SQLite format 3@  ii!%%atableTopicsTopicsCREATE TABLE Topics (Title NVARCHAR(100), Notes TEXT)n2a00 Communion Memories{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 COMMUNION MEMORIES\par by John MacDuff, 1886\par \par The record of some Communion Sundays, withf\P-!,  Y10 suited for the Lord's Table\par \par \par Part 1\emdash SERMONS\par \par A01 The Grain of Wheat Falling into the Ground and Dying\par A02 The Great Resolve\par A03 The Psalm of the Pilgrims\par A04 Spiritual Progress\par A05 The Exaltation of the Humanity\par A06 A Flight of Doves\par A07 Christ and His Disciples at the Last Supper\par A08 The Great Festal Gathering and Song of Heaven\par A09 The Obligation of Christians to Observe the Lord's Supper\par A10 Beautiful with Sandals\par A11 The Passover in Egypt and its Typical Significance\par A12 Concluding Address\par \par Part 2\emdash Meditations and Addresses, with Other Aids and Thoughts for the Lord's Table\par \par B01 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #1\par B02 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #2\par B03 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #3\par B04 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #4\par B05 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #5\par B06 Prayer Before Communion\par B07 Address to Aged Communicants\par B08 Address to Mourning Communicants #1\par B09 Address to Mourning Communicants #2\par B10 Address to Mourning Communicants #3\par B11 Private Meditations after Communion #1\par B12 Private Meditations after Communion #2\par B13 Private Meditations after Communion #3\par B14 Private Meditations after Communion #4\par B15 Private Meditations after Communion #5\par B16 Private Meditations after Communion #6\par B17 Prayer after Communion\par \par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par }  and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." John 12:24\par \par To understand the scope and meaning of these words, we must connect them with the verses in the immediately preceding context.\par \par Some Greeks, not Grecian Jews, but Gentiles\emdash what were called Proselytes of the Gate\emdash had gone to Jerusalem to worship with other pilgrims at the Feast of the Passover. They came to Philip of Bethsaida, probably attracted by his Greek name, with the request, "Sir, we would see Jesus."\par \par The disciples could not fail to observe the profound emotion which the desire thus expressed produced on their divine Lord. When Philip told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip together told Jesus, it brought from His lips an utterance of strange triumph\emdash "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified!" Occurring as it did in that solemn season of Passion week, there was something in the petition and the petitioners alike remarka ble. These Greeks were Representative men. In the eye of Christ, it was "a prayer," to use the words of Stier, "in the name of their nation and of all nations," to see the world's Savior. It was the heathen (the "other sheep not of the Jewish fold") soliciting to be gathered in; yes, too, and the Jew introducing the Gentile. Need we wonder, that the Redeemer beholds in this, the first-fruits of a mighty ingathering\emdash a pledge that the time was at hand when the covenant and uncovenanted nations would be blended and reconciled; the middle wall of partition broken down, and all the ends of the earth see the salvation of God? 'What!' He seems to say, 'Gentiles coming to My light! aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise! Men from Pagan shores, and that, too, from no vague curiosity, but with the intense earnestness and wistful longing of "watchers for the morning," uttering the cry of weary humanity, "Sir, we would see Jesus!" Then, the hour is come that the heathe n are given for My inheritance; when men shall be blessed in Me, and all nations shall call Me blessed.'\par \par But, His exclamation of triumph comes to an abrupt conclusion. All at once, by a singularly rapid transition, He changes the theme. That momentary glimpse of glory seems dimmed and clouded by the intervention of some troubled thought\emdash "a prelude to Gethsemane." It is as if some bolt had suddenly darted athwart the azure sky; and He had called to mind that the way to glorificati on is by suffering and death. The Cross must be borne before the Crown can be gained. While in one breath, with an unusual gleam of joy on His countenance, He proclaims, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified," the "decease" He must first "accomplish" casts its dreadful shadow on His path; and He adds the similitude of our text\emdash "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone." You will observe, in the announcement and enfor cement of a great truth, He goes, not to the Volume of Prophecy (this He might have done, and probably would have done, had He been discoursing to Jews alone). But in the presence of these Greeks, He turns to pages better understood by them; and allows Nature, through her simplest processes, to speak, and unfold the impending mystery. He brings before them the familiar parable of the seed-grain dropped into the earth\emdash showing how life comes out of death\emdash a new and more exuberant growth springing from the destruction of the inserted grain.\par \par Dear brethren, the subject surely is specially appropriate in the prospect we have of commemorating the death and sufferings of our divine Savior. Come, then, let us gather around the lowly emblem, and contemplate "Christ, THE GRAIN OF WHEAT."\par \par In doing so, let me direct your meditations to these three points\emdash\par \par The Grain of Wheat abiding alone.\par \par The Grain of Wheat falling into the ground and dying.\par \par The Grain of Wheat bringing forth much fruit.\par \par \par I. The Grain of Wheat ABIDING ALONE.\par \par It is Christ's humiliation which we are mainly called in these words, as well as in our commemorative feast of today, to ponder.\par \par But in order, by contrast, to bring out the wonders of that humiliation, let us, as here suggested, go back to a past Eternity, and contemplate that Grain of Wheat abiding alone.\par \par  Immensity a void. The mysterious Trinity in unity, pervading and filling all space. No need of worlds or angels to glorify them. Stupendous thought! To wing our way up the ascending steeps, with no planet for a resting-place\emdash No created spots where we can breathe, and pause, and breathe again\emdash Nothing above, below, around, but GOD!! No trill of an angel's song, to break the trance of everlasting ages\emdash There was the Grain of Wheat abiding alone\emdash The Eternal Son with the Eternal Father, in the glory which He had with Him before the world was!\par \par Sublime indeed is it to contemplate Christ at this moment, as the Sovereign Ruler of His vast universe marshaling its hosts of stars; kindling up the Altar-fires of Heaven, "binding the sweet influences of Pleiades; loosing the bands of Orion; guiding Arcturus with his sons." But equally grand and magnificent is it to revert to the period before the existence of this wealth and munificence of power\emdash when no forests were waving, no waters rolling, no planets circling in their spheres. To think of the great Center of all, then reposing in the solitudes of His own Infinite Being\emdash no tongue of angel, redeemed or unredeemed, to hymn His praise\emdash yet ineffably glorious in His own blessed Nature!\par \par Behold "the Grain of Wheat"\emdash behold the Second Person in the Ever-blessed Trinity "abiding alone!"\par \par \par II. The Grain of Wheat FALLING INTO THE GROUND, AND DYING.\par \par Impelled by nothing but His own free, sovereign, unmerited grace, Christ resolves not to abide alone. He has to come down to a ruined world in order to effect its ransom and salvation. Compassionating the wandering star which had broken loose from its orbit, plunging ever deeper and deeper into darkness\emdash He resolves to replace it within the sphere of the divine regards.\par \par But, how replace it? How, in other words, is this Redemption from sin and death to be effected? Is it by becoming incarnate in order to live a pattern-life, the embodiment and manifestation of all virtue and moral excellence; and thus exhibit in the sight of apostate men a model of unsullied purity, sublime unselfishness, peerless self-sacrifice, divine love?\par \par He doubtless did so. He, the Infinite One, descended in the likeness of sinful flesh; and as He walked through a guilt-stricken woe-worn world, wherever He went He scattered the riches of His beneficence. Compassion beamed in His look; grace flowed from His lips; disease crouched at His feet; sickness at His touch took wings, and fled away. God the Father complacently beholding that sinless, Holy Being, proclaimed from the excellent glory\emdash "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."\par \par But all this was subordinate to higher requirements\emdash more dreadful responsibilities. "Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). Regarding Him as merely the Ideal of Humanity, the manifested perfection of divine "Manhood," He could not, in that capacity, save us. Death (in this most majestic and solemn of all illustrations) must be the condition of life. The grain of wheat\emdash to revert to the symbol in outer material Nature\emdash may be perfect, a perfect specimen of its kind. No more, it has in it the germ of vitality\emdash the seminal principle of life. But if left by itself in the granary, it cannot fructify. It remains an inert unproductive thing\emdash "it abides alone." It must first be sown, or, we may figuratively express it, be buried in the earth. But thus falling into the ground and dying, it comes up a verdant stalk, ultimately bearing fruit, the parent and progenitor of a thousand harvests.\par \par So it was with Jesus, the Lord and Giver of life. How wondrously does Nature's lowliest page thus preach to us the great central truth of the Gospel\emdash "Him who died for us, and rose again." As I go to the field where the husbandman is scattering his grain, I see in one of those tiny seeds a type and interpreter of that Mystery which angels desire to look into. It tells me that the way to the seed's multiplication and to Christ's glorification is the same\emdash by the law of death. I see the grain of wheat, which abode alone in the barn, taken and cast into the ground; harrowed over; left during winter or in early spring to slumber under the insensate clod. Anon the field is flushed with living green\emdash the one yellow seed has started up, multiplied thirty-fold. Out of apparent decay and dissolution there emerges prolific life and loveliness\emdash "it brings forth much fruit." "I came," says the Great Antitype, and Interpreter of these nature-teachings, "that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly."\par \par There are two words in our text, on which we may for a moment instructively pause. The one suggesting the necessity, the other the voluntariness of the death of Jesus.\par \par (1) "EXCEPT a grain of wheat fall into the ground." "Unless."\emdash There was no other possible way by which the world could be redeemed. Without the dying of the grain-seed\emdash no life. Without the shedding of blood in the person of the Divine Sin-bearer\emdash no remission.\par \par This is not the place to enter on the consideration or explanation of theological difficulties and perplexities. The whole principle of Surety substitution is a mystery to us; though, too, abundantly exemplified and manifested, alike in the analogy of Nature and in human experience. But we may well believe, that had there been any other possible method, by which the vindication of God's law could have been effected and the sinner saved\emdash the Grain of Wheat would to this day have remained (if we can with reverence employ such a figure) where it had been from all Eternity, in its place in the Heavenly Garner. Christ would have "abode alone,"\emdash God, the Being of infinite compassion as well as of righteousness, would never and could never have permitted unnecessary and superfluous suffering in the Son of His love. It was the one only means of restitution and safety. "It became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their Salvation perfect through suffering" (Heb. 2:10.) There was a necessity for all that He endured, arising out of the very Nature of God. The law, in the outer world, of the seed-growing, became a law to the Moral Lawgiver Himself.\par \par (2.) We have the voluntariness of Christ's death here set forth. "If it dies!" "If." This same monosyllable He Himself repeats with similar emphasis a few verses further on\emdash "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me."\par \par It is a conditional particle of intense and momentous significance. It sets before us the perfect freeness and spontaneity of the Sacrifice\emdash uttered at the moment it was, with the shadow of the Cross projected on His path\emdash His hour of untold Suffering close at hand. May we not take it as revealing to us the human, in the divine Person of the God-man\emdash for the instant shrinking at the anticipation of coming anguish? "If it dies!" As if He were casting up and pondering in His own infinite Mind, the possibility of evading the terrible necessity. "If it dies." For a moment, if I may so express it, appalled at the dreadful yet indispensable conditions Suretyship involved!\par \par  How full indeed is all this passage of His strong human emotions. A few verses succeeding He exclaims\emdash "Now is the judgment," or, as some have rendered it, though we may challenge the accuracy of the rendering\emdash "Now is the CRISIS of this world." But in reality it was so\emdash the crisis-moment\emdash the great turning-point in the world's salvation. Am I to save Myself\emdash or save it? Am I (the Grain of Wheat) to fall into the ground and die, or am I to return, unsurrendered to deat h, to the heaven whence I came? Are the longings and hopes and aspirations of 4000 years to be rolled back again into the abyss of chaos and night? Or, is the debt to be paid, and earth's millions to be saved? "Now is the Crisis of this world."\emdash The Church of the past and the Church of the future are, as it were, hushed into silence, listening with arrested ear for the announcement of the resolve, which rests with the Divine Speaker. Is He to pause or go on? Is the cup to pass from Him, or is He to !drink it? Is He to drop into the ground and become life for others; or, to "abide alone?" He Himself, at this same crisis-hour, prolongs the soliloquy\emdash "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?" "What shall I say?"\emdash Shall it be, Father, save Me! Accept My past life of loving filial obedience! Father, let Me leave untasted this dire chalice of death. Let Me revoke My word of promised Surrender and Sacrifice, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death!" "Father, let the world perish. Forego the world's harvest\emdash take me to Yourself to abide alone, and forever?\par \par We read in another place, regarding the great Harvest-home of the world, that "the Reapers are the Angels." A writer on this passage of a bygone age, has graphically pictured angel whispering in breathless interest to angel, as they look forward to this reaping time\emdash "What will be the solution of this stupendous problem?" "What will He say?" Shall we have the joy of rea#ping our golden harvest\emdash or, will the Grain of Wheat refuse to fall into the earth, and abide alone? What DID He say? "Father, save Me from this hour! nevertheless for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Your Name!" It is enough. In these last words He has given the sure "prelude of victory." He will save others, Himself He will not save! The angels are not to be bereft of their glorious reaping. This Man of Sorrows (His soul in trouble)\emdash this God-man Mediator, going forth weepin$g, bearing in Himself precious Seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing His sheaves with Him.\par \par We all recall the old Roman story, when, in obedience to the oracular response, a human life, by an act of heroic self-surrender, paid the demanded penalty, and the earthquake-rent was closed.\par \par Christ, in a nobler sense, was that Victim. By the supremest of all deeds of self-sacrifice, because superhuman and divine, the yawning gulf between earth and Heaven ha%s been filled up. The Prince of Life, the sinless Son of God, has given Himself for a ransom.\par \par Like another Aaron, "He stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed." In the lowly emblem of our text, the Grain of Wheat dies, and becomes the life of a perishing world. This leads us\endash\par \par III. To the Grain of Wheat BRINGING FORTH MUCH FRUIT.\par \par It was prophesied regarding the Redeemer, that He would "see His seed" (Isaiah 53:10). "This&," says He, "is the Father's will who has sent Me, that of all whom He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day" (John 6:39). In that group of Hellenists\emdash men from the shores of the most intellectual of the European nations\emdash who now stood in His presence and had given the key-note to all this discourse, the Savior beheld the first "handful of grain on the top of the mountains, whose fruit would yet shake like Lebanon." The wise men had come from the Eas't to worship at His birth\emdash these Greeks had come from the West to worship before His death. The simple desire, "We would see Jesus," was, to Him who heard it, better than all gold and frankincense and myrrh. It was as precious ointment against the day of His burial. With the omniscient glance of Deity, He that moment foreknew that He was about to die. He (the Tree of Life) was to be felled to the ground; the axe was already laid to the root. But as many a noble inhabitant of the forest, coming with (a crash on the sward, scatters its seed all around, and in a few years there starts up a vast plantation\emdash So Christ, by dying, scattered far and wide the grain of spiritual and immortal life. The seed and the leaves of this Tree are for the healing of the nations. The divine Grain-Seed drops into the ground; a golden harvest waves, and Heaven is garnered with ransomed souls.\par \par Brethren, it is surely delightful for us, on this Day of Communion, to connect the cross with the triumphal) crown. We are about to contemplate the one solitary fact, the Grain of Wheat falling into the ground and dying. But the eye of faith is carried forward to that final harvest of the world, when the mighty Conqueror will be recognized and welcomed, as the Balm of all hearts, the Redressor of all wrongs. Seeing of the fruit of the travail of His Soul, He shall be satisfied\emdash and surrounded with His spiritual Seed exclaim, "Behold I, and the children whom You have given Me." The cry subsequently heard f*rom these same Greeks and their shores, "Come over and help us," will become the shout of nations. "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be."\par \par Oh wondrous multitude which no man can number! A multitude growing ever since Abel bent, a solitary worshiper, in the heavenly Sanctuary, with his solitary song\emdash the first solitary sheaf in these Heavenly granaries. Yes! the song is deepening; the sheaves are multiplying. The patriarchal Church swelled the store; the Mosaic Church adde+d to its bundles of first-fruits, and its members prolonged the festal anthem. The strain was taken up by shepherds and fishermen of Galilee. It was echoed by Magi of Persia, and heathens of Greece. It spread along the shores of the Mediterranean; it rang in the halls of Caesar. It was taken up by the waves of the Western seas. It reached the shores of Britain, and from her sent its echoes round the world. India uttered it from her Pagodas. Iceland proclaimed it amid her eternal winters. Ethiopia stretche,d out her hands unto God; and this was the burden of the universal prayer, "Sir, we would see Jesus."\par \par The song of the Church on earth is nothing to the song of the Church above. It has expanded into "the sound of much people, the sound of a great multitude, the noise of many waters, the voice of mighty thunderings." And what is its theme? It is the death of the Grain-Seed, and the resultant "much fruit." "You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every kingdom and- tongue and people and nation."\par \par Brethren, we come this day to present ourselves as an offering\emdash living sacrifices on God's altar; as it were a portion of the fruits of the Savior's atonement\emdash acknowledging, that if we have any life in us\emdash it is as springing from that Grain of Wheat we have now seen (and are about through the more vivid emblem of His own instituted Ordinance to see) falling into the ground and dying. We come, joyfully owning and confessing, that all we .have we derive from Him, as the life of our souls.\par \par May not this appropriately form the closing practical thought\emdash If He died for us, what have we done, what are we willing to do for Him? The lowly disciple of Bethany brought the best offering she had, with which to embalm her Lord on the eve of His decease. Are we preparing our tributes of affection?\emdash our alabaster box filled with the choicest graces of humility, faith, repentance, new obedience\emdash loving Him who has giv/en us, as the mightiest proof and measure of His love, that instead of "abiding alone" through the everlasting ages with the Father, He was willing to fall into the ground and die?\par \par Spirit of God! consecrate our Communion Sabbath! Open the doors of the banqueting house! Unseal the Sacred mysteries! Let Your people leave the din of the world behind them, that they may come and "see Jesus!" With their hearts full of the lowly similitude of our text; with their footsteps turned to Gethsemane and Calvary\emdash the cross and the grave\emdash let them obey the summons, 'Come, see the Grain of Wheat laid in the furrow of darkness and death! Come, see the place where the Lord suffered; Come, see the place where the Lord lay\emdash for He has swallowed up death in Victory!' May Angels, looking down upon us as we are assembled at the Holy Table, be able to say, "They joy before You, according to the joy in harvest; and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil!"\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } ;;2a00 Communion Memories{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 COMMUNION MEMORIES\par by John MacDuff, 1886\par \par The record of some Communion Sundays, with Meditations,\par Addresses, and Prayers $$,MA01 The Grain of Wheat Falling into{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 The Grain of Wheat Falling into the Ground and Dying.\par \b0\par "I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground3he Sacrament of the Supper is a votive as well as a commemorative ordinance. And these words may be appropriately taken as embodying a holy resolution, or rather a series of holy resolutions, on the part of those who have recently recorded their vows.\par \par "The Name of the Lord," it is said, "is a strong tower\emdash the righteous runs into it, and is safe" (Prov. 18:10). You who, as good soldiers, have anew attested your allegiance to your heavenly Leader, are represented as garrisoning thi4s divine Stronghold\emdash "Those who trust in the Lord shall be like Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abides forever." It has its "places of defense"\emdash fortified battlements. And we are now to invite you to "go about Zion, mark the towers thereof, mark well her bulwarks and consider her palaces." The various Towers of this Great spiritual Fortress are nothing else than the titles and attributes with which, in His own Inspired Volume, God has seen meet to make Himself known. Of such there are5 six, more conspicuously presented to us, in Old Testament Scripture alone\emdash\par \par JEHOVAH-TSIDKENU. The Tower of Righteousness.\par \par JEHOVAH-SHALOM. The Tower of Peace.\par \par JEHOVAH- SHAMMAH. The Tower of the Divine Presence.\par \par JEHOVAH-NISSI. The Tower of Defense.\par \par JEHOVAH-JIREH. The Tower of Trust.\par \par JEHOVAH-ROPHI. The Tower of Healing.\par \par After a Sacramental Season, it is my privilege, as w6e survey these glorious munitions, to say to all believing communicants, in the words of the Prophet Zechariah\emdash "I will strengthen them in the Lord; and they shall walk up and down in His name."\par \par I. The First Tower we mention is JEHOVAH-TSIDKENU. "The Lord our Righteousness."\par \par We were surely today specially invited to behold this Tower built on "the Rock of Ages." What was the main purpose of our gathering at the Holy Table, but to commemorate the Prince of Life w7orking out for us, by His obedience and death, a righteousness not our own? Any shelter we can rear is a tower of sand\emdash a citadel of bulrushes\emdash that will leave us naked and defenseless in that solemn hour which is to try every man's work, and every man's righteousness of what sort it is. But, says Jehovah, "I bring near My righteousness" (Isa. 46:13). The salvation wrought out by His Eternal Son He has "appointed for walls and for bulwarks." And the believer's prayer who has fled to this Refug8e city is\emdash "Let Your hand be upon the Man of Your right hand, on the Son of Man whom You have made strong for Yourself" (Ps. 80:17). He has finished transgression and made an end of sin, and made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in Everlasting Righteousness (Dan. 9:24). Perish all else that would interfere with it. Let the giant deed\emdash the triumph of divine sorrow and love which we have had before us in significant symbol\emdash stand forth in its solitary grandeur. To attempt anything 9of our own by way of supplement or addition to the merits of the Divine Surety, would be seeking to gild refined gold; holding up the candle to help the sunlight; or listening to those who counseled the youthful conqueror of Goliath to cumber himself with useless armor, a helmet of steel, and boots of brass, and an untempered shield. Like him, let us cast them all aside, saying, as we stand panoplied in the great imputed righteous ness\emdash "Behold! O God, our Shield, and look on the face of Your Anoint:ed."\par \par Brethren and fellow-Communicants, think as you pace that Tower, with its memories of suffering and victory, how it has been crowded by the Saints in the past. You are walking where Abraham walked, when "he believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." You are treading what was consecrated by the footsteps of Isaac and Jacob\emdash Moses, and David, and Isaiah\emdash the blessed Apostles, the holy Martyrs, the members of the true Church throughout all the world and i;n every age. You are taking up, in the text, the strain chanted and sung by each of them in turn\emdash "We will walk in the name of the Lord our God," and "this is His name whereby He shall be called, the Lord our Righteousness" (Jer. 23:6).\par \par II. A Second Tower is JEHOVAH-SHALOM. "The Lord my Peace," or "The Lord send Peace."\par \par This Spiritual Tower of Peace stands side by side with the Tower of Righteousness. "The work of righteousness shall be peace" (Isa. 32:17). "Beiing Hills\emdash from that Righteousness, which the Psalmist describes to be as "the great mountains" (Ps. 36:6). Like the glacier Alps, from which streams, melted by the sun, are flowing all summer long in the midst of drought, when every other channel is dry.\par \par Walk up and down, as Christian sentinels, in this Name of the Lord\emdash singing your watch-song, "You will keep him, O God, in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You!"\par \par What a repose this Gospel peace give?s amid all the petty troubles of life! The Apostle speaks of it as "the Peace of God, which passes all understanding," and which "keeps the heart" (according to the meaning of the word in the original), as in a citadel or garrison. What a calm elevation is imparted to the present; while the future can be contemplated undismayed! The chariot of peace in which the believer is seated rolls on; and life's troubles are but as the thin clouds of dust on the gusty highway. Yes, you who climbed so lately "the Hil@l of blessing," as you enter this Tower of Zion, and gaze from its loopholed window, see how, when God gives His beloved the gracious boon of peace, He makes all things look peaceful. All that belongs to the Christian; his duties; his engagements; his very cares and difficulties, are softened and mellowed with this calm tranquility; just as in nature the setting sun transforms and metamorphoses the whole landscape into gold. While from your Peace-Tower you thus look along life's valley, you can observe alAso, beyond the border river, the fields of the true Canaan "dressed in living green," and which this purchased peace has made all your own. With the present rest of grace in possession, and the rest of glory in reversion, we may well say of the Lord, "He is my Rock, and my Fortress, and my Deliverer; my God, my Strength, in whom I will trust; my Shield, and the horn of my salvation, and my high Tower."\par \par Let us joyfully renew and ratify our vows; and with earnest heart and voice utter theB resolution, "We will walk in THIS name of the Lord our God forever and ever."\par \par III. A Third Tower is JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH. "The Lord is there,"\emdash The Tower of the Divine Presence.\par \par It is a blessed thing for the believer to bear constantly about with him the realized sense of the Divine nearness, and it is his peculiar privilege and prerogative to do so. God, indeed, is everywhere. The world, the universe has written on its every portal JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH\emdash "The Lord Cis there." It is gleaming in starry letters on the nightly skies. It is carved in deep hieroglyphics on earth's lowest strata. It is inscribed on the brow of its loftiest mountains. It is written in mosaic on the floor of the sounding sea. Among the forest glades\emdash the cathedral aisles of tangled wood\emdash where neither hammer nor axe nor tool of iron has built a Temple, God is there. Amid the waste of desert sands; on the mossy bank; on the lonely shore, God is there. In the summer calm; the raginDg storm; the smiling harvest, God is there. Like one of those giant mountains whose base is furrowed with lakes and valleys, and its top pierces the clouds; so is the Ever near\emdash the Omnipresent One. Heaven is His throne, and the earth is His footstool. From among its lowliest insect tribes, up to the myriad ranks of Angel and Archangel\emdash JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH\emdash the Lord is there.\par \par He is the living God also in Providence\emdash alike in great things and in small. When we hear ofE kingdoms convulsed; nations reeling and trembling, The Lord is there. "Shall there be evil," says the prophet, "in a city, and the Lord has not done it?" (Amos 3:6). When we hear of death darkening the humblest dwelling; when we see the tiniest bud of earth's affection falling, as we think, prematurely to the ground, "The Lord is there," "Who knows not in all these things that the hand of the Lord has wrought this?" (Job 12:9). Yes, it is delightful and comforting surely, with the eye of faith, to see JeFhovah thus riding in the chariot of Providence, reining in (if I may so express it) at His sovereign Will its fiery coursers\emdash the mighty wheels, like those in Ezekiel's vision\emdash rather their complex movements, wheel within wheel\emdash revolving and evolving nothing but good\emdash He guiding and supervising all; appointing every sorrow that is endured, and every tear that is shed!\par \par There is yet a nobler and pre-eminent sense in which His covenant people can flee into this StrGong Tower; and walking in the name of their God can say\emdash "The Lord Almighty is with us\emdash the God of Jacob is our Refuge,"\emdash "Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). Oh! how it would hallow all life's duties, and take the sting from many of its sorrows, and fortify against its temptations, if we could ever regard ourselves as God's fortresses\emdash our souls bearing the superscription on their living gates\emdash "The Lord is there." Where the tHerm we now speak of is used, Micah is gazing with prophetic inspiration on the future city of Jerusalem, and the Sanctuary which was yet to crown the heights of Zion. He tells us that although there will be the absence of the glory of the First Temple\emdash no visible Shekinah\emdash no visible cloud\emdash yet that the presence of the invisible God will be diffused like an odor of sacred incense around; and the name of it shall be JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH.\par \par Dear friends, today's watch-word, cirIculating from guest to guest at the Holy Table, was "Surely the Lord is in this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of Heaven." Let us seek to perpetuate the blessings of a Communion-Sabbath by the holy resolve\emdash "If Your Presence go not with us, carry us not hence." "You, O Lord, are in the midst of us, and we are called by Your name." "We will walk in this name of the Lord our God forever and ever."\par \par IV. A Fourth Tower is JEHOVAH-NISSI. "The Lord Jmy Banner,"\emdash The Tower of Defense.\par \par This reminds all of us who have given public testimony of our faith in Christ, that we are still in an enemy's country. You remember how Bunyan (to quote the great Dreamer again) represents Christiana and her children knocking at the Gate; while in a castle, near by, there were those who were assailing them. If any leave a Communion-table to return to the world in their own strength, they shall assuredly fall. But we go not a warfare on our own cKharges. "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God," and He who is for us, is greater than all that can be against us.\par \par Let our moral attitude be like the workmen on the walls of Zion in Nehemiah's time, building with the sword girded by our side; ever ready, when the missiles are flying thick and fast around, to flee to Him who is a "High Tower against the enemy," and who thus invites all weak and helpless ones\emdash "Come, my people,L enter into your chambers, and shut your doors about you; hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast" (Isa. 26:20). This is the true Tower of King David, built for an armory, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men (Sol. Song 4:4). "Blessed is the people who know the joyful sound\emdash they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of Your countenance. In Your name shall they rejoice all the day and in Your righteousness shall they be exalted. For YouM are the glory of their strength\emdash and in Your favor our horn shall be exalted. For the Lord is our DEFENSE\emdash and the Holy One of Israel is our king" (Ps. 89:15-18).\emdash "We will walk in this name of the Lord our God forever and ever."\par \par V. Our Fifth Tower is JEHOVAH-JIREH. "The Lord will provide,"\emdash The Tower of Trust.