and horror), won for us exemption from the

curse,

But something more than the union of Christ with our nature is necessary in order to our salvation. It is necessary that we should be joined individually to Christ, should be made to belong to the Family, of which he is the Head; should be brought into a real connexion with His humanity, as we already stand in a real connexion with the humanity of Adam. I say, into a real connexion with the humanity of the Lord Jesus. To be brought into connexion with Him as God, as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, would not be what we need. He, the Lord from heaven, is the Second Man, who has repaired the ruin of our race; and if that ruin is to be repaired in us, we must belong to, and become part of, His humanity. And so He speaks in the text of eating the flesh, and drinking the blood, of the Son of Man, as an indispensable condition of life. There is a twofold significance in the expression "flesh and blood," which we must not miss. First, these words are used to show us that the union is to be with His humanity. "Flesh and blood" is an expression used in Scripture, and by Our Lord Himself, to denote man,-human nature in its present state, Thus, when St. Peter is to be assured that he had received the communication of Christ's Messiahship, and Divine Sonship, from God, not from man, the words are; "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee; but My Father which is in heaven." And again, when St. Paul claims to have received his Gospel by direct revelation, and not through the medium of the other Apostles, the words are; "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood neither went I up to Jerusalem, to them which were Apostles before me." . . As to the words "eating" and "drinking," they are no doubt employed to denote the closeness and intimacy of the union. How could Our Lord have expressed our union with His humanity in words more forcible? To contemplate one who stands before us is not to be united with him. To fall on his neck and embrace him is not to be united with him; for he is still external to us. But in eating and drinking, the food passes into and becomes identified with us; it is converted into bones, or flesh, or blood; it becomes part of the living frame.

us,

cies are clearly revealed to us; but over the method of their operation there hangs a mystery, which we shall seek in vain to penetrate. And what wonder? Our connexion with Adam by natural generation is a patent fact which no one doubts. But who can explain this connexion, by which man is drawn out of man in interminable succession, so that each person, though distinct, is a part of his ancestor? How then can we think for a moment, to understand or explain the method of our connexion with Christ, though it may be as certain, real, and indisputable a fact as our connexion with Adam?

answer.

But what are the agencies which bring about this connexion ? And first; what is the sovereign efficient cause of this union with Christ? Holy Scripture gives one unequivocal It is the agency of the Holy Spirit of God, who at the feast of Pentecost descended upon the Church, to consummate the union between God and man, which the Incarnation had commenced. In constituting the Head of the new Family, the second Adam, there was a signal operation of the Holy Ghost; as it was said by the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation; "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." And in the addition of any member to the Family of this Second Adam, the same Spirit is the prime agent, and the sole efficient cause, of the result. And so our Saviour spoke to Nicodemus of being born of the Spirit, and becoming "spirit" in consequence; and St. John the Evangelist speaks of being "born not of blood" (i,e., not in the way of natural descent, as the Jews were, by the mere fact of their lineage, the chosen people of God) "nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

But this prime agent, the Holy Ghost, employs two instrumentalities, of different orders, in effecting the union of the soul with Christ, faith and the Sacraments. Faith, including the foregoing process of Repentance, which leads up to it, and the subsequent graces of Hope and Love, which grow out of it, He forms by His own independent agency, in the abyss of the heart. For, indeed, the idea that a being capable of exercising moral and spiritual powers, can be united to Christ independently of the exercise of such powers is one of the wildest fancies which The differever entered into the brain of man.

ential part of man's nature (that which distinguishes him from the lower animals) is the spirit; that is, the reason and the conscience. If we could imagine for a moment that without an action of the reason and conscience (in a being capable of such action*) a soul could be united to Christ, then one of the lower animals might be united to Christ; a conclusion absurd and profane. Therefore faith must be engendered by the Holy Ghost in the reason and conscience, as an indispensable condition of the union. Yet think not that by any mere convictions of the mind, however profound, or aspirations of the heart, however sincere, man can bring himself into union with Christ. That union is a work of grace, and is to be regarded as a gift of God, not as an endeavour on the part of the soul. And it is conferred in the Sacraments, whensoever they are received with faith. Our grafting into Christ is accomplished by Baptism, a Sacrament originally administered by immersion, and, as so administered, expressing our burial with Christ, and thus our union with Him in His death, and also our rising with Him from under the waters, which have submerged us, unto newness of life. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized unto His death?" But since the washing with water is external, Baptism does not either convey or express so close an union with Christ as the second Sacrament. By this Sacrament, when duly administered and duly received, is effected the closest possible union with the crucified Humanity of the Lord Jesus ; and to express this closest union, the Sacramental act is that of eating and drinking the consecrated elements of bread and wine, which pass into, and are absorbed in, our living frames. The elements are not only the sign and symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ, but also the instrument of conveying, in some highly mysterious way, far above out of our reach, an actual participation in His crucified Human Nature, according to that word of St. Paul's, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not

