Private Meditations After the Holy Communion

“And they drcio nigh unto the villo/je uildthcr thcij vent, and He made as though Se woidd have gone farther; hut they constrained Him, saying, Abide loith us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent” (Luke xxiv. 28, 29). Words spoken by two wayfarers, in all probability disciples — not apostles, — lowly men who were slowly retracing their steps amid struggling emotions of sorrow. It was, too, on their return from the City of Solemnities, at the close of the Great Jewish Paschal Feast, that Jesus met them.

The verses are surely appropriate for my own afterthought and meditation at a similar hour: and as it is the retrospect of a Communion season, I may well include in these thoughts my fellow-guests. The services of the Holy Table are over; but, Lokd, abide with us! ‘It is ’ toward evening.’ The sun is westering. The gates of the Banqueting House are closed, and the Festal worshippers have dispersed — ‘Loud, abide with us!” Toward evening; ’ — In another sense this may be true with some who partook of the sacred Ordinance. Night is the emblem of sorrow and trial. Their walk to-day with their beloved Saviour may have been an eventide one: — the darkness may have been gathering, — the earthly sun setting or set. — Let this be their prayer — ‘Loud, abide with us! ‘It is ’ toward evening; ’ — with others the day of their life may be shortening: — their sun is past its meridian; the lengthening shadows portend approaching nightfall. In the prospect of the final and solitary hour, they too may breathe the invocation — ‘Lord, abide with us! ‘We are all of us, however diverse our age and experience, advancing on the pilgrim journey; the milestones are decreasing; the grains in life’s sand-glass diminishing; — Eternity is nearing. Every returning Sacrament; every month, every day, every hour, may well deepen the solemnity of the prayer, “Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent!”

How am I best to fulfil the vows and perpetuate the blessings of a Communion occasion? It is to take Jesus with me from His Holy Table; — the living, loving Brother on the Throne, as my abiding Friend; — to have the habitually realised consciousness of His presence and nearness. “He that abideth in Me, and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing!’ What is the strength and safeguard of voyagers in the midst of the storm? Is it not when the pilot is known to be trustworthy: when they can gaze with confidence on the serene undaunted countenance at the wheel, and the brawny arm steering securely through the roaring surge? If in going out from the peaceful quiet haven of a sacramental hour, perhaps recalling former experiences, I am dreading the power of temptation and my inability to meet it, let me look to my Heavenly Pilot. Abiding in Him, and He abiding in me, — a living union with a living God, — I am in safe keeping. Heart and flesh may faint and fail; earthly refuges may fail me; earthly refuges may become refuges of lies. But He will be the strength of my heart and my portion for ever; — the only unfainting, unfailing Friend, in a failing, varying world. Oh, blessed be God, there is more than one Emmaus journey. I have been privileged to traverse that road to-day. Though no longer in bodily Presence, as when He trod this earth; — though now surrounded with myriads of glorified spirits, and worshipped as Lord of all, the Saviour’s heart knows no change: His name is “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” He still loves to make Himself known to His people, as to these disconsolate wayfarers on the way to their village home, “in the breaking of bread.”

The thought often occurs, in connection with cherished earthly friends who have fallen asleep in Jesus; — and I believe most of all at the hallowed sacramental hour, — are these “loved and lost” permitted still to hold intercourse with those they have left behind on earth? When the mysterious tie is snapped which binds soul to soul in sweet fellowship here, is there no invisible communion prolonged and perpetuated with the sainted and glorified? May we not be allowed to entertain the pleasing idea — that they hover still around us, and watch with tender interest our communings at this Feast of love: — the Sacramental Table a Bethelladder for the unfettered union of spirit with spirit — “the bridal of the earth and sky?” Who can tell? This, however, we do know, that what possibly may be a vain illusion with reference to the departed, is a sublime and glorious reality in regard to Jesus. The mysterious Stranger on the way to Emmaus is no

Stranger at His own Holy Ordinance. How many can tell as their experience of that hallowed ground — “He brought me to His Banqueting House, and his banner over me was love!” — or, like the disciples on the great Easter eve, “We have seen the Lord.” If such be my retrospect to-day, I would plead with an ever-deepening, reverential earnestness — ‘Blessed Jesus! Thou Divine Master of assemblies — Abide with me from morning to evening; and from evening to morning again; for without Thee I cannot live; and without Thee, I dare not die! ’

II.

