their accustomed place from Sunday to Sunday, whom he has never seen at the Lord's Table, to whom he cannot remember ever having administered the "broken bread."

Again, how many have received Holy Communion once? When was that? Shortly after their Confirmation. Where are these, say six or twelve months afterwards? If it was thought good to receive it then, what has made it less good since? Were any encouraged to believe that the object of Confirmation was to admit to Holy Communion, but that, once admitted to share that privilege, there would be no need to enjoy and use it again? Others, regarding communicating as a duty, limit avowedly their acts of communion to the three great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. Such communicate rather by prescription and rule than from any vivid and intelligent appreciation of the design of the ordinance. Are there none in every congregation who, it is to be feared, habitually communicate with little or no preparation of heart; with a surface self-examination, or with a refined superstition which looks to that ordinance as having the nature of a charm or spell? Prostrations, genuflexions, frequent crossings, do not these often betray a conception of the Lord's Supper bordering upon, as it savours of Romish error; an exaltation of the ordinance, which is as likely to make many "weak and sickly" as the opposite danger of never communicating, or communicating unworthily?

How many, again, as the end of life draws near, and they hear the deep summons of the sea, and on a sick

bed leisurely review life, and in prospect of its close are brought face to face with themselves, finding the need of religion and its consoling offices, express a desire to receive Holy Communion! When all that is false and unreal is falling off the man; when he distinguishes with quickened sense, if not with alarm, between what was hollow and real in his religion, assumed from various motives, but on a death-bed utterly powerless and peaceless; when he would in some way atone for the neglects of the past, in the hope of quieting an accusing conscience, or getting relief under inward uneasiness and the torments of self-reproach, or of wiping off the transgressions and ungodliness of a wasted life, he takes refuge in the hope that all this may be brought about by partaking of the Holy Communion! He feels that something has been left undone, some high privilege foregone. He hears again the invitation, frequent and earnest, to the Lord's Table. No longer able to worship in the Sanctuary, there rises before the mind's eye the vision of the fair white linen cloth, the sacred vessels, the ordinance prepared from which he lightly and wilfully turned away. And when the question is asked of him by some friend, solicitous for his soul's peace, or by the clergyman who knows the end is at hand, "Would you like to receive Holy Communion?" rare is the instance in which one, sick unto death, does not say, "Yes."

I seem to myself, whilst writing these lines, to be ministering in a sick-room where no time is to be lost, for powers are fast failing, where flesh and heart faileth.

The dying man, surrounded by all nearest and dearest, is about to pass away from all which makes life dear; it may have been too dear! Soon he will close his eyes on this world for the great awakening in Eternity! Under no circumstances is Holy Communion more solemn, more impressive, than when administered for the last time in the chamber of death. But what if it be then administered for the first time? Neglected, despised, unheeded in the days of church-going, is there no danger of its being regarded as a viaticum, or as only another form of "extreme unction"? Just as men often scout the idea of "conversion," and any miraculous or extraordinary manifestation of grace, and yet, with marvellous inconsistency, look for it on a death-bed, so that view of "extreme unction," which he would have repudiated had he heard it preached, may after all be the view the dying man is taking of Holy Communion. He then receives it for the first and the last time. How often, out of deference to the wishes of relatives, rather than from any Spirit-taught conviction of its blessing, the sick and dying yield to earnest solicitation that they would not die without partaking of Holy Communion, or in some vague sense they hope to derive comfort from it at the last, when they have never sought and found comfort from it throughout a life during which, by a faithful partaking of it, they would, as life drew to its close, have not guessed at, but experienced its refreshment and blessing.

Now, if all this be true-and to deny it must be to forget and falsify ministerial experience-if it be true

that men and women do turn to, do look to, do desire Holy Communion at the last, there must be something radically defective and utterly mistaken in the views currently entertained about the ordinance itself, that it can be so neglected throughout life, and yet desired at its close. There must be some misconception, very prevalent and widespread, as to what constitutes "worthiness” and “unworthiness." Or if, as I shall throughout these Addresses endeavour to show, no preparation for death and for Christ's second coming can be more meet than habitual Holy Communion, there must undeniably be something hidden away in the man's life; something he loves more than his Master's presence; something incompatible with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; some sin indulged, worldliness of mind, bitterness of spirit, want of charity, or secret unbelief, which sufficiently accounts for his not communicating. All this, doubtless, does protect that holy ordinance from the profanation of a Judas' kiss, or a Judas' hand "on the table;" but it makes this solemn exhortation none the less necessary: "Consider with yourselves how great injury ye do unto God, and how sore punishment hangeth over your heads, when ye wilfully abstain from the Lord's Table, and separate from your brethren who come to feed on the banquet of that most heavenly food." Alas! how many make a convenience of God! They hold, as they are fond of saying, their "views" and their "opinions." They try to persuade themselves that they can turn to Him whenever they please; that they may put their own interpretation on His express command, and

observe His will according to their idea of what that will is! What should we say and think of the man who had his "views" about the law of gravitation, and, setting God's law at defiance, leapt from some precipice, doubting he would be injured by his fall? What should we say of the man who believed he might thrust his hand into the fire, and yet not be burned? What should we say of the man who "had his opinions" about the laws of electricity, and ridiculed the conditions in recognition of which lightning, or a charge from a Leyden jar, would play around him unharmed? He would discover to his cost-would he not?-that, whatever his "views" and "opinions," they do not touch or affect God's laws. Yet, is it not thus that men, shall I say dare, to speak with respect to the conditions on which God gives blessedness hereafter, and to their present use of those means of grace which He has seen fit to ordain for the promotion of that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord"? If these are not used or believed in, may we not ask, "To what other is a man trusting?" What right has he practically to charge God with folly? What authority has he for entertaining and indulging the thought that, whatever may be necessary for others is not needful for him; and that, after all, there are many ways of salvation, and not but one and only way?

To mind the atheist or infidel is much more conmy sistent than the "honorary member" of a creed which he professes, but uses and observes only so far as suits his convenience. In the one case the man believes in