\par \par It is always desirable for a conquering army either to be near its supplies, or to keep up its line of communication. That broken, allN is lost. The Christian has his promise of assured help\emdash "My God shall supply all your needs, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19). "The Lord will provide." Ah, that future! that unknown, sometimes dark and chequered future, how many a thought it costs! Who can forecast the varying scenes of changeful life? It is like walking up some sequestered dell; every turn in the path presents something new. A cluster of flowers here, a rotten branch or decaying tree there\emdash now Oa flowing stream, now a quiet pool, now a sprawling cascade; now a gleam of sunlight, now the driving rain or muttering thunder. But each apparently capricious turn in life's way, all its accidents and incidents, are the appointments of Infinite Wisdom and "those who know Your Name shall put their trust in You."\par \par Trust\emdash trust in the goodness, and mercy, and faithfulness of God, is surely one at least of the great lessons which a Communion Season inculcates. Looking to these symbolsP and pledges of unutterable love, you can confidently make the challenge\emdash "He who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). A child in the midst of the storm can muffle its head in its father's arms and fall asleep. God is your Father! Walk up and down in the strength of that Gospel Name. Every earthly father does in a small scale to his family what the Great Parent does on a large scale to all His people. From Qthat glorious Tower on the Hill of Ordinances you can look through the embrasures behind, as well as before. Survey the landmarks of the bygone pilgrimage! Count up your Ebenezers\emdash the providential interpositions of the past, and then say\emdash taking these as pledges and guarantees for the time to come, "You have been my help\emdash leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation." The future, as we have already said, with all its vicissitudes, is in His keeping and ordering. You may work Rthe loom\emdash the shuttle may be in your hands but the pattern is all His\emdash the intermingling threads of varied hue, even what are dark and somber. Talk not of a tangled web, when it is that of the Great Craftsman. Confide in that heart of Infinite Love. Shall we dream of being wiser than God? Shall we dream of correcting His Book of Sovereign decrees? of altering the building-plans of the Divine Architect? No! trust His loving heart, where sense cannot trace His hand. Trust is a staff not for leveSl plains and smooth highways. It is the alpenstock, the pilgrim prop for the mountaineer, for the rugged ascent, the slippery path, the glacier crevasse.\par \par As the El-Shaddai\emdash the All-sufficient, God has said, "I will never leave you, I will (in the redundant emphasis and energy of the original) "never, never, never forsake you." He is a Rich Provider, a Sure Provider, a Willing Provider, a Wise Provider. JEHOVAH-JIREH! "We will walk in this name of the Lord our God forever and ever.T"\par \par VI. Yet one other Tower remains to be noted. JEHOVAH-ROPHI. The Tower of Healing\emdash "I am the Lord who heals you."\par \par Among those who partook of the Holy Sacrament, doubtless there were not a few members of the ever wide family of affliction. Some, experiencing soul-sorrows\emdash hidden, unspoken griefs, too deep for utterance or for tears. In the case of others, trials, the nature of which is only too patent to fellow-worshipers and fellow-communicants, from the Usable attire and symbols of mourning. It is blessed for you to think of Him whose love you commemorated, as Himself the King of sorrows\emdash the Prince of sufferers\emdash who, just because He was thus "acquainted with grief," is pre-eminently able to heal the broken in heart, and to bind up their wounds. He proclaims as His Name (and He suffered, and wept, and bled, and died, that He might have a right to say it) JEHOVAH-ROPHI," I am the Lord that heals you." He is the true "Healing-tree," which, cast Vinto your bitterest Marah-pool, will make its waters sweet.\par \par Brethren, if other earthly portions have perished, cleave to Him who is unfailing and imperishable\emdash whose Name survives, when prized earthly names have either faded in oblivion, or are whispered through tears. When, let me ask, is the name of God most comforting? "I have remembered," says the Psalmist, "Your name, O Lord, in the night" (Ps.119:55). It was at Jacob's fierce struggle-hour, as at many of our own, he was led Wto prompt the earnest question to Him who was wrestling with him, "What is your name?" And, as with the Patriarch, He blesses us there. That Name of God is like a lighthouse, with its six-sided revolving lamps, it shines brightest in the gloom of trial. If some of the loopholes of your Tower be darkened\emdash if the sun has set; and the midnight sky be over and around you; be it yours to sing\emdash "You will light my candle, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness," "God our Maker gives songs in the Xnight."\par \par My closing communion wish and prayer is, that that Name, which is above every name, may be to all of you as "Ointment poured forth." "The name of the Lord!" it is spoken of as the badge at a more enduring Feast in the Church of the glorified. "His name," we read, "shall be upon their foreheads." No more; that Name is to form the theme of the saints' everlasting song. For what is the ascription of the Church triumphant\emdash the ransomed conquerors beheld by John in vision, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God? "Who shall not fear You, O Lord, and glorify YOUR NAME?"\par \par O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Three in One in covenant for our salvation\emdash Send us help from the Sanctuary, and strengthen us out of Zion! that the resolve following a transient season of Communion on earth, may form at once the vow and the joy of Eternity\emdash\par \par "We will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } }A}4uA03 The Psalm of the Pilgrims{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\coZaeA02 The Great Resolve{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 THE GREAT RESOLVE\par \b0\par "We will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever."\emdash Micah 4:5\par \par T2[lortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PSALM OF THE PILGRIMS\par \b0\par "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home there, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young\emdash at a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King\ and my God! How happy are those who can live in your house, always singing your praises. Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs, where pools of blessing collect after the rains! They will continue to grow stronger, and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem."\emdash Psalm 84:1-7\par \par This is emphatically a Communicant's Psalm; and occurs] appropriately today in our ordinary course of exposition.\par \par Conjectures have been numerous and varied on its authorship and historical bearings. This would not be the time or place to enter at length on the vindication of any favorite theory. Enough to remark, that, while by very general consent it is regarded as a Psalm of the Jewish Pilgrims on their way to one of the annual Feasts, there is, to say the least\emdash following not a few eminent authorities\emdash a strong probability th^at it is not of David's but of Hezekiah's times; and refers to the gathering of festal worshipers during his occupancy of the throne. That pious monarch inaugurated his reign by a season of national humiliation, and by a subsequent purification of the Temple; ridding the latter of idolatrous objects which had clustered around it during the life of his apostate predecessor\emdash cleansing its courts, regilding and restoring cedar-gates and porticoes\emdash altar, and table, and candlestick\emdash also rev_iving the ceremonial of music, in accordance with the Divine model appointed by David and Asaph.\par \par Hezekiah, however, did not rest satisfied with this outer reformation and revival, noble as it was. On the completion of the task, he calls together all his subjects to make a consecration of a nobler temple still\emdash that of their own souls. Moreover, the same deep-seated religious zeal prompts him to decree a great sacramental season. A Passover is to be celebrated; and not for Judah on`ly\emdash but, with his patriotic heart sighing over the disruption and alienation of the ten tribes, he would once more endeavor to re-unite the dual kingdom in sacred fellowship and service\emdash that, too, even though the period of the year was unusual, and the dark cloud of the Assyrian invasion was gathering in the north-eastern sky. He would have them forget for a time their differences, and meet together under the old roof-tree of Jerusalem's Sanctuary\emdash around her hallowed altars; and under aher anointed Priest and King, be one again. It was a beautiful conception; and one, surely, in all respects worthy and desirable; for indeed the Passover had not been duly kept since the age of Joshua. Oh! would not this be the answered prayer of another magnificent Psalm, most probably also of his\emdash the sigh of the true-hearted over the crumbling of church and state\emdash "Return; we beseech You, O God Almighty; look down from Heaven, and behold, and visit this vine!"\par \par He allows nbo time to elapse in carrying the project into effect. No sooner is the Temple purged and re-decorated, and the old ceremonial revived, than messengers are despatched through the land "from Dan to Beersheba," and especially to the Kingdom of Israel, to proclaim the approaching Paschal solemnity. They speed from town to town, from village to village; blowing up the trumpet in the new moon; announcing the time appointed\emdash the solemn feast-day. As was quite to be expected (what alas! is found too often tche accompaniment or result of ecclesiastical divisions)\emdash the royal couriers in many instances met only with insult. The sacred enthusiasm of the king was traduced and misunderstood. Not a few forfeited the intended blessing\emdash the dew that was to descend on the mountains of Zion; when "the good and pleasant thing" might have been revived, of "brethren" (brethren once, and who should have been brethren still) "dwelling together again in unity."\par \par Nevertheless, rejected by some, ad considerable number from the more northern tribes responded to the call. The blare of the silver trumpets awoke the dormant religious patriotism; and before many days had elapsed, the great pilgrim road\emdash the Jewish "Via Sacra," untraversed with the same intent for ages\emdash was again studded with travelers singing, though with what has been well called "pathetic joy," the Songs of Zion.\par \par We know not what these other songs may have been\emdash but we have at all events presumptivee reason to surmise, that the present Psalm was written, or in the case of too strong assertion\emdash may have been written by the Korhites, for this resuscitated Passover of the King of Judah, to give embodiment and expression to the inward aspirations of the worshiping throngs. As such, let us now ponder it\emdash as such, let us keep before our mental eye these scattered travelers; as from the distant Naphtali\emdash the border-land of Lebanon\emdash they emerge on their pilgrimage, until they stand wfithin the gates of the elect metropolis.\par \par May the sentiments of the Psalm be echoed by many lowly festive worshipers here. May we, too, as children of Zion, be joyful in our King.\par \par Let us confine ourselves at present, to this one aspect of the Psalm, as containing a description of the Pilgrim's (or in our case the Communicant's) journey to the Feast.\par \par This is contained in the opening portion selected\emdash what may be more correctly called the first agnd second strophes. As the wayfarer commences his journey, or starts in company with a few fellow-Israelites, his heart kindles into emotion at the thought of once more worshiping the God of his fathers in the oldest of their sacred rites, and that too within the ancestral Shrine\emdash "How amiable (how lovable, how beautiful) are Your tabernacles, O Lord Almighty! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cries out for the living God!" In our authorised version, thhese worshipers are represented as envying the sparrow or swallow who have built their nests in the eaves of the Temple, or under its altars. The figure, however, is very simple and expressive in its application, without having recourse to a somewhat strange and unnatural rendering.\par \par The writer would seem rather to take the image of these two birds sinking into their woodland nest for repose, merely as an emblem of the blessed rest and peaceful enjoyment anticipated in entering within thie Gates of the Sanctuary. "Yes, as the sparrow finds out a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young; so," (with a significant ellipsis) "so\emdash Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God." The traveler pursues his way until we may suppose him to have reached a resting-place. As he pauses, leaning on his staff under some shady oak or terebinth, still they are anticipations of the festal day\emdash the hallowed courts\emdash which occupy his mental vision; and he breakjs forth into the soliloquy, "Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, they will be still praising You!"\par \par But onwards he proceeds; or, it may be, we have already suggested, as one of a caravan. They have now come to a gloomier part of the road. The scenery around them wears a more desolate aspect, and tinges for the moment their own thoughts with sadness. They have reached "the Valley of Baca"\emdash "the Valley of weeping" or "the Valley of the weeping trees"\emdash a valley still poinkted out on the way to Jerusalem\emdash supposed by some to have been full of a peculiar moisture-distilling tree\emdash "nature's tear-drops" falling from its pendent branches. At all events it was, to use a modern oriental word, a dry and somber desert\emdash the sun above poured on their heads his burning arrows, and their lips were parched with thirst. But even here, their spirits rise and their songs ascend. The God of the pilgrims has made "the wilderness pools of water, and the dry land springs of wlater." He has changed that scorched "Valley of the weeping tree" into a Well. The clouds which had gathered gloomily on the hill-tops around\emdash screening the sunshine\emdash burst in blessing\emdash and down the slopes the streams with their glad music descend. The welcome boon has already filled its waterless troughs and ridges. In the place they least expected, weeping has been changed into joy. Baca has become as Elim. God has sent a plentiful rain, whereby He has refreshed His heritage when they wmere weary. They can sing with joyful lips\emdash "Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs, where pools of blessing collect after the rains!" Psalm 84:5-6\par \par The Valley is at last traversed; and in due time there are indications that the journey is drawing to a close. The groups are increasing (v. 7). "They go from strength to strength," possibly, nas that may be rendered, 'from company to company;' or 'from halting-place to halting-place.' Group is added to group; larger and yet larger grows the caravan; louder and yet louder swells the song. And now, Temple and tower and Holy Mount rise conspicuous to view. Their glowing anticipations are on the point of fulfillment. The City of Solemnities is reached\emdash its Gates open to the weary travelers\emdash "Every one of them in Zion appears before God" (v. 7.) And, beautiful for situation (then as nowo), on the sides of the north, is "the City of the Great King!"\par \par My friends, is there here, in any feeble measure, a picture of ourselves this day? As the Israel of God, can we enter into the ecstatic language of these pilgrims of old as they came up to Hezekiah's restored courts? Specially observe the keynote of their song\emdash what it was that formed the burden of their intensest aspirations. It was to meet Jehovah\emdash to "see God in His Sanctuary." Many a heart among these thousanpds doubtless beat high at the prospect of gazing for the first time on the Holy City, so full of lofty and sacred associations. But while there was much in the external glory of its Temple-Courts to thrill and solemnize; while they might well gaze with profound and reverential devotion on "the altar of God," it was "God, their exceeding joy," who formed the burning center of their desires and yearnings. The recorded promise uppermost in their thoughts was this\emdash "There I will meet with you, and will qcommune with you from off the mercy seat."\par \par See, how in our Psalm, the same longing is expressed and repeated!\emdash "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God." "Blessed are those who dwell in Your house\emdash they will be still praising You." "Their strength is in You." They appear in Zion, but it is "before God!" Is this the chief arnd most ardent aspiration in the heart of each worshiper and each communicant now before me? It is not attractive service, nor gorgeous ceremonial, nor external symbolism; no, nor formulated doctrine and dogma, the soul desires; but a living Being.\par \par "I know," says Paul in words often misquoted, and in the misquotation their sense and beauty mutilated, "I know" (not in whom), but "I know Whom I have believed." It was not sects, nor creeds, nor churches, nor ecclesiastical organizations thsat this dying hero clung to in the hour of departure as he had done in life; but the glorious Person of the divine Emmanuel; the living Presence of the ever-living Savior\emdash the Brother, the Friend on the Throne, whom he had learned to love more dearly than all the world beside. Is it so with us? Is our prayer and longing, today, that of him who first celebrated the Hebrew passover, "I beseech You, show me Your glory"? Do the glowing words of another Psalm form the exponent of our feelings and desirest\emdash "O God, You are my God, early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where no water is; to see Your power and Your glory, so as I have seen You in the Sanctuary"?\par \par A second reflection occurs. Diverse and manifold, we may feel sure, were the feelings of individual worshipers among the Hebrew throngs of old, as they pursued their journey along the Palestine highways. These only too truly and faithfully reflect our own varied and cuhequered experiences. Some there are among us on the hill-tops of gladness, the "Delectable mountains," Nature's spring-time clothing every valley, and making its pastures sing for joy. The early or latter rain coming down on flower and tree and meadow, and causing them to sparkle like gems in the radiant sunlight. With others, it is some Valley of Baca. Clouds have gathered. The moral landscape is not spring blossoms, but autumn leaves; bared stems; branches scattered with hail and storm. Some have to tevll of blighted affections, narrowed family circles, the pride and prop of the homestead fallen\emdash fellow travelers of bygone Paschal seasons no longer at their side\emdash voices missed in the caravan. They could almost sit down under the gloom of these weeping trees, and hang their harps on the cypress branches.\par \par But whatever be your experience, even though the sad and weeping one may predominate, you will have rich consolation in this appointed means of grace. May you have "the earwly rain" in coming to the Table, and "the latter rain" in returning from it\emdash communion with Christ, who is Himself, in the manifold phases and revelation of His grace and mercy, as "Rivers of water in a dry place." O Happy pilgrims and Christian communicants, spoken of in this Pilgrim-psalm\emdash how all-sufficient is your "strength!" Every pilgrim needs a staff, yours is a Savior-God. Your strength is in Him. As the sparrow and the swallow here spoken of, flee from the windy storm and tempest, andx sink in peace in their nests; so may you find increasing repose\emdash it is ratified to you today, in the completed work of your glorious and glorified Redeemer\emdash the true "Cleft" for God's hidden-ones. A communion-table is one of His own appointed resting places for His spiritual Israel, where He recruits their souls and opens to them wells of refreshment.\par \par It was the custom of the Jewish paschal worshipers, in going to the City of Solemnities, to be arrayed in new attire\emdash ynew garments adorned their bodies, new sandals bound their feet. Be it yours to have on, not for the transient sacramental season only, but as your habitual attire, the garment of holiness and love and new obedience\emdash to have your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; having a more single undivided trust in Jesus; a greater willingness to bear His cross\emdash greater joy at the prospect of sharing His crown.\par \par "The swallow a nest." The swallow\emdash Is not that a bzird of passage\emdash here today, away tomorrow to sunnier climates? Be this your constantly realized feeling, that you are swallow-like; migratory; the present a state of transition. Soon you will be away from earth's wintry skies to your Heavenly home, to build your nest in the golden eaves of the Eternal Sanctuary!\par \par Brother Pilgrims and Fellow-Communicants, how happy your prospects, alike present and future\emdash for time and for eternity! Present\emdash You have here the assurance a{nd guarantee, in every stage of your appointed journey, that the Lord God will prove "a sun and shield"\emdash a sun to gladden, a shield to protect; withholding from you nothing that is truly "good" (verse 11). Thus with His own blessing resting upon you; and under the guidance of the double name, "God Almighty, and God of Jacob" (verse 8)\emdash whether "Bacas" of sorrow or "Elims" of delight be yours; whether you have to pass through valleys of weeping trees, or ways clustering with amaranthine flowers; you will, you must be blessed.\par \par The Future!\emdash Oh, if a day\emdash one day\emdash thus spent in God's courts is better than a thousand, what will be the Eternal day? No Valley or Valleys of tears; no vacant seats, no absent guests; a long forever! To take up the sweet refrain of this psalm which has trembled on our lips during the services of an earthly Sabbath, and to sing it everlastingly\emdash "O Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in You!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } }d4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 SPIRITUAL PROGRESS\par \b0\par "Grow in grace."\emdash 2 Peter 3:18\par \par Progress is a great law in the universe of God. Nothing either in the world of mind, or matter, is stationary\emdash with One exception. In the midst of His vast material creation, and of the myriads of His spiritual intelligences, God alone never knew and never can know what progress is. He being infinitely perfect, is incapable alike of decrease or increase in bli~ss, knowledge, power, glory. It is well known that the familiar river of Egypt possesses this peculiarity amid its compeers, that during a course of more than a thousand miles to its delta, it is indebted to not a single rill or tributary. While the other rivers of the world, issuing as tiny streamlets from their mountain-bed or glacier-cradle, are swollen with innumerable such, before they reach the ocean; this father of earthly rivers, as he sweeps by the tombs of Memphis and the minarets of Cairo, has received no accession to his volume during all that vast distance he has majestically traversed.\par \par So (with reverence we say it) is it with the Supreme Being, the great Father of all. While others, constituting His offspring, are susceptible of progress\emdash of receiving fresh rills, fresh accessions of intelligence and happiness, He remains from everlasting to everlasting unchangeably the same. The angels who excel in strength, we believe are still more and more excelling\emdash reaching higher and yet higher stages of advancement\emdash nearer and still nearer to God; and yet, the nearer they come, feeling more the infinite and untraveled distance separating between Creator and created. The saints\emdash the redeemed from the earth\emdash will, we doubt not, through all eternity be progressing in the divine life and likeness, growing in grace, climbing from height to height and altitude to altitude. But though approaching always nearer the infinite Brightness\emdash that brightness still being "light inaccessible and full of glory,"\emdash the confession ever made, as each new eminence is attained\emdash "Between us and You, O God, there is a great gulf fixed!"\par \par This, however, is growth in Glory. Let us descend for a little from the heavenward to the earthward contemplation to which the Apostle summons us; when, (speaking of progress in the Church below) he urges on his readers to "grow in grace."\par \par We are met at once by similar analogies in nature. We cannot fail to note the constant manifestations in the outer world of this law of progress or advancement\emdash that the Creator and Ruler does nothing suddenly; rather that His vast processes move on silently\emdash slowly\emdash imperceptibly. Let the heavens declare this "glory of God" in the grandeur of its progressive operations. We need no other illustration than the breaking of the morning light and its brightening into perfect day. If we sought more recondite testimony and illustration, we might find it in what astronomers tell us of the process in the great planetary system, by which, as was the case with our own earth, vast globes like Jupiter and Saturn, from "liquid seething masses of fiery heat," as they at present appear to be, are, in all probability, being gradually consolidated, until an outer crust is formed to fit them for becoming living habitations.\par \par Is it the vegetable world? On a minuter but not less real scale, how gradual the development! First the blade, then the ear, then the full kernel in the ear. The inserted grain does not rush up all at once, and become immediately ready for the sickle\emdash it is matured by the husbandman's laborious culture. After a long appliance of means\emdash moistening rains, gentle dews, fructifying heat\emdash that tender seed struggles upwards through the overlying clods of earth, to the gladsome light. Then comes a fresh conflict with atmospheric influences\emdash But on it progresses. Spring nurses the embryo blade; Summer smiles on the bursting ear; Autumn opens her lap to receive from the sickle the full kernel in the ear. It is Nature's great parable on the law of advancement in the material world. May I quote the child-words\emdash\par \par "'Little by little,' an a kernel said,\par As it slowly sank in its mossy bed,\par 'Little by little' each day it grew,\par 'Little by little' it sipped the dew;\par Day after day and year after year\par 'Little by little' the leaves appear;\par Until its branches are spreading far and wide,\par And the mighty oak is the forest's pride."\par \par What grows suddenly, dies suddenly. The ever welcomed snow-drop rushes up from its bulb in a few weeks, but its life-time is as brief.\par \par In animal life, we see the same law in operation. To take at once the highest type in sentient being. The Infant does not attain, in a moment, the full growth and dignity of manhood; like the ancient Greek's ideal of human perfection in the case of their patron goddess, said to have sprung at once, fully armored, from the head of Jupiter. It is a progressive development. The bones and muscles and sinews grow with the child's growth and strengthen with its strength; until the helpless arm that can scarce grasp the toy in its cradle, is, in the course of years, able to sustain the ponderous weight\emdash it may be to ply the hammer, or guide the plough, and give, or ward off, the warrior's blow.\par \par Turn to the world of mind\emdash there is similar progressive development there. The lisping stammerings, the playful prattle of infancy, are succeeded by the buoyancy of childhood. This again merges into the thoughtfulness and high aspirations of hopeful youth. Then comes manhood, with its maturer judgment and experience and power\emdash and every different and successive stage in that mental history is one of progress. Mark, yet once more, it is not by one vast bound that the mountain can be ascended and the summit reached; but by the same slow day-by-day, step-by-step process. By no fitful efforts, but by many an hour of toilsome application, have the great masterminds, who guide the destinies of empires and of mankind, been disciplined and matured. The statesman, the philosopher, the historian, the man of science, can traverse in memory those years of student life, when in the secluded chamber the midnight lamp met the hues of morning. When others were slumbering, or pursuing the 'phantom of pleasure', there they were, storing the mental citadel with treasures which at some future day would make the earth they live in wiser and better.\par \par Now in all these, and manifold other illustrations which might be given, is there no analogy in the spiritual and divine life? Yes. This law of advance and progress\emdash exemplified in the outer world, and in the constitution and growth of our own bodily and mental frames\emdash illustrates God's dealing in the higher economy. We speak of "the life of faith"\emdash "life in the Soul." Here also is there an infancy, youth, teenage, manhood, maturity. Peter in his First Epistle speaks of "babes in Christ"\emdash those who are to be fed on milk. They could not bear stronger nutriment. They are in the earliest, the incipient stage of the spiritual existence. A brother Apostle speaks of "little children," "I write unto you, little children, because you have known the Father" (1 John 2:13); of "young men," "I have written unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you" (1 John 2:14); of "fathers"\emdash saints grown grey in the service of their Heavenly Master\emdash "I have written unto you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning" (v. 14).\par \par We find our blessed Lord Himself recognizing these same stages of advancement in the case of His own disciples\emdash "Have I been so long time with you, and yet have you not known Me?" (John 14:9). And to the same effect, "I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12).\emdash As if He had said, "There is a time coming\emdash an ulterior stage in your spiritual existence, when you will be able to understand and appreciate these mysteries of the kingdom\emdash but not yet!"\par \par Perhaps in the case of none of the Apostolic band was this spiritual progress more perceptible and better illustrated, than in the case of Peter, who penned the words of our text. See him at first the "little child." As a child, petulant, fretful. See him in full manhood; attained to much, yet having much to learn; full of rash impulses\emdash sensitive, impetuous. Venturing on the water, yet sinking; faithful, yet fearful; loving, yet doubting\emdash and at last, frailest moment of all, when that devoted Master most needed his loyal adhesion and sympathy, becoming unfaithful and renegade. But mark him in the mellowed sunset of his career. That sun had waded, during life's long day, through mist and cloud and tempest, alternately brightened and obscured; how tranquil now is his "going down" behind the mountains of Israel! Calm as an infant that has been rocked asleep on its mother's lap, or as some well-known flowers fold their leaves when the night-shadows begin to fall! As we read of him in the gospels, we meet there with a bold, fiery, passionate soul\emdash the grace and prayer of Christ alone between him and ruin\emdash "Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat\emdash but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not" (Luke 22:31, 32). Thirty years after this, he wrote his Epistles. How changed the man! we scarcely recognize his personal identity. How grace has molded him, softened, subdued, chastened him! His every breathing in these letters is gentleness and love. He had himself felt the benefit of the purifying, refining furnace; and therefore thus he writes\emdash "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, may be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:7).\par \par See, as has been noted by more than one writer, how his humility appears in undesigned coincidences. We know that he had much to do in the writing of Mark's Gospel. What does he say of himself there? Everything is suppressed that would savor of self; everything brought in that would humble him and exalt his Lord. His walking on the water\emdash suppressed; the special blessing Jesus gave to him as "Simon Bar-jonas," recorded in Matthew, suppressed; the word "bitterly," inserted by the first evangelist when he records the intensity of Peter's repentant sorrow when "he went out and wept," suppressed; and more than all, that dark sorrowful story of his denial is more fully recorded in this second Gospel than in any of the others.\par \par Then see when he comes to die\emdash What is the testimony of the man who was once afraid of death?\emdash he who shook with terror in the water as he felt himself sinking\emdash he who cowered with more than womanish fears when his Lord was buffeted, lest he might be dragged to share His cross and sufferings! Hear the old man speak! Hear the softened, calmed, heavenly-minded apostle, with his grey-hairs and furrowed brow\emdash how he writes about death\emdash that event so terrible to all. It has lost its dread. "I must put off," says he, "this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has showed me" (2 Peter 1:14). Christ showed him how he was to die. He had foretold the painful and ignominious manner of his decease\emdash that he was to follow Him in crucifixion; meet the King of Terrors in his most revolting form. But how does the aged champion contemplate this?\emdash He speaks of it as the laying aside of an old cloak (so the word may mean)\emdash a useless outer garment! To speak so of death, and such a death, showed surely that this "righteous man"\emdash once called by his Lord "fearful" and of "little faith,"\emdash once a poor reed shivering in the wind, had now, by the power and growth of divine grace, become bold as a lion!\par \par This spiritual progress, so singularly illustrated in the case of him who exhorts us in our text, is (must be) the distinguishing characteristic, more or less, of all God's true people. And as there were seasons in the life of the Apostle, so also are there in ours, when a gracious and salutary impulse is given to spiritual advancement. The Lord's Supper is intended to be a strengthening as well as a commemorating Ordinance. The nutritive and sustaining qualities in the natural elements of bread and wine are doubtless intended to be symbolic of a higher truth\emdash that of feeding and stimulating the graces of the Christian character\emdash promoting sanctification and holiness. Our Church will never be arraigned for any unwarrantable leanings towards what is known as "Sacramentarian efficacy." But a Standard whose authority we all own and reverence, leaves us no doubt what its compilers considered the relation which the Divine rite bears to our text today, as being one special means of fostering and promoting the life of God in the Soul. We are "by faith made partakers of His body and blood, with all their benefits to our spiritual nourishment and growth in grace."