“Did not our heart hum loithin us while He talked vnth us by the way, and while He o])cned to us the Scriptures?” (Luke xxiv. 32). Such were the musings of the same two solitary disciples after pursuing the way to Emmaus in company with their Beloved Lord. Can I, in some feeble measure, endorse them and rehearse them? In my own case, and that of my fellow-guests, what may some of these musings and reflections be, in the hallowed retrospect of to-day’s service?

(i.) Did not our heart hum iDithin us, with a deep sense of the evil nature of sin? At the Holy Table, and in its impressive memorial-symbols, I followed in thought the Adorable Sufferer to the garden of agony. I beheld Him prostrate there, amid the chills and dews of that midnight hour, — drops of perspiration mingled with blood flowing down to the ground — the interpreters of superhuman anguish. The presence of an angel from heaven is needed to strengthen Him. We can see no farther than the rim of the thunder-cloud: — we cannot penetrate the midnight of terror. Well may the Greek liturgy speak “of all the sufferings of Christ hnoivn and unJcnou’ii.” “Now,” said He Himself, in entering on these, “is the hour and power of darkness.” Bewildered, fearful, panic-stricken, trembling, in a thrice repeated fervour of prayer He entreats that the mysterious cup may be allowed to pass from Him. Three times, as He seems to approach the brink of some awful precipice. He cries “Father, save Me from this hour!” His soul is “sorrowful,” “exceedincj sorrowful” — “even unto death.”

I farther ponder the dread successive scenes of ignominy which followed Gethsemane, and had their climax on Calvary —

“Lo! a face to heaven in a^ony stealing,

Stained of sorrow, but, soilless of sin,

Sweat that in blood is breaking and streaming, —

Praying for those that do strip Him and scourge Him,

As a cross on His quivering shoulders they place.

‘Neath its burden He sinks while they mock Him, they urge Him,

They crown Him with thorns, they spit in His face.

They are lifting Him, bruising Him, piercing Him, nailing Him

To the cross that is dyed in a red crimson flood.

See, the sun hides his head, see the vapour envailing Him:

Hark, the earth and the skies in the darkness bewailing Him,

“Who dieth for those that are shedding His blood.”

Why all this? Nothing of retributive punishment could there possibly be in that unparalleled endurance. “In Him was no sin:” — He was the spotless Lamb of God. It was, as our Surety-Substitute — that the Lord laid on Him (or as these words literally mean, ‘the

Lord caused to meet upon Him ‘) the iniquities of us all. “He was made sin for us.” Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, by being Himself made a curse for us. He was the true spiritual Atlas bearing on His shoulders the transgressions of the world. ISTo other — no less a cause, will suffice to explain the awful inner meaning of the “horror of great darkness,” and of that bitterest wail that ever arose from earth to heaven — “My God! my God! M’hy hast Thou forsaken me?” “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”

Have I not seen, to-day, in these visible significant symbols — the hrohcn bread and the foiircd out wine — what an evil thing that must have been, which brought the beloved/Son of God — the Prince of Life — from the Throne in heaven and nailed Him to the Tree?

(2.) Did not our heart hum within us, with sincere and poignant sorrow for our oum sin? My sin formed some drops in that cup of anguish — “He gave Himself for me.” For nfie He descended to these depths of humiliation: for me He bared His head to the pitiless storm, and travelled on that blood-stained path, — a spectacle to devils and angels and men! My sins against light, and love, and warning, and mercy: my many faintings and backslidings; — my tamperings with temptation; — my murmurings under trial; my guilty repinings under providential dealings: — how do their vileness and ingratitude stand revealed under “the Cross and Passion” of the Almighty Sufferer! Well may I be subdued and softened and saddened at the retrospect; and resolve with a deeper, more unqualified and unwavering resolution, to hate in all its forms what was, in very truth, the crucifier of the Lord of Glory.

