In all these details, the reader can scarcely fail to be struck with the adaptations between the vegetable and rational creation, the former affording such interminable scope to the latter, for the exercise of ingenuity, and the reward of judicious labor.

TWELFTH WEEK-THURSDAY.

THE SACRAMENT OF THE SUPPER.

THE chief duty I have assigned myself in writing the 'Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons,' is to draw from natural objects, as they unfold themselves in the progress of the revolving year, proofs of the being, perfections, and attributes of the unseen Creator. The importance and the satisfactory nature of the argument thus deducible, has been long appreciated; but still that argument is, and must necessarily be, defective; and we must look to a higher source when we seek for those assurances on which rest our hopes of future felicity. It is on this very defect, indeed, that the necessity of a direct revelation from Heaven is founded. If, in the book of Nature, we could have read, and, from the ordinary operations of Providence, could have received, all that was necessary to salvation, there would have been no need of that other book which brings life and immortality to light; or of those miraculous transactions which raise our astonished view beyond the things that are seen and temporal and we may well believe that, without such necessity, the ordinary course of things,—the eternal laws of the universe, would not have been disturbed by messengers from the silent world of spirits.

I have often felt this defect pressing upon me, and longed for more frequent and favorable opportunities of rising to still higher views of the character of the Eternal, and of the future destiny of the human race. Of such opportunities, indeed, I have availed myself, in the Sunday papers, and I have sometimes also either found

or made them at other times. When they have occurred, I trust my readers have felt, as I have felt, myself, that they were as a place of refreshment and peculiar delight, in a journey itself full of beauty and enjoyment.

This period of the year furnishes us with one of these interesting resting-places, which I could not readily excuse myself were I to pass by. It was about the present season that the hopes of the Christian were confirmed and sealed, by the sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.* Let us, then, break in upon matters of unspeakably inferior importance, that we may attend to the particulars of these astonishing transactions, as they occurred in succession, during this and the two remaining days of the week, and were consummated on the first day of the following week.

It was upon that day of the week which corresponds to our Thursday, that Jesus, while partaking of the Passover, with his twelve apostles, instituted the holy ordinance of the Supper, in commemoration of his mysterious sufferings, which were to commence that very night in the

* The period of the Jewish Passover, during the celebration of which Christ was crucified, is not doubtful, because it was expressly fixed by the command of God, and the date is carefully recorded in the book of Exodus. It was on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month of the ecclesiastical year, called the month Nisan, and this month commenced in one or other of the three last weeks of the month of March, or the two first weeks of April, according as the period of the new moon was earlier or later; for the Israelites regulated their months by the changes of this luminary, beginning every new month at the new moon. This prevents the possibility of practically fixing down the date of the crucifixion to a precise day or week of the year; but, by attending to the time of new moon, the period may be ascertained with all the precision which appears necessary; though, even then, the looseness of the Jewish method of computing time, seems to preclude absolute accuracy. According to the most approved authorities, the day of the crucifixion must have occurred some time between the 20th March and the 23d April. Both Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, who observe this anniversary, celebrate the day of the resurrection (called Easter Sunday,) on the first Sunday after the first full moon that follows the 21st March, unless that full moon should happen on Sunday; in which latter case, the succeeding Sunday is chosen. The reason for this mode of calculation rests in the fact, that the Passover took place on the fourteenth day of the month, and therefore on the day of full moon.

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garden of Gethsemane, and especially of his death on the cross, which was to be inflicted on the next day.

The appointment of this sacred rite, in itself so important, in its manner so beautifully simple, and, in the time chosen for its first celebration, so deeply affecting, was entirely in harmony with the character of Jesus, and with the pure and humble spirit of his religion. His tremendous sufferings lay at that moment open to his prophetic view, and were pressing heavily on his soul. But not with his own woes did He occupy his thoughts. His care was to provide consolation and encouragement to his disciples. "Having loved his own," as an apostle beautifully expresses it," He loved them to the end." solved to leave them, under circumstances so affecting, a pledge of his enduring love, which, as a dying gift, might gratify their feelings, and, as a solemn religious rite, commemorate the blessings about to be procured for them by his death, while, in the act of commemoration, they might receive a sign and a seal of these blessings.