\par \par Yet, while, we trust, this divine growth may form the ardent aspiration, the grand practical result of our hallowed season, let no humble Christian, let no believing communicant, leave these sacred courts under a misapprehension. Let none go away cast down or discouraged, under some humbling conviction that with them there has been no such thing as advancement in grace\emdash that relapse rather than progress\emdash from weakness to weakness rather than "from strength to strength is and has been their mournful and saddening experience. Who among us, brethren, is free from the haunting suspicion, that if tried and tested by this spiritual growth, we would have good cause, humbled and conscience-stricken, to evade the scrutiny?\par \par But are there not many of God's true people who are apt, in this respect also needlessly, to write bitter things against themselves? We believe, indeed, that often the Christian may seem to himself to be retrograding, when all the while it is the reverse\emdash no apparent continuity of progression, yet ultimately and really periods of advance. You may at times have stood on the sea-shore, and watched the incoming tide\emdash wave after wave laving the beach; only to retreat into the bosom of the former wave. It seemed receding; murmuring for a moment at your feet\emdash and then back again to nestle in its watery bed. As, however, the briny tears came sweeping over the sand or rock, you saw that the ripple-marks were gradually diminishing; that, despite of these refluent waves, the tide was making, and the boat moored dry on the shore would be soon buoyant on the water.\par \par So it is with the ebbings and the flowings in the spiritual life. You may be ever and anon in doubt and despondency. Temptation after temptation, like wave upon wave, may tell of nothing but apparent relapse. The tide of the divine life may appear to recede; while, in truth and reality watched by the unerring discriminating Eye above\emdash it is rising\emdash the old marks of sin are being submerged under the advancing waves. "The righteous shall hold on his way." "Though he falls, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with His hand." "He gives more grace." "He who has begun a good work in you, will perform it unto the day of the Lord Jesus."\par \par "Why is that plant"\emdash ask this question of the experienced gardener\emdash "making no advance? Though healthy in appearance, its growth seems arrested." "No\emdash not so," would be his reply. "Externally, and to the outward eye, it makes no progress. But it does better\emdash it is mooring its unseen roots all the firmer and deeper in the soil."\par \par And now, what remains, in closing, but to exhort and encourage you, as God's votive and covenanting people, to aspire after increasing attainments. By startling providences, as well as by revolving seasons, we are solemnly reminded that our present fleeting opportunities will soon be gone, and gone forever. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Time is rushing on, swift-winged to Judgment. He puts no arrest on his revolving wheels. He stops no grain in the diminishing sand-heap. Day follows day; Sabbath treads on the heels of Sabbath; Communion season on Communion season; and the sun, like a vast pendulum, as he swings from East to West, seems to proclaim\emdash "Nearer Eternity!" "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." "Be not weary in well-doing; for in due season you shall reap if you faint not!"\par \par Members of the Sacramental host of the Great Captain of Salvation! be yours especially the noble resolution of the man, who exhibited on the vastest and grandest scale the practical power of the resolution of our text\emdash "I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do\emdash forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those that are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!"\par \par "By the grace of God we are what we are." May we leave His courts today, feeling that by that same grace we may grow into something higher, nobler, holier, diviner still.\par \par "Your vows renewed; go seek His mercy only,\par To arm the trembling spirit for the strife;\par You shall not fight the world's great battle lonely,\par Soldiers of Christ, you bear a charmed life!\par \par "Go with sweet thoughts of Jesus, and in meekness\par Take up the cross and follow in His way;\par His strength shall be made perfect in your weakness,\par His GRACE shall be your comfort and your stay."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par }   )A05 The Exaltation of the Humanity{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang20583eA04 Spiritual Progress{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkin|\b\f0\fs24 THE EXALTATION OF THE HUMANITY\par \b0\par "What is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor."\emdash Psalm 8:4, 5\par \par This Psalm, like many others, has a twofold application. No simple reader can have failed to be struck in perusing it, with a mingling up, throughout, of reference to "Man," and to some one Infinitely Greater. In the first verse of our text, the sacred writer turns from the consideration of God's wonders in the starry heavens, to the favored being on earth upon whom He has lavished such distinguishing tokens of His love. And yet, immediately after, he appears by prophetic inspiration to blend his contemplation of humanity in the creature, with the contemplation of humanity in the future Incarnate WORD. It would be superfluous to occupy time in showing that the passage is inapplicable to man alone; and how the expressions, "You have crowned him with glory and honor," "made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands," "put all things under his feet," have a higher and diviner signification. Any such proof is unnecessary, as we have inspired comment and authority, in the second chapter of Hebrews, in applying it to Christ.\par \par In discoursing, therefore, with God's blessing, on the words, I would have you to bear in mind, as their most interesting feature, this somewhat remarkable dual reference; the identifying, so to speak, of the two humanities. Come, and let us with devout reverence meditate on the theme thus opened up; for it is that which we are to have set before us today, in visible sacramental memorial\emdash "the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh."\par \par Let our thoughts be directed to these successive views of the exaltation of the Humanity\emdash\par \par I. In the Divine purpose.\par \par II. In the Incarnation of the Son of God.\par \par III. In the Ascension of Christ.\par \par IV. At the Day of Judgment.\par \par V. Through all Eternity.\par \par I. The exaltation of the Humanity in the DIVINE PURPOSE.\par \par It formed the great Divine idea, so to speak, before the earth was made, and when God dwelt alone in the solitudes of infinite space.\par \par Amid the countless worlds which were in future to throng His universe, there was one selected to become the scene of an unparalleled manifestation of love\emdash the Almighty Creator Himself, condescending to assume the Human nature in union with the Divine, in order to exalt that nature, fallen and degraded, to glory and to honor. We have dim and obscure intimations of this sublime conception given us in Scripture. There are passages of light which burst upon us here and there, from the recesses of eternity, unfolding the grandeur of the human destiny, as contemplated before the birth of time.\par \par Although on no account vindicating such an interpretation by any strong assertion, it has at all events been regarded by expositors as possible, that in a well-known Bible chapter, under the personification of Wisdom, Christ Himself may be regarded as announcing that "from everlasting, before the earth was, His delights were with the sons of men," as if coming down, while yet our globe was without form and void, to visit the great theater of His soul's travail and of man's salvation (Prov. 8:23-31).\par \par In a still earlier Scripture, the Blessed Trinity, in their ineffable counsels, seem to intimate the development of some magnificent plan in connection with the world's creation\emdash "Let us make man after our own image," words which have a primary reference to the formation of the former in a state of purity and innocence, and thereby a reflection of the divine Original, the uncreated God\emdash but which can alone, in their full complementary significance, apply to Jesus the Great Ideal of Humanity, the Perfect Man\emdash He who by distinctive pre-eminence is "THE Image of the Invisible." If we have reason to believe that the new-born Earth arrested the interested contemplation of other Orders of Intelligence\emdash little at all events would they dream of so surpassing an honor in store for it\emdash how the first speck of new-born light which appeared, penetrating chaos, fell on the realm an Incarnate God was to redeem\emdash in which He was to assume the nature of a finite creature and therein enshrine the Infinite. As it gradually became more luminous, the brooding darkness dispelling, the sun shining on its fresh verdure\emdash well might the Morning Stars, in joyous jubilee-strains, sing together, and all the Sons of God shout for joy!\par \par Let us contemplate\emdash\par \par II. The exaltation of the Humanity in the INCARNATION of the Son of God.\par \par "Manifest in the flesh!" How magnificent does fallen nature appear, even in its ruins, in thus becoming the very sanctuary and residence of Deity. The traveler visits with emotion places consecrated as haunts of the mighty dead. He reverently lingers amid the broken columns and capitals of antiquity, associating their very desolation with illustrious sages and heroes\emdash names traced imperishably on the tablets of history. How sublime, we may almost say awe-inspiring, the thought, that every man has within himself a Temple with associations, no, with realities, incomparably grander\emdash that the Human spirit, wrecked by sin, is the very habitation in which Deity dwelt for three and thirty years of humiliation on earth! "Destroy this Temple," said Christ, "and in three days I will raise it up. He spoke of the Temple of His body."\par \par His body! It was a fleshly tabernacle like yours and mine, with this exceptional characteristic, that it was "yet without sin." By Him Humanity was ennobled, hallowed, consecrated, in its every phase and condition. He consecrated infancy, by Himself becoming the Babe of Bethlehem. He consecrated poverty, by Himself being emphatically "the houseless One," "having nowhere to lay His head." He consecrated bereavement, by the tears shed at Bethany's grave, and the words of comfort spoken in Bethany's darkened household. He consecrated suffering and pain and trial, by the wave on wave that swept over His own guiltless head, until His mangled body was left, like a wreck on the desert shore. He consecrated death itself, when the walls of the Temple collapsed, wherein dwelt the ever-blessed God. Yes, He consecrated Humanity's last resting-place\emdash the very grave cannot be dissevered from the earthly tabernacle which the great Lord of heaven condescended to occupy. Unspeakable honor to put on the nature of a fallen being!\par \par Glorious indeed might have been the exaltation of Humanity if Adam had remained staunch in his allegiance; and the nature he received pure and spotless from his Maker been transmitted uncontaminated to his posterity. There would have been the beauteous spectacle of a world tenanted by sinless creatures; every bosom filled to the brim with love to its Creator, and no room for one shadow to dim or darken. But, more glorious and wondrous far, that exaltation, when "very God of very God" deigned to convert a ruined haunt into His own presence-chamber, and transform it into what is divine! If condescension be a relative term, and increase in proportion to the distance and disparity between its objects\emdash where is there condescension equal to this?\par \par We have read of kings on earth visiting the beggar's hovel\emdash there is condescension here. But what is such after all? One finite being visiting another finite being, one mortal visiting another mortal. But we have presented to us in our present contemplation, the God seated on the throne of the universe, coming down to the outcast and the perishing! Brethren, we cannot estimate the wonders of such condescension, because there is no scale by which it can be measured. There are certain existing relations between everything else in creation. There is a certain relation and proportion between the giant mountain and the grain of sand. There is a certain relation and proportion between the drop of water and the boundless ocean. There is a certain relation and proportion between the sun and the tiny candle which glimmers into nothingness in his beams. There is even an imaginable relation and proportion between the seraph before the throne and the insect whose lifetime is a brief hour, for they are both creatures, though at the opposite extremities of being.\par \par But there can be no measurable\emdash no possible relation or proportion between the Great God and the vile sinner, between Deity and dust! When I think that in a bodily framework like my own, only untainted by evil, there dwelt the Adorable Jehovah, "the high and lofty One who inhabits Eternity,"\emdash that "He took not on Him the nature of angels," that He selected, not the angelic form or condition to ennoble and exalt, but "the seed of Abraham," well may I exclaim with the Psalmist in devoutest amazement\emdash "What is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him? You have made him a little lower than the angels, You have crowned him with glory and honor!"\par \par III. The exaltation of the Humanity in the ASCENSION of Christ.\par \par Our human nature occupies the Central throne of Heaven\emdash If great be the mystery of godliness, "God manifest in the flesh," we may with reverence add as a counterpart, "Great is the mystery of godliness"\emdash Man manifest on the throne of God! If it be an amazing truth, Jesus bore our suffering nature on earth\emdash it is a verity, surely no less marvelous, Jesus bears our glorified nature in the upper sanctuary. When "the gates lifted up their heads," and the King of Glory traveled through the burning ranks, it was before Humanity in union with Deity, they bowed as He passed. It is in that glorified Human nature He there still lives and loves.\par \par Take one among several kindred visions of the Apostle of Patmos\emdash that of the white-robed and palm-bearing multitude. The central figure in that inspired picture of pictures is THE LAMB in the midst of the throne, leading them, and feeding them\emdash conducting them from pasture to pasture and from fountain to fountain. What is this, but the blessed assurance, alike to His Church triumphant and militant, of the Redeemer's undying Manhood; that though reigning as King of kings\emdash God over all, blessed forever\emdash He still retains the Brother's eye, and the Brother's love, and the Brother's heart?\par \par No more, as Head and Representative of His people, His glorified Humanity forms the pledge of their own ultimate exaltation. He, the first sheaf in the harvest presented in the Heavenly Temple, is the pledge of myriad sheaves that are to follow. Where He is, His people also are to be. "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body." "His glorious body!" or as it is rather rendered, "the body of His glory." It is the mighty mold into which our fallen nature is to be recast. It is the divine model after which the defaced and mutilated block is to be shaped into eternal symmetry and beauty. It is the glorious Archetype, in conformity with which the mirror, shattered in a thousand pieces in Eden, is to be completely reconstructed\emdash each broken fragment, each ransomed sinner\emdash the lowliest, the humblest\emdash like a piece of polished glass, to reflect a perfect image of the Lord!\par \par My friends, what an exaltation is this, to the nature of Humanity \emdash alike present and future? Present. "Christ the first fruits,"\emdash His divine human form, once pierced with thorns and racked in torture, now, in language of lofty metaphor, wearing many crowns! In prospect\emdash the multitude which no man can number, ransomed with His own precious blood; now, it may be, despised, dishonored, disesteemed; but who shall then be raised from obscurity and scorn, "set among princes; and made to inherit crowns and thrones of glory." Oh! with what a grandeur is the lowest and poorest child of Adam thus invested; if within his clay-walls, as a child of God, he is a partaker of the Divine Nature\emdash that nature elevating the human to a pitch of greatness which leaves all earthly distinction immeasurably behind!\par \par IV. The exaltation of the Humanity at the DAY OF JUDGMENT.\par \par "The Father has given Him authority to execute all judgment, because He is the Son of Man." "He has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that Man whom He has ordained." Here, again, it is Humanity exalted, on the throne of final reckoning\emdash The Man Christ Jesus.\par \par Who can unfold the glory which will then accrue to our nature, when "every eye shall see Him?"\emdash the irreversible sentence going forth from the lips of glorified Humanity. My hearers, be it yours to exult in the anticipation, that there will be seated on that majestic tribunal, not a Being of dreadful, inapproachable majesty\emdash whose presence would blind and dazzle and confound\emdash but, once more, a Brother in your own nature! The cry of Jewish mockery and Gentile scorn which resounded of old around His cross, will then form your note of triumph\emdash the secret of your joy when gazing on His throne\emdash "Behold the Man!"\par \par Behold the representative Man! Behold the once-suffering Man! Behold the righteous Man! Behold the sympathizing Man! Behold now the exalted and the crowned Man! "We know," says the beloved disciple, in a transport of holy joy, "that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." From the same lips which in trembling accents on Calvary once called him "Son," he will hear the benediction and welcome, "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." On that great and alarming day, when the wrath of God shall sweep away all refuges of lies, the designation given Him by the prophet, so cheering to the tempest-tossed soul on earth, will lose none of its comfort then\emdash "A Man" (A MAN!) "shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest!"\par \par V. Contemplate the exaltation of the Humanity THROUGHOUT ALL ETERNITY.\par \par Christ's mediatorial reign, with regard to His enemies, will end at a Day of judgment; for we read, "He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet," and "then shall He deliver up" (that part of His kingdom) "to God, even the Father." His sovereignty with regard to them, shall be merged into that of God absolute. But of the increase of His mediatorial government "there shall be no end." The Humanity He wore on earth will continue evermore on the throne! The divine Father, by immutable covenant, invested Him, as Mediator, with "length of days forever and ever." Unto principalities and powers in heavenly places will be made known by the Church (under her Great Representative Head), "the manifold wisdom of God."\par \par Let me ask you, dear friends, are you prepared, after these imperfect meditations, to echo the exclamation of the Psalmist? Will it be that which will circulate from heart to heart while you surround as guests today the Table of communion, "What is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him?" Rise to a sense of your distinguished, your peerless privileges in Christ! Oh, if such be the dignity bestowed on human nature in the Person of the Adorable Head, need we wonder at the pre-eminent and surpassing honors set forth in Scripture as in store for the members? Angels are sons of God by creation; but ransomed man becomes a son of God by filiation, adoption\emdash union with his glorified Lord. From being at the base of the pyramid, lying among the debris and ruins, see where redeeming love has placed him! "To him who overcomes, will I grant to sit with Me on My throne; even as I also overcame, and have sat down with My Father on His throne."\par \par Having this hope in Him, (the hope of seeing Him as He is) are we purifying ourselves even as He is pure? "Wherefore, brethren," says the Apostle, "partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus." "Consider!" It is an emphatic word. Literally "gaze" on the Lord Jesus. It is the artist copying, line by line, and feature by feature; not expecting the transcript to be perfect here (for that it cannot be), but seeking to approximate if he can do no more; looking forward to that blessed time when, without one speck of sin and sorrow to mar or blemish, "we shall be transformed into the same image from glory to glory."\par \par Let us go, meanwhile, to His holy Ordinance, with the earnest determination and the recorded vow\emdash "This God shall be our God forever and ever!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } ry. It forms in itself a unique Poem, a gallery of successive pictures delineating the golden age of the Messiah. His Church, resplendent with the glories of her King, is represented as growing and expanding, age by age, until a whole world is seen hastening to lay tribute offerings at His feet, and to welcome Him to the throne of universal empire!\par \par Several of its verses, taken by themselves, might form befitting themes to sum up the sacred services of a Communion Sunday. We need indeed go no further than the opening exhortation, "Arise, shine," sounding as it does like a clarion-note, a herald trumpet in entering again the battle of life with refurbished armor, and the renewed vow of allegiance on the lip. "Let your light so shine before men, that others, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father who is in Heaven."\par \par But we have been led, in preference, to select a different but equally expressive metaphor\emdash the sight which revealed itself to Isaiah, as he gazed down the vista of ages on the Church of the future. It is that of a flock, or rather flocks of doves, on the wing to their cotes. Jesus may well be regarded as the true House of safety\emdash while Communicants, His covenant people, like these silver and golden plumaged doves, flee to Him for shelter, trust Him for shelter, abide in Him for shelter. May God help us to some appropriate meditations, in harmony with the simplicity of the emblem.\par \par (1.) The first thought which the verse suggests, in connection with our Communion services, is that of blissful association. Can we fail to think of the Prophet's figure as symbolizing what has occurred among us in this vast city today?\emdash varied churches and varied denominations engaged in celebrating the same sacred rite. We have, in and through its significant symbols, been looking and fleeing to the one only Savior. As the dovecot may have its different openings; so, each church retains its own denominational entrance. But the Glorious meeting-place, the spiritual Shelter, is the same. The windows are diverse, but there is a blessed identity in the hallowed haunt itself. The summoning bells have rung their varied tones\emdash but there is a sweet harmony and concord in the responsive chime of consecrated hearts\emdash "Unto Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood!"\par \par Clothed, we trust, in the one glorious plumage, and with wings bearing in the same direction, may we not imagine angels exclaiming, as they look down on the multitudes in this and in other places throughout our land, hastening to the figurative sacramental Ark\emdash "Who are these that fly as a cloud and as the doves to their windows?"\par \par (2.) In connection with our sacred rite, the emblem of our text suggests a public profession. The Prophet is arrested; or possibly, in the poetical imagery here employed, a chorus of spectators\emdash in which he veils his own personality\emdash are arrested by the spectacle. The doves are not spoken of as flying under screen of night or darkness; neither were they beheld winging a solitary or circuitous flight, as if dreading and evading observation. But the mid-day sun looked down on a whole cloud of them, their golden iridescent plumage flashing in his beams.\par \par Dear brethren, it is no unimportant or insignificant feature in your divinely-appointed Ordinance, this open dove-like flight to the Covenant Ark. In these times, when there is so much unworthy shame in espousing Christ's cause, ranging ourselves under His banner, and unfurling it before the world\emdash it is a noble thing, or rather a joyful privilege, to come boldly forward and avouch the Lord to be our God\emdash making the public unhesitating avowal, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," like the man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, who, before all the multitude, went forth "walking and leaping and praising God" (Acts 3:8). "Those who honor Me, I will honor" (1 Sam. 2:30). Doubtless Jesus will regard with a special delight, those who have, with willing, loving obedience, responded to His own dying command, and in the words of another verse of this chapter, "glorified Him in the House of His glory."\par \par Yes, as He looked down and saw this day, those who are the fruit of the travail of His soul\emdash as He beheld His people winging their flight to His Sacramental Table; may we not, with reverence, suppose Him joining in the angelic interrogation, and saying in the gladness of His own infinite heart\emdash "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?"\par \par (3.) The cloud of doves, as here represented, betokens the character of Christians and of Christian communicants. They are, or ought to be, dove-like. The Dove has these among other characteristics\emdash\par \par First. It is the complex symbol, in sacred poetry and are, of peace and love, of meekness and gentleness, purity and harmlessness (Cant. 1:15, 6:9, Matt. 10:16). I may add, in the crude early Christian symbolism of the Roman catacombs, the Dove, as the bird of hope, is generally represented in connection, variously treated, with the olive branch. What a lesson for us all as believers in Jesus, and specially in rising from His Holy Supper, to carry away the resolution of imitating more than we have yet done, "the meekness and gentleness of Christ," His kind, loving, unselfish, peaceful spirit! If, in the retrospect of past months, it may be of past years, we have to mourn the cherishing or the exhibition of unholy tempers and resentful feelings\emdash unworthy passions that have held guilty sway over us\emdash let us form the determination, in God's strength, that henceforth we are to be more Dove-like\emdash more like Him who was "meek and lowly in heart,"\emdash "who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judges righteously."\par \par Moreover, recalling the Dove as the bird of hope; either perched on the branch of peace or bearing it in its mouth, what more befitting benediction to carry with you as you leave this sacred ground\emdash "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 15:13)?\par \par A Second characteristic of the Dove is, that it is swift of wing. The Prophet saw them, not sailing like a cloud, or drifting like a cloud, but flying; borne along with whirlwind speed. The carrier dove is well known for the swiftness\emdash the length and steadiness, of its arrowy course, surpassing the proverbial flight of the eagle. An Oriental writer mentions regarding it, that it never pauses; that when its wings are weary, it poises itself on one, while the other droops for a little by its side, and when rested, the unremitting flight is resumed. This, coupled with Isaiah's figure, surely suggests the activities of the Christian life. The believer is swift of wing to do God's service. The religion you profess, and to which many have set their seal today, is not only a being good, but a doing good. Be always, like the dove, soaring. In a spiritual sense it is a safeguard and preservation against sin, not to remain with wings folded, but to mount on ministries of active service. It matters not what these services may be; for there are also, in this respect, many windows in the Ark\emdash many outlets of usefulness\emdash diversities of gifts and consecration. Only "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might."\par \par To be on the wing is to be safe. To have the wings folded, sunning in the glaring light, is often to be in peril. It is a striking and beautiful verse in Proverbs, "Surely in vain the net (of temptation) is spread in the sight of any bird," or, as it is rendered in the margin of your Bibles\emdash "in the sight of that which moves on the wing." Moving; resting not; making no perch of the world; but in the pure cloudless ethereal regions of faith and love and holiness, soaring ever higher to the home in the hills of God. "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?"\par \par (4.) The figure of the Dove fleeing to its window reminds and suggests, that it is a bird which requires a safe shelter. It does not, like some others, hide in hedgerows or furrows. The wild pigeon may build its nest on the forest tree; but the tame one seeks its secure dovecot. The eastern dove, which had no artificial home, had its equally secure dwelling in the rock-clefts\emdash "O my dove, which is in the clefts of the rock" (Sol. Song 2:14.) A little way from the northwest shores of the Lake of Gennesaret there is a recess in the hills called the "Wady Hyman," or "Valley of Doves," the sides of which are perforated with their retreats.\par \par You who are Communicants have been fleeing anew today for refuge to the "Rock of Ages." You have come for a little season into this Ark of Ordinances, from work and duty, from roaming the needful fields of every-day occupation\emdash shall we say to bathe afresh your ruffled, soiled plumage, in the Fountain of Salvation? Rather, you have desired, in one of His own appointed Sacraments, to hold nearer, dearer, and more confidential fellowship with Christ\emdash realizing more devoutly that in Him you have your best, securest, and happiest Home. Away from earth's troubles and anxieties, its sins and sorrows\emdash in this glorious Rock-cleft you have been folding your weary wings. An earthly communion is the foretaste and foreshadow of a safer and more enduring shelter; the pledge of a happier and more blissful Sabbath, when you will sink into the crevices of the true Rock forever!\par \par It is a special characteristic of the Dove, that, however far it goes\emdash though at a distance of hundreds of miles\emdash it will fly back with unerring aim, sureness, and safety to its abode. So with "the dove of Christ." Every true believer, born of God\emdash born from above, and for above, through every cloud and tempest, will reach at last the true Home on high. "The spirit shall return unto the God who gave it."\par \par (5.) The cloud of Doves on wing to their windows, reminds one of young communicants. In the Septuagint, the words of this verse are remarkable, "Who are these that fly like doves with their young?" The doves fly to their dovecot, but not alone, they have their offspring with them.\par \par Not the least beautiful thing about a Communion-Sunday is the spectacle of young doves; those who have just risen from their early perches, the perches of the morning of life, and are winging their way, bright and unsoiled, to the Rock! If old communicants may be likened to the doves, whose wings the Psalmist speaks of as covered with "yellow gold" (golden with age); may we not compare young communicants to those wings, described in the same verse, as covered with silver; silvered over with the white shining of early piety and youthful consecration.\par \par "Who are these that fly like doves with their young?" If a father or mother ever in their lives experience a sacred and hallowed joy, it surely is at the hour when their young ones are found by their side at the sacramental table. Fleeing together; wing touching wing; nearing together the same Ark\emdash together in the clefts of the same Eternal Rock. Yes, for parents to feel, when in the course of nature they are constrained, with aged and disabled pinion, to drop out of the flight; or rather, when they come to enter finally the windows of that Dovecot from which there is no return\emdash that they will leave behind them those who will pursue their way, year after year, to "the Ark of the testimony."\par \par Oh! my dear young friends, you who are the young doves today, in this glorious flight, be true and faithful to your God. Keep your plumage untainted. Let no feather be soiled with sin. Many wings among us would have been swifter, more buoyant, more soaring, if they had not been broken or blemished by some former falls.\par \par The cloud of doves spoken of in this verse, were ever getting nearer their windows. May this be so with you in a nobler spiritual sense; and may the familiar words be alike your prayer and your experience\emdash\par "Still all my song shall be\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee!"\par \par (6.) One other thought is suggested, by the remembrance of a large class of those who are always to be found at the Sacrament of communion\emdash I mean the afflicted.\par \par This image of doves flying to their windows reminds of storm. They were seen flying; drifting along like a tempestuous cloud. The dove flies to its dovecot, or to the rock-clefts, when the storm is brewing; perhaps were it not for the tempest it might linger in the open field, and get entangled in the snare or trap of which we found the Wise man speaking. But the black cloud is in the heavens! the thunder is heard\emdash the tempest moans\emdash the rain torrents descend. On the wings of the tempest the timid creature directs its flight to the sheltering covert.\par \par Sorrowing, afflicted ones! and especially any who, as communicants, partook of the sacred emblems in heaviness of spirit, bewailing the loss and absence of "those who are not," may not this be your sanctified experience of the Divine dealings? Has not that desolating storm, which tore down your cherished earthly dovecots and shelters, only led you to speed more swiftly, steadily, persistently, to the only Refuge that never can be assailed by the hurricanes of dire misfortune, or the darker, gloomier tempests of bereavement and death? Yes, mourning dove! this day too faithfully noting blanks amid the flock of living wings around you\emdash whether the silver-plumaged dove of youth missing the golden one of age, or the golden plumaged ones of age missing their young\emdash rejoice if that "windy storm and tempest" has brought you closer to Jesus, driven you from the perishable to the Imperishable, and attuned lip and heart more for the song of a sainted Minstrel\emdash\par "I flutter, I struggle, I pant to be free,\par I feel me a captive while banished from Thee:\par A pilgrim and stranger the desert I roam,\par And look on to Heaven and long to be home!