My sin — yes, my sin helped in evoking these most awful words that ever broke the trance of eternity — “Awake, 0 sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man who is my Fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts: smite the Shepherd” (Zech. xiii. 7).

(3.) Did not our heart burn within us, with a lively apprehension of His great love? The word of the Beloved disciple, spoken at a later time, could not fail to come, like a strain of holy music, at the Holy Table to-day — “Herein is love: — not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That divine love is revealed and manifested elsewhere. Creation teems with its memorials and illustrations. It is warbled in every grove. It is whispered in every breeze. It is pencilled in every flower. It glitters in every sunbeam. The volume of Providence proclaims the same; “The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” Yet, at times, there occur, in both volumes, dark and perplexing passages that we cannot understand: — and where the only earthly explanation is — “Thy judgments, 0 God, are a great deep!” But — “herein is love.” Question as I may that love elsewhere; — looking, as I have been permitted to do this day, at these memorials of suffering and anguish, — beholding in visible manifestation the grace of the Lord Jesus, — who though He were rich, — rich in all the plenitude of the Divine perfections, — yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich, — I can surely exclaim ia adoring transport — “The love of Christ which passeth knowledge!” It will form the theme, the confession, the problem of eternity: and yet the ever renewed and baffled avowal will be — “Oh the depth!”

(4.) Did not our heart hum loWdn us, with an earnest desire to yield Hitn a neio and more devoted obedience? Is this, to-night, my devout aspiration and resolve, — that whatever others do, I will serve the Lord? that my existence henceforth, more than it has been, shall be a continued wlalk with Jesus, a life-long Emmaus journey? As He, in His infinite love and condescension, invited me to come to His Banqueting-Table, and in expressive sacramental symbols, ratified all the blessings of the everlasting covenant, so may I be ready, with the responsive vow — ‘Lord, here is my heart; take it; make it Thine own for ever. I am Thine by creation; I am doubly Thine by redemption.’ May all the varied discipline of Thy providence — all Thine appointed ordinances and sacraments and means of grace, only serve to bring me “nearer to Thee:” and lead me more habitually to recognise the obligation thus stated by the Apostle; — “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them.”

(5.) Did not our heart hum luithin us, tvith the blessed hope of His second coming? At the very moment when He took bread and blessed it, and brake, and gave to these wondering men of Emmaus, we are told, He suddenly “vanished out of their sight.” But it was only for a little time. The two privileged and delighted guests hastened back to the upper chamber and the gathered disciples in Jerusalem; and lo! the Lord re-appeared with the salutation, “Peace be unto you!”

“A little while,” says Jesus, “and ye shall not see me; and again a little while and ye shall see me, because I go unto my Father.” The first little while of the “not see Me” will, to His Gospel Church, soon be past; and the second great while of the “ye shalL see Me” will ere long be here. The gracious Feast of to-day is, above all things, the Feast and pledge of the Second Advent: “Ye shall show forth the Lord’s death till He come.” Oh, blessed prophetic memorial! which, like a luminous rainbow, thus connects the cross with the crown: one arc of that bow resting in the first festal chamber by the Kedron Valley; the other on the golden steps of the Great White Throne! “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

(6.) Did not our heart hum within us, loith longing desires of spending an eternity of fellowship in His loving presence? If this rill — this rivulet — of the sacred Ordinance I have been privileged to partake of to-day be so refreshing, what must be the great Fountain-head? If the Pisgah-view be glorious, what must be the Promised Land itself? If I have been listening by the shore to a few waves murmuring, ‘God is love,’ what will it be to bathe in the ocean of that Eternal love? Here, at the earthly Communion Table, I only see the Beloved “behind the lattice.” He meets me on the Emmaus road, but it is “as a wayfaring man who turneth aside to tarry for a night.” I go, as a guest; but it is, at times, too, with tearful eye, as I note fellowships that are no more, — missing the music of voices that were wont to cheer, alike in going to the Feast, and when the Feast was over. What will it be in that Glory-Land where nothing can intrude to mar the bliss of uninterrupted communion: no note of discord to disturb the harmonies of the everlasting song: no veil of sin or sadness to intercept the vision and fruition of an ever-present Saviour?

