remember it for years without ever opening the Bible; whenever we were asked about it, the recollection might be fresh and ready. But what is become the while of our constant consciousness of its reality? Where is the distinctness of our image of those few days,those days in which is concentered more than the interest of millions of years, those days from Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, to his last recorded words to his disciples before he ascended into heaven? Where is our sense of all the deep truths here contained, concerning sin, and acquittal, and judgment? concerning eternal life, or eternal death? Never, indeed, will these truths be present to us enough; but surely, every remembrance of them that we can gain, we ought to gain; by reading, by prayer, by that outward and visible act, so mercifully commanded, by which we "show forth continually the Lord's death till he come;" by every means of grace given to us, we should labour to fulfil in ourselves the blessed words of St. Paul, "that the life which we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for us."

And if we did so live in faith, would there be any feeling in us to cry, "O wretched man

2

that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" Should we sorrowfully feel that we were still the slaves of sin; for that "when we would do good, evil was present with us ?" Would not our constant feeling be, " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord?" In all things I am more than conqueror through Him that loved me; sin has no more dominion over me, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

SERMON VI.

CHRISTIAN COMMUNION.

JOHN VI. 62, 63.

What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

A SHORT time before these words were uttered, our Lord had used the expression, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him;" and again, "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me." Many of his disciples said, when they heard these words, "This is an hard saying, who can hear it?" they either did not, or would not, understand his meaning. Then Jesus, knowing in himself that they either found or made a difficulty in what he had said, went on to say to them, "Doth this offend you? Do you really find it impossible to understand what I mean, when I say, that

he who eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him; or when

I tell you, that

shall live by me?

He who eateth me, even he

What, and if ye shall see

the Son of Man ascend up where he was before? If you are so bent on understanding me literally, in thinking that I am really speaking of my flesh and blood in the common meaning of the words, what will you say when I am taken up from you, and the clouds receive me from your sight? How will you be prepared to bear my absence from you in body, if your notions of the good which you are to gain from me are so wholly outward and bodily? But it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. When I say, that by eating me you shall live by me, that by eating my flesh and drinking my blood, you shall be one with me and I with you, I certainly do not mean that this my body, so soon to be taken from you, can be possessed of such an undying, of such a mighty power of giving life. It is not my flesh which you must eat, or my blood which you must drink; but rather my spirit which you must receive heartily and entirely into your own. The words which I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. It is of them that I say,

'He who eateth me, shall live by me.' Receive them into your inmost souls; digest them, let them mingle with every thought and feeling, till your spirits are but as the image of my Spirit, and of the Spirit of God. So being one with me and with my Father, you shall live through me; if my Spirit be in you, and quicken your souls, that same Almighty Spirit, to whom belongs the creation of all things, whether bodily or spiritual, shall, in his good time, quicken your mortal bodies also, that ye may live both body and soul for ever."

Such, I think, is the meaning of those words of our Lord which I have taken for my text this day. Nothing can more strongly repel the fond and unworthy superstition which would give to any thing but spirit the virtue of healing and quickening our spirits; which would suppose that our Lord's flesh or blood, in the literal sense; that the pieces of his cross, the remnants of whatever had touched him bodily, could be in themselves of any religious use whatever. But, as I have often said, no labour can be more vain, or worse than vain, than that of attacking errors which are not our's. We are not given to these superstitions; we do not think that we can eat the very body and blood of Christ; we attach no