\par Ah, there the wild tempest forever shall cease,\par No billow shall ruffle that haven of peace\emdash\par Temptation and trouble alike shall depart,\par All tears from the eyes and all sin from the heart."\par \par It is by affliction God has always prepared His doves for flight and for heaven. Without affliction, they might be grovelers forever. It is by the thorn in the nest He drives them to the wing. They might otherwise have been content with a poorer portion. It is one of the finest of the old Assyrian myths or legends, that when their great Queen Semiramis, the founder of their empire, died, she was changed into a dove. How often does death\emdash the death of beloved friends\emdash work a similar transformation on bereaved souls! imparting to them the dove-like spirit, and the upward soaring!\par \par God grant that many among us, young and old, may have had the longing prayer answered today\emdash "Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest!" (Ps. 55:6). From our present theme of meditation, with its pictures and suggestions of shelter and repose; from the emblems and tokens of redeeming love at the Sacramental Table; from all that our eyes have there seen of the Word of Life; from Him who has tuned our hearts, inspired our thoughts, and given significance to our vows; from His dying lips on the Cross, from His glorified lips on the throne\emdash we hear His own blessed, dove-like balm-word, stealing on the breath of eventide as a chime from the upper Sanctuary\emdash "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you REST!"\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } waA06 A Flight of Doves{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 A FLIGHT OF DOVES\par \b0\par "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?"\emdash Isaiah 60:8\par \par The whole of this chapter of the great evangelical Prophet is replete with sublime imageid, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray Me." They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, "Lord, is it I?"\emdash Matthew 26:20-22.\par \par "Sanctify yourselves, for there is to be a feast of the Lord!"\par \par Such was the customary summons to the Jews of old on the occasion of their solemn festivals. The silver trumpets sounded, "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel," and blessed were the people who knew the joyful sound. With the prospect we have before us, today, of keeping the New Testament Sacramental memorial, I have selected these words as an appropriate theme for meditation. Let us gather with sacred interest around this scene in the upper chamber of Jerusalem, and may God the Holy Spirit direct, inspire, and sanctify our thoughts.\par \par Let me speak of these four points\emdash\par \par The rite celebrated.\par \par The company assembled.\par \par The announcement made.\par \par The manner in which the announcement was received.\par \par I. THE RITE. It was the Passover Supper. It would be altogether out of place here to examine a question which has given rise to conflicting opinions, whether the meeting of our Blessed Lord and His disciples described, was the actual commemorative Jewish feast; or whether, as from a comparison of dates there seems some grounds for surmising, it partook rather of the nature of a private observance in anticipation of another on the 14th day of the month Nizan; that date being held, with greater chronological accuracy, to have fallen on the following evening, corresponding with our Friday. The preponderating arguments, supported by most reliable authorities, seem to incline to the long accepted view that it was the actual Passover feast, the same that was being celebrated universally that night in Jerusalem. If so, it was the close of what must have been in all respects a remarkable day in the City of Solemnities. Within the walls, supplemented by tents or booths in the Valley of the Kedron and on the slopes and in the green hollows of Olivet, it is computed that two million people were assembled to keep the annual festival. Each family had to provide itself with a lamb, and take it to the Temple for sacrifice. Relays of priests were there standing in a row, with gold and silver basins, into which the blood of the animal was poured, while its carcass was returned to the owners, and by them prepared for the evening meal. At eventide came a hush of silence after the busy day\emdash a day noisy with the tramp of the multitudinous pilgrims, the bleating of the sacrifices, the festal songs of Levites and worshipers, and the blare of the silver trumpets. Now, each house-door was shut, each tent-curtain drawn; and, save for the strains of the Hallel, a sacred silence pervaded the scene, while the immemorial feast was kept. It was the grandest and most impressive of all the types of the ancient dispensation. Though unrecognized by few in that vast assemblage, the Great Antitype Himself was there; the true Paschal Lamb about to take away the sin of the world.\par \par "The evening had come," the last evening He was to spend in peaceful communion with His disciples. In the mysterious appropriate twilight, when the full moon was rising over Jerusalem, He had crossed from the hamlet of Bethany, and gathered the chosen apostles in a small room on Mount Zion; possibly the same apartment that had been hallowed to Him on many previous similar occasions, when He accompanied His Mother and "the multitude that kept holiday" from Nazareth\emdash a room moreover, that more likely was soon to have a new consecrated association, as the scene of the joyful benedictions of Easter Evening. The Jewish memorial was now to be merged in the Christian. Not that the national commemoration was to be altered for something diverse in kind and significancy. The two rites were each sacramentally expressive of the same peerless gospel truth. The testimony of Jesus, the one prospective the other retrospective, was the spirit of both ordinances. The older is to be interwoven with higher, diviner mysteries. If change there was, the change has been likened to that in a tree when the blossom drops off to make way for fruit. And though "the Lord's Supper" is never to be superseded by any other rite on earth, it may itself be regarded as a transition Ordinance, which will attain its full consummation and perfection in the sublime Heavenly Festival; where, with no traitor and no betrayal to interrupt its celebration, we shall, as glorified guests, "sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God."\par \par II. THE COMPANY ASSEMBLED. The MASTER and His disciples\emdash the Shepherd, and the flock that are so soon to be scattered.\par \par The Passover Supper was essentially a gladsome family gathering. Relations and friends living in distant and diverse parts of Palestine, were enabled once a year\emdash in this the loveliest season, when the land was in its full wealth of floral beauty, and its skies undimmed with a cloud\emdash to meet at the sacred festival and renew suspended communion. Jesus, who habitually and scrupulously accorded with all innocent traditional usages and customs, was not likely to make any exception in the present case. We might naturally have expected Him, therefore, to regard it as a fitting opportunity of gathering (shall we say, not in the limited apartment of a house, but within some commodious tent of Galilean pilgrims on the Mount) all that were nearest and dearest of His family and friends, "His cousins and brethren." Would not the Marys of the Lakeside be there; and the Bethany sisters, with their restored brother; besides many other intimate friends and recipients of His grace and mercy? Above all, would not the dear earthly Mother, whose love and presence must have been vividly associated, as we have just remarked, with many such previous anniversaries, have had her special summons? No! Every one of these we have named are conspicuous by their absence. They receive no invitation. It is to be a sacredly private and confidential meal with His own chosen disciples. The specific words of the invitation are in every way remarkable. "With desire have I desired" (with great desire) "to eat this Passover with YOU, before I suffer." And when Peter and John, at their Lord's bidding, track the footsteps of the water-carrier to his house, they deliver this as their message\emdash "The Master says, My time is at hand; where is the guest-chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples?"\par \par Solemn convocation! Monarchs of the earth were that night sitting on thrones of state or dreaming of conquest. But what was all the glory encircling them, compared with the undying interests which center in that little band?\par \par Imagine the scene. The Divine Lord had just performed, in their presence, an act of unparalleled humility. "Jesus, knowing that the Father had committed all things into His hands, and that He came from God and was going to God." "Came from God!"\emdash At that moment, with the full consciousness of His underived glory\emdash in His hand the garnered treasures of the universe. "Was going to God!"\emdash With all the prospect of His approaching triumph over death and the grave, and His ascension to His Mediatorial Throne\emdash yet then, He undid His loose upper garment, took a towel and girded Himself, and washed the disciples' feet. Going from couch to couch on which they were reclining, carrying in His own hand the bronze laver, and stooping to this menial office "as one who serves!"\par \par Having resumed his white festal robe, He invites them to partake of the provided Feast. But in doing so, He renews the significant intimation of what was before them and Him. It was a feast preliminary to His own "suffering." We need not have wondered if this theme of suffering, like a somber keynote of plaintive minor, had run through all His discourse; if the shadow of the morrow's cross projected on His path had occupied and engrossed His mind to the exclusion of all else. But see His unselfishness! With the anticipated agony\emdash the surcharged clouds gathering more ominously and ever nearer around Him\emdash the gleam of the torches and the flash of the swords at hand, the buffeting and the ignominy\emdash sadder than all, the consciousness of the desertion of His own tried and trusted disciples\emdash still He seemed to have no thought for Himself or about the brimming of His own cup.\par \par His tenderest sympathies and longings and anxieties are for them. He has assembled them in this quiet guest-chamber, to breathe farewell words of comfort and peace\emdash "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Further, in order that they might retain these valedictory utterances in visible and permanent memorial, He proceeds to institute the sacred Ordinance\emdash a keepsake and legacy of love, which would be treasured by them when He Himself would be visible no more. Yes, "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end!"\par \par In all the other homes and within all the other tents of the City of solemnities that night (it was a very distinctive feature in the ceremonial observance), there was delivered, by the presiding head of the family, a narrative or rehearsal of the flight from Egypt and the subsequent wilderness journey to Canaan. In His opening valedictory discourse in the 14th chapter of John, Jesus, as it has been well said, "elevates and transfigures past historical events by transferring them to Himself and speaking of His own 'Exodus.'" (Dr. Maclear)\par \par We may even expand the thought, and note how, as if under a series of new gospel metaphors, He rehearses the wilderness wanderings of His people to the end of time; comforting in the first instance the Pilgrim Band around Him, as He points them to "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," unfolding Himself before them as the wondrous Tree which will sweeten their bitterest Marah-pools\emdash the true desert Rock, from whose smitten sides the waters of everlasting consolation flow in a perennial stream\emdash the true Elim, with its stately palms of refreshment and wells of consolation\emdash the true Joshua, conducting them at last in peace and triumph through the dry channel of Jordan, until landed in the Heavenly Canaan\emdash the Father's House with its many mansions, which He was going before to prepare for them!\par \par Let us pass for a moment, in this rapid reference, from the Master to the GUESTS. It is interesting, in the prospect of our own Communion, to note the variety of character surrounding that supper-table. Each member of the company has his own individuality, different mental and moral, as doubtless they had varying physical features\emdash yet all, with one exception, are loving and beloved. In several\emdash it may be diverse ways\emdash they manifest their attachment and devotion. Outspoken, impulsive Peter, full of words, yet genuine, ardent, sincere. Silent, meditative John, wrapped in contemplation, in restful affectionate confidence leaning on his Lord's bosom. Calm, intellectual Thomas, and others of similar temperament; not saying much, or professing much\emdash rather battling with doubt\emdash cast down because unable to show the same vehemence of love which some of their more enthusiastic fellow-apostles exhibited. In this respect they were types of the variety of guests that would in all future ages assemble round the same sacramental Table. They were representative communicants; representatives of that diversity of character which must ever distinguish God's true people, on similar solemn occasions.\par \par Some, of ecstatic frame and feeling, souls burning with ardor\emdash others, fearful, distrustful, rejoicing with trembling; yet, though in a different way, equally conscious of love to their Lord\emdash equally owned and recognized by Him, "who accepts according to what a man has, and not according to what he has not." Some, who I may venture to call, without for a moment implying or intending disparagement, demonstrative Christians, who can at once show what they are\emdash unfurl their banner and display it\emdash others, like the Mother of our Lord, who "kept all these things in her heart." God will not reject because the one is devoid of the complementary gifts and graces of the other. "There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit."\par \par III. THE ANNOUNCEMENT MADE. The Paschal meal and its attendant ceremonies were over. The cup of blessing and thanksgiving, we may suppose (according to olden custom), had four times gone round. The great Hallel\emdash the closing psalm of praise, had been at least partly sung. The new rite is about to be instituted. But before it is so, there is something of sorrowful import burdening the mind of the loving Master. He has, until now, kept it from the guests; He can do so no longer. He reluctantly adds new drops to their cup; but the sad story must be told. All in a moment, with startling abruptness, their hour of hallowed communion is broken by the communication, "Truly, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me." How every word\emdash syllable by syllable\emdash must have gone like fiery arrows to their hearts! "Verily I"\emdash I, your Lord and Master\emdash I, the gracious One who called you from your homes in Gennesaret, and honored you to be my confidential friends. I, who during three years of hallowed converse have given you proof of nothing but pure, unselfish love! "Truly, I say." Too well do I know the sad truth. It is no perhaps, no surmise or contingency\emdash something regarding which I may have been mistaken or misinformed. As the omniscient Lord, I can certify the painful reality. It is my own betrayal! I am to be ignominiously delivered up for crucifixion and death. By an act of secret treachery, my life has been compassed, and the assassins are already prowling on my path.\par \par Worst of all, it is "one of you" that is to be the guilty agent in consummating the foul deed. It is not an enemy, then I could have borne it\emdash but he that dips with Me in the dish, eats with Me at table, the man I have received\emdash welcomed\emdash honored as a brother and friend, "has lifted up his heel against Me." A wicked bribe is to conquer and cancel the memories of much recent kindness. Need we wonder that another Evangelist should tell us, in a parallel passage, that "as Jesus testified these things, He was troubled in spirit." It was not the nail and spear of Jew or Roman which now entered His soul. It was the thought of injured goodness and unrequited love on the part of a faithless disciple. It was Sinless Purity incarnate, wounded in the house of His friends. He wept over a whole city; now His mighty soul is bowed in sorrow by the base conduct of one Apostate, and the keen anguish seems too deep for tears!\par \par Oh! let that single unhappy traitor tell us, what one sin, trifled with\emdash tampered with\emdash can do! His name, "Judas," means "praise of God." We have every reason to believe that he was once as earnest and faithful as his brother Apostles\emdash as unselfish in his motives as they, in joining Christ and the Disciple-band\emdash God's candle shining on his head. But covetousness\emdash the base and degrading love of money\emdash assailed his better nature. In an evil hour he dangled its forbidden gold and silver chains, and they became fetters to bind him. The master-passion by degrees took full possession of his soul\emdash dominated his will and affections\emdash crushed every lofty aspiration\emdash all that once was fair and lovely and of good report, and left him, at last, a blighted blackened ruin, demon-haunted and defiled!\par \par The most dreadful sin that ever stained the catalogue of creature guilt, came to brand his name and memory with infamy. As we see him leaving abruptly the supper-table, and from the lighted room plunging into the dark streets with a deeper darkness in his soul; from no one figure in all sacred story comes there so terrible a lesson\emdash a lesson that may well be enforced by the inspired monitory words\emdash "You, therefore, beloved, beware lest you also, being led away by the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness." "Who can understand his errors? cleanse me from secret faults."\par \par 4. THE WAY IN WHICH THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS RECEIVED.\par \par "They were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto Him, Lord, is it I?" What, rather, might we have expected? Surely that the disciples, after a first moment struck speechless with shame and amazement, would have united in an instantaneous disavowal\emdash spurned and repudiated the incredible imputation, saying\emdash "Lord, it cannot be that villainy so base can possibly be ours. We could not be such disloyal renegades towards One so kind and indulgent as You!" Or, if not this, that each would look with a suspicious eye on his neighbor, or cast an uneasy glance on Judas. But, they were too busy with their own untrustworthy spirits to have time, or thought, or room to fasten accusation on others.\par \par Instead of the query passing from lip to lip, "Is it you? every eye was turned to their injured Master as they inquired, through anguished tears, "Lord, is it I?" As much as to say\emdash 'Fearful beyond words is such an impeachment\emdash yet we cannot, we dare not say it is impossible. We know too much of the wickedness and waywardness of these hearts of ours. We have proved weak and cowardly in the past\emdash broken reeds. We know too well, if left to ourselves, Satan would desire to have us, that he may sift us as wheat\emdash "Lord, is it I?"' Was that apprehension\emdash that unconscious self-distrust and misgiving\emdash unwarranted? Never were these disciples, we believe, more touched with the love of their Lord, or more conscious of the sincerity and loyalty of their own , than now. Yet, they all, a few hours later, forsook Him and fled!\par \par Brethren, it is well for us, in our seasons of devoutest consecration, to cherish a sense of our own frailty the fickleness and fitfulness of our best frames, the instability of our best purposes. Even on the holy ground we tread today, be it ours to avow, in profound humility and godly fear, "Lord, it is Your grace alone which keeps me from being another Judas. I cannot trust this traitor-heart. I shall go to Your tabl e, uttering and deeply feeling the confession, by the grace of God I am what I am!"\par \par Yet, let me add, on the other hand; as God's appointed ordinance\emdash if partaken of in a spirit of lowly, earnest faith, it cannot fail to prove a quickener in the divine life, stimulating to new and more devoted obedience. Though in many ways our hearts may condemn us, He who is "greater than our hearts" will accept our offerings, and give us strength equal to our day. The very approach to Him, throu gh His special means of grace, will secure its own pledged and covenanted blessing\emdash "You meet him who rejoices and works righteousness; those that remember You in Your ways" (Isaiah 64:5). "I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing\emdash and I will cause the shower to come down in his season there shall be showers of blessing" (Ezekiel 34:26).\par \par Doubtless, on many a future dark and perplexing day, when their Master was gone, and they had to fight single-handed the battles of the faith, would the Apostles revert to this hallowed hour of a first Communion. May He, whose presence and blessing now, as then, gives to the solemn Ordinance all its preciousness, make Himself known to us in the breaking of bread\emdash revealing the mystery of His suffering love, the completeness and glory of His final victory; and fulfill in our experience His assured promise\emdash "In all places where I record My name, I will come unto you and bless you."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } IEA07 Christ and His Disciples at the Last Supper{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 CHRIST AND HIS DISCIPLES AT THE LAST SUPPER\par \b0\par When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he saed0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 THE GREAT FESTAL GATHERING AND SONG OF HEAVEN\par \b0\par Then I looked again, and I heard the singing of thousands and millions of angels around the throne and the living beings and the elders. And they sang in a mighty chorus\emdash\par \par "The Lamb is worthy\emdash the Lamb who was killed. He is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!" Revelation 5:11-12\par \par What an anthem is this!\par \par We have, today, been assembled at Christ's Sacramental Table, contemplating the memorials of His dying ever-living love. The sublime passage just read contains also a superb description of a Communion. But the place of convocation is not a Temple on earth, but Heaven\emdash the fellow-guests, not a few perishable mortals, but a glorified multitude which no man can number. It may form no unbefitting theme, surely, for this evening's service, to connect our sacrament below with the Supper of the Lamb above\emdash The eternal festal Sabbath; no mock kiss of pretended friendship to mar\emdash no anticipated hour and power of darkness to ruffle the deep rapture of its joy. How profoundly interesting the thought that we have here depicted what is now transacting in the Upper Sanctuary. How delightful to reflect, that in ourselves ascending the Mount of Ordinances, we have been identified with the redeemed around the Throne; that the Church militant and the Church triumphant are associated in the same grand commemorative rite. Lo! as faith catches up the echoes of the Heavenly minstrelsy, it tells that our theme and our song are one\emdash "The Lamb is worthy\emdash the Lamb who was killed. He is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!" In their connection with the previous and succeeding context, let me advert to a few consolatory truths with which the passage is replete. We may learn\emdash\par \par (1.) The delight with which Christ looks back on His own Atoning work and sufferings. It was predicted, "He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied," and it would appear from the text, as if this were to be a perpetual sight and ever new satisfaction. If, even on earth, when the appalling prospect was before Him of treading the winepress of the wrath of God; when, at hand, was the gleam of the midnight torch, the assassin-band, Gethsemane's hour and power of darkness, and other deepening shadows beyond\emdash if, even then, anticipating the results of Redemption, He could say, as if longing for the final triumph\emdash "I have a Baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!"\emdash now, when His work is completed, the vision informs us with what holier satisfaction He regards the retrospect of His agony and endurance. Rejoicing still to talk with His redeemed, as He did of old on the Mount of Transfiguration, of "the decease accomplished at Jerusalem," beholding on every side the evidences of His conquest\emdash living trophies in their robes of light and with palms of triumph\emdash contemplating the influence His death has exercised, not on the family of earth only, but on the varied orders of intelligence throughout the universe; what an attestation to God's immaculate holiness, His unimpeachable rectitude, His burning purity, His boundless mercy!\par \par Shall the record be allowed to perish, or be henceforth an unknown and unpondered theme in Heaven? No\emdash exceptional as it is, there shall still be one everlasting memorial there of anguish and suffering, in a place where pain never enters and suffering is unknown. Accordingly, when the Redeemer puts the coronation anthem into the lips of His worshipers, He reveals Himself, not in the glories of Godhead, but as a slain Lamb, wearing the marks of humiliation. He tells them to make Calvary still their meditation, and His Cross and Passion the great Sacrament of eternity. The print of the nails in His hands, and the spear-mark in His side, are not the mementoes of shame but of victory\emdash remembrancers of a love whose depths the ages cannot fathom.\par \par The vision of the text thus becomes the mightiest of preachers, replete to the hosts above with the Story of grace. There is a tongue in every wound of the glorified Sufferer, silently but expressively proclaiming, "Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh!"\par \par (2.) The Vision of the slain Lamb would seem symbolically to point to the perpetual efficacy of the Savior's sacrifice. "Christ was once offered to bear the sin of many." "By one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified." By that one oblation He has made the bestowment of love and mercy compatible with every demand of justice and every requirement of righteous law. Nearly nineteen centuries have rolled by, since those wounds were opened and that blood shed. But the power and sufficiency of the Atonement are undiminished\emdash still is He "able to save to the uttermost." And what is His plea when, as the ever-living Intercessor, He bears the names of His covenant people on His heart in every approach to the Throne? It is the plea of His own precious blood-shedding. He appears as "the slain Lamb." He points to the mute but expressive traces and symbols in His own adorable Body, as the grounds of His Advocacy. The live coals in the censer of the true Aaron (the fire of suffering) give the odor-breathing incense of His merits all its fragrancy. By His death He wrought out atonement; by intercession He perpetuates it and renders it forever efficacious; so that in the noblest of senses it may be said of Him, "He being dead, yet speaks." When on earth He poured out His soul in strong crying and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, "He was heard in that He feared." In heaven He pleads in silence. He is heard in that He suffered.\par \par (3.) The Vision informs us of the continued identity of Christ's Person as God-man Mediator. It assures His people that He is the same Savior now that He was on earth. "Behold the Lamb of God!" said John, when pointing out the Man of sorrows in this valley of tears. "Behold the Lamb of God!" exclaim myriads in the Heavenly Sanctuary, when gazing on the exalted Savior. It is indeed a glorified humanity He now wears; but it is humanity still\emdash His risen Body a human Temple enshrining the Shekinah of Godhead. As the slain Lamb He proclaims that the same heart which throbbed in anguish on the Cross still beats on the Throne\emdash that He is still the elder Brother, "the living Kinsman," the Almighty Friend; still feelingly alive, exquisitely sensitive to every pang which rends the human soul. What were the comforting words which the angels, on the Mount of Ascension, addressed to the disciples as they saw the bright cloud hearing their Lord to Heaven? "This same Jesus." Precious assurance! Jesus unchanged and unchangeable\emdash "this same Jesus"\emdash of Bethlehem and Nazareth, of Jerusalem and Galilee\emdash "this same Jesus," who mingled His tears with the widow at the gate of Nain; who wept over the memory of a cherished friendship, and was melted in a flood of tenderest compassion over a fated city and an apostate land\emdash "this same Jesus," who breathed balm-words of comfort on the very eve of His own agony, and in the midst of it welcomed a dying felon to Paradise\emdash is now, with a heart of unaltered love and sympathy, wielding the scepter of universal empire!\par \par And He will continue "this same Jesus" until these clouds be once more parted, and the celestial gates once more opened, that He may "come again and receive us unto Himself." This is, and ever shall be, His name and memorial, "I am He who lives and was dead." "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever."\par \par (4.) We may yet further infer from the Vision, that Redemption is the grand theme of adoration for unredeemed angels, as well as for the redeemed family of God. It is a mighty throng of worshipers the text discloses. It is not one company alone. We have angels, "living ones," and elders\emdash redeemed and unredeemed. No harp is unstrung, no voice silent. One strain thrills on every tongue\emdash "Worthy is the Lamb, the Lamb who was slain!" It is only one of the many ranks who may be said to be personally interested in the subject-matter of the anthem; and yet the whole celestial hierarchy would seem to dwell with devout and delighted amazement on the marvel of marvels. We may picture them exclaiming in turns, as they gaze on the significant symbol of sufferings, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!" How spotless His righteousness! How inexorable His justice! How unsearchable His wisdom! How infinite His love! How He hated sin, yet loved the sinner! How He magnified the law by showing He could by no means clear, and yet how He has 'cleared, the guilty!'\par \par Dear Friends, it is surely an elevating thought, that you have been this day associated in your Sacramental feast, not with the Church triumphant alone, ransomed sinners who have exchanged the pilgrim warfare for the pilgrim rest, but with the whole Family of God, from the archangel nearest the throne to the least in the kingdom. Though requiring not, as we do, the personal application of the blood of sprinkling, they love to assemble as spectators at the Great commemorative rite, and make it the theme of devoutest conte!mplation; for, we read, "unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God." When they search for the richest displays of the Divine character, where is it, we are told, they direct their gaze\emdash with what do they task their immortal energies? With folded wings they bend over Gethsemane and Calvary, and exclaim, "The whole EARTH is full of His glory!"\par \par (5.) The Vision of the text informs us, of the preeminent dignity and bl"iss of the ransomed saints. The Evangelist heard the voice of many Angels round about the throne, and round about the living ones, and round about the elders. What does this unfold, but a succession (so to speak) of concentric circles encompassing the all-glorious and glorified CENTER; and that the innermost circle\emdash those standing nearest the slain Lamb, permitted the nearest glimpse of His Presence\emdash are "Elders," that is, the Redeemed from the earth. It was the white-robed multitude, with cro#wns and palms, who in a subsequent vision were beheld "before the Throne," God sitting on the Throne and dwelling among them. They would seem (to use the language of the old divines,) as if reckoned the blood-royal of Heaven\emdash "Kings and priests unto God," "sitting with Christ on His throne." Wondrous spectacle! the ranks of cherubim and seraphim, angel and archangel, making way, that redeemed sinners may take the station nearest "the excellent Glory," and pour in their own special chorus, in which n$o unredeemed tongue can join\emdash "He was slain for us!"\par \par (6.) We learn further from the Vision, the unity which pervades the heavenly ranks. "Angels," "Living ones," and "Elders." No discordant voice to disturb the symphony. Not only so, but among the elders themselves (the ransomed from earth) there is blessed harmony. We read of the whole aggregate Church triumphant, "the four-and-twenty," symbolizing the varied churches of Christ gathered from "every kindred and tongue and people a%nd nation," singing in sweet concert the new song, and falling down in blissful accord at the feet of Him who lives forever and ever. However different on earth, there, at least, variance ceases. No jarring sound\emdash no party or separating shibboleth. The trumpet of discord mute. All seeing eye to eye and heart to heart. Then (alas! for the first time) that which is often spoken of as so beautiful in theory in the Church militant, will be realized in the Church glorified, "Behold how good and how pleas&ant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."\par \par The only ambition amid the mighty convocation will be, what harp will yield the richest melody, what tongue the loftiest tribute of grateful and adoring homage to "the Lamb\emdash the Lamb that was slain!"\par \par (7.) Finally, let us draw one other concluding lesson. The vision seems intended to prepare the Church on earth for her own sufferings, and reconcile her to her approaching tribulation. The scene is placed near the' beginning of the Apocalypse; a preliminary to the pouring out of a succession of vials on the nations. But, before the thunders awake, the Church receives a wondrous vision of consolation. What is that? It is the sight of an Almighty Fellow-Sufferer! What can better reconcile her to have her own vestments dipped in blood, than looking up to the crimsoned vesture of her Adorable Head? How can she repine, when she looks to heaven and beholds the once Crucified Savior\emdash reminding her that in her strugg(les she can fare no worse than her Master and Lord\emdash that if persecutions be appointed, what are they, when she sees on the Throne the visible memorials of suffering, in comparison with which all her experiences of scenes and ages of agony would be but as dust in the balance?