I love at times to dwell on that picture of His Eesurrection-life, when, early in a Palestine morning — all nature clad in spring’s resurrection attire, a solitary Figure stood by the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret, and addressed some weary midnight toilers as * Children.’ They were well-known accents of tenderness. The joyous word of recognition passed from lip to lip — “It is the Lord!” The day is coming, when ’ that same Jesus,’ in the morning of immortality, will be seen standing on the Heavenly shore, with the look of affection and the word of welcome: the region where no night darkens, no tears dim, and no shadows fall. Let me join with my fellow-communicants, in looking forward with bounding heart from the banquet on the earthly shore, to the eternal Heavenly one: where, with the plighted love of to-day as the master passion of our souls, we shall each be able with unhesitating sincerity to repeat the avowal made of old with trembling lip — “Lord! Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.”

III.

“Fear not: I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evcr- ,nore” (Rev. i. 17). The Apostle John, left alone m Patmos, away from all congenial fellowship with lovincr human hearts, had doubtless often longed m his rocky solitude, for some token or manifestation of his Redeemer’s personal Presence. When he called to mind the former privileged bliss of near and endearing intercourse with the Lord he loved, but which m a visible form he enjoyed no more, — the prayer of his lonely heart and lonely spirit must frequently have been —

<’ Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!” —

That sich — that prayer was not in vain. The vanished hand and the stilled voice were again felt and heard: He laid His right hand upon me, saymg unto me — “Pear not I am the First and the Last; I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore’” The tears of his banishment were dried. He was made to forget the absence of a loved brotherhood of disciples and saints, in the presence of “One who sticketh closer than a brother!”

The same gracious words have been breaking on mv ears to-day. This Holy Table is one of the special places and occasions-a spiritual Patmos-where Jesus loves to record His name, and where He commands the blessing, ’ even life for evermore! ’ “I am He that was dead!” — This solemn, mysteiious truth I have been permitted significantly to recall through the symbols of His own appointment. But now, as the Table is left, He seems, in this still hour of reflection and retrospect, to bequeath for meditation the glorious counterpart assurance, — a glad watchward surely in renewing the beaten paths of life — “I am He that livdh” — or, as that might be better rendered, “I am THE Living One:” — He that was dead “dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him!”

How blessed to be able to look up to the right hnnd of God, and behold, seated there, as my Advocate and Intercessor, not a stranger, but an ever-living, never-dying Friend: with a heart beating responsive to human sympathy. Not only, as God, able to save, but, as Man, able to compassionate: — feeling what is done to His people, as sensitively as if it were done to Himself. When I think that into the hands of this God-man Mediator has been committed universal rule and sovereignty: that He directs all that befalls me: that it is He who sends prosperity, — who gives the gourd and the sunshine ;^that it is He who appoints the blight and the shadow; — that every trial is ordered by Him, and every tear permitted by Him, — I may feel sweetly assured that all is well. He has renewed to n:e, to-day, at His Sacramental Feast, the pledges of His love and tenderness; — so that this may well be a balm-word and a heart-cheerer alike in all time-of weaUh and in all time of tribulation; — a support and solace in every vicissitude of this mortal scene; hallowing joy consecrating sorrow, dispelling my fears, lightening vij darkness, and at last smoothing my deatli-pillow — “I know that my Redeemer liveth!”

The words of a Brother Apostle seem like a comment on the above divine vision and voice of Patmos: “When Christ who is OUR life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” “The glorious appearing” of- the life: — in other words, the second coming of his Lord, was the special theme and revelation of the Apocalypse. That mystic Book has well been called “the Book of the Coming One.” It begins, in its opening chapter, with “Behold, He cometh with clouds!” It ends in its closing chapter, with a thrice repeated blast of the same silver trumpet — “Behold, I €07716 quickly!”

