Communion Memories

THE first portion of this Volume consists of Sacramental Sermons, written and delivered at widely separated periods of ministerial life. Some were preached in a rural parish: — some to a city congregation. This will account for a somewhat marked diversity in style, although chronological sequence is not observed in their arrangement.

No memory of a twenty-eight years’ ministry in the Church of Scotland is so hallowed to the writer as that of her Communion Sundays. Those in sister churches, habituated to more varied and ornate services, may possibly, in much of her ordinary sanctuaryworship, be repelled by its severe simplicity: but exception must assuredly be made in the case of the celebration of the great Sacramental rite. It may reverentially be called the “Idyll” of her ritual; — and to those located in other homes and countries, who may no longer be privileged to share in them, they are the seasons, of all others, which linger in the Uiind with most devout and cherished associations; like a strain of music whose pathos and cadence survive, or rather are deepened and intensified, when other chords may cease to vibrate. “How goodly are thy tents, 0 Jacob! and thy tabernacles, 0 Israel!” The late Lord (Chancellor) Campbell thus writes to his father, an aged minister in the Church of Scotland, as he is present in thought on the first Sunday in August, 1 8 17, in the Parish Sanctuary familiar to him from boyhood: — “From hour to hour I followed the service, through its various stages, till I thought you must have concluded your thanksgiving service in the evening. Of all the religious ceremonies I have seen or read of, I find nothing so impressive or truly grand as the administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to the forms of the Church of Scotland.”

It may be permitted, respectfully, to add a more remarkable and interesting verdict still: —

“At the end of the sermon began the service of the Communion, which is most touching and beautiful, and impressed and moved me more than I can ex-

* Life of John, Lord Campbell, &c., edited by his daughter. 1 88 1. How many can subscribe to the words of another eminent Scotchman: — ‘• That poor temple of my childhood,” says Thomas Carlyle, “to me more sacred at this moment than perhaps the biggest cathedral then extant could have been; rude, rustic, bare, — no temple in the world was more so; — but there were sacred lambencies, tongues of authentic flame from heaven, which kindled what was best in one, and what has not yet gone out.” — Carlyle’s Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 86.

press... It would indeed be impossible to say how deeply we were impressed by the grand simplicity of the service... It was all so truly earnest: and no description can do justice to the perfect devotion of the whole assemblage.” *

As probably to most of the eyes which fall on these pages, the Presbyterian Communion service is unfamiliar, a few prefatory sentences may not be out of place, and may tend to impart an interest to words spoken on these solemn occasions. Those for whom such explanatory remarks are unnecessary, may simply pass them over.

The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is dispensed in all the parishes in Scotland, generally speaking, on an average twice a year; what are known as ’ the Summer and Winter Communions.’ The day indeed is not remote (quite within the writer’s recollection), when the rite was administered, as was the case in his own first rural parish, only once a year; and when, as a sacred Anniversary, it was regarded with something akin to the feeling with which the Jewish worshippers kept their great annual celebration of the Passover. As marking additionally the solemnity of the day (we speak, however, specially of the Highlands), it was by no means an infrequent custom, and within our remembrance also, for the neighbouring country

* H.M. The Queen’s More Leaves from the Journal of Our Life ill the Highlands, pp. 152, 155.

churches to be closed, in order to allow of their habitual worshippers repairing to the adjoining parish where the rite was to be administered. Moreover, for lack of room in the ordinary Sanctuary, a Tent was, and is at times, in many parts of Scotland, improvised out of doors, to accommodate the surplus numbers that are in the habit of assembling. When the season is at all favourable, this Tent has for its curtains nothing but the blue awning of heaven, — the dense throng surrounding. To quote from the narrative of a spectator: —” The services on Sunday were divided: those in English being conducted in the Church, and in Gaelic in a little. hollow glade opening on to the sea-beach. ... It was a very striking sight that met us on our arrival at the place of meeting. More than three thousand people sat on the ground, or on stools they had carried in their hands. In the midst of the assemblage stood the tent or wooden pulpit. This

was occupied by Dr.. In front of the pulpit

were two ridges of turf covered over with white linen. These were the Communion Tables. The day was most beautiful. The sun shone brightly, rooks cawed overhead, and the ripple of the water close by on the gravel beach mingled with the psalm: the solemn effect of the latter was indescribable.” ‘’’

Similar testimonies and descriptions might be mulplied. I cannot resist adding the following from the

* See Good Words,” Jpz7 1881.

Life of an esteemed fellow- worker, tliou“li belonsiim to a different branch of the Presbyterian Church, the late Dr. Alexander Ealeigh. Eehearsing his oldest recollections, his biographer remarks, “Among the memories of his boyhood, none stood out more clearly than the open-air Communion Sabbaths, — the green hillsides, the white covered tables, and the hushed interest of the hearers, who followed the preacher from point to point of his elaborate discourse. ‘I go back nearly forty years,’ was his own pulpit reference to one of these occasions, ’ when I was so young that I could remember only this text, (” / will not cat till I have told mine errand,” Gen. xxiv. 33), discoursed from, on a Sacramental occasion, by a famous preacher for well nigh an hour and a half. He sjDoke from a tent in a green field on a clear summer day; the communion tables, covered with the linen clean and white, spread out waiting their occupants, who came to sit down at communion after the sermon was over, and during the singing of a psalm. Although the speaker spoke so long, no one seemed to weary. The sound of his voice was solemn; and the awe- struck desiring look of the people — nearly two thousand of them — seemed almost as if they expected a visit, on that day and in that place, from their Risen Lord. The whole formed a picture and a scene not likely to be forgotten.’”

Far be it from us to attempt vindicating, what strangers to Scottish usages and traditions must doubtless remark upon, the singular infreq-’ency of

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