\par \par We know nothing more consolatory for the child of God, in the midst of sorrows too deep for utterance and tears, than to take the vision of the text and dwell on its profound teachings. Afflicted believer! tri)al upon trial, like wave after wave, may have been rolling over you\emdash deep calling unto deep. But is there not a voice from that Slain Lamb proclaiming\emdash "I am a Fellow-Sufferer," and may you not well be mute under the unanswerable challenge\emdash "Was there ever sorrow like unto My sorrow?" Precious vision! it tells me, when my heart is overwhelmed and in perplexity, that there is One at the right hand of God who can say, from identity of experience, "I know your sorrows," for as the Slain Lam*b, the Man of sorrows, He has felt them all Himself. Ah! it is a Lamb too, the token and emblem of innocence. Can I, a guilty sinner, repine at my afflictions, when this spotless, sinless, innocent Lamb of God was mute before His shearers? Is there not a voice stealing from that glorious and glorified One, addressing every child of tribulation, 'O bleeding heart, look at My wounds, and then say, can you murmur?'\par \par Men and brethren, we have celebrated another high festival on earth; and as+ we descend the Mount, let us do so with the anthems of glory we have now been considering sounding in our ears. Lo! the immortal ranks (to repeat our opening sentence)\emdash are busied with the same festive rite as ourselves. They echo back the motto and watchword as their own, which has ascended from not a few spirits among us today\emdash "God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." O Lamb of God, who did so freely shed Your blood; we entreat that that blood may plead mightily for us!\emdash that when we bid farewell to Communions here, and rise to the everlasting festal Sabbath in Heaven, it may be to prolong and perpetuate words which have been now uppermost in our hearts; which form our rejoicing while pilgrims on earth; which will compose our death-song and smooth our death-pillow; which will be our passport at Judgment and our triumphant anthem through Eternity\emdash "Worthy, worthy, worthy is the Lamb, the Lamb who was slain!"\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } ^^s uA10 Beautiful with Sandals{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 BEAUTIFUL WITH SANDALS\par \b0\par "How beautiful are youP< 9MA09 The Obligation of Christians to Observe{\rtf1-| Q5A08 The Great Festal Gathering and Song of Heaven{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\r .\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 THE OBLIGATION OF CHRISTIANS TO OBSERVE THE LORD'S SUPPER\par \b0\par "Therefore let us keep the feast."\emdash 1 Cor. 5:8\par \par These words (which are selected more as a motto than a text), I desire, with the utmost simplicity of thought and language, to take as the theme of appropriate meditation on this Sac/ramental Sunday morning. Our subject is\emdash the solemn and imperative obligation resting on Christians to keep the sacred Feast of Communion.\par \par There are not a few, regularly and devoutly worshiping God in His Sanctuary\emdash "not forsaking the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of some is," who yet leave their places vacant on the recurrence of the Holy Ordinance of the Supper. As the professing servants and followers of a great and good Master, I would desire to bring 0home to all here present who have arrived at a mature age, the privilege and duty of making this avowal of their faith in Christ and of consecration to His service. Let me proceed to state one or two reasons, why the Communion Service ought to be devoutly observed, by every one who bears the Savior's name.\par \par I. The Lord's Supper is to be observed, because its obligation rests on the Redeemer's dying command. An injunction is always rendered more binding and imperative if it has these two,1 among other considerations, to enforce it\emdash\par \par (1.) When it comes from the lips of One we love, and who has shown a deep interest in our welfare. We naturally pay a respectful deference to the request of a neighbor or acquaintance; but what is this, in comparison with the command of a parent? How supremely obligatory to every right-thinking child is the wish emanating from a father or mother, and with what joyful alacrity is it obeyed! The son going to a distant land has a Bible put 2into his hands, as the last gift of doating love, with the sacred promise exacted and given, that night by night in the adopted home he will never fail to use it. The request might be sacred for other reasons; but doubly so would it be, when he regards it as that of his dearest earthly friend.\par \par When, in the desert wasteland, or in solitude, memory travels back to the parental hearth, and remembers the devotion which so often and so willingly submitted to self-sacrifice\emdash the hands w3hich smoothed the pillow of sickness, and the voice which solaced in the hour of sorrow\emdash if he ever proved traitor to his trust\emdash if that hallowed souvenir should be ever left to gather dust on the neglected leaves, we know whose image would be the first to give the upbraiding look of injured love, and lead him with remorseful tears to unclasp it once more.\par \par The observance of the Lord's Supper is the solemn injunction of One, who has proved Himself to be infinitely more than t4he best and fondest on earth. Even a mother's love\emdash noblest type and ideal of supreme human affection\emdash pales before His. All our tenderest and most endearing relationships, individually and combined, form but a feeble image and emblem of the devotion of this Parent of parents\emdash this Brother of brothers\emdash this Friend of friends\emdash "He that does the will of my Father in Heaven, the same is my mother and sister and brother." It is from the lips of such peerless LOVE the command is a5ddressed, to "keep the Feast!"\par \par (2.) Another consideration which makes such a request specially obligatory, is, if it is conveyed at some exceptionally solemn or momentous season. Surely if there be a time in the history of any human being more sacred or impressive than another, it is at the hour of death. How sacred must have been the dying adjuration of the last of the Patriarchs, when he "made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bone6s!" How filially and loyally was this injunction obeyed\emdash all the more so, just because it was a dying one. The bones of Joseph were not allowed to repose in Egyptian sarcophagus or under Egyptian pyramid. They were religiously guarded and kept unburied by his children's children, until, borne in the longest funeral procession the world ever saw, they were laid, in obedience to his last injunction, in the mausoleum at Sychar.\par \par Take a New Testament illustration. Timothy would feel at7 all times imperative the wishes of his great spiritual father. But when the latter was "such an one as Paul the aged," "ready to be offered," sinking under the weight of years and suffering in his dungeon home, how devoutly would the younger disciple respond to his injunction, even to the request about his winter cloak and parchment writings left in Troas! And, when the noble champion of the faith was gathered to the Church triumphant, how specially would every dying word listened to in that Mamertine pr8ison, remain engraved indelibly on the survivor's heart.\par \par What shall we say of the circumstances in which the parting command\emdash the great farewell injunction\emdash was given, of a Greater than the greatest of Apostles, that of the Divine Savior of the world? "Do this in remembrance of Me" has, as we well know, the special significance and impressiveness attached to it, of being uttered the night before death. It was, as much as the "Peace I leave with you," His dying legacy. He lef9t on it the impress of His dying lips; yes, too, when His agony and bloody sweat, His Cross and Passion, and all their fearful accompaniments, were vividly portrayed to His omniscient eye. If John felt that the hallowed bequest of his Lord had a double obligation, because uttered by the faint lips of the Crucified in the supreme moment of suffering love\emdash "Son, behold your mother\emdash Mother, behold your son,"\emdash if, just because it was spoken with dimming eye and paling countenance, that disci:ple regarded the direction and trust all the more sacred, from that hour to take the bereft mourner to his own home\emdash with what profound reverence ought not we to accept and ratify the valedictory command of Jesus, to show forth His death in His own appointed Ordinance?\par \par Yes! If I love the Savior; and so loving Him, if there be preeminently sacred music in His dying words; then surely no evasion of what is alike a duty and a privilege can be pleaded regarding our solemn Feast day. ";If you love Me," says He, "keep my commandments." You are my friends if you do whatever I command you." Blessed Redeemer! to Whom we look for every hope for time and for eternity\emdash in the great crisis-hour of Your work and sacrifice, You did not only institute this precious Memorial, but did lay upon Your Church the solemn injunction to perpetuate it for all ages\emdash "Therefore, let us keep the Feast."\par \par II. I would observe, under our second general head, that an obligation rests <upon us to celebrate the New Testament Ordinance, because it is a befitting public declaration of our Christian profession.\par \par Beautiful must have been the spectacle of that ancient mountain gathering, when the tribes of Israel assembled to give public testimony of their allegiance to their fathers' God, on the slopes of Ebal and Gerizim. More solemn and interesting still, what we have on other occasions referred to in connection with our Sacramental seasons\emdash when, year by year, the =valleys and highways of Palestine were vocal with the songs of Pilgrims, as they went in company to celebrate the appointed feasts. Jehovah required them thus, year by year, to make mention of His name in the City of Solemnities. It was not enough for Jewish parents, by oral instruction, to impart His will and unfold His testimonies to their children, "talking to them when sitting in the house and when walking in the way\emdash when lying down or rising up"\emdash thus faithfully inculcating in the homest>ead the observance of private and domestic religion. "The Lord loves the Gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." Jerusalem was the place where He recorded His Name, and where He promised especially to meet His chosen people. Hence every true and warm-hearted Israelite, when he came of age, considered it alike a duty and delight to take part in the holy convocation, and "subscribe himself by the name of Jacob." "Jerusalem is built as a city that is compact together, where the tribes go up, the? tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord."\par \par Brethren, "let us keep the Feast"\emdash our New Testament Passover\emdash as a blessed opportunity of testifying, in presence of our fellow-Christians and before the world, our obligations to the Savior, and that we are not ashamed of Him and His gospel. Observe, the Psalmist (himself a devout worshiper) puts special emphasis in paying his vows "in the presence of all God's people." "In the co@urts of the Lord's House, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem" (Ps. 116:14, 19). Let none of us be guilty of false shame, shrinking from an open declaration of the infinite debt of gratitude we owe to Redeeming Love. Even the soldiers of pagan Rome were not ashamed to pay their religious vows along with their comrades. They gloried in ascending the steps of the Capitol to the Temple of Victory, with their votive offerings, swearing by the gods of Olympus allegiance to their Imperial Master. And shall we, ChrAistians, be found cowards to the true Jehovah and His Christ, when the heathen did public fealty to mute idols?\par \par If such unworthy feeling be deterring any from approaching that Holy Table, let them remember the righteous upbraiding which will meet them at the Great Day, "Whoever is ashamed of Me and my words, of Him shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father and of the holy angels." No, no; may this rather be the avowal that rises spontaneously to our lips,B "We will rejoice in Your salvation, and in the Name of our God we will set up our banners." God helping us, we shall not, like the recreant children of Ephraim, "carrying bows, turn back in the day of battle." The servant may desert his master\emdash the beggar may refuse to recognize his benefactor\emdash the restored may pass unacknowledged the physician that cured him\emdash the soldier may absent himself from the ranks, or basely disown his brave and trusted leader\emdash but God forbid that we shoulCd glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. "You have given a banner unto those who fear You, that it may be displayed because of Your truth." "Therefore, let us keep the Feast!"\par \par III. We are under an obligation to keep this feast, because by not keeping it, we incur spiritual loss. We never can be careful enough in discarding the false and unscriptural idea, that there is any peculiar grace or virtue in the Sacrament\emdash any mystic charm to pacify conscience\emdash or that tDhe mere act of communicating earns some claim or title to God's favor\emdash in some mysterious way condones transgression, and cancels bygone guilt. We can entertain no such modification of the Roman Catholic dogma. As little could the mere act of communicating have power to take away sin, under the new dispensation, as had the blood of bulls and of goats under the old. All grace and mercy, pardon and acceptance, flow, not from the sacrament, but from Christ. This Ordinance is no more than one of "the goElden pipes" spoken of by Zechariah in his beautiful and instructive vision, as conveying the golden oil from the Heavenly reservoir (Zech. 4:12).\par \par But neither, on the other hand, must we undervalue the Ordinance, as a mean of grace. It is doubtless one of the Divine channels for the conveyance of spiritual good\emdash one of the aforesaid golden pipes which transmit needed and promised grace to the soul. God could have fed His Temple-lamps miraculously, without aid or intervention. He coFuld have nourished them by some mysterious supernatural process. But in this, as in other things, He works by instrumentalities; and if we neglect those of His own express appointment, we cannot expect otherwise than to suffer spiritually.\par \par Would the Pilgrim host of Israel have sustained no deprivation if they had omitted to quench their thirst and fill their leathern bottles at the wells of Elim? Would Elijah have suffered no loss if he had rejected the offered food, in whose strength hGe braved the barren desert for forty days and nights? And how can we expect otherwise than to incur loss and detriment if we pass by this Well of Living Water dug for us in the Valley, without partaking of its refreshment?\par \par We would confidently appeal to many who, in obedience to their Lord's command, have come again and again (using the expressive word of an old writer), to this gracious "Trysting-place" and surrounded His Table. Have you not found it a precious means of advancing the wHork of grace, and of fostering spiritual growth in your hearts? Can you not, as you look back to these "Delectable mountains," with their hallowed memories, exclaim, "It was good for me to be there"\emdash "I will remember You from the land of Jordan and of the Hermonites, from the Hill Mizar"? How many have there received some unexpected tokens of blessing\emdash gracious revelations of the Savior's character and work\emdash new unfoldings of the Savior's love\emdash some more intense and quickened longiIngs after divine fellowship\emdash some more realizing and energizing views of the unseen and eternal?\par \par Ask such, if they regard this Day of Solemnity as an empty form\emdash a mere periodical accordance with a conventional religious custom, from which they expect no fresh and stimulating impulse to faith, and love, and holiness? They will tell you far otherwise. "I have food to eat which the world knows not of." "His Flesh is food indeed, and His Blood is drink indeed." "You have put glJadness in my heart more than in the time that their harvests and their wine increased." We take no undue or exaggerated estimate of His ordinance when we say, that it is the choicest and most strengthening meal provided by the Master for His spiritual Israel, in the House of their pilgrimage\emdash "Lord, evermore give us this Bread!"\par \par These remarks may appropriately be closed by a simple reference, and no more, to a DIFFICULTY. This difficulty is occasionally felt and expressed as twofoKld, on the part of those who remain away from the Lord's Table, and forfeit a personal share in the blessing of which we have spoken.\par \par (1.) 'We are not warranted to approach the Table of Communion, because we are not prepared for it.' My answer is\emdash The same reason which makes you unfit for the Communion, is equally valid, equally pertinent, in rendering you unfit and unready for Death. Unfit for the Communion Table in the Church below, can you be fit to sit down at the Supper-tableL of the Church above? Unworthy! Oh, is it not because we are sinners, and unworthy, that we are invited to come to the Feast, and there to celebrate the infinite worthiness of "the Lamb that was slain?"\par \par (2.) It is further and not infrequently urged\emdash 'We cannot go to the Sacrament of Communion because we know that some venture who have no right to be there.' 'Hypocrites,' say they, 'frequent this hallowed ground\emdash those living in known sin and spending disreputable lives. We sMhall not, we cannot go, where the cup of fellowship is mixed with the cup of devils\emdash to talk of it as a "Communion" would be a brand and stigma on the name.' I reply\emdash Your duty of obedience to your Lord's command is independent of any such intruders. You are not responsible for the sin and presumption of others. If hypocrites there be, to the Lord they thus mock, and defy, and crucify afresh\emdash not to you\emdash are they answerable. It is a disputed question, whether the betrayer himself dNared to partake of the consecrated elements on the night of Institution. If he did, John and Peter and James were assuredly not responsible for the sacrilege\emdash the defiant crime of the Apostate putting his lips to that sacred cup. And of every Judas who ventures with unhallowed footstep among disciples still, we can only say\emdash "To his own Master he stands or falls."\par \par Jesus bids all His lowly followers welcome. "Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, forO they shall be filled." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Why stand excluded from the gracious privilege by the intervention of any needless barriers and impediments unrecognized by the Master? If in any degree conscious of love to Him who first loved, and so loved you, and cherishing a humble yet earnest desire for its increase\emdash do not delay this public manifesto of your allegiance. Rather, in response to His invitation, "Come, for all things are ready,"\emdash be it yours to say, even while deeply feeling your unworthiness and infirmity\emdash\par 'Just as I am! Your love unknown\par Has broken every barrier down;\par Now to be Your, yes, Your alone\emdash\par O Lamb of God! I come!"\par \par We cannot more appropriately close, than by simply repeating our text, and the words of the immediate context\emdash "Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } Qr sandaled feet, O prince's daughter!" \emdash Solomon's Song 7:1\par \par I am well aware of the purely secular treatment of the Song of Solomon has received at the hands of not a few scholars in these modern days.\par \par I shall not, however, be deterred by any schools or tenets of theology, from utilizing a precious Book of the sacred Canon for the highest spiritual instruction. This, too, on no "accommodation theory,"\emdash deflecting it from a poor earthly meaning, in order to Rengraft pious thoughts and lessons it was never designed to furnish or suggest. Grant that it has a historical basis; grant that its primary and original purpose was to serve as a 'Marriage Song', or that its literary structure assumes the form of a romantic epic\emdash still, these are but the setting of a more precious Jewel. It has a truer intrinsic value than that of being merely a choice product and specimen of Hebrew pastoral poetry. Its chapters have been, to tens of thousands of God's holiest and Sbest, from Origen, and Jerome, and Theodoret among the Fathers, down to our own Samuel Rutherford, like "Apples of Gold in pictures of Silver," It has been called by one of them "The Holy of Holies of the Bible sanctuary." At no time do the themes of the Great Allegory seem more befitting and appropriate, than when forming part of the service of a Communion Sabbath.\par \par In a remarkable passage immediately preceding our text, Christ is figuratively regarded as coming down to "the Garden of nTuts" (the Church on earth) to hold communion with His members\emdash they transporting their chariots of faith and love up to the Gates of Heaven to quicken His approach\emdash "before I ever knew it\emdash my soul bore me (margin) on the chariots of a willing people" (6:12).\par \par The Great Redeemer, the Heavenly Bridegroom, is now represented under the leading emblem of the Book, as surveying the beauties and excellences of His betrothed bride. "Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, Uthat we may look upon you." Amazed at His condescension she replies\emdash "What will you see in the Shulamite?" "What, O my Savior, will You see in me?" by nature lost, by daily transgression incurring Your displeasure; my love so weak, my resolutions so feeble\emdash "What will you see?" Nothing but a divided heart; "the company of two armies." Grace on the one hand, corruption on the other; faith on the one hand, sight and sense on the other; the remains of the carnal mind still enmity against God, theV flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.\par \par And did You not "cover my head in the day of battle"\emdash fight for me the good fight of faith; restrain my foes and curb my wavering affections; I would long ago have been able only to tell of one army; that I was leagued on the side of Satan against You; the helpless victim of my own legion-sins, my present tyrants, my future tormentors. Even now, with all Your wondrous mercy and gracious forbearance, I feel too ofWten and too mournfully the tendency of the evil heart of unbelief. Self-abased, and self-condemned, alas! I need no other lips than my own to attest the humbling reality\emdash You see nothing but "as it were the company of two armies" (2:13).\par \par Her Lord replies in the verse of the text. The whole chapter is an apostrophe to her. She is in herself full of conscious unworthiness\emdash blemishes and shortcomings which seem to mar her best services and highest consecration. But He sees her Xclothed in the bridal attire of His own righteousness, having "neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing," and instead of upbraiding her for avowed imperfections, He begins with the words\emdash "How beautiful are your sandaled feet, O Prince's daughter!"\par \par Let me this evening speak, with God's blessing, on these two points.\par \par I. The Church's or the Believer's NAME\emdash "Daughter" and "Prince's daughter."\par \par (1.) She is called "DAUGHTER." This points Yto the tender relation subsisting between Christ and His people. When Jehovah in the Old Testament speaks most endearingly of His ancient Church, He calls it "The Daughter of Zion." He employs, indeed, manifold figures, all indicative of strong and ardent attachment. "As one whom his mother comforts." "Can a woman forget her nursing child?" "Like as a father pities his children." "I will be a Father unto you."\par \par How graciously, too, does He adapt Himself to their special circumstances andZ diverse experiences! He came down to Abraham (the pilgrim and sojourner) in a tent. He came to Moses (when Israel was in the furnace of sore trial) in a burning bush\emdash burning, yet not consumed. Joshua was fighting\emdash a man of war; his Lord came to him with a sword drawn in His hand. Zechariah was in a deep midnight of national trouble\emdash the horrors of internal feud and bloodshed impending; his Almighty Defender appeared to him by night, as "a man riding on a red horse," with the ensigns of[ battle and pledges of deliverance.\par \par In the text the believer needed gentle dealing. The Shulamite, represented in the lowly garden or valley of nuts\emdash the valley of humiliation, is compared to a budding pomegranate (6:11); graces feeble; requiring the gracious influences of sunshine, or the balmy zephyrs of the south wind previously invoked (chapter 4:16). It was necessary to express the tenderness of God's pardoning mercy and purposes. He will not treat as a son\emdash requiring b\older, harsher correction, the severer tokens of parental discipline. But He will manifest and bestow all forbearance and love. He calls that honored believer "Daughter!"\par \par (2.) But again, she is a "PRINCE'S daughter." He reminds her of her pedigree. It is no ordinary birth. She is one of the adopted children of the "King of kings,"\emdash those who, by virtue of their spiritual relationship to the Prince of the kings of the earth, their Elder Brother, are themselves "made Kings and Pries]ts unto God." Their glory is His glory. Their lives are, through this mystical indissoluble union, "hidden with Christ." He feels what is done to them as sensitively as if it were done to Himself. Oh wondrous thought! God not only recognizes them as His children, but includes them in the same paternal affection which He bears to His own dear Son. And Christ, the Brother in their nature, regards them with a like measure and intensity of love\emdash "As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you."\par \p^ar The concluding words of His memorable Valedictory prayer are among the most marvelous in the Bible\emdash "That the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them!" Well may we echo the challenge\emdash "Who is a God like unto our God, who pardons iniquity and passes by the transgressions of the remnant of His heritage?" "He raises up the poor out of the dust, and lifts up the beggar from the ash-heap, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory!"\p_ar \par Would that we could realize the full grandeur of these royal privileges which have been ratified to us today at the Sacramental Table. I repeat, let us not regard the language of the verse we are now considering as a mere figure of speech of oriental poetry, but rather as a glorious divine reality\emdash and those into whose hearts God has sent forth His Spirit, enabling them to cry "Abba, Father," know it to be so. Heavenly blessings in Christ in possession\emdash and, in reversion, the` prospect of being ushered into the presence-chamber of the King; according to the description in Psalm 45\emdash the King's daughter "all glorious within," her clothing of "wrought gold" (the golden texture of a spotless righteousness not her own), arrayed in "clothing of needlework" (the graces of a divine life and character inwrought and inweaved by the Holy Spirit in the soul); "the virgins her companions following after," rank on rank of attendant angels\emdash ministering ones to the heirs of salvataion\emdash ushering her with gladness and rejoicing into the Heavenly Palace; there, as princes, and prince's daughters, to reign forever and ever!\par \par How all earthly greatness dwindles into nothingness before the honors and blessings of God's purchased people! What is the mightiest king or prince of the earth?\emdash a robe of ermine or a crown of gold conceals, underneath, a body corruptible as others. A breath may overturn the most towering fabric of earthly happiness. The vile worm refbuted Herod's divinity. In an unexpected moment the revelries of Belshazzar were stilled in death, and his diadem plucked from his brow. One mandate from the throne of Heaven converted Sennacherib's tented field into a sepulcher, and scattered the pride of Assyria like chaff before the whirlwind. What is the history of earthly empires and kingdoms? "Ichabod! Ichabod!\emdash the glory has departed!" an alternation of rise and fall\emdash a proud capital one day, the next century a pile of ruins. The laurelsc of victory and empire one day fresh; another, withering and fading with the brow that wears them. But, believers, yours are imperishable crowns\emdash palms ever green, robes ever white. The leaves of your coronation diadem are leaves plucked from the Tree of Life; yours an inheritance "incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not away!" "Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear."\par \par d Let us proceed now\emdash\par \par II. Her Lord's SUBJECT OF COMMENDATION\emdash "How beautiful are your sandaled feet."\par \par I would observe (1.) The sandal, in ancient times, and in oriental countries, was the badge of FREEDOM and HONOR. The crouching slave never wore a sandal. The lack of shoes\emdash the unsandaled feet\emdash was the badge and mark of slavery, if not of degradation. When the Lord, therefore, in the text speaks of His betrothed Bride's feet being "beautifule with sandals," what is this but to proclaim that she\emdash type of every believer\emdash is translated from the bondage of corruption into "the glorious liberty of the children of God?" Free from the condemnation of a broken law; free from the accusation of a guilty conscience; free from the terrors alike of temporal and of eternal death. "Thus shall you eat it," was the address to pilgrim Israelites of old\emdash assembled, as you have been today, at their Paschal feast\emdash "with your loins girded, fwith the shoes on your feet" (Ex. 12:11).\par \par It was the anniversary of their emancipation\emdash the celebration of their national birthday, which brought them forth from their land of bondage and terminated their thraldom. You come forth from a Communion Table, wearing the sandals of freedom. God has anew, in that blessed sacrament, sealed to you your divine liberty. Its significant symbols of love and suffering recall that you "are not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver andg gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." Computing in some feeble measure the amazing ransom-price paid for your redemption, you can say with the Roman officer, as he addressed Paul in the castle of Jerusalem\emdash "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." The Son has made me free, and I am free indeed!\par \par In that beautiful festal Psalm where the worshiper is heard declaring, "I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of hthe Lord," he is represented as adding\emdash "O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant and the son of Your handmaid, You have loosed my bonds" (Ps. 116:16).\par \par I remark (2.) Sandals were emblems of JOY\emdash while the lack of these was equally recognized and regarded as a symbol of grief and sorrow.\par \par David, you will remember, when compelled to leave his throne and capital, and take flight to a land of exile, went up Mount Olivet barefoot. On the other hand, upion the occurrence of glad seasons\emdash whether great national ovations, or social feasts and entertainments, where mourning was turned into dancing\emdash the guests were supplied with sandals. Such, in the Parable of parables, was the case with the hunger-stricken prodigal, on his return from the far country to his forfeited filial privileges\emdash within paternal halls and walls; the rejoicing father proclaiming it to be an occasion for making merry and being glad.\par \par And is not the Cjhristian called to be joyful? Yes, God's children are indeed, really, and in truth, alone of all, in this sin-stricken world, entitled to the epithet of "happy." Never say that gloom and despondency are the conditions and accompaniments of the believer's creed and the believer's life\emdash that sadness of countenance is the badge and penalty of godliness. Who can forget that the God of nature is the God of Christianity? Never tell me, that He who gave the lily its beauty and the sky its delicate blue, ankd the sun golden wheels to his chariot and golden arrows of light for his quiver, could ever intend the soul to be draped in sackcloth.\par \par So long as we continue to be strangers to the covenant of promise, living in neglect of the great salvation\emdash then our figurative description is that of men barefoot; our appropriate emblems those of melancholy and sorrow; for happiness, in its highest and noblest phase, must be unknown in the bosom where God is a stranger. But the moment a man is lunited by faith to the Lord Jesus as his ever-living Redeemer\emdash the moment he obtains the assurance of sin forgiven\emdash the blessed sense of adoption into the Divine family, he is "girded with gladness," the shoes, not only of liberty but of holy joy, are put on his feet. Like the Ethiopian of old, in the desert of Gaza, having found what he had so long sought in vain, he goes on his way rejoicing.\par \par "The daughters of Jerusalem," the band or chorus of singers in this allegory, maym appropriately name the Bride of the text "SHULAMITE," that is, "peaceful." She is filled with "the peace of God which passes all understanding." The sacramental rite of today, when partaken of by those who can, with humble confidence, justify their claim to the title, "children of the King,"\emdash may well be called "Eucharist," or "Feast of Joy."\par \par (3.) Once more. The sandals on the feet speak of activity and duty, and preparedness for Christ's service. They point to the nature of the njourney the believer is pursuing. Though a pleasant road, and a safe road, and a road with a glorious termination, it is at times rough; a path of temptation and trial. Unshod feet would be cut and lacerated with the stones and thorns and briars which beset it.