The Sacrament of Communion may, with equal propriety and emphasis, be called — “The Feast of the Coming One.” I have just been commemorating Him, in His first Advent, as the Dj/ing One; when He came in humiliation — the Man of sorrows, despised and rejected, — and bowed His head on Calvary’s Cross. But while a Feast of Remembrance, it is equally a Feast of anticipation. Every returning celebration is giving augmented power and reality to the divine words — “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away!”

Even His own people are prone at times, through wavering faith, to ask — “Where is the promise of His coming?” There is no sound of His footstep. The wheels of His chariot are tarrying: and outer nature, in her majestic imvarying sequences, seems to countersign the doubting thought, “All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” From this Mount of Ordinances the chimes of the Advent Bell break on the listening ear. “Ever since, has this blessed Institution lain, as the golden morning light, far out even in the Church’s darkest night, not only the seal of His presence and its pledge, but also the promise of the bright day of His coming.” *

I have recently been privileged to stand, so to speak, on a divinely -built watch-tower, looking for that day-dawn —” the blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of the Great God our Saviour.’’

“Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” That Advent season has its date in a yet unrevealed future. Meanwhile, be it mine to be so living and acting, that the cry can never be heard too soon or too suddenly — “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!” — Ever ready to hail Him with exulting welcome; and so at last, to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the festal throng of the glorified, in my Father’s Kingdom.

IV.

“/ will go in the strength of the Lord God” (Ps. lxxi. 1 6). The Eeast is ended: but let me solemnly feel that the vow remains. The pledge to the Great Redeemer has been given: the fulfilment is to come. All the sincerity of this fresh consecration is yet to be proved: all the fidelity to the Heavenly Captain: all the loyalty to the Heavenly King. Will He who walks in the midst of the candlesticks — the Blessed

* Dr. Edersheim’s “Life and Times of Messiah.”

Master of assemblies, be able on the next similar sacred occasion to say of me, as He did to the Church of Philadelphia of old — “Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name “?

My position recalls that of the old Hebrew Paschal Pilgrims, which formed the theme of meditation to-day: as the silver trumpets proclaimed that the feast was ended; — and caravan by caravan, company by company, were seen retraversiug the familiar highways to their several distant homes. The imperious call of work summoned them again to their appointed labours. Nor was there any incongruity between the two. Work — everyday work — the drudgery of brain and hand and sinew was a divine thing then as now. The Passover was not appointed, or designed to be, a perpetual Feast all the year round. Piather, — (one at least of its purposes was, apart from its comemmorative object), to brace and invigorate for the duties of a busy M^orld. These Israelites would doubtless carry back to their homes and their toil many hallowed festal memories. Their cares would be lightened, — their sorrows soothed, their faith quickened; their devotion to the God of their Fathers deepened and intensified, by all they had witnessed in the City of Solemnities.

In common with my fellow-conniiunicants I now leave the New Testament Passover Feast to retra verse the beaten paths of life; to return, some of us to its green pastures and still waters, and the sunshine slopes of its ‘Delectable Mountains;’ — others, to its ‘Hill Difficulties,’ its Marah pools and valleys of Baca. But, along with higher and diviner verities there taught, may we all feel it, as it was designed also to be, a strengtiiener in the discharge of daily duty: — the old tribal blessing and beatitude of Israel’s God resting upon us, — “Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and Issachar in thy tents.” The Lord God our Sun and Shield: — grace given us in this world, and the reversion of glory in the next (Ps. lxxxiv. 1 1 ). — Happy is that people that is in such a case, yea happy is that people whose God is the Lord.

This suggests a similar lesson from a different portion of God’s Word, which also formed subject of recent contemplation. It is the beautiful vision of the girded angels given in the Book of Revelation (xvi. i); and to whom the words were addressed by the Great Voice out of the Temple: — “Go your ways.” These angels had been listening with rapt reverence to the song of the Harpers by the glassy sea. But the hour of duty had come. Forth they go to the world beneath them, to execute the behests of their divine Lord.