* I desire to call attention to the parenthesis, as guarding my assertion. Of course it is not intended to deny that infants are capable of union with Christ in Holy Baptism. For an infant is a spiritual being, though the powers of the spirit are latent and undeveloped. A being void of spirits (like one of the lower animals) would present no point of contact to the Holy Spirit. And a being in whom the spirit acts not (though capable of acting), in whom the conscience and moral powers are dead, which is the case of a wicked or worldly adult, equally presents no point of contact to the Holy Spirit.

the communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ ?"

I seek not for a moment to understand the method, by which this mysterious union is accomplished. I feel that all explanations would be only rationalizing attempts to reduce a sublime mystery to the level of the human understanding; and that they involve presumptuous speculations on what God has not been pleased to reveal.

And here I must advert to an erroneous and unscriptural practice, which is fast creeping into some of our Churches, though it has not a particle of sanction from the Liturgy. All erroneous practices will be found ultimately to spring from unsound views; and so I believe it is in this case. The practice I refer to is that of being present at the actual celebration of the Lord's Supper without communicating, and the accounting such presence as an acceptable work of devotion, though it be of an inferior grade. See how the view we have propounded fences off this mistake. The great characteristic blessing of the Ordinance is union with Christ; His Body and Blood are given in the Supper, not to be gazed upon by spectators, but to be partaken of by faithful communicants. Unless there is a participation, you defeat the end of the Ordinance. If the Church be asked to pro duce her warrant for the celebration, she can produce none but this, "Take, eat: this is my Body." You will observe that "Take, eat," are the very first words of the warrant. Then if a man comes without taking and eating, is it not a perverse thwarting of the Lord's design and intention? If a Sovereign should bid his councillors assemble for the purpose of giving him their advice in an important affair of state, and in consequence of this summons should expect from all of them some interchange of sentiment and discourse; and if some should come to the council, but when there should refuse to open their lips, what would this be but to defeat the design of calling the council, and make the attendance of such persons at it a futile mockery?

And if the Lord has instituted a Sacrament for the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the participation of it, and we come to witness, but not to partake, is not this a plain perversion of what He meant by it? The Body and Blood of Christ are given in the Supper to be partaken of, and the Consecration for any

other purpose than that of partaking has no warrant of our Lord's at all, and would there. fore be vain and impious.

There is one most precious and consolatory thought (connected with what has been said) which, in conclusion, we must develope. The union with Christ, which the Supper of the Lord emblematizes, and, when duly received, conveys, is union with Christ in His death. The Body and Blood are exhibited by the Bread and Wine in a state of separation from one another. Now the Blood is in Scripture said to be the Life; and accordingly the separation of the Blood from the Body indicates that death has taken place. It is, then, with a dying Christ, and so with an atoning and propitiating Christ, that the Holy Supper, duly received, makes us one. Ah! what an infinite comfort when we consider the number and seriousness of our responsibilities, and the grievous failures of the best of us in meeting them! Christ, we know, expiated all sins upon the Cross. "By His one oblation of Himself once offered" (as our Prayer of Consecration has it) "He hath made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world."

Now in this Holy Ordinance the great blessing of union with Christ is offered to our faith, -of union with a dying, bleeding, agonizing Christ. We have the closest intercourse with Him, "in whom," as St. Paul says, "all died." Christ died as representing sinful Humanity, lying under the ban and curse of sin; though personally standing entirely aloof from it, He identified Himself with our guilt, and took upon Him to answer all charges against us. If now we be one Spirit with Him,-if our union with Him be cemented inwardly by faith, outwardly by ordinance,—we too have in Him really and truly died for sin, and by that death in Christ have endured sin's penalty. The Law, the accusing conscience, the accusing spirit, have in that case no more charge against us, we may go free. Oh, what a strength in dying to the power of sin may be gathered from this consideration, that in the dear Saviour, with whom we are so vitally and closely united in this blessed Sacrament, we have already died to its guilt! Oh! shall we not long for that union with Him,-union with His Merits, with His Cross, with His Passion, with His Spirit, which faith indeed avails itself of, but which this Ordinance conveys and seals? For this

union, be it remembered, is the secret not only of all peace and pardon, but of all strength; and the tighter the bonds of it are drawn, the greater will be our power over indwelling corruption, and the more close and happy will be our walk with God.

