the truth that Christ was really the Saviour. The conviction of guilt appears to have been speedily followed by a full recognition of Jesus as able to save him, and by an earnest application to that effect: he turned to the emaciated and bleeding victim by him, and said, "Lord, remember me when thou comest to thy kingdom." It is evident here that, by whatever process, his mind had been then opened to receive the doctrines of Christ, and that renouncing all hope in himself as a guilty creature, he was now brought to cast himself entirely on Christ for salvation :- "I am a dying sinner, receiving justly the reward of my deeds. In myself I can have no hope; but O! Thou, whom now first. in the crisis of my condemnation I know and acknowledge, with reve

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