\par \par The figure, moreover, suggests, that there can be no loitering or lingering on the way. Impressive must have been the scene that night, to which we have already referred, at the first Paschal Feast in Egypt. It was not the solemno calm which so distinguishes our Communion celebration\emdash the elements handed slowly and reverently from guest to guest in a hush of hallowed silence. As we see the old Hebrew family, or cluster of families, gathered together, every movement betokens celerity. They stand girded\emdash "harnessed." They eat the appointed Supper, not only with shoes on the feet, but, it was an added injunction\emdash "in haste," as it were, by snatches, like men who have not a moment to put off\emdash delay may be fatalp. When we hear the voice of our "Beloved" saying, "How beautiful are your sandaled feet!" we are reminded that these shoes are given not for ornament, but to be worn\emdash they are given that His true Israel may walk, yes, "run in the way of the divine commandments," ready to follow the Great Captain of salvation wherever He sees meet to guide them; seeking, with the true pilgrim ardor, to be ever advancing in the heavenward, homeward way; listening to the old monition, "Speak to the children of Israel tqhat they go forward." The path of the just is compared to the sun in the skies, traveling in the greatness of his strength; glowing with intenser brightness until he reaches his meridian\emdash or, like the eagle in his soaring\emdash his nest on the earthly rock, but his home the skies. "They shall mount up with wings as eagles."\par \par We may all take to ourselves here the apostolic injunction\emdash "See that you walk circumspectly." In the quaint but expressive phrase of an old divine on trhis passage, "Many are content to walk slipshod." They go with a halting pace; with meager faith, and satisfied with a low standard of grace and holiness. They have shoes on their feet, but they are the sandals of a flimsy profession that cannot stand the rough parts of the road; and when affliction or tribulation arises, immediately they are offended. Beware, and specially those who have recently renewed their vows at the Holy Table\emdash beware of the first symptoms of spiritual declension\emdash that sdrowsy, sleepy, lukewarm condition so forcibly described in a preceding chapter of this same Song\emdash where the believer, stretched on the downy pillow of self-security, listens\emdash but it is only with languid indifference\emdash to the knockings of the Savior at the door of the heart.\par \par How tenderly, how gently, how urgently He importunes\emdash "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled\emdash for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night!" (tv. 2). What is the cold reply of the slumberer? Mark how she invents excuses. She has cast off the sandals of a close and holy and habitual walk with God, and replies\emdash "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?" Ah, if the feet had been shod as they ought to have been; if she had been on the alert, ready for duty and obedience, her Pilgrim-Lord would not have been repelled from the door, or left unwelcomed amid the falling, drenching dews. If she uhad been careful then to have been ready for His presence, she would not have been driven, as we find she was, out amid the dark streets and crude watchmen of Jerusalem, seeking Him with plaintive wail, and bleeding feet, and anguished tears.\par \par This subject suggests to us a lesson of a different kind. Another befitting fragment may be gathered from it at the close of our Sacred Feast. The shoes (the beautiful shoes) seem to indicate, not only the believer's personal activities in the mattver of his own high calling, they point to him also as a messenger to others. The Church in each of her members must be, or ought to be, shod as "a ministering one." It is noticed by an excellent commentator, that the translation of our text in the oldest Bible is, "How pleasant are your treadings with shoes, O Prince's daughter!" Hers should be treadings in the world's thousand pathways and byways of duty and kindness and mercy. It is a law in all God's moral government that "the elder should serve the yowunger,"\emdash the higher minister to the lowlier natures. He who is at the summit of all Being ministers to the needs of angel and archangel. Christ, the Incarnate God, came "not to be ministered to, but to minister."\par \par The angels are "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation." And, as God ministers to angels, and angels to man; so, surely, man, in a higher social station, ought, in accordance with this great law, to minister to those of his fxellow-beings occupying a lowlier one. "We who are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." The family, surrounded and dowered with many domestic blessings, should be the willing almoners of God's bounty to others\emdash aiding and succouring the orphan and fatherless, the poor also, and him that has no helper. Blessed is that church which sends its messengers "shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace," and whose advent is thus hailed by the perishing in the world's darksome valleys\emdasyh "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that brings good tidings!"\par \par In Isaiah's temple-vision of the six-winged seraphim, while the 'pose' of a double pair of these wings was indicative of reverence\emdash the contemplative and devotional element in the Christian character and life\emdash with the remaining pair "he did fly," the symbol of joyful activity, ever ready to speed on behests of unselfish love and mercy. Nor is this the duty and the privilege only of the influezntial few. All in their varied ways\emdash (with many it may be a very humble and lowly way) may become such ministering angels of kindness. You may receive, for that little, but a small recompense of praise from man. But the Great Recompenser, who does not forget even the cup of cold water, may be heard addressing you\emdash "How beautiful are your feet,"\emdash how pleasant are your treadings "with sandals, O Prince's daughter!"\par \par Let all who have put on afresh their festal sandals toda{y, seek in this, as in other ways, to follow Christ\emdash to "walk, even as He walked." May it be said of you, "These are those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes." He may at times take us by a rough road, narrow and difficult; full of crosses and hardships and losses; but He will not conduct us over a path harder than our shoes can bear. He will lead us by the right way to a city of habitation.\par \par When we think of the lessons more especially taught us at His Memorial Ordinance; how His| feet were transpierced, that the sandals of salvation might be put upon ours; when we think that there is not the path of sorrow which the treadings of the Man of Sorrow knew not; nor the pang of woe which His bleeding heart felt not; shall we refuse to follow Him in any way He may choose to appoint? The ruggedness of this and every other tortuous and thorny road will be all forgotten, when our feet shall stand within your gates, O Jerusalem!\par \par Dare I close without one other urgent thoug}ht, which seems yet to claim a concluding sentence? Should there be any here, to whom the symbols of the Holy Table have been all unmeaning, who are still strangers to Christ and His Salvation\emdash walking unshod\emdash slaves, for they have no real freedom; joyless, for they have no true joy\emdash leading a selfish, aimless, profitless existence; living in unconcern and sin\emdash their own souls in unrest, and others around them uncared for and unblest\emdash Let any such arise, and go to their Father. He welcomes every prodigal's return. There are shoes\emdash jeweled sandals\emdash awaiting in the long-lost home. Oh! how many has that Lord of love and tenderness watched in the hazy distance! How many a drooping penitent, with ragged dress and tear-dimmed eye, has He met at the threshold; and stripping off the tattered clothing, given orders to the attendant servants\emdash "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and SHOES ON HIS FEET."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } iched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 THE PASSOVER IN EGYPT AND ITS TYPICAL SIGNIFICANCE.\par \b0\par "Wear your traveling clothes as you eat this meal, as though prepared for a long journey. Wear your sandals, and carry your walking sticks in your hands. Eat the food quickly, for this is the Lord's Passover. On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and kill all the firstborn sons and firstborn male animals in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord! The blood you have smeared on your doorposts will serve as a sign. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt. You must remember this day forever. Each year you will celebrate it as a special festival to the Lord." Exodus 12:11-14\par \par The Passover, in its earliest celebration, is perhaps the best known of all Old Testament types. But it is with it, as with most familiar things\emdash if they are interesting and impressive, they can well bear restatement and repetition. With the observance before us today of our own Gospel Feast, we may appropriately and with profit take the Jewish rite as our theme of meditation.\par \par We are transported in thought to that memorable night when, under the guidance of their trusted leader, or rather under the strong Hand and outstretched Arm of the God of the Pillar-cloud, the oppressed race are to leave their home of exile forever. Let us endeavor, by individualizing a domestic group, to form a mental picture of the scene.\par \par On the 14th day of the month Nisan, an Israelite family are gathered for the last time in their Egyptian dwelling. The door is shut; the father's face is lighted up with joy as he addresses his assembled household with words of encouragement; for he knows that they are about, in some mysterious way, but with very real certainty, to bid farewell to their bondage. 'Fear not,' we may imagine him saying, 'before the morrow dawns, Jehovah is to do mighty wonders! yet another hour, midnight will be here, and then a great cry will be heard amid the darkness; for the Destroying Angel is to speed through every dwelling in the land, and leave its firstborn dead\emdash son of king and son of slave. Yes, even the firstborn of beasts too. Egypt's animal-gods, which our oppressors in their base superstition have worshiped, will share the doom, and the Lord God of Israel, our God, shall be glorified.' If the father observes, meanwhile, any of those present betokening alarm\emdash possibly hearing them exclaim, 'Alas! shall not we also be involved in this terrible destruction?' 'No!\emdash dismiss your fears,' would be his reply. 'Did you not see, a few hours ago, how I besprinkled our lintels and doorposts with the blood of a lamb? That mark, wherever it is made, will ensure to every Hebrew house and household immunity from the Destroyer. Only keep, as we are now, within the walls. To venture outside would be exposure to certain peril. Here we are safe!'\par \par At that moment, may we give further license to imagination, and suppose, by a bold metaphor, that there is heard outside a sound as of rustling wings! It is the dreadful Messenger of vengeance. But that Angel's eye falling in the present case on the appointed blood stain, he passes by the dwelling unscathed. Not so with the habitations of others. Plaintive wail follows plaintive wail, as the discovery is made in every Egyptian home that there is a dead eldest-born! The frantic cries increase. Mothers, beating their breasts, rush from their houses in the delirium of despair. They seek Priest and Temple. They cry wildly to Osiris and Mnevis to be up and save them! But these oracles and deities are dumb. "They have ears, but they hear not."\par \par And now the hour of longed-for emancipation has arrived. 'Up! let us be going'\emdash Hebrew calls to Hebrew. 'Let our tears and chains be henceforth nothing but a doleful memory.'\par \par It is done. Amid the darkness of night\emdash relieved only by the light of the moon, and the silence broken only by the cry of the bereft Egyptians, the country scarred with the marks of the recent plagues, the palm-trees struck down and blasted with the hail of God\emdash the march begins. "Not a hoof is left behind," Israel is free! The mighty army of liberated slaves have begun and effected their Exodus.\par \par Brethren, let us gather around these significant emblematic teachings. If no passage in this ancient story of God's acts is more familiar, none is fuller or more suggestive to us of the Great Redeemer. With the utmost simplicity of thought and treatment, for the subject will admit of no other, let us view "Christ, our passover, sacrificed for us,"\emdash "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."\par \par In doing so, we shall briefly recall\emdash or, if I may use the expression\emdash 'outline'\emdash and that in the order of the inspired narrative, the leading points in the olden type.\par \par (1.) The first feature which strikes us is concerning the PASSOVER, is that the Rite was of DIVINE APPOINTMENT.\par \par This significant Hebrew ceremony would never have been thought of by an Israelite himself. It would have been the last thing that would have suggested itself, on the concluding night of bondage, to kill one of the members of their flock and sprinkle doorpost and lintel with its blood.\par \par The method of the Great divine Expiation for the sins of the world was pre-eminently God's devising. What human mind would ever have formulated such an idea, as that the Eternal One would send to this apostate earth of ours, the Prince of Life and Lord of Glory, in order to effect, through a death of self-surrender and suffering, the emancipation and final salvation of His people? Surely if, in any respect more than another, God's ways are not our ways, nor God's thoughts our thoughts, it is that He should have "so loved the world, as to give His only Begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but might have everlasting life."\par \par (2.) Let us note next, the name and nature of the appointed victim\emdash a LAMB. The animal of all others that seems to suggest the idea of innocence and meekness. In the lion's whelp, with all its playfulness, there is early discerned the incipient fierceness of untamable years. But a lamb, as it browses on the mountain side or by meadow and stream, is the recognized picture of gentleness and patience. Expressive emblem, surely, of "the Lamb of God!" It seems to us a poor reason which some have given for the selection of the Paschal offering, that it was what could most readily be furnished by the shepherds of Goshen from their herds. Let us see, rather, in this first simple element in the typical significance, what the writer of an after age calls, "the meekness and gentleness of Christ." "HE was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth."\par \par (3.) As a further expansion of this thought, the selected Paschal lamb was to be WITHOUT BLEMISH.\par \par Plague-mark or disease or infirmity dare not attach to it. No animal would be accepted with torn fleece, or broken limb. A maimed member of the flock would be an insult to Jehovah, and would have vitiated the offering. The besprinkled blood of such would have failed to arrest the footsteps of the Avenging Angel.\par \par Christ was "a Lamb without blemish and without spot." He "offered Himself without spot to God." As one flaw or vein in the marble fatally damages the sculptor's work\emdash as one speck in the lens of microscope or telescope destroys its use and demands a recasting\emdash as one leak would inevitably submerge the noblest vessel that ever rode the waters\emdash so, one leak in the Mighty Ark of Mercy\emdash one flaw, one stain in the nature of the Divine Surety\emdash the Image of the Invisible God\emdash would have been fatal to His qualifications as a ransom for the guilty. Blessed be His name, the Lamb "slain for us," was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." What a host of witnesses conspired on earth to testify to His immaculate purity! His very foes were compelled to own and recognize His blameless, stainless life. The traitor who sold Him had to avow\emdash "I have betrayed innocent blood," the judge who condemned Him had to wash his hands, and declare, "I find no fault in Him at all." His own beloved Disciple, in after years, beheld Him in vision "girded with a golden belt," "glorious in His holiness."\par \par (4.) The Paschal Lamb was not only without blemish, but "a male of the first year," that is to say, had attained its full growth. It was the choicest of the fold. It was, in its lowly way, the type of absolute perfection.\par \par Behold again, a yet additional attestation to the All-perfect Sacrifice! It may appear to some a very accidental and subordinate feature; but we think it cannot be overlooked, that the expiation for sin was consummated by the Great Antitype at the very age when manhood reached its prime. Vain is the attempt, save from unauthorized traditional sources, to form any definite conception of the outward appearance\emdash the human form and likeness\emdash of the Divine Son of God. We may each have our separate imaginings and surmises regarding what has been unrevealed. Chief perhaps among these, that just as with the best and noblest on earth, we generally find worth, purity, integrity, sympathy, and kindness, unmistakably reflected in face and feature\emdash so it may have been with Him "whose countenance was as the sun which shines in his strength." May it not reasonably be conjectured, that whatever was most attractive and beautiful in man, was unfolded in the outer aspect of "the Altogether Lovely one"? It surely adds to the touching thought of His death, that it was just when the adorable Savior had attained all that was complete as the Ideal of humanity, that "He was taken out of the land of the living."\par \par The Heavenly Flower was cut down, not when in early incipient bud, but in amplest blossom. The pure white Lily bowed its head, not when the latent beauty was undeveloped, but when it had fully revealed its "calyx of gold." The Divine Tree of Life succumbed to the axe, not in the early spring when its branches were unclothed and the fruit unformed; neither in late autumn, with the leaves seared\emdash but in the full summer of its glory; when every bough was laden with verdure and hanging with richest clusters. The magnificent Temple fell, not when half upreared, nor yet when toil and suffering had left their lines and furrows on the gleaming marble; but rather, just when the top stone had been brought forth with shouting, and the cry arose, 'Grace, grace unto it!' If we venture to use human language, it was when this "Fairer than the children of men" was 'at His noblest and best,' that in divinest sacrifice He poured out His life-blood for us.\par \par From this conjunct emblematic view of Christ as "a Lamb," "a Lamb without blemish," "a male of the first year," let us take comfort. It required perfection\emdash the perfection of Deity and humanity, to make Him all that we need as a Savior. An Angel has a perfection of his own, but an Angel cannot redeem. His perfection is at best only the perfection of a creature\emdash the borrowed derived glory and luster of the satellite. They "veil their faces with their wings" in token of conscious unworthiness. The perfection of Christ is underived\emdash His the alone perfection that can be accepted as substitute for imperfection, and by reason of which He can thus address His Church\emdash "I who speak in righteousness, am mighty to save!"\par \par (5.) The Paschal lamb was SEPARATED from the flock and kept alive four days. This formed a further Divine injunction, as you will find by reference to the detailed instructions in the opening of the chapter from which our text is taken. (Ex. 12:3, 6.)\par \par Christ, as we have already seen, was designated for His atoning work and sacrifice in the counsels of the Father from the foundation of the world. Before the true Paschal Antitype was slain, the world was left 4000 years (four millennial days, as an old writer expresses it) to work out the problem of its own self-restoration. God seemed to say, I will set apart the Great appointed Sacrifice for these specified eras, to let the nations test their ability to save themselves\emdash to solve, if they can, by their own intellect and reason; by their laws of progress, their astute philosophies, their "moral consciousness," the all-momentous question, "How can man be just with God?" The solution of that problem, after the long period of waiting and probation was\emdash "The world by wisdom" (its own boasted wisdom and civilization; its moral codes, its political expedients and scientific theories) "knew not God!" Then, the fullness of the time came, and God sent forth His only begotten Son.\par \par (6.) The Paschal Lamb, after being presented "on the fourteenth day of the first month, at full moon, between the evenings,"\emdash was slain. At the celebration of the rite in Egypt, with which we are now especially concerned, the head of every household officiated as sacrificing priest. But when they reached Canaan, and in subsequent times, each offerer seems to have brought his separate lamb to the Tabernacle or Temple, where it was killed by Levites. The blood was poured, at all events in the Temple service, into gold and silver basins. These were handed along a row of officiating priests, until they reached the altar upon which the blood was finally cast. In either case the Paschal Lamb was a sacrificial offering\emdash a propitiation.\par \par Brethren, here is the foundation truth of the gospel; "the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." Yes, the "sprinkling," for observe, that under the varying forms of observance in earlier and later Jewish times, this expressive action was rigidly preserved. Not enough for you or for me is the slaying of the Lamb\emdash in other words, the mere historical fact that the Divine-human Victim died. There must be the saving application of that blood to the conscience\emdash a personal individual interest applied for and found in the great salvation\emdash "He loved me and gave Himself for me."\par \par Vain for us will it be to sit down at our great New Testament Feast unless conscious that the lintels and doorposts of our hearts, as a great spiritual reality, have been marked with the covenant token, and that we are resting in Christ as our only Savior. We have seen that nothing but the sprinkling of the blood could have saved from the Avenging Angel. The Israelite might have piled buttress on buttress, pyramid on pyramid, to effect exclusion. He might have strengthened his dwelling with bars of brass and pillars of iron, lintels and doorposts of cunning workmanship. The Destroyer's weapon would have cleft them in sunder.\par \par "Neither is there salvation in any other." The work of Jesus must stand alone in all its solitary grandeur and sufficiency. "When I see the blood"\emdash "the blood," says God\emdash "I will pass over you."\par \par Omitting several additional interesting typical lessons on which time forbids to speak, I shall conclude with one other reference\emdash the final injunction to the Hebrews regarding their offering; that is, that after the carcass of the victim was "roasted with fire," it was to be eaten\emdash the whole of it was to be eaten, nothing was to be left.\par \par In the modern Samaritan celebration of the rite, no part would appear to be more strangely interesting, than the guests, under the light of the full paschal moon, gathering around and consuming the carcasses of the slaughtered lambs. There is, moreover, the same rigid adherence to the old command, that nothing was to be unconsumed; so that if any morsels remain, they are carefully gathered up and placed on mats and burned. Fires and candles are lighted, and the ground searched in all directions, in case of any fragment being overlooked. "You shall let nothing remain until the morning, and that which remains until the morning you shall burn with fire."\par \par What, among others, is one great spiritual lesson here inculcated? That it is not enough to rest satisfied with the initial act of pardon and forgiveness through the blood of the cross. Christ must not only be looked to by simple faith, but in His own expressive but much misunderstood and misinterpreted words and simile, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except" (in a lofty, spiritual sense) "you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God; you have no life in you."\par \par In a very especial manner, dear friends, is that typical feature brought before us today. You recall the words of Institution uttered by the Great Master of the New Testament Feast. These are not "Take, look," (this would have been sufficient had it been a commemorative occasion and no more); but He significantly says, "Take, eat." It is a covenanting, strengthening, grace-imparting, nourishing Ordinance. By partaking of the Sacramental bread, and drinking the Sacramental wine, there is expressed, in the outer act, the necessity of what the old divines call "appropriating the Redeemer and all the benefits of His purchase." The ordinance, received by faith, not only "does signify, but seal, our ingrafting into Christ, our partaking of the benefits of the Covenant of Grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's."\par \par Brethren, "Let us keep the Feast!" and as we "go to the altar of God, unto God Himself our exceeding joy," let us do so with the cherished, familiar litany on lip and in heart\emdash "O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!" "O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us your peace!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } [~EEB01 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #1{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0 e=A12 Concluding Address{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{ 1A11 The Passover in Egypt and its Typical{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator R~\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 SUNDAY AFTERNOON\emdash CONCLUDING ADDRESS\par \b0\par "There shall be a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goes with a flute to come to the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel."\emdash Isaiah 30:29\par \par "But the people of God will sing a song of joy, like the songs at the holy festivals. You will be filled with joy, as when a flutist leads a group of pilgrims to Jerusalem\emdash the mountain of the Lord\emdash to the Rock of Israel." Isaiah 30:29\par \par In the previous solemn services of today, our minds were directed to the typical significance of the first Passover in Egypt; which we endeavored to connect, by many remarkable particulars, with our own New Testament celebration.\par \par I have thought I could not more appropriately wind up and close our sacramental meditations, than in the words just read from the great evangelical Prophet. They have reference to an interesting custom in the keeping of the Paschal Feast during subsequent ages of Hebrew history; when, year after year, every Israelite went up to Jerusalem. The multitudes which thronged there from all parts of Palestine were in the habit of traveling by night as well as by day\emdash proceeding in bands or companies; cheering one another with the voice of psalms and sacred songs, or with the simple music of flute or tabret.\par \par What a rush of thought must have filled the bosoms of these Pilgrims, as, under a clear passover moon, and making the valleys resound with their melodies, they drew near the City of Solemnities, to commemorate the mightiest epoch in their national history! Many and varied, we may suppose, would be the voices composing these night-strains, from the tremulous accents of the aged patriarch, who had traversed often before with hardier step the same journey, to those of the youth, who was now, at last, to have the ardent longings of boyhood realized, personally to be spectator of the glorious things spoken of the City of God.\par \par We may imagine, as the secluded villages and hamlets, from the slopes of Lebanon to the borders of Idumea, poured out their groups, how many and pleasing themes of converse there would be by the way. Some, who, it may be, from varied causes had left their homes in sadness, disconsolate and desponding, would be cheered and invigorated by the sympathy of congenial minds. It would be a season of holy fellowship meetings between Israelite and Israelite. The voice of united prayer would mingle with that of praise\emdash while the one object of their journey, the one keynote of their song, would cause every heart to thrill with gladness, "Our feet shall stand within your gates, O Jerusalem!"\par \par But in due time, the solemnities are ended. The highways of Palestine are again thronged with the returning worshipers; these highways, lighted up with the waning passover moon, and its troop of attendant stars. The dead of night, once more, resounded with the Songs of Zion.\par \par How many fresh thoughts must have crowded the minds of these wayfarers! How varied the feelings with which they would muse on the now ended festival! How brief (would not one of their reflections be)\emdash how brief has been the joyous season. It seems but yesterday we were entering with bounding hearts within the Temple of our Fathers, and here we are again bidding it farewell. We looked forward for a long year to this festive meeting. It has come and gone. The vow has been made\emdash the votive offering rendered. The sacred Gates are closed; and we are retraversing the road to our distant mountain and village homes!\par \par Brief, is our experience also, are earth's best and most hallowed seasons of festal joy. We eat our paschal supper, as if, like the old Hebrews, with girded loins and sandaled feet and pilgrim staff\emdash all indicative of pilgrim haste. The everlasting, uninterrupted, unending Festival is above; where the guests are assembled and associated, not for a fleeting hour, but for eternity!\par \par The thought most appropriate to us, at this part of our service, is, that these Jewish wayfarers returned to their several homes to resume their usual occupations\emdash the customary routine of everyday common life. They had been for days\emdash perhaps weeks, unfamiliar with scenes of worldly toil. The laborer's busy task had been suspended. The vinedresser had laid aside his pruning-hook, the husbandman his plough\emdash the fisherman's nets were spread on the shores of Galilee, and his boat slept on its shadow as it was moored to the rocks of Capernaum. A deep, unworldly solemnity had reigned within Jerusalem, as the nation, at the bidding of its God, kept its high holiday. But the hallowed Portals are shut\emdash The Feast is over\emdash the old heritage of work must be undertaken\emdash the festive and holiday garments must be exchanged for the ordinary attire and as the groups hasten back to their homes along the highways, and by the plains and valleys, they see the tiller of land again in his field\emdash the shepherd again with his crook in the midst of his flock\emdash the Hebrew sailor has started afresh with his Tyrian cargo, and the fishermen on Gennesaret are again preparing for a night of toil.\par \par So it is, brethren, with us. After the most sacred festal and sacramental seasons, the world's business and cares necessarily reassert their claims. Its din and bustle must again be heard and entered\emdash and labor, God's own appointment\emdash yes, gracious appointment\emdash resumed.\par \par BUT\emdash think we, would these old Jewish worshipers (those who were worshipers indeed) in casting off their holiday attire, cast off also their holiday and festive spirit? In the midst of the coarse contacts of daily existence, would the recollections of the Jerusalem Festival no longer linger in their memories? No, rather, would not these Songs of Zion still haunt their ears and hang upon their lips?\emdash would not the shepherd be heard chanting them in the midst of his fleecy charge by green pastures and still waters? would not the fisherman warble them in his nightwatch on the Lake? and the sailor as he bounded over the Great Sea, and the dim mountains of his Fatherland were receding from view? would not the cottager, as he reached his home among the hills of Kedesh or on the spurs of Hermon, evening after evening, in returning from his toil, gather his little ones by his knee, and rehearse to them the joyful remembrances of the holy season?\par \par Be it ours, dear friends, while we leave the New Testament Feast, and engage\emdash as engage we must\emdash in our daily avocations, to carry the hallowed memories of it along with us. These Communion seasons, though only brief pausing places in life's pilgrimage, are intended too as Arbors for spiritual refreshment and revival in the ascent of the "Hill Difficulty"\emdash to brace and strengthen for the everyday road which is again to be traversed, the steep and rugged mountain again to be climbed. While anew wearing the world's dress, and grappling once more with cares and duties, forbid that we should know, with regard to spiritual things and holy resolutions, the world's oblivion power\emdash that we should suffer its engrossments to sweep our solemn impressions away\emdash as the ripple marks on the sand are effaced and obliterated by the first rising tide!\par \par Rather, in resuming our varied tasks and employments, let it be, with our hearts overflowing in gratitude to Him who summoned us to the place of solemnities, to ratify His covenant and give us festive pledges of His love. As we leave the banqueting-house, be it ours to take up in spirit the very strains which hung on the lips of returning Hebrews\emdash and with heartfelt devotion, mingled with resolutions of new obedience, to say, "What shall I render unto God for all His benefits?" "The Lord has been mindful of us\emdash He will bless us\emdash He will bless the house of Israel\emdash He will bless the house of Aaron\emdash He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great."\par \par "Those who fear the Lord, both small and great."\emdash Among the multitudes of Jewish wayfarers resuming the familiar road to their native homes, none does imagination follow with deeper and kindlier interest than the young worshipers\emdash those who had gone up to Jerusalem to gaze for the first time on the City of the Great King\emdash to render their first offering, and pay their first vow. Many mothers in distant localities of the land would doubtless, during his absence, follow with prayerful emotion her son's earliest journey, and wait with trembling solicitude to hear the impressions of a never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimage. Are we wrong in thinking, that the character of not a few youthful Israelites would be permanently molded and influenced by that momentous era in opening life\emdash that, with regard to not a few of them, the words of their great Psalmist were happily fulfilled\emdash "Of Zion it shall be said, the Lord shall count, when He writes up the people, that this one was born here"?\par \par And surely, if there be, among those who have come up today to our Gospel Passover, any whose circumstances are more interesting than others, it is those of young communicants.