more than all

with sympathizing hearts of the poorer, huinbler brother; and they thought not with love and gratitude of him, on whom the heart should then be fixed. They ate and drank unworthily, because they discerned not the Lord's body, because they did not consider and lay to heart the distinguishing and significant points of this repast, because in partaking of the bread it was not with them a vitally important consideration, 'The Lord offered up his body for me on the cross!' and in partaking of the wine, 'The Lord shed his blood for the forgiveness of my sins!' They ate and drank unworthily, because they even then supplied aid and nourishment to their fleshly lusts and impure desires, when the memory of Christ's crucifixion should have been newly and deeply impressed upon them.

6

They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.' • Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.' In short, they ate unworthily, because through this supper they were nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.

Thus by great sin they made themselves guilty of the body and blood of our Lord. They ate and drank damnation to themselves, because they discerned not the Lord's body. They were accomplices in regard to the body of the Lord, whose sacrifice was occasioned by the sins of men; and in regard to the blood of the Lord, which was shed for the deliverance of men from misery, and ruin, and death of sin. If men had not had such impure minds and depraved hearts, so vain and blinded, and so infatuated and contracted by fleshly lusts and desires, so alienated from the higher, invisible world, and fettered to the things of this lower world, and by perishable earthly pleasures, and blunted as to love for God and man,-if there had been no such men on the earth, if there had been no sin which deprives men of peace, and happiness, and true life, and plunges them into misery, and ruin, and death, then Jesus would not have needed thus to suffer and to die.

men brought him to this death.

The sins of

He who takes no thought nor care as to the increasing of his guilt, shows that it is indifferent to him

whether Jesus had to suffer more or less, or whether he could have been wholly exempted from his sufferings and death; and whoever, notwithstanding Christ's sacrifice on the cross, can so indulge his malignity as to become yet worse, would not find it difficult to coincide with that excess of malice, which brought Jesus to the cross. Such a man betrays an indifference, a hardness and insensibility of heart, like the indifference, the

insensibility of those who cried,

hardness and

Crucify him!'

No; men who at the feast of love, at the commemorative celebration of the death of Jesus, betray such a state of mind, and so deceive themselves; who know and consider not how miserable, and poor, and helpless they were without Jesus, and what it must have cost the Father in heaven, and what it has cost Jesus to snatch men from their misery and ruin; do not feel and estimate in their hearts how dearly Jesus has bought them. They have no desire to become free from that, from which the death of Jesus should make them free; they allowed themselves rather to be yet more blinded, infatuated and snared by

that which was so opposed to God, to Jesus; and so were alienated still farther from God and Jesus, to whom they should have drawn nearer and nearer. They did not acknowledge and ponder the high value and unutterable greatness of the love of God and Jesus Christ, as manifested in the arrangement for the redemption of men. They felt nothing of the weight and burden of the sufferings, to which Jesus out of love subjected himself even to the death of the cross; and hence they are not excited to love and gratitude to God and Jesus; and feel no inclination, no impulse to live in love and gratitude to him who died for them. By insensibility and levity, by a fleshly mind, and by sin, the unfailing fruit of such a mind, they made themselves guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Had they had any lively knowledge of the sufferings and the death of Jesus, and of the objects and results of these sufferings and this death, had they had but human compassion for what Jesus must have suffered, it would have been impossible for them to assemble in such evil guise for the celebration of a feast which was

wholly designed to fill the heart with lively inward abhorrence of all that is sin and iniquity. They increased and aggravated their guilt by their observance of the sacrament; and so ate and drank to their own condemnation and punishment. What might and ought to have been made a most salutary blessing for the heart and life, became, and by their guilt became, a malediction and a curse. And ah! the wretched fruit which sin infallibly brings forth, when lust hath conceived, and when sin, its offspring is finished, was not wanting there; as is clearly intimated in the first chapter of James and fifteenth verse.

Learn then, dear Christian friend, to be aware of and to avoid unworthy eating and drinking in the holy supper. If a living knowledge and inward feeling of your vileness and unworthiness before God and your Saviour, if a correct, genuine knowledge of your sin and your danger, if a deep, real feeling of your weakness and need of help, disturbs and distresses you, humbles and prostrates you before your God and Saviour, if from your very