Undue Fears

There is a godly fear which becomes tho approach to this sacrament. But there is nothing profitable in a legal and slavish dread, which is often compounded of self-righteousness and superstition. The best cure of this is to have the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience by the blood of Christ.* Terror does not belong to the Lord’s Supper, which you should consider as a feast of love. The Lord Jesus himself invites you, where he has promised to be present.f Deliberately consider with what feelings you would enter an apartment, if you knew that the blessed Sa’

* Keb. 10 22. t Matt la: 20.

viour in his visible humanity was waitiDg to receive you. He was often thus approached. Did he reject, or frown on the Syro-phoenician, or the sinful woman at Simon’s house, or the woman taken in adultery?* “This man,” it was said, “receiveth. sinners.” And he is “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”f