One of Israel, whose worship the altar and the priest typified, there was then established the covenant of reconciliation and peace; and, consequently, salvation assured to the offerer.-At the same time, forget not to mark how by the communicant's eating and drinking the bread and wine of the sacramental elements there is signified the necessity, in order to this salvation, of the communicant's so feeding spiritually on Christ's dying grace and love, so personally applying it,-a -as to incorporate the sense of it, as it were, into his very inward life and being. I say spiritually feeding. So our Church with admirable distinctness expresses the sentiment; "Feed on Him in thy heart, by faith, with thanksgiving.' In which, as in all else, she follows Jesus Christ's own teaching; "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life for my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood drink indeed : "—there being added by Christ, as if to show the purely spiritual nature of the required feeding on Him, "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he, shall live by me."

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5. And hence of course must follow, with every true participant, the reciprocating feelings of gratitude and self-devotion to Christ. For, in this realizing view of Christ's dying love, how can he now help sympathising with the blessed apostle St. Paul in the sentiment, "If one died for all, then are all dead; and that He died, in order that they which live should not live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them, and rose again"? Thus the self-dedicating pray er will naturally flow forth to Him from the very heart; "Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee." And rapidly will thoughts such as the following glance across his mind; "How may I best consecrate myself to Him? How best promote his cause? How best live to his glory?" Not without a deep and humbling sense of past defectiveness; together with earnest

prayer for grace to help him towards such self-dedication to Christ for the future.

as

6. There should be realized in this Holy Communion the real oneness of true Christians; even being each and all members of one and the same body, the head of which is Jesus Christ. The very symbols of the sacramental bread that you will have given you to eat, and wine to be drunk, are set forth as indicative of this; the bread being broken from one and the same loaf, the wine poured out from one and the same flagon. So St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 17; "For we, being many, are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread: "-even of Him whom the bread of the sacramental loaf symbol zes; the bread which came down from heaven. And hence should follow a warmer breathing of the blessed spirit of brotherhood and love-a spirit thus strikingly and most touchingly inculcated by Christ Himself, at his celebration with his disciples of the last supper; "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."-Nor should this feeling of fellowship and brotherhood limit itself to a fellowship with the faithful members of our own Church, or even of Christ's universal Church on earth. For is not the fact of the Christian communicants' larger fellowship thus alike truly and beautifully expressed in our Sacramental Service; "We are members incorporate in the mystical body of Christ, which is the blessed company of all faithful people"? A company this which includes the faithful departed, as well as those still living on our earthly scene of probation; just as they are embraced tco in that thanksgiving for all estates of men in Christ's holy Church;-"We bless Thee for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear." Yea, yet more. It should be viewed as including also even the angelic company in heaven. So in that sublime Trisagion Hymn, as it is called, or Hymn of the "Thrice Holy," handed down from the Liturgies

of the early Christian Church: "With angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty; heaven and earth are full of thy glory." Oh, how sublime the thought and feeling! It is just in accord with the magnificent statement respecting Christians made by St. Paul; "Ye are come unto (or joined in citizenship to) the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusa lem; and to an innumerable company of angels; and to the spirits of the just made perfect; and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant; and to God the judge of all."

7, and lastly. There will necessarily follow on this the longing anticipative thought of that perfected union of the whole body which is to take place at Christ's second coming. "For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." And then there shall be that gathering together of all the redeemed ones in Christ, both those in heaven and those on earth, and of all the hosts of angels too, which the apostle speaks of as fixedly fore-ordained in the counsels of God.* Very observable are those words of St. Paul which thus associate the thought of Christ's second coming with the celebration of that holy ordinance of which I am now speaking;-" As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death, till He come."+ It is observable first, from its expressing God's own view of Jesus Christ's death, as that the recollection of which would be so essential to the Church's spiritual life that it must needs never be overlooked, never forgotten: whence his appointment that just as, from after man's fall in Paradise, there were to be unceasingly visible sacrifices prefigurative of it in the Old Testament Church, until his first coming and death, so in the New Testament Church, after his death, there should be unceasingly a visible * Eph. i. 10. + 1 Cor. xi. 26.

commemorative sacrament of it, until his second coming. It is observable, secondly, as constituting, by implication, a prediction (a prediction of what was altogether beyond the power of human sagacity to foresee) that there would never cease to be such a continuous celebration of the ordinance by Christians of the coming future; the fulfilment of which prediction now for some 1,800 years after St. Paul, even through the darkness of the Roman apostacy, is a fact notorious.* It is observable, further, as suggesting to each faithful communicant ever after to be continually looking for the glorious reappearing of Jesus Christ, as the Church's blessed hope: a hope naturally suggestive of earnest prayer that He will shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and hasten his kingdom.

Dear young friends, may you thus prepare for, and in this spirit participate in, the Holy Communion of the Lord's supper! Then will you indeed find it to be, as our Church expresses it, an ordinance for the strengthening and refreshing of your souls; even as your bodies are strengthened and refreshed by the bread and wine.

* I mean chiefly in Churches, or communities, separate from Rome. I do not see how we can consider the transubstantiation ordinance of the Church of Rome as any proper continuance of the ordinance of the Lord's supper. Rather it is a mockery and blasphemous supersession of it. At the same time I do not forget that there have been ever some who, while in Rome, were not of Rome; and who have carried a Christian spirit even into participation in the Romish ordinance.

THE PRINCE EDWARD; AFTERWARDS KING

THE VITH, AND QUEEN ELIZABETH.*

EDWARD

"IN the xxvth year of King Henrie the VIIIth's reign, the xiith daie of September, being Sondaie, the Quene was delivered of a faire ladye...

"The Duke of Norfolke came home to the Christenyng,..which was on the Wednesdaie folowyng. On which daie the Bishoppe of London, with diverse Bishoppes and Abbots mitre'd, began the obserwaunces of the Sacrament. The Godfather was the Lord Archbishoppe of Cantorburie;.. the child was named Elizabeth. And, after that al thyngs was doen at the Churche dore, the child was brought to the fount, and chrystened. And, this doen,..the child was brought to the Aultar, and the Gospell saied over it. And after that, immediately, the Archbishoppe of Cantorburie confirmed it; the Marchiones of Excester beyng Godmother. At the Chrystenyng the Godmothers were the olde

* From Hall's Chronicle:-a black letter Chronicle, printed A.D 1547, and entitled, "Of the reunion of the noble and illustre families of Lancaster and Yorke."