SECT. 3.

"For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the Word of God and Prayer."1 Tim. iv. 4, 5.

The Body of the Prayer of Consecration consists of two members. First, there is a petition for our participation in the bles"Hear us, O sings of the Ordinance : Merciful Father, we most humbly beseech Thee; and grant that we, receiving these Thy creatures of Bread and Wine, according to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of His Death and Passion, may be partakers of His most blessed Body and Blood." After this, the history of the Institution is recited; and the very actions employed by Our Lord on the occasion are repeated in the course of this recital, the vessels containing either element being taken into the hands of the Priest, the Bread being broken by him, and, finally, his hand being laid upon the Bread and Cup, as a sign that they are now blessed and hallowed. Both the Prayer and the recital have, from the earliest ages of the Church's history, been considered essential to a valid consecration. The Roman Church in this, as in so many other points, deviates from Primitive Antiquity, maintaining that Consecration is effected by a mere repetition of the words, "This is My Body,” “This is My Blood." And as it is not unfrequently the case that extremes meet, so we shall find here that sundry Protestant sects, who have gone as far as possible from Rome both in doctrine and discipline, hold the recital of the words of Institution to be the only requisite. The Church of England holds closer both to primitive practice, and to the example of our Lord. She uses a Prayer of Consecration,” implying surely by the very title that Prayer is essential; and does not proceed to recite the history or the words of the Institution, until she has addressed to our Heavenly Father a fervent petition for the great blessing of the Ordinance. St. Paul says, in reference to our ordinary reception of food, that "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving ;

for it is sanctified by the word of God" (that is, by some passage of Holy Scripture introduced into the Grace before Meat) "and prayer." And our Church holds, as the early Church did, that this Heavenly Food must be sanctified in the same manner, not only by reciting from the Scriptures the very words of Institution, but also by thanksgiving for God's tender mercy, and Christ's all-sufficient Sacrifice, and by prayer, that this Ordinance, which echoes on the Sacrifice to the end of Time, may be an effectual instrument of communicating the virtue of it to our souls. And a close study of Our Lord's practice in instituting the Holy Supper leads us to the same conclusion. The Evangelists expressly say that He gave thanks, before He used the words, "This is my Body," "This is my Blood of the New Testament," addressing Himself to God over the Bread and over the Cup in the first instance, before He gave them to the disciples as His body and Blood.

The sum and substance of what has been said is, that an address to God, in the form of Prayer and Thanksgiving, has from the earliest times been regarded, and justly regarded, as essential to Consecration.

To some, no doubt, the point will seem a very unimportant cne, more especially if they are unfamiliar with the history of Liturgical controversy. But under questions which present to an ordinary mind the appearance of being mere subtleties-not worth the raising, and certainly not worth the controverting-there occasionally lie hid great principles, which are at issue; and we believe that it is so in the present instance. The whole history of the Lord's Supper, culminating as it does in the error of Transubstantiation shows a sad tendency in the human mind to localize and materialize the blessing of the Ordinance,-I mean by localizing and materializing the blessing, the placing it entirely in the outward visible sign, the imagining some mysterious charm,-a virtue half-physical, half-spiritual,-to reside in the crumbs of Bread, and in the drops of Wine. The Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation is quite as open to this charge as the bolder and more unreasonable error of the Church of Rome. And there can be no doubt that many members of our own Communion, in the views they take of the subject, attach the blessing far too little to the Ordinance itself, and far too exclusively to the sensible, material vehicle of the Ordinance. The mysterious operation upon the

Bread and Wine, by which they are sanctified for their high significance and office, engrosses in their minds the whole field of view; and the operations of and upon the human spirit, which the Ordinance is designed to call forth and develope, go for nothing in their estimate. The natural superstitiousness of the human heart, (for it is most superstitious,) gathers round the material and local, and the mental and moral are thrown into the background. One can fancy a similar debasement of idea in connexion with the Person of our Blessed Lord. It was, of course, a most exalted privilege to the Apostles, and the source of great blessings to the inhabitants of the Holy Land, among whom he went about doing good, to have Our Lord with them, and in the midst of them. His Sacred Body was the source of natural health to thousands of poor patients who touched it, and His teaching was the source of spiritual health to those who listened to it. But supposing that in those days some of His disciples had attached to the mere Body of Our Lord, independently of any action of mind on the part of those who heard Him and applied to Him, the blessings of His Presence in the world. Supposing they had heeded scarcely at all the gracious words which fell from His lips, and had imagined that the mere fact of His neighbourhood in the body would prove a sort of talisman of health to the whole district in which He sojourned. Would He not have most seriously reproved such notions? Did He not virtually and implicitly reprove them, when He required faith from all patients as the one condition of their cure, that is, an operative persuasion of the mind on their part that He was able and willing to relieve them? In no case does Christ heal without this preliminary condition; wherever persons apply to Him for healing, the application itself of course implies the persuasion on their part; but never is the healing granted as the mere result of material contact with His Person. Faith and Prayer were the conductors, without which the virtue that was in Him could not reach the bodies of the suffering; an awakened mind and a docile heart were the conductors without which the spiritual blessings of His Divine Ministry were not, and could not be realized. Now this illustrates very well the caution we are now attempting to give in reference to the elements in the Supper of the Lord. We need not deny, rather we would clearly and strongly affirm, that they are not mere symbols, but

