(4) In the fourth place, do not use the Lord's Supper irregularly. Never be absent when this ordinance is administered. Make every sacrifice to be in your place. Regular habits are essential to the maintenance of the health of our bodies. Regular use of every means of grace is essential to the prosperity of our souls. The man who finds it a weariness to attend on every occasion when the Lord's Table is spread, may well doubt whether all is right within him, and whether he is ready for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. If Thomas had not been absent when the Lord appeared the first time to the assembled disciples, he would not have said the foolish things he did. Absence made him miss a blessing. Does this come home to you? Mind what you are about.
(5) In the fifth place, do not do anything to bring discredit on your profession as a communicant. The man who after attending the Lord's Table runs into sin, does more harm perhaps than any sinner. He is a walking sermon on behalf of the devil. He gives occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. He helps to keep people away from Christ. Lying, drinking, adulterous, dishonest, passionate communicants are the helpers of the devil, and the worst enemies of the Gospel. Does this come home to you? Mind what you are about.
(6) In the last place, do not despond and be cast down, if with all your desires you do not feel to get great good from the Lord's Supper. Very likely you are expecting too much. Very likely you are a poor judge of your own state. Your soul's roots may be strengthening and growing, while you think you are not getting on. Very likely you are forgetting that earth is not heaven, and that here we walk by sight and not by faith, and must expect nothing perfect. Lay these things to heart. Do not write bitter things against yourself without cause.
To every reader into whose hands this paper may fall, I commend the whole subject of it as deserving of serious and solemn consideration. I am nothing better than a poor fallible man myself. But if I have made up my mind on any point it is this,—that there is no truth which demands such plain speaking as truth about the Lord's Supper.
NOTE
I ask the special attention of my readers to the following extracts from the last Charge of the late Dr. Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury.
The office held by the Archbishop, the remarkable gentleness and mildness of his character, the fact that this Charge contains his last sentiments, and that it was not made public till after his death,—all this appears to me to invest these extracts about the Lord's Supper with peculiar interest.
"It is far from my intention to impute to all those who have taken the ill-advised step of adopting the Sacrificial Vestments (in administering the Lord's Supper) any sympathy with Roman error; but I am constrained to avow that there are plain indications in some of the publications which have been issued as manifestoes of the opinions of that section of our Church, that some of its professed members, yea, even of her ministers, think themselves at liberty to hold the doctrines of the Church of Rome in relation to the Sacrifice of the Mass, and yet retain their position within the pale of the Anglican Church with the avowed purpose of eliminating from its formularies every trace of the Reformation, as regards its protest against Romish error. The language they hold with respect to it is entirely incompatible with loyalty to the Church to which they profess to belong. They call it 'a Communion deeply tainted with Protestant heresy:' 'Our duty,' they say, 'is the expulsion of the evil, not flight from it.' It is no want of charity, therefore, to declare that they remain with us in order that they may substitute the Mass for the Communion; the obvious aim of our Reformers having been to substitute the Communion for the Mass. Doubtless the Church of England admits of considerable latitude in the views that may be taken of that most mysterious of all mysteries, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And so long as those solemn words of its original institution, 'This is my Body,' 'This is my Blood,' shall remain in the sentence of consecration (and they never can be erased from it), so long will there be varieties of interpretation of these words, all of which may be consistent with a true allegiance to our Church, provided these three conditions be observed:—
"1. That they be not construed to signify that the Natural Body of Christ is present in the Sacrament:
"2. Nor to admit of any adoration either of the Sacramental bread and wine there bodily received, or of any corporal presence of Christ's Natural Body and Blood:
"3. Nor to justify the belief that the Body and Blood are again offered as a satisfaction for sin; seeing that the offering of Christ once made was a perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, original and actual.
"These are the limits which our Church imposes upon the liberty of interpretation of the words of our blessed Lord.
"The use of these sacrificial vestments is in the minds of many intimately connected with the idea that an essential element in the Holy Communion is the offering to God a Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, which abide with the elements in a mysterious manner after the act of Consecration. The minister wears the vestments at that time as a sacrificing priest. According to this view it would seem that the most important part of this Holy Sacrament is what we offer to God, not what we receive from Him.
"This view is not recognised by the Church of England in her formularies. The general definition in the XXVth Article states that Sacraments are 'certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace, by the which [God] doth work invisibly in us;' and it is said specifically of the Lord's Supper (Art. XXVIII.), that it 'is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.' The idea of the Sacrifice of that Body and Blood finds no place in either of these strict definitions. The Catechism speaks the same language when it defines a Sacrament to be 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us.' Nor will an examination of the Office of the Holy Communion itself give any countenance to the idea in question. The only distinct oblation or offering mentioned in that Office is previous to the Consecration of the elements, in the Prayer for the Church Militant, and therefore cannot be an offering or sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ; and the only sacrifice which we are spoken of as making, is the offering of 'ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice.'[3] Our Church seems most studiously to have avoided any expression which could countenance the notion of a perpetual Sacrifice of Christ, while on the other hand it speaks of Christ's death upon the cross as 'His own oblation of Himself once offered as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.' No room is left for the repetition of that sacrifice, or for the admission of any other sacrifice for sin.
"The Romish notion of a true, real, and substantial Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, as it is called in the Council of Trent, entailed the use of the term altar. But this term appears nowhere in the Book of Common Prayer, and was no doubt omitted lest any countenance should be given to the sacrificial view. The notion, therefore, of making in the material elements a perpetual offering of the Body and Blood of Christ, is as foreign to the spirit and the letter of our Service as I hold it to be to the doctrine of the early Fathers, as well as of the leading divines of our Church. This latter point also I shall endeavour to establish hereafter.
"Meanwhile it cannot be denied, on the other hand, that the doctrine of the Real Presence is, in one sense, the doctrine of the Church of England. She asserts that the Body and Blood of Christ are 'verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.' And she asserts equally that such presence is not material or corporal; but that Christ's Body 'is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner.' (Art. XXVIII.) Christ's presence is effectual for all those intents and purposes for which His Body was broken, and His Blood shed. As to a presence elsewhere than in the heart of the believer, the Church of England is silent, and the words of Hooker therefore represent her views: 'The real presence of Christ's most blessed Body and Blood is not to be sought in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament.'"
[VII]
CHARITY
"Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."—1 Cor. xiii. 13.