giving, so we may surely trust, a depth of earnestness to our work at the present moment, which will admit of no frivolity, no procrastination, no lukewarmness: which will make business elevating, and hallow amusement as the means by which we are to gain refreshment for labour; which will convert weariness into patience, and dulness and monotony into resignation and hope; which will make us live with one thought ever present to us-that to-morrow, to-day will have become yester day.

The disciples prepared the Passover for their Lord; when the hour was come they sat down with Him.

With what feelings of awe and thankfulness must they have thought upon those simple actions if they looked back upon them, whilst gathered at the foot of the Cross!

THE DESIRE OF CHRIST.

ST. LUKE, Xxii. 15.

"And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you, before I suffer."

OUR Blessed Redeemer's expression, "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you," is certainly very remarkable, even to our dull perception of the vast reality and importance of all He said and did. What He could so desire must have been of such incalculable value! It would seem as though all the benefits of the Holy Communion which He was about to institute were pressing,—if one may venture so to speak, upon His mind, and therefore He longed to impart them. To dwell upon the words seems to assist us in understanding more what that blessing may be; understand it fully, of course, we never can; certainly not on earth, perhaps not even in Heaven. Yet where there is real earnestness, nothing in our religious life grows more than the estimation of the Holy Communion. Whatever instruction and assistance may be given, it must at first be received ignorantly, especially by very young people. Even the meaning of common every-day events is far more important than they can understand; and how much

more must that be the case in a mystery which doubtless, even the angels desire to look into! But where earnestness and sincerity, and simple faith exist, there will always be found God's blessing; and with His blessing deeper knowledge and clearer spiritual perceptions must come.

This is a subject on which no reasoning will help us. Reason takes up the root of the plant to see how it grows, and by the very inquiry destroys life. Only we may, perhaps, gain some good to ourselves by thinking not so much upon the mysterious nature of the Holy Communion as upon the place it has always held in the scheme of Christianity. That which for eighteen hundred years has been the centre of thought, discussion, argument, devotion, must have in it some deep value, even in the eyes of its opponents. Men do not violently assail what they esteem trifling. There must be a wonderful power and truth in an institution which has come down to us through those long centuries; which has survived the corruptions of Rome and the faithlessness of Puritanism; the awfulness of which men feel though they cannot reason upon it; and to which they cling, though so often blindly and doubtfully; explaining away their own words of belief, but conscious through all that there is a truth in them deeper than they can understand,-that there is a blessing in the Communion, even though they are tempted to deny it.

But these are human feelings and human testi

monies; something infinitely beyond them is to be found in our Lord's words: "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover." It may possibly be said that they do not apply to the institution of the Communion. If persons think so, it is not a question for argument, and they must be left to their own opinion; but, taking the expression in its simple and most obvious sense, and connecting it, —as we have reason to do,-with the action which followed, we shall scarcely doubt that the desire felt by our Saviour had reference to the blessing which He was about to grant to the disciples,—the spiritual feast which was to take the place of the typical commemoration.

And this would at once create an immense distinction between the Commuuion and any mere ceremony. If the feeling of the communicant in the act of partaking was to be the one object of importance, our Lord might have desired for His disciples humility, faith, earnestness, every Christian virtue; He might have prayed for them and with them; but the rite itself would have been of secondary consequence. The feelings required then might have been equally called forth at other times, and the blessing would have been equal. But this is evidently not all. Had that last passover not been eaten, Christ might have endured His agony in Gethsemane, and died on Calvary; He might have risen on Easter morning, and sent His Spirit upon His disciples on the Day of Pentecost, but something would yet have been

wanting a blessing would still have been withheld. If it were not so, why should his thoughts have lingered so lovingly on that one feast? why, at the very moment when torture and death were drawing near,-so near that it would seem as though the first agonizing thrill of mortal agony must even then have been present to Him,-did he turn from them with but one longing desire, that He might eat that passover with His disciples before He suffered ?

What He, our Saviour, our Redeemer, our God, longed for! What we think of coldly, turn from with indifference, receive with lukewarmness, forget when it is over!

They are sad thoughts which arise in the mind when we look back upon our past Communions; none, perhaps, are more sad, except that they are so mingled with hopes of mercy. Doubtless the blessing is bestowed according to the preparation made: "To him that hath shall more be given;" yet is it a blessing distinct from the preparation, and in its least form unutterably beyond all our expectations. It may be that if we are permitted in Heaven to look back upon our course upon earth, one of the most startling and overwhelming discoveries will be the value of God's gifts, conferred upon us in return for our least degree of earnestness;-the blessing of the Holy Communion, in answer to the feeble prayer, the weak resolution, the cold act of obedience! That will be one view. There will be another,—not,