Am I leaving the “Temple of the Tabernacle of the testimony,” like them, “clothed in white and pure linen, and girded with golden girdles “? Am I about to return to my daily avocations with the blessedness of the pure in heart who have seen God? resolved, in a strength greater than my own, to keep my garments clean — “unspotted from the world:” having my loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness: desirous to follow the path of obedience whatever that may be: — filling my earthly sphere for His glory and my neighbour’s good: ready, when my task is finished, to bring, angel-like, the emptied incense bowls of service, and lay them at the Master’s feet, saying — ‘Lord, I have sought, however unworthily and imperfectly, to do Thy holy will ‘?

“Go your ways,” says God. What the ways before me may be in this uncertain world, I cannot tell. Be this my comfort, that the summoning Voice is His. — “The Lo7rl is in His Holy Temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him.” There is elsewhere given the promise and assurance — “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”

It is not the resolutions of a Communion season I must trust to. Eather, it is the going out into the world which will test and try their reality. Who has not read of the Roman legions of old, in pursuit of their Parthian foe, how they stood most in danger, not in the glow and excitement of triumph, but in following up the victory! The I’arthian bowmen on swift horses, ever and anon wheeled round in their retreat, and emptied their quivers on the pursuing enemy, strewing the march of the conquerors, even more than the battle-field, with their slain. “When thou thinkest thou standest,” is the farewell monitory word which may well be heard in the name of the Great Master of the Feast — “take heed lest thou fall.” “Beware lest ye also, being led away by the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness; but grow in grace.”

“The holy rite is o’er: the blessed sign

Is given to cheer us in this earllily strife: The Bread is broken, and outpoured the Wine, Symbols of better life.

Touch Thou our wayward hearts, and let them be In stronger faith to Thy glad service given;

Till in the city of the crystal sea
We sing the Song of Heaven.”

V.

“It is Jinished / “(John xix. 30). I have listened to-day in thought, at the Holy Table of Communion, to this victorious cry. Glorious is the fulfilment of the prophetic words —” He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” A finished work: and so finished and completed, that, in the retrospect, the divine-human lips could say with complacency, yea proclaim with unhesitating triumph, “I am satisfied! “Satisfied! — It was the very dignity and divinity of the august Speaker, which gave such singular meaning and emphasis to the assertion. The higher our aim, the more refined and elevated our views and attainments, — the less are we satisfied with our own ideals. A little thing will satisfy a little mind. It requires a great thing to satisfy a great mind. The child is satisfied with a toy or bauble; the savage with the trinket, — the gaudy bead, or piece of painted glass: while the civilised and educated are, in very proportion to their culture, fastidious; — swift to detect the literary blemish, or the faulty note in music; or the crude touch of colour on the picture, — the flaw in the otherwise breathing marble. What pleases the unlettered villager will look poor in the eyes of the man of science. And so, the higher we ascend in the ranks of being. What must it require to satisfy the mind of an angel: what must it be to satisfy the mind of God? Him whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom: — whose glory is set above the heavens: whose power is boundless, His wisdom infinite; His life-time eternity! Oh, what a work that must he, over which this all-wise and all-perfect Deity, in contemplating it, can say — ‘It is enough; I have reached my own divine Ideal. I am satisfied.’” Father, I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do! “In that moment of all moments, when His eyes were about to close in the sleep of death, — a gleam of radiance breaks from His eclipsed soul. He could wish no more: the world’s battle is won. With the smile of ineffable love and satisfaction on His lips, He cried, and cried” tvith a loud voiced’ as if He would wake the echo of all the ages, in order to proclaim the completion and the completeness of His victory — It is finished!

“Satisfied” — “Finished “: — blessed pillow for me to repose on in the retrospect of to-day! He has done all, and suffered all, and procured all for me. I see every attribute of the divine nature magnified. Justice exulting in the sublime vindication. Truth hastening to meet Mercy and Mercy meeting Righteousness. Let the rich man glory in his riches: let the strong man glory in his strength: let the wise man glory in his wisdom: but God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

One other thought occurs in my contemplation of that mystery of darkness; — that superhuman soul-struggle; ending though it did in so triumphant a victory. Yet vain, surely, is the question that has been asked, ‘Could not less have satisfied? Could not anguish less awful in its accompaniments have sufficed? Could none of the ignominy and agony of that bitter path and that bitter cross have been dispensed with? ‘The analogy of nature would seem to tell that there is no useless nor redundant expenditure of agency even in the smallest of the works of God. If it be so with the lowlier divine operations, much more may we conclude that there will be no superfluous or unnecessary agency demanded in ’ the work of works,’ — the work of Redemption. From the first pang of Bethlehem’s Babe in the cradle, till the Great Surety trampled Satan under His bleeding feet on Calvary, all was necessary. There was not the redundant leaf in that chaplet of sorrow which the Man of Sorrows wore.