stand in some real, though mysterious relation to the blessings of the Ordinance. Yet we say that the blessing is not to be materialized, or supposed to reside in the elements, after the manner of a charm. And we find a protest to this effect in the true doctrine of the Consecration of the Elements. The mere recital of the formulary, the mere contact of the hands, is not sufficient by itself,-has never in the best and purest times been held sufficient-to that Consecration. They are sanctified by the Prayer and Thanksgiving which accompanies their Consecration,—the offering of which implies Faith, the only avenue by which any blessing can reach the human soul. When we lift up our hearts to God over a common meal, in acknowledgment of His Bounty in spreading our board with daily food convenient for us, by this action of the mind we sanctify His good gifts to our use. And on a similar principle, when over the oblation of Bread and Wine, destined to become the Symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ, we raise up all our thoughts, desires, and affections to God, and implore Him to make us partakers thereby of the benefits of the Great Sacrifice, reciting over them at the same time the history of Christ's Institution,-this is the consecration of the Elements, whereby they are sanctified to that high and holy use which they fulfil towards us. How important, then, at this culminating period of the rite, is a spirit of fervent, earnest, believing Prayer, offered with all our heart, and soul, and strength! And in order to the due maintenance of this spirit, we must not only stir up ourselves to pray, chiding our own hearts for their indifference and insensibility, and, if I may so say, following hard after God, but also must study beforehand the words appointed for our use, so that we may pray with the understanding, as well as with the spirit.

Let us look, then, a little more closely at the terms of this petition. Comparing them with the Consecration Prayer used in the first Protestant Prayer Book of 1549 (the terms of which still exist in the Scotch Episcopal Office), we see at once that the petition before us, while we quite believe that it embraces all that is necessary, is very cautiously worded. Formerly it ran thus: "Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech Thee; and with Thy Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these Thy gifts, and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of Thy most

dearly Beloved Son Jesus Christ." Considered abstractedly, and in themselves, these words were good, sound, and primitive. But our Reformers, looking at the state of controversies in their time, had to consider also whether they were safe,-whether an alteration of the terms, while the general sense was retained, might not make them less liable to abuse and perversion. Error-very gross and serious error-had warped the religious mind of the country in one direction, and in order to make it quite straight again, it was necessary to bend it slightly in the other, even at the expense of a phraseology which in itself was sound, and had antiquity in its favour. It was necessary to disabuse men's minds utterly of the figment that the bread and wine became in a gross and carnal sense the Body and Blood of Christ, and also of the kindred notion that they were talismans, which would exercise a special virtue, independently of the faith of the recipient. Any allusion therefore to the action of the Holy Spirit and Word upon the elements, or to their becoming the Body and Blood of Christ (however capable of justification both by Scripture and primitive usage), it was thought safe to expunge, and simply to ask God for the blessing of the Ordinance, without prescribing to Him the means by which that Blessing is to be realized to us. Now the blessing is a real and true participation of the Body and Blood of Christ. And accordingly we ask that we receiving" (in receiving, while receiving) "these Thy creatures of Bread and Wine" (observe how clearly it is here recognized that the Bread and Wine after the Consecration remain in their true and natural substances) "may be partakers of His most Blessed Body and Blood." The prayer is, that the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ may accompany our outward reception of the Elements. How it is to accompany that reception we leave with God. We do not ask that it may be by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the elements, nor mention any other mode in which He is to communicate to us the virtue of the Sacrament. We ask for the end in the fullest and most explicit terms, and leave the means by which it is to be brought about unnoticed. And indeed, independently of all controversial grounds for thus modifying the terms of the prayer, there is great reverence and reasonableness in framing our petition thus. The Holy Communion is a deep mystery, as in