He re

For such a pledge, He sought not in any splendid or expensive ceremonial. He had recourse to the ordinary food of which they were then partaking, and found, in bread and wine, the most expressive and the most appropriate of emblems. Bread, the staff of man's natural life, most aptly represented Christ, the staff of man's spiritual life: Bread broken, strikingly indicated the death of torture which the Saviour was to endure for his people: Bread eaten, was a fit type of the inward reception necessary to be given to the doctrine of the Cross, before it can contribute to our spiritual nourishment. In the same manner, wine, with its vivifying influences, beautifully shadowed forth the blood of Christ, blood being the natural vehicle of life to the human body: Wine poured out, exhibited the shedding of his blood, that is, the sacrifice of his life for the remission of sin: Wine tasted, indicated the personal application of that blood of atonement, that is, its appropriation, by believers, each to himself, so indispensably necessary to salvation.

Thus the action itself, united with the time and manner in which it was performed, was calculated to make

the deepest and most salutary impression, not only on the apostles with whom it was personally transacted, but on all the disciples of Jesus, to the latest generations, who should, from them or their successors, receive the hallowed rite.

And this impression it has actually produced. In all the severe trials which those holy men who sat with their Divine Master, at the feast of communion, had to endure in their future lives, the pledge of his love thus so condescendingly and affectingly given, the memorial of his death, then so solemnly instituted,-formed a ground of unspeakable consolation, and a never-failing source of strength and enjoyment. It was at the table, where their beloved Saviour had Himself personally presided, that the apostles renewed their communion with this best of friends; heard once more the gracious words which He uttered; were again enlightened, encouraged, and consoled by his presence; and saw Him, with the eye of faith, as they had seen Him with their bodily eyes, distributing to them those symbols of his expiatory sufferings and death, they were so soon to witness. How vividly and overpoweringly would the whole succeeding scene, at these moments, rise to their awakened view,the agony in the garden, the insults of the judgement-hall, the torture of the cross;-and, along with these, his exhortations, his assurances, his words and looks of pity and unextinguishable love ;—and, above all, that proof of affection, stronger than death, which He exhibited, when He bore their sins, "in his own body, on the tree.

Events so impressive, thus impressively recalled, could not fail deeply and permanently to affect their minds. No wonder that, when animated by such a memorial, they endured persecution and contempt with patience; nay, when condemned to the scaffold or the stake, rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer in the service of a Master endeared to them by so many ties.

Similar effects have been produced in the minds of communicants, from the days of the apostles to the present hour. Whatever, in the whole history of the church, has been lovely or of good report, received its origin or

its encouragement in this solemn act of communion. The confessors, the martyrs, the reformers, who stood forward, in the midst of inveterate foes, to bear testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, and whose names are in the churches as ornaments of religion, and benefactors of an ungrateful world; and not less, though in a more humble sphere, the innumerable company of private Christians, who walked though this vale of tears, looking to Jesus, and whose names, forgotten perhaps on earth, are written in the imperishable records of heaven,-these all renewed their vows, confirmed their faith, and cherished their graces at the table of Him who loved them even to death. There, the Christian penitent has received comfort, the Christian pilgrim food and refreshment, the Christian soldier energy to contend against, and strength to overcome, all his enemies, and there will his disciples. continue to receive spiritual nourishment and growth in grace "until He come."

TWELFTH WEEK-FRIDAY.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

THE great event predicted in ancient prophecy, frequently alluded to by Jesus in his intercourse with his disciples, and typically represented on the preceding evening in the Sacrament of the Supper, was now to be accomplished ;-Christ, our Passover, was to be sacrificed for us. In the agony of the garden, which quickly succeeded the institution of the Eucharist, the concluding scene of the Saviour's life, may be said to have commenced. The bloody sweat, and the prayer for mitigation, are awfully expressive of the unspeakable intensity of the sufferings of that hour of the powers of darkness.

There were, indeed, crowded into a few short hours a complication of sorrows, on the one hand, and manifestations of fortitude, of patience, and of Godlike love, on the other, which it is impossible to contemplate with