\par \par  How solemn and important this step in your spiritual history! One cannot but feel, with regard to most of you who have encompassed for the first time your Lord's table, that your characters too are just forming; that it depends much on the resolutions which you have now taken, and the manner you carry them out, what your future is to be. You have put your hand to the plough\emdash see that you turn not back. Oh, endeavor to act out, and pray out, and live out, the firm resolve, that "whatever others do, as for you, you will serve the Lord." Be life's vista long or short, may you never cease to cherish a lively remembrance of your earliest Passover vow\emdash that it may be with you as with the young Hebrews who, in leaving Jerusalem after their first festival, cast a lingering tearful glance on the Gates that were closing behind them\emdash "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill upon the harp. May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I fail to remember you, if I don't make Jerusalem my highest joy." Psalm 137:5-6\par \par To all here present, young and old, would I repeat the benediction which has more than once been breathed upon you\emdash that in "peace you may go from the Table of the Lord, and that the God of love and of peace may go with you!"\par \par Among many other reflections which occurred to the Hebrew Pilgrim when the feast was over, and he found himself returning again to his home, would not this assuredly be one\emdash 'Shall I be spared to be there again?'\emdash shall I ever again tread these hallowed courts? It may be, this is my last Passover. Before another such season comes round, I may be laid in the sepulcher of my fathers. My next Passover!\emdash It may be in the New Jerusalem. I may be called to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven!\par \par My brethren, many of our former Communion feasts, as well as today's, have reminded us of the precarious tenure which binds us to earth's best blessings; and can we suppose it will be different in those that are to come? Or rather, will not new, solemn, warning bells be tolling in our ears? Oh, let this be the home question with each and all of us, as the Sanctuary doors are about to be closed\emdash If today I have registered my last communion vow, prayed my last communion prayer, sung my last communion song\emdash if the summons, before another Sacramental Sabbath comes round, were heard by me, which once fell on a patriarch's ear, "Get up and die,"\emdash would I be able to respond "I am ready!" and looking, by faith, within the portals, on the great Communion Feast and Sabbath of Eternity, to say, "Open to me the Gates of Righteousness, I will go in to them, and I will praise the Lord"?\par \par Meanwhile, let us return to our several homes, with new and more devoted purposes of obedience, with a higher ideal of what Life\emdash may I even add, what Religion\emdash should be? that it dare not, cannot be restricted to Sunday hours or Communion Seasons\emdash that it is not a thing of the lip\emdash of talk, or theory, or dogma, or barren speculation\emdash neither is it expressed by moping countenance, or sullen and moodish divorce from the world's duties and business, its smiles and joys\emdash but a great abiding, permanent principle of action. It is full of deeds. It shows on the character. It proclaims its presence and power by gentleness, and meekness, and patience, and unselfishness; by benignity and kindness; willing if need be to make sacrifices for Jesus, with the ever-present remembrance of the sacrifice and the cross which He so meekly accepted and endured for us.\par \par As on this winding up of a Communion Service many years of solemn responsibility lie behind us, uttering their thousand conflicting echoes of hope and joy, of fear and sorrow\emdash let the recording Angel stay his flight, until, once more, the one supreme message finds its fit parting utterance, and we are permitted yet again to urge upon one and all of you, old and young, rich and poor, to close with the free, full, glorious offers of a Great salvation. In that divine Master's name, around whose Table we have gathered this day\emdash I adjure you, by all the bliss of heaven; by all the solemnities of judgment; by all the realities of eternity; by all the love that we have been commemorating; by Calvary's Cross and Calvary's Savior; by His agony and bloody sweat\emdash by His Cross and Passion\emdash by the spear that pierced His wounded side and the thorns that wreathed His bleeding brows\emdash flee, oh flee to that most gracious Redeemer\emdash flee, oh flee "from the wrath to come!"\par \par Though it should be the last sentence I ever utter, the last proclamation I ever make\emdash let that blessed Name be in it. Let it be enshrined in all its unspeakable and unutterable preciousness\emdash Jesus only\emdash Jesus wholly\emdash Jesus first, last, all in all! Hark! does not the ear of faith even now listen to a song stealing down from the Church triumphant? It is from the guests within the veil!\emdash the white-robed multitude at the great Communion Feast and Sabbath of glory. We have been identified and associated with them this day throughout every portion of our holy service. The same song has been thrilling on our lips, the same Name has been weaved like a golden tissue in our mutual anthem, "Unto Him who has loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood\emdash and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father\emdash to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen!"\par \par "From these blessed hours we borrow\par Music that shall linger long,\par And the labors of tomorrow\par Shall be cheered by holy song\emdash\par Followed still by chanting voices,\par We may tread life's rugged way,\par Ever in our hearts repeating\par Anthems that we sing today."\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } \fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 "The Master has come, and is calling for you." (John 11:28).\par \b0\par These familiar and memorable words were spoken at Bethany on a very different occasion from that of a Communion Season. But they may be warrantably and appropriately adapted as a summons and invitation to the Great Feast of love.\par \par Jesus at all times is invisibly near to His own people. As doubtless, though unseen, He marked every tear of sorrow in that Bethany home during the mysterious "tarrying days" beyond Jordan\emdash so on His throne in Heaven is He still ever imparting and manifesting, by His grace and Spirit, the comforting sense of His presence. But there are times and seasons when He draws especially near; and at no time nearer, or more graciously, than at this His own blessed Sacrament of Communion. In these memorials of His bleeding love, He is evidently and impressively "set forth crucified and slain." In the preaching of this blessed Gospel I hear of Him. In the Holy Ordinance of the Supper I am privileged emblematically to behold Him. There, as in the case of Mary and Martha, He summons me to His feet, to listen, on that hallowed ground, to utterances of love and promises of glory. He takes me, as He did them, to a Grave\emdash but it is that of no human friend. It is the Sepulcher into which He Himself entered as my Surety and Substitute. It is to see the Grave-stone rolled away forever; and over these symbols of suffering to hear Him proclaiming, as He did to the Bethany sisters, that He is Himself the Resurrection and the Life, and that because He lives, His people shall live also.\par \par How does the summons sound in my ears? "The Master has come." Do I\emdash can I\emdash respond to the Name? Am I able, experimentally, to rejoice in Him as 'Rabboni, my Master,'\emdash an all-sufficient Savior\emdash whose blood has purchased a full, free, everlasting remission of my sins; and whose intercession is so prevalent at the right hand of God, that I am warranted, as I meet Him at this Bethany-gate of love, to say in the words of Martha's first utterance\emdash "I know that even now whatever You will ask of God, God will give it to You"? Yes! that mourner of Bethany presents me with a divine watchword, a golden key for the Table of Communion. The riches and promises of grace are to be there, in visible emblem, spread out before me\emdash the garnered blessings of Salvation "hidden in Christ," and whatever be my trial, or weakness, or infirmity, I am encouraged to behold the Scepter of the Heavenly King stretched forth, with the challenge and invitation\emdash "What is your petition, and what is your request?"\par \par "I will hear what God the Lord will speak\emdash He will speak peace unto His people." I will go to His appointed Ordinance, and there unburden and unbosom to Him all my needs and necessities. He will not send me empty away. "Jesus wept."\emdash He wept tears of sorrow as He stood before Martha and Mary in the Bethany graveyard; but this day He is to manifest Himself, in significant symbol, as shedding, not His tears, but His blood. He gives me the blessed pledge and assurance that He will, after the greatest of all boons and blessings\emdash the gift of Himself, freely dower me with every lesser mercy. The Table is about to be spread; the Feast is prepared; the oxen and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready. As, in the name of the rich Provider, I listen in thought to the summons, as if from some herald-angel\emdash "The Master has come, and calls for you," be it mine to respond\emdash "I will go into Your House with burnt offerings, I will pay You my vows." Lord, to whom can I go but unto You, You have the words of eternal life! Bring me to Your Banqueting-house, and let Your banner over me be love! Hide me in this Cleft of the Rock, and let all Your glory pass before me!\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } im. I am like a green fir tree. From me is your fruit found" (Hosea 14:8). \par \par The whole of this precious chapter\emdash a jewel among the Minor prophets\emdash consists of a dialogue between a penitent and his God; and seems peculiarly suitable as a theme for thought and reflection, in the prospect of this day's solemn Ordinance. May I seek devoutly to commune now, alike with my own heart and with the great Heart-Searcher. Be it mine, with the docility of a little child, to say, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears!"\par \par God Himself begins the conversation\emdash He is the first to address overtures of mercy to backsliding Ephraim. We might have expected words of threatening, and upbraiding, and retribution. But there is no terror in His voice. They are rather the tender breathings of a fond father over his erring and wayward children. The marvelous entreaty and admonition break upon our ears\emdash (v. 1, 2) "O Israel, return unto the Lord your God; for you have fallen by your iniquity. Take with you words, and return to the Lord\emdash say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously; so will we render the calves of our lips."\par \par The invitation is obeyed. Humbled and sin-stricken, yet overpowered by a sense of the divine forbearance, they pour out a full confession of their guilt. Hitherto, they had been trusting to an arm of flesh; but they now recognize where their true strength lies\emdash (v. 3) "Assyria will not save us\emdash we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, You are our gods; for in You the fatherless finds mercy." The Lord hearkens. He gives ear to the penitents' breaking of heart, and replies\emdash (v. 4) "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel\emdash he shall grow as the lily and cast forth his roots as Lebanon." Even Ephraim, the apostate and obdurate\emdash we might have deemed irreclaimable\emdash listens to the gracious pleadings. As the scales are falling from his eyes and the chains from his soul, he feels the desire rising within him to give himself to this God in whom compassions flow. As he awakes from his sleep of death, the past, with all its record of sins, passes before him. He gets a glimpse into the chambers of his spirit. He sees they are thronged with idols\emdash usurpers of Jehovah's rights. Amazed that so long, in guilty unconcern, he should have surrendered himself to these, he exclaims, in words of unqualified renunciation\emdash "What have I to do any more with idols?"\par \par Taking this one verse for my present meditation, let me note, as an intending communicant, these three points\emdash The Penitent's resolution. The Divine recognition. The added Promise.\par \par (1.) Is this my vow and resolve, in the prospect of meeting God at His Holy Table\emdash "What have I to do any more with idols?" In my case, as in that of Ephraim, it may well be a resolution evoked by the contemplation of God's wondrous, unmerited love. Guilt and unworthiness have been met with patience kindness. How often have I fainted and grown weary of Him; yet He has never fainted nor grown weary of me! What determination can be more fitting, when about to stand, so to speak, under the shadow of Calvary's Cross\emdash contemplating alike the mightiest manifestation of God's mercy and the mightiest testimony against sin? With such affecting memorials and symbols before me of my own transgressions, and of the dreadful price demanded for their remission, may I be enabled firmly to resolve, that all which dishonors and displeases Him shall be dethroned, saying, 'O Lord my God, other lords beside You have had dominion over me. But this God shall be my God forever and ever.'\emdash "What have I to do any more with idols?"\par \par (2.) But the conference\emdash the dialogue\emdash does not end here. The verse admits us further into the secrets of the audience-chamber. We have, next, the Divine recognition\emdash "I have heard him and observed him."\par \par What can be more touching? No earthly auditor may have listened to Ephraim's breathings of self-reproach. The penitential sighings of his broken spirit may have fallen on no human ears except his own. But One eye, though not of earth, marked these tears. One ear listened to the groanings of the travailing soul. The Almighty Spectator and Hearer now discloses Himself\emdash "I have heard him and observed him!" Beautiful picture, surely, of the interest God takes in His children! His concern for their peace and happiness; the delight, above all, with which He hears the still small voice of penitence\emdash the wail of conscious yet sorrowing estrangement\emdash longing through tears for restoration\emdash "Oh that I knew where I might find Him!" He is watching these feeble pulsations. The tear wept in secret He has registered in His Book. The cry heaved in solitude has been borne to His Throne, and entered with acceptance into the ear of God Almighty. "I am poor and needy," said the Psalmist, when he was himself buffeting the waves in a midnight of gloom\emdash but he adds the experience of Ephraim\emdash "Yet the Lord thinks upon me" (Ps. 40:17).\par \par (3.) This, however, is not enough. With my foot about to stand on holy ground, I cannot help forecasting, with trembling anxiety, the future. So it was with penitent Ephraim. He remembers how frail he is. Even with the consciousness of new love and fresh consecration, he recalls past backsliding and declension. He is filled with desponding fears for the days that are to come. Memory cannot obliterate the just upbraiding and reproach for former treachery and unfaithfulness\emdash "O Ephraim, your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away" (Hosea 6:4). No strength in himself, the tender sapling dreads the hurricane. Help he needs; where is this help to be found?\par \par God meets his case and mine, with a twofold promise of Protection and Grace. "I am like a green fir (or cypress) tree. From Me is your fruit found." The cypress-tree\emdash alike so beautiful and so common in Eastern lands, with its long, tapering, graceful form and its dark clothing\emdash was one of the precious woods employed in the Temple of old; and forests of them are still to be found in the less frequented parts of Lebanon. From its undying verdure, owing to a perpetual supply of sap, winter and summer\emdash so dense, moreover, and strong in foliage, as to afford shelter and nesting-place even for the stork (Ps. 104:17)\emdash it forms surely an appropriate type, in inanimate nature, of the sheltering protection, safety, and security, the believer has in God!\par \par If I am now self-distrustful\emdash troubled with misgivings for the days to come\emdash let me be cheered with the assurance of Him who has promised to be a shelter from the storm and a covert from the tempest. He reveals Himself here to me as an Almighty Friend; who will fortify against all temptations; unravel all perplexities; and overrule all providences for my well-being. He will impart strength in the hour of weakness, and courage in the hour of despondency, and peace in the hour of trouble, and victory in the hour of death.\emdash "I," says a protecting God, "am like a green fir-tree." "As your days, so shall your strength be."\par \par May I not further think of that green fir-tree, as pre-eminently the emblem of my gracious Redeemer\emdash the God-man Mediator\emdash "the Tree of Life in the midst of the garden"\emdash its roots struck in the soil of humanity; its top reaching to heaven\emdash the "Brother-born," yet "mighty to save"? He makes known, elsewhere, the secret of continued support\emdash "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat\emdash but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not" (Luke 22:31, 32). "I have prayed for you." A sinking disciple, a praying Master\emdash Satan tempting, Christ upholding\emdash "From Me is your fruit found!"\par \par Let me, take, as the motto and watchword for an unknown future\emdash "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,"\emdash "By the grace of God I am what I am." By the aid of that promised grace, may I be enabled specially to keep close underneath this Heavenly Fir-tree\emdash to live near to Jesus. The tribe of Ephraim, whose soliloquy I have been pondering, was selected and honored to follow immediately behind the Ark in its way through the wilderness. Let this be ever my coveted position\emdash not on high Communion Seasons only, but all through the pilgrim-journey\emdash to be close to Him whom that Ark symbolized, as my Protector and strength and salvation. Let the song of the many thousands of Israel be mine today; let it be mine from week to week and from year to year, until Grace is merged in Glory\emdash "Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Your strength, and come and save us!" (Ps. 80:2).\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } zz6E5B02 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #2{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 "Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard him and observed h law of the God of Jacob." (Psalm 81). \par \par The 81st may be called "The New Moon Psalm," or "The Psalm of the Silver Trumpets." While these trumpets were blown every morning, at daybreak, in preparation for the morning sacrifice, they were specially sounded at each New Moon. There was one occasion, specially designated "The Feast of Trumpets," which took place on the 1st of the seventh month, the holy month of the Jewish year\emdash when, instead of the one matin blare, their sound was heard all day long, accompanying the eucharistic and expiatory sacrifices. A longer preliminary blast summoned the worshipers to prepare for solemn service. They are reminded in this Psalm of the divine Institution and authority of the Feast\emdash "For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob." One among other designs of this Jewish Festival, was to prepare the hearts of the people for the celebration of the Great Day of Atonement.\par \par The silvery tones of the Gospel trumpet are sounding in my ears its herald notes for today's Gospel Feast. How solemnly and vividly is the Jewish great Day and Feast of Atonement recalled, with its wondrous typical significance; when the High Priest of the nation sprinkled the blood on the Mercy Seat! He disrobed himself of his gorgeous dress, his tiara of gold, his ephod and sparkling jewels\emdash and was arrayed in a simple garment of spotless white. Fit emblem and prefiguration surely of Him, who divested Himself of His eternal glories, and came into our world attired in the pure white vestments of a holy humanity, to suffer and die\emdash Antitype alike of priest and victim. Alone He went into the most Holy Place, the divine presence chamber; alone He carried the censer; alone He sprinkled the blood\emdash "I have trodden the wine press alone!"\par \par I am to see all this, today, in impressive symbol\emdash the blood sprinkled on the Mercy-seat and before the Mercy-seat. In the blood cast, or sprinkled on the pavement "before the Mercy-seat," I behold a type of the blood of Jesus speaking peace to His people on earth\emdash "above the Mercy-seat," speaking peace from before the Throne, where He now pleads as Intercessor. "For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."\par \par I would seek to hear the preparation-trumpet calling me to devout thought and meditation in the prospect of the great Gospel Festival\emdash "Blow the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed; on our solemn feast day." It was a universal belief of the Jews of old, that on this their Feast of Trumpets, Jehovah seated Himself on a Throne, and that His people "passed before Him as a flock of sheep before their shepherd." In the presence of a heart-searching God, let me listen to the New Testament exhortation of the Great Apostle, as he too, in a spiritual sense, sounds the herald note\emdash "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup." Let my feet be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, as now the summons is heard\emdash "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!"\par \par Yes, "your God." This is His own message to me, and to each intending communicant. Let me hear it addressed in this Psalm (verse 10th), "I am the Lord YOUR God\emdash open your mouth wide and I will fill it." He will there\emdash at His own appointed ordinance\emdash reveal Himself as my God in Covenant; and, if I 'open my mouth wide,' that is, if I go with longing desires after Him and longing earnestness for His help and blessing\emdash He will not mock my approach by sending me away unblest. "He satisfies the longing soul with goodness." True to the closing promise of this new-moon Psalm, He will feed me with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the rock\emdash with spiritual treasures hid in Christ, the true Rock of Ages\emdash will He satisfy me (v. 16).\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } 9EqB04 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #4{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fch E B03 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #3{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 "Blow the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast-day. For this was a statute for Israel, and aarset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 "Come, you yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile" (Mark 6:31). The hour of noontide rest was a special one of old in Palestine\emdash when the laborer suspended his toil; when the oxen were unharnessed from the yoke, and the ploughshare reposed on the upturned furrow; when the Caravan of Pilgrims, as they may be seen to this day, gathered under the shade at some well, eating bread and fruit, with their burdened camels moored around. In a diviner spiritual sense that noontide rest is about to be mine. "Come," is the Savior's gracious invitation, addressed to His disciples of old\emdash "Come, you yourselves apart, and rest awhile." "This is the rest with which He causes the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing." Let the world be for a little time shut out\emdash its cares hushed, its duties and business suspended; as with my fellow-communicants I repair to the Well of Living water, the Fount of Gospel mercies "springing up unto everlasting life," and there "rehearse together the righteous acts of the Lord" (Judges 5:11).\par \par Let me note, as its chief and divinest feature; it is rest in the fellowship of the Great Master. It would have afforded little joy or refreshment to His disciples if they had been sent away to that desert place alone. This brief season of suspension from work would have been divested of all its blissful peace and holy gladness, had they been unaccompanied by their Beloved Lord. The consciousness of that Presence and Love and Sympathy was all in all to them. They did not heed the passing away of the splendid vision of the Transfiguration Mount, when in their descent in the grey mists of early morning, "they found no man, save Jesus only" (Matt. 17:8). The summons from the Table of sweet communion on Zion, to the mysterious gloom of the Kedron and the Olive Garden, had sufficient music and heart-cheer to them, from one word embraced in it\emdash "Arise, let us go hence." "And when they had sung a hymn, they went out (together) to the Mount of Olives." A subsequent night of unrecompensed toil on the Sea of Galilee was all forgotten in the morning's joyful recognition\emdash "It is the Lord!"\par \par So is it with Master and disciple still. That Feast of love has its holiest, sweetest, most consecrating thought in this, that it is "the Lord's Supper." It is the presence of the King which makes it, in the truest sense, a Communion. "There," is His own promise, "I will meet with you and commune with you from off the Mercy Seat." If Your presence, O Savior God, goes not with me, carry me not hence! May I be able to say, both in the prospect and retrospect, "He brought me to His banqueting house, and His banner over me was love." "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."\par \par We have need of such "quiet resting places" in the Pilgrim journey; breathing-times amid the din and turmoil and harassing cares of the world. Let me now leave its soiled garments, its coarse wearing drudgery, behind me in the outer court; and unembarrassed and unencumbered, enter with sacred footstep to be 'alone with Jesus.' Many are the circumstances and seasons when the choicest of all His sayings is applicable\emdash none more so than regarding this "Feast in the desert,"\emdash "Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } n, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my Beloved come into His garden, and eat His pleasant fruits" (Song of Sol. 4:16). Come! Blessed Spirit, in all the plenitude of Your gifts and graces\emdash and as I am about, this day, to go to the sacred Feast, breathe upon me and my fellow-communicants, and say, "Receive you the Holy Spirit!" Come, as the North wind bringing with it conviction of sin\emdash my own sin\emdash seen in the light of my Savior's Cross and sufferings. Come, as the South wind\emdash with all soothing, comforting, sanctifying influences\emdash bearing on its wings the Beloved's own balm-words of mercy\emdash revealing the wonders of His love\emdash the tenderness of His sympathy\emdash the riches of His grace. Let the spices\emdash the fragrance of a grateful heart filled with all joy and peace in believing\emdash flow out.\par \par One of the most sublime prayers on record, is that of the Apostle, for the special bestowment of the Holy Spirit preceding the dwelling of Christ in the soul\emdash a beautiful and befitting prelude-utterance to a Communion season and service\emdash "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man." "He shall glorify Me," says the Redeemer Himself, "for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you."\par \par Awake, then, O North wind! come, you South wind, blow upon my garden! Make this sacramental season\emdash one in which heaven and earth seem to touch one another\emdash an occasion of hallowed and blissful intercommunion between my soul and Jesus. Yes, 'intercommunion.' The joy of this permitted fellowship, delightful to His people, would almost seem, with reverence be it spoken, as if shared by His own Infinite heart. The Beloved comes into His garden "to eat His pleasant fruits."\emdash "I am glorified," says He elsewhere, "in them." Who can ever fail to be struck in the Gospel narrative, with the intense\emdash the vehement earnestness of the Savior's longing to meet His own disciples at the first institution of the Supper, immediately before His death? His own soul was\emdash I was about to say\emdash strangely engrossed with the preparation and arrangement for it. "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). The disciples, knowing and noting how singularly that Festive hour seemed to fill their Lord's thoughts, came to Him and said\emdash "Master, where will we go to prepare for You to eat the Passover?" When they met the man bearing the pitcher of water, they address him thus\emdash "The Master says, my time is at hand, I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples." Moreover, when the Feast itself was being partaken, the season of hallowed and confidential fellowship proved evidently to Him a sweet "song in the night"\emdash a gleam of joy amid the gathering, thickening darkness\emdash "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." It is the same now as it was then. While to all disciple-guests it is primarily a blessed occasion and opportunity of unburdening their inmost thoughts to their divine Lord; of having faith strengthened\emdash love deepened\emdash misgivings lulled\emdash troubles healed\emdash they may exult in the assurance that it is distinctively also a season of complacent joy to the Redeemer Himself. The blessedness, felt and realized by His covenanting people, is most deeply shared by the true Solomon\emdash It is "the day of His espousals, the day of the gladness of His heart" (Song of Sol. 3:11).\par \par As the Great Master of assemblies, He there sees of the fruit of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. "Satisfied!" wondrous thought! as if His own intensest joy were in the happiness of His redeemed people. "Father," He said, on that same betrayal night, when fresh from the Institution of the New Testament Passover, and when the shadows of His own Cross were projected on His path\emdash "Father, I will,"\emdash (what is this mighty boon which Omnipotence is about to invoke at the close of His intercessory Prayer? It forms the climax of His pleadings; as if He had reserved the crowning solicitation to the last)\emdash "Father, I will,"\emdash (with what does He fill up the formula?\emdash He knows that He can write under it what He pleases\emdash what then is the great yearning, filial wish\emdash the richest reward and recompense of His soul-travail?)\emdash "Father, I will, that those whom You have give me, may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!"\par \par May that glory\emdash the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth\emdash may the distant rays of it, at least, be revealed to me, today, on the holy ground of Communion. May the meeting in the earthly Garden prove a blessed pledge and foretaste of that diviner communion and fellowship in the better Garden above\emdash that Garden in which there is no sepulcher, no funeral spices, no "why are you weeping?" whose precincts can be invaded and saddened by no sin\emdash no sorrow\emdash no broken vow or forgotten resolution\emdash no Lebanon storms to dread; no "lions' dens or mountains of leopards" (Song of Sol. 4:8), but where disciple and Master, and that forever and ever, shall rejoice together with joy unspeakable and full of glory!\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } "E B05 Private Meditations Preceding Communion #5{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 "Awake, O north wind; and come, you south wind; blow upon my gardering for me a table in the wilderness, do prepare me for the table. O send forth Your light and Your truth, let them lead me\emdash let them bring me unto Your holy hill and unto Your tabernacles. Then will I go unto the Altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy. May it be my experience within the gates of the Sanctuary, and while partaking of the Sacred Feast\emdash "This is none other than the House of God, this is the Gate of heaven,"\emdash "I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."\par \par Fill me with a humbling sense of my own demerits and shortcomings. I am not worthy to eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master's Table; how much less to be seated at the banqueting Table itself, and to enjoy the blessedness of near and endearing fellowship with You. Come, Lord, and search me\emdash Come and try me\emdash Come and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting. Impart, above all, an inspiring and elevating sense of Your great and infinite love to me in Christ Jesus. At this, His own commemorative Ordinance, may I have a realizing apprehension of all that mystery of agony and suffering He so willingly endured for me. May the near sight of Gethsemane and Calvary give me deeper and intenser views of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, as that which filled His cup of anguish. May I be enabled, as I go afresh to this covenanting ground\emdash not only to confess my sins, but to have the hearty desire and resolution to forsake them; and to live, in the time to come, not unto myself\emdash but unto Him who loved me and gave Himself for me, that He might redeem me from all iniquity, and purify me unto Himself, as one of His own peculiar people, zealous of good works.\par \par My earnest prayer is, to be brought more constantly and habitually under the constraining influence of redeeming love\emdash that the life You have preserved by Your mercy, and which You have ransomed at such a price, may be henceforth consecrated to Your praise. May the blessed Feast prove a hallowed means of strengthening within me every Christian grace, and of confirming every good resolution. May this be my earnest aspiration, 'Lord, evermore give me this Bread.' Like Your servant of old, in the strength of that food, may I go on, from day to day, until I reach the true mount of God above.\par \par Bestow Your blessing on all my fellow-communicants. There is bread enough in our Father's house and to spare. May those who through sickness and other restraints of Your providence, are unable to go to the Courts of Your Sanctuary, know that You are not confined to temples or to tables made with hands\emdash that wherever there is a true worshiper, there, there is a prayer-hearing\emdash a prayer-answering\emdash a covenant-keeping God. May those who tarry at home divide the spoil.\par \par Bless Your ministering servants who are to be this day the dispensers of the Holy rite. As they deal the Bread of Life to others, may their own souls be abundantly satisfied. Let Your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let Your saints shout for joy. The Lord bless the House of Israel\emdash the Lord bless the House of Aaron\emdash both small and great that fear the Lord, do You surely bless them. So may this appointed Ordinance prove, to each and all of us, a season of reviving and refreshing from Your own immediate presence.\par \par And all I ask, or hope for, is in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior. Amen.