I have been testifying to-day, through these significant memorials, to the sufferings of Christ; let me connect them with the glory which is to follow: anticipating that everlasting communion Sabbath, when’ the sufferings and the glory shall be sung in one blended strain by the ransomed. I have heard the sound of the Bridegroom’s feet to-day; I have listened to His festal summons to the Feast on earth; let me be so living, and walking, and watching, and working, that the great final cry and summons to the Festal Hall of heaven may be met with the glad response, — “Lo, this is our God: we have waited for Him!”

VI.

“Thy voics are icpon me, 0 God; I will render praises unto Thee: for Iliou hast delivered my soul from death “(Ps. lvi. 1 2, 1 3). This musing of the Psalmist is surely most befitting and appropriate for me on a retrospect of to-day’s approach to the Holy Table. But he does not stop with this treble assertion. He adils a fervid appeal, a votive prayer — if I may so call it — to the God he has covenanted to serve. May I not endorse it also as my o^Yn earnest pleading in this votive hour — “Wilt Thou not deliver my feet from falling, that I may icalk before God in the light of the living?” (Ps. lvi. 13).

Let me note that it is Mhen under the deepest and most solemn consciousness of his covenant engagement — “Thy vows are upon me, 0 God” — he anticipates the possibility of his feet stumbling. In the hour of elation and victory he contemplates the certainty of fresh encounters with spiritual foes. The past deliverance and the present vow are no guarantees against the seductive wiles of temptation. At the very moment when he has that votive resolution on his lips, and the hymn of praise on his tongue; — when his bark is on placid waters and no cloud disturbs his sky, he dreads and forecasts the storm. He would be forearmed as well as forewarned; and looking to the God who had put his vow on record, he cries — ‘Lord! in this very hour of my strength, I feel the reality of my weakness! Thou hast delivered my soul from death: {that is my present rapturous theme). Lut the future — that unknown and often treacherous deceitful future! — wilt Thou not — who hast i:)romised “as thy days, so shall thy strength be”’ — wilt Thou not help me in it? ’ “Wilt Thou not deliver my feet from falling?” Communions and Sacraments cannot keep me. The most sacred vows may be broken like gossamer webs. But hold Thou me up and I shall be safe. With Thy voice behind me saying, ‘This is the way,’ I may, in the expressive word.?

of Israel’s singer — “walk before God in the light of the living!”

And what is this, but the lesson and resolution of ’ new obedience ‘? What a befitting season, by God’s grace, to adopt fresh resolves, and to aspire after a higher standard of life and duty! Not to mystify so solemn a subject with figure: If, in looking back on past months, or past years, I am conscious of the dominating influence of some evil temper, some ungodly passion, — some flaw in Christian consistency, — some neglect or omission of well-known duty, either regarding myself or with respect to others, — what an appropriate season is this to initiate and inaugurate a new and better life: — to turn over, as the common saying is, a new leaf; — to make this renewed votive service to-day, a fresh starting-point for eternity: — as expressed in the words just quoted — “/ icill icalk before God! “What a sure preservative against sin, to walk with the consciousness of His pure eye upon me! Seeking to go only where He leads: — to love only what He loves: His paths my paths: — my longing aspiration and aim the coincidence of my will with His! This is obedience. No” snare for the falling feet “successful then,” Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird” (Pro v. i. I 7). Rising on the wings of faith, and prayer, and love, and new obedience, — these wings bathed in the light of God and heaven, — they will be kept from being soiled by the degrading contacts of earth: — “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”