CHAPTER VI.

OF THOSE THAT ARE AFRAID TO COME.

WE have supposed a case-we have seen in idea the recusant crowd disperse; and if the master of the feast has said on the one hand,

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They that were bidden were not worthy," has he not cause to say on the other, "Were there not ten cleansed? where then are the nine? There is not found to give glory to God, save this stranger." Jesus has watched the receding steps of some to whom nothing we have said is applicable; who do indeed write the same hard sentence against themselves; they are not fit, they are not ready now,' and go away in sorrow, not in scorn; intending to return some better day. And we can fancy that we hear the benignant voice again, as it spake once to the disciples in the wilderness:

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They need not go away, give ye them to eat." The divine master's feasts are all alike:

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They have fasted all the day and eaten nothing if I should send them away fasting, they will faint by the way." Hunger was the preparation for that miraculous feast. "Fetch hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind." Others had the invitation, but it was the hungry and necessitous that had the feast. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." The living water, the life-giving bread, the manna that came down from heaven, the wine and milk without money and without price, all his provisions are bestowed alike. "He filleth the hungry with good things, and the rich he sends empty away.'

Our title to partake of the Sacrament is the same as our title to partake of Christ; we do not purchase the tokens, while we take the grace for nought;-merit the shadows, and have the substance free. If the fears of the timid are to be removed, I think they must be met upon this ground: for whatever be the exclusive character of the ceremony, as limited to the family of God, the seal of adoption is an invisible one; until it be realized, sometimes slowly, often imperfectly, and it may be never fully, in the signs of divine life within the soul.

Admitting that the benefits to be derived from the Holy Communion are confined to those who are alive in Christ, and united to him by a living faith, and cannot in any wise be partaken of by those who are yet dead in trespasses and sins, which I most fully do: I for myself must say, that I cannot agree with those who require that the communicant should certainly know that he is born again of the Spirit, and made one with Christ, before he presents himself to eat and drink at the table of the faithful. It is one thing to be in a state of grace, and another to realize confidently the fact that we are so. I doubt if the apostles themselves, at the time they received their first communion, could have met the enquiry so put; though to the simple question, "Lovest thou me?" they could all have answered, "Yea, Lord." Many are renewed in the Spirit, and justly hope they are, and with more or less confidence, do even believe they are, who would yet hesitate to approach the altar, and declare that they know themselves to be so. The suggestions of Satan, and the infirmities of the flesh, produce uncertainties, where there need be none; while there is many a living member of the body of Christ, in whom the signs of life are for a season so indefinite,

and overborne by earthliness, it is only God can know if they be genuine: the doubting disciple may be afraid, and may have some reason to be afraid that sin has still dominion over him but so far from forbidding such a one, awakened to a sense of his condition, and seeking deliverance by the blood of Christ, I should invite and urge him to communicate, as a means through which more grace might prayerfully and hopefully be expected.

Satan is very subtle, and there is a principle within us more subtle even than he; the principle of self-righteousness, so tenacious, it will catch at the shadow of a straw to maintain itself. Christ is our title to salvation, but where is our title to Christ? Here are the emblems of his blood shed, and body broken, but how do we know if they are designed for us? The secret decrees of the eternal godhead have not been found too distant a place to hide away the sinner's title to his Saviour, lest haply he should find it, and take possession. How do we know if we were in Christ before the foundation of the world, chosen of God and precious, foreknown and predestinate to life and union with him; without which we cannot eat his flesh, or drink

his blood, or appropriate the blessings of these holy mysteries? I believe that Jehovah has, because he says he has, his hidden ones, his secret covenant, his eternal purpose, his fixed immutable decrees. But, like the plan itself of their salvation, the election of grace is the secret of omnipotence, into which we are not called upon to look, nor can look, except as it is manifested in its effects. We are not called upon to know, we cannot know, that we were in Christ when he died, or in the covenant when he undertook to die, otherwise than by discerning that we are in him now. "Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven ?that is to bring Christ down from above; or Who shall descend into the deep?-that is to bring Christ again from the dead. But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is the word of faith which we preach." Whatever may have been done, or written, or determined in the eternal councils of Jehovah, all that we are cognizant of is transacted here: salvation was wrought out on earth, within the reach of mortal sense and knowledge and it is on earth that our title to it must be made out, our interest in it made sure, not by discovery of our names written in

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