\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } ?? AB07 Address to Aged Communicants{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\yQB06 Prayer Before Communion{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\f0\fs24 O Lord, I beseech You to draw near to me this day in Your great mercy. I have the near prospect of approaching You at Your gracious Sacramental Ordinance. As You are prepa\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 Address to Aged Communicants\par \b0\par Each returning Sacramental Sabbath emphasizes the thought to us all, that we are nearer eternity. These sacred seasons are shadows moving across the dial-plate\emdash or as if another hour were tolled on the great clock of Time. With special solemnity and impressiveness does this reflection come home to aged communicants. Some of you can look back, through a long vista of years, to the hour when you approached for the first time the Holy Table. How many who then gathered with you are left? The pastor who dispensed to you the mystic symbols\emdash gone! The father and mother who looked with proud and tender interest upon you; following you with prayers and tears to the hallowed ground\emdash gone! Those who shared with you in receiving the Bread of life, and talked over the sacred service on the Sabbath eve\emdash many of them\emdash most of them\emdash gone! It is a tale that is told. Yes, to some, there are many more remembered faces of that old throng amid the congregation of the dead, than among the worshiping living!\par \par And the time will come\emdash (must come) sooner or later\emdash who need dread it if they are living prepared for the supreme moment and the irrevocable summons?\emdash when others will pronounce our names, and say of us, 'They are no more!' Who can tell, but that the Master may this very day have, all unknown, been whispering in the ears of this one and that one, grown grey in His service\emdash "You shall henceforth no more drink of this fruit of the vine, until I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom!"\par \par Aged friend, you have been permitted to wait once more, on God, in His own Ordinance. Spiritually, may He renew your strength. He has 'latter rain' as well as 'early rain' to bestow\emdash a blessing on those girding for the fight\emdash a blessing for those unbuckling their armor. The Temple-lamps in the Jewish Sanctuary were lighted 'at evening.' If the night-shadows of your life be falling, and with you the day be far spent, may you be able to say, "YOU will light my candle, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness." Beautiful is the promise\emdash "Ask of the Lord rain in the time of THE LATTER RAIN\emdash so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain" (Zech. 10:1). May you be privileged to go on\emdash in what still remains of your pilgrim way, rejoicing\emdash leaning, as a staff for very age, on the faithful promises of a covenant-keeping Jehovah\emdash preserving the torch of faith and love and holiness undimmed to the last.\emdash So that you may be able, like the weary exhausted runners in the Grecian games of old\emdash to hand it, undiminished in brightness, to younger athletes, who are waiting to bear it\emdash as witnesses for God and His truth, when you are gathered to your fathers.\par \par Go in peace, from His table; and may the God of peace and of love go with you. Amid dimming memories and diminishing friends, "He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you." May your holy approach to the holiest Ordinance of earth, be to you the foretaste and foretaste of the eternal Feast and rest which remains for His believing people. "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disturbed within me? Hope you in God, for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par }  d4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 Address to Mourning Communicants\par \b0\par "Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?" (Job 12:9)\par \par God has been addressing a twofold voice today to those who have gathered at His Holy Table.\par \par To some, He has been speaking in prosperity. New gourds have been given\emdash new fountains of blessing opened. The dreaded cloud, big with disaster, has passed. The financial loss has been c ompensated. The shaft of death has been turned aside\emdash the dear one hovering on the confines of the dark valley has been restored. The chair in the family circle has not been emptied. You have been spared the dreadful word which falls on the heart like the crash of a descending avalanche.\par \par To others\emdash to you\emdash He has been speaking by adversity; by crushed hopes and blighted joys\emdash early and unlooked-for graves.\par \par Afflicted one! if your sorrows are gre at, have you not had today vividly brought before you, in touching symbol, the memorial of sufferings, in comparison with which, your deepest and intensest are light indeed. In the contemplation of these, you have not only the revelation of the Heart of a loving, sympathizing Savior, but the pledge and assurance that the God who gave His Son would not, and could not, visit you with one needless pang, or put one unnecessary thorn into your wreath of woe. Be assured, it is for the spiritual good of His chil dren that He sees fit, ever and anon, to put a scar, so to speak, on His people's most treasured earthly joys.\par \par It is said in a striking passage of Isaiah\emdash "The day of the Lord Almighty shall be upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures" (Isaiah 2:12, 16). Yes, on these "pleasant pictures" He deems it meet, at times, to stretch forth His hand, and sweep the portrayed vision of gladness away\emdash He may have seen it was eclipsing and dimming His own likeness o n the soul. You may remember the great Artist who painted the lofty ceiling of the Roman Basilica. High up on the giddy platform, his eye is on some 'pleasant picture,' on which he is just putting his finishing touches. Absorbed in the triumph of his genius, he has left his position, in order to obtain a broad, general view of the gigantic work. But he has forgotten his danger. He is stepping back, and yet farther back, to the edge of the scaffolding. A few inches more, and he will go reeling down to the marble pavement, a hundred feet beneath.\par \par What can save him? It is a moment of thrilling suspense. Life is trembling in the balance\emdash verily there is but a step between him and death. One who was assisting sees, at a glance, the imminent peril. With the speed of lightning, his determination is formed. On he dashes towards the work of the Master, and, with apparently presumptuous hand, plants a deep scar on the moist fresco. The Artist rushes forward to avert the blow. It was enough\emdash all the other needed\emdash It destroyed the painting, but it saved the more valued life. How often is this God's method of dealing! He sees us on the world's giddy eminences\emdash going back, back, back, to certain ruin. He hastens to the rescue. He places a seemingly remorseless, destructive hand on our most cherished objects of pursuit\emdash blurs and scars life's loveliest visions. He breaks our hearts, that He may save our souls! "The day of the Lord Almighty is on all pleasant pictures!"\par \par Seek to honor Him by unmurmuring submission to His holy will. Let your chastisements, for the present not joyous but grievous, lead you to live nearer Heaven and nearer Him. So that, if, at some subsequent Communion season, you too should have your place vacant at the Sacred Feast, your name may, like that of one mourned today, be missed by your fellows, and never mentioned but with the sigh and the tear.\par \par Ah, if this be a day on which we are compelled to take count of blanks in the flock\emdash sheep, that were used to pasture with us, no longer to be found in the earthly fold; it is surely the most elevating of Communion thoughts\emdash (the word 'Communion' has no more hallowed interpretation)\emdash to behold them, with the eye of faith, up in yonder realms of bliss, fed by the living fountains of waters in the presence and love of the Heavenly Shepherd\emdash their voices falling in soft music on our ear, and charming us to follow after!\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } B)iB08 Address to Mourning Communicants #1{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkinws 4:15)\par \par Afflicted one\emdash We cherish the hope that you have been able today to have your own sorrows soothed by close and endearing fellowship with the Man of Sorrows. We trust that Jesus, the Prince of Sufferers, has met you at His own Table, and solaced you, alike with the assurance of His exalted sympathy and with hopes that are full of immortality. Yes, even though the very sacredness of the Table of Communion\emdash the sacredness of its associations with the 'loved and lost,' may have made, for the time, your sadness deeper, and the blank more real\emdash yet, like the two disconsolate Marys, hurrying from the spot dearest to them on earth, have you not been met by your Lord in the way? Has not Jesus, the Prince of Consolers\emdash the peerless Comforter\emdash been found standing, as in their case, on the very path of your trouble, ready to dry your tears and hush your sadness with the old joyous salutation\emdash "Don't be afraid!" He, the thorn-crowned King, whom you have seen through expressive symbol evidently set forth crucified, has been soothing your sorrows by pointing you to His own. His own! What a cup of suffering was that! filled to the brim! anguish which had its exponent in "the great drops of blood" and the Eloi cry! There are generally some mitigations in the case of the severest earthly afflictions\emdash some drops of comfort mingling in the bitter draught. In His case there were none. "All Your waves and billows have gone over me." In that solitary, unsolaced hour, He could plaintively echo the prophetic utterance, "I have trodden the wine-press alone!"\par \par But, blessed lesson to gather under the shadows of Gethsemane's Garden and Calvary's Cross\emdash "In that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to support those who are tempted!" Blessed lesson, moreover, to have learned at that Holy Table, that, under life's darkest experiences, there is a Brighter than the brightest material Sun to dispel the gloom; yes, and that after earth's longest and dreariest night-watches, there is a "breaking in the Eastern Sky," a joyful morning at hand, whose Sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself, but where the Lord your God shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended.\par \par Leave, then, the Communion Table behind you, with the vision of the Crown rising above the Cross\emdash taking up this as your 'Song in the night'\emdash "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17).\par \par "Fainting and footsore toil we in the way;\par No manna glistens in the desert sod;\par Yet here, to earnest souls that kneel and pray\par Is given\emdash the Bread of God.\par Resting beneath His Shadow cool and sweet\par We gain fresh strength for conflict with our foes;\par Here the lone desert, with its sultry heat,\par Does blossom as the rose.\par And though these earthly shadows, dark and dim,\par Veil from our sight His blessed presence now;\par Yet faith, exulting, lifts her eyes to Him,\par And sees the thorn-crowned Brow!\par Waves from the ocean of His mighty love\par Break in rejoicing on the expectant shore,\par Whispering sweet voices of the Land above,\par Where storms shall be no more."\par \emdash R. H. Baynes\par \par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } Y)B09 Address to Mourning Communicants #2{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 Address to Mourning Communicants\par \b0\par "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." (Hebre (Hebrews 4:15)\par \par Afflicted one\emdash We cherish the hope that you have been able today to have your own sorrows soothed by close and endearing fellowship with the Man of Sorrows. We trust that Jesus, the Prince of Sufferers, has met you at His own Table, and solaced you, alike with the assurance of His exalted sympathy and with hopes that are full of immortality. Yes, even though the very sacredness of the Table of Communion\emdash the sacredness of its associations with the 'loved and lost,' may have made, for the time, your sadness deeper, and the blank more real\emdash yet, like the two disconsolate Marys, hurrying from the spot dearest to them on earth, have you not been met by your Lord in the way? Has not Jesus, the Prince of Consolers\emdash the peerless Comforter\emdash been found standing, as in their case, on the very path of your trouble, ready to dry your tears and hush your sadness with the old joyous salutation\emdash "Don't be afraid!" He, the thorn-crowned King, whom you have seen through expressive symbol evidently set forth crucified, has been soothing your sorrows by pointing you to His own. His own! What a cup of suffering was that! filled to the brim! anguish which had its exponent in "the great drops of blood" and the Eloi cry! There are generally some mitigations in the case of the severest earthly afflictions\emdash some drops of comfort mingling in the bitter draught. In His case there were none. "All Your waves and billows have gone over me." In that solitary, unsolaced hour, He could plaintively echo the prophetic utterance, "I have trodden the wine-press alone!"\par \par But, blessed lesson to gather under the shadows of Gethsemane's Garden and Calvary's Cross\emdash "In that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to support those who are tempted!" Blessed lesson, moreover, to have learned at that Holy Table, that, under life's darkest experiences, there is a Brighter than the brightest material Sun to dispel the gloom; yes, and that after earth's longest and dreariest night-watches, there is a "breaking in the Eastern Sky," a joyful morning at hand, whose Sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself, but where the Lord your God shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended.\par \par Leave, then, the Communion Table behind you, with the vision of the Crown rising above the Cross\emdash taking up this as your 'Song in the night'\emdash "For our light affliction, which is but f or a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17).\par \par "Fainting and footsore toil we in the way;\par No manna glistens in the desert sod;\par Yet here, to earnest souls that kneel and pray\par Is given\emdash the Bread of God.\par Resting beneath His Shadow cool and sweet\par We gain fresh strength for conflict with our foes;\par Here the lone desert, with its sultry heat,\par Does blossom as the rose.\par And though these earthly shadows, dark and dim,\par Veil from our sight His blessed presence now;\par Yet faith, exulting, lifts her eyes to Him,\par And sees the thorn-crowned Brow!\par Waves from the ocean of His mighty love\par Break in rejoicing on the expectant shore,\par Whispering sweet voices of the Land above,\par Where storms shall be no more."\par \emdash R. H. Baynes\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } K)}B10 Address to Mourning Communicants #3{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 Address to Mourning Communicants\par \b0\par "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."#iched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par \pard\sl240\slmult1\qc "And they drew near unto the village where they went, and He made as though He would have gone farther; but they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us\emdash for it is tow\'05ard evening, and the day is far spent" (Luke 24:28, 29).\par \pard\sl240\slmult1\par Words spoken by two wayfarers, in all probability disciples\emdash not apostles\emd$ash lowly men who were slowly retracing their steps amid struggling emotions of sorrow. It was, too, on their return from the City of Solemnities, at the close of the Great Jewish Paschal Feast, that Jesus met them.\par \par The verses are surely appropriate for my own afterthought and meditation at a similar hour\emdash and as it is the retrospect of a Communion season, I may well include in these thoughts my fellow-guests. The services of the Holy Table are over; but, 'Lord, abide with us!' It% is 'toward evening.' The sun is westering. The gates of the Banqueting House are closed, and the Festal worshipers have dispersed\emdash 'Lord, abide with us!'\par \par 'Toward evening'\emdash In another sense this may be true with some who partook of the sacred Ordinance. Night is the emblem of sorrow and trial. Their walk today with their beloved Savior may have been an eventide one\emdash the darkness may have been gathering, the earthly sun setting or set.\emdash Let this be their prayer\em&dash 'Lord, abide with us!' It is 'toward evening;'\emdash with others the day of their life may be shortening\emdash their sun is past its meridian; the lengthening shadows portend approaching nightfall. In the prospect of the final and solitary hour, they too may breathe the invocation\emdash 'Lord, abide with us!' We are all of us, however diverse our age and experience, advancing on the pilgrim journey; the milestones are decreasing; the grains in life's sand-glass diminishing\emdash Eternity is neari'ng. Every returning Sacrament; every month, every day, every hour, may well deepen the solemnity of the prayer, "Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent!"\par \par How am I best to fulfill the vows and perpetuate the blessings of a Communion occasion? It is to take Jesus with me from His Holy Table\emdash the living, loving Brother on the Throne, as my abiding Friend; to have the habitually realized consciousness of His presence and nearness. "He who abides in Me, and I( in Him, the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." What is the strength and safeguard of voyagers in the midst of the storm? Is it not when the pilot is known to be trustworthy\emdash when they can gaze with confidence on the serene undaunted countenance at the wheel, and the brawny arm steering securely through the roaring surge? If in going out from the peaceful quiet haven of a sacramental hour, perhaps recalling former experiences, I am dreading the power of temptation and )my inability to meet it, let me look to my Heavenly Pilot. Abiding in Him, and He abiding in me\emdash a living union with a living God\emdash I am in safe keeping. Heart and flesh may faint and fail; earthly refuges may fail me; earthly refuges may become refuges of lies. But He will be the strength of my heart and my portion forever\emdash the only unfainting, unfailing Friend, in a failing, varying world.\par \par Oh, blessed be God, there is more than one Emmaus journey. I have been privileg*ed to traverse that road today. Though no longer in bodily Presence, as when He trod this earth\emdash though now surrounded with myriads of glorified spirits, and worshiped as Lord of all, the Savior's heart knows no change\emdash His name is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." He still loves to make Himself known to His people, as to these disconsolate wayfarers on the way to their village home, "in the breaking of bread."\par \par The thought often occurs, in connectio+n with cherished earthly friends who have fallen asleep in Jesus\emdash and I believe most of all at the hallowed sacramental hour\emdash are these "loved and lost" permitted still to hold communion with those they have left behind on earth? When the mysterious tie is snapped which binds soul to soul in sweet fellowship here, is there no invisible communion prolonged and perpetuated with the sainted and glorified? May we not be allowed to entertain the pleasing idea\emdash that they hover still around us,, and watch with tender interest our communings at this Feast of love\emdash the Sacramental Table a Bethel-ladder for the unfettered union of spirit with spirit\emdash "the bridal of the earth and sky?"\par \par Who can tell? This, however, we do know, that what possibly may be a vain illusion with reference to the departed, is a sublime and glorious reality in regard to Jesus. The mysterious Stranger on the way to Emmaus is no Stranger at His own Holy Ordinance. How many can tell as their experience of that hallowed ground\emdash "HE brought me to His Banqueting House, and his banner over me was love!"\emdash or, like the disciples on the great Easter eve, "We have seen the Lord." If such be my retrospect today, I would plead with an ever-deepening, reverential earnestness\emdash 'Blessed Jesus! Divine Master of assemblies\emdash Abide with me from morning to evening; and from evening to morning again; for without You I cannot live; and without You, I dare not die!'\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } ''B5]B12 Private Meditations after Communion #2{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmul.5aB11 Private Meditations after Communion #1{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator R"/t1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" (Luke 24:32). Such were the musings of the same two solitary disciples after pursuing the way to Emmaus in company with their Beloved Lord. Can I, in some feeble measure, endorse them and rehearse them? In my own case, and that of my fellow-guests, what may some of these musings and reflections be, in the hallowed r0etrospect of today's service?\par \par (1.) Did not our heart burn within us, with a deep sense of the evil nature of sin? At the Holy Table, and in its impressive memorial-symbols, I followed in thought the Adorable Sufferer to the garden of agony.\par \par I beheld Him prostrate there, amid the chills and dews of that midnight hour\emdash drops of perspiration mingled with blood flowing down to the ground\emdash the interpreters of superhuman anguish. The presence of an angel from he1aven is needed to strengthen Him. We can see no farther than the rim of the thundercloud\emdash we cannot penetrate the midnight of terror. Well may the Greek liturgy speak "of all the sufferings of Christ known and unknown." "Now," said He Himself, in entering on these, "is the hour and power of darkness." Bewildered, fearful, panic-stricken, trembling, in a thrice repeated fervor of prayer He entreats that the mysterious cup may be allowed to pass from Him. Three times, as He seems to approach the brink2 of some dreadful precipice, He cries "Father, save Me from this hour!" His soul is "sorrowful," "exceeding sorrowful"\emdash "even unto death."\par \par I farther ponder the dread successive scenes of ignominy which followed Gethsemane, and had their climax on Calvary\emdash\par \par "Lo! a face to heaven in agony stealing,\par Stained of sorrow, but, soilless of sin,\par Sweat that in blood is breaking and streaming\emdash\par Praying for those that do stri3p Him and scourge Him,\par As a cross on His quivering shoulders they place.\par 'Neath its burden He sinks while they mock Him, they urge Him,\par They crown Him with thorns, they spit in His face.\par They are lifting Him, bruising Him, piercing Him, nailing Him\par To the cross that is dyed in a red crimson flood.\par See, the sun hides his head, see the vapor envailing Him:\par Hark, the earth and the skies in the darkness bewailing Him,\p4ar Who dies for those that are shedding His blood."\par \par Why all this? Nothing of retributive punishment could there possibly be in that unparalleled endurance. "In Him was no sin,"\emdash He was the spotless Lamb of God. It was, as our Surety-Substitute\emdash that the Lord laid on Him (or as these words literally mean, 'the Lord caused to meet upon Him') the iniquities of us all. "He was made sin for us." Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, by being Himself made a cu5rse for us. He was the true spiritual Atlas bearing on His shoulders the transgressions of the world. No other\emdash no less a cause, will suffice to explain the dreadful inner meaning of the "horror of great darkness," and of that bitterest wail that ever arose from earth to heaven\emdash "My God! my God! why have You forsaken me?" "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed."\par \par Have I not seen, 6today, in these visible significant symbols\emdash the broken bread and the poured out wine\emdash what an evil thing that must have been, which brought the beloved Son of God\emdash the Prince of Life\emdash from the Throne in heaven and nailed Him to the Tree?\par \par (2.) Did not our heart burn within us, with sincere and poignant sorrow for our own sin? My sin formed some drops in that cup of anguish\emdash "He gave Himself for me." For me He descended to these depths of humiliation\emdash 7for me He bared His head to the pitiless storm, and traveled on that blood-stained path\emdash a spectacle to devils and angels and men! My sins against light, and love, and warning, and mercy\emdash my many faintings and backslidings\emdash my tamperings with temptation\emdash my murmurings under trial; my guilty repinings under providential dealings\emdash how do their vileness and ingratitude stand revealed under "the Cross and Passion" of the Almighty Sufferer! Well may I be subdued and softened and s8addened at the retrospect; and resolve with a deeper, more unqualified and unwavering resolution, to hate in all its forms what was, in very truth, the crucifier of the Lord of Glory.\par \par My sin\emdash yes, my sin helped in evoking these most dreadful words that ever broke the trance of eternity\emdash "Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man who is my Fellow, says the Lord Almighty\emdash smite the Shepherd" (Zech. 13:7).\par \par (3.) Did not our heart burn with9in us, with a lively apprehension of His great love? The word of the Beloved disciple, spoken at a later time, could not fail to come, like a strain of holy music, at the Holy Table today\emdash "Herein is love\emdash not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." That divine love is revealed and manifested elsewhere. Creation teems with its memorials and illustrations. It is warbled in every grove. It is whispered in every breeze. It is pencilled in ev:ery flower. It glitters in every sunbeam. The volume of Providence proclaims the same\emdash "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works." Yet, at times, there occur, in both volumes, dark and perplexing passages that we cannot understand\emdash and where the only earthly explanation is\emdash "Your judgments, O God, are a great deep!" But\emdash "herein is love." Question as I may that love elsewhere\emdash looking, as I have been permitted to do this day, at these memorials o;f suffering and anguish, beholding in visible manifestation the grace of the Lord Jesus\emdash who though He were rich\emdash rich in all the plenitude of the Divine perfections, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich\emdash I can surely exclaim in adoring transport\emdash "The love of Christ which passes knowledge!" It will form the theme, the confession, the mystery of eternity\emdash and yet the ever renewed and baffled avowal will be\emdash "Oh the depth!"\par \pae unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them."\par \par (5.) Did not our heart burn within us, with the blessed hope of His second coming? At the very moment when He took bread and blessed it, and broke, and gave to these wondering men of Emmaus, we are told, He suddenly "vanished out of their sight." But it was only for a little time. The two privileged and delighted guests hastened back to the upper chamber and the gathered disciples in Jerusalem; and lo! the Lord re-appeared with the s?alutation, "Peace be unto you!"\par \par "A little while," says Jesus, "and you shall not see me; and again a little while and you shall see me, because I go unto my Father." The first little while of the "not see Me" will, to His Gospel Church, soon be past; and the second great while of the "you shall see Me" will before long be here. The gracious Feast of today is, above all things, the Feast and pledge of the Second Advent\emdash "You shall show forth the Lord's death until He comes!" Oh, bl@essed prophetic memorial! which, like a luminous rainbow, thus connects the cross with the crown\emdash one arc of that rainbow resting in the first festal chamber by the Kedron Valley; the other on the golden steps of the Great White Throne! "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"\par \par (6.) Did not our heart burn within us, with longing desires of spending an eternity of fellowship in His loving presence? If this rill\emdash this rivulet\emdash of the sacred Ordinance I have been privileged to partakeA of today be so refreshing, what must be the great Fountain-head? If the Pisgah-view be glorious, what must be the Promised Land itself? If I have been listening by the shore to a few waves murmuring, 'God is love,' what will it be to bathe in the ocean of that Eternal love? Here, at the earthly Communion Table, I only see the Beloved "behind the lattice." He meets me on the Emmaus road, but it is "as a wayfaring man who turns aside to tarry for a night." I go, as a guest; but it is, at times, too, with tBearful eye, as I note fellowships that are no more\emdash missing the music of voices that used to cheer, alike in going to the Feast, and when the Feast was over. What will it be in that Glory-Land where nothing can intrude to mar the bliss of uninterrupted communion\emdash no note of discord to disturb the harmonies of the everlasting song\emdash no veil of sin or sadness to intercept the vision and fruition of an ever-present Savior?\par \par I love at times to dwell on that picture of His ReCsurrection-life, when, early in a Palestine morning\emdash all nature clad in spring's resurrection attire, a solitary Figure stood by the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret, and addressed some weary midnight toilers as 'Children.' They were well-known accents of tenderness. The joyous word of recognition passed from lip to lip\emdash "It is the Lord!" The day is coming, when 'that same Jesus,' in the morning of immortality, will be seen standing on the Heavenly shore, with the look of affection and the word of welcome\emdash the region where no night darkens, no tears dim, and no shadows fall. Let me join with my fellow communicants, in looking forward with bounding heart from the banquet on the earthly shore, to the eternal Heavenly one\emdash where, with the plighted love of today as the master passion of our souls, we shall each be able with unhesitating sincerity to repeat the avowal made of old with trembling lip\emdash "Lord! You know all things, You know that I love You."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } E1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. He laid His right hand on me, and said, "Don't be afraid! I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I was dead, but look--I am alive forever and ever!" (Revelation 1:17-18)\par \par The Apostle John, left alone in Patmos, away from all congenial fellowship with loving human hearts, had doubtless often longed in his rocky solitude, for some tFoken or manifestation of his Redeemer's personal Presence. When he called to mind the former privileged bliss of near and endearing communion with the Lord he loved, but which in a visible form he enjoyed no more\emdash the prayer of his lonely heart and lonely spirit must frequently have been\emdash\par "Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,\par And the sound of a voice that is still!\emdash\par That sigh\emdash that prayer was not in vain. The vanished hand and the stilled voicGe were again felt and heard\emdash He laid His right hand on me, and said, "Don't be afraid! I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I was dead, but look--I am alive forever and ever!" The tears of his banishment were dried. He was made to forget the absence of a beloved brotherhood of disciples and saints, in the presence of "One who sticks closer than a brother!"\par \par The same gracious words have been breaking on my ears today. This Holy Table is one of the special places and occaHsions\emdash a spiritual Patmos\emdash where Jesus loves to record His name, and where He commands the blessing, 'even life for evermore!'\par \par "I was dead!"\emdash This solemn, mysterious truth I have been permitted significantly to recall through the symbols of His own appointment. But now, as the Table is left, He seems, in this still hour of reflection and retrospect, to bequeath for meditation the glorious counterpart assurance\emdash a glad watchword surely in renewing the beaten pathsI of life\emdash "but look--I am alive forever and ever!"\emdash or, as that might be better rendered, "I am THE LIVING ONE,"\emdash He who was dead "dies no more\emdash death has no more dominion over Him!"\par \par How blessed to be able to look up to the right hand of God, and behold, seated there, as my Advocate and Intercessor, not a stranger, but an ever-living, never-dying Friend\emdash with a heart beating responsive to human sympathy. Not only, as God, able to save, but, as Man, able to Jcompassionate\emdash feeling what is done to His people, as sensitively as if it were done to Himself. When I think that into the hands of this God-man Mediator has been committed universal rule and sovereignty\emdash that He directs all that befalls me\emdash that it is He who sends prosperity\emdash who gives the gourd and the sunshine\emdash that it is He who appoints the blight and the shadow\emdash that every trial is ordered by Him, and every tear permitted by Him\emdash I may feel sweetly assured tKhat all is well. He has renewed to me, today, at His Sacramental Feast, the pledges of His love and tenderness\emdash so that this may well be a balm-word and a heart-cheerer alike in all time of blessing and in all time of tribulation\emdash a support and solace in every vicissitude of this mortal scene; hallowing joy, consecrating sorrow, dispelling my fears, lightening my darkness, and at last smoothing my death-pillow\emdash "I know that my Redeemer LIVES!"\par \par The words of a Brother ApLostle seem like a comment on the above divine vision and voice of Patmos\emdash "When Christ who is our LIFE shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory." "The glorious appearing" of THE LIFE\emdash in other words, the second coming of his Lord, was the special theme and revelation of the Apocalypse. That mystic Book has well been called "the Book of the Coming One." It begins, in its opening chapter, with "Behold, He comes with clouds!" It ends in its closing chapter, with a thrice repeateMd blast of the same silver trumpet\emdash "Behold, I come quickly!"\par \par The Sacrament of Communion may, with equal propriety and emphasis, be called\emdash "The Feast of the Coming One." I have just been commemorating Him, in His first Advent, as the Dying One; when He came in humiliation\emdash the Man of sorrows, despised and rejected\emdash and bowed His head on Calvary's Cross. But while a Feast of remembrance, it is equally a Feast of anticipation. Every returning celebration is givingN augmented power and reality to the divine words\emdash "Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away!"\par \par Even His own people are prone at times, through wavering faith, to ask\emdash "Where is the promise of His Coming?" There is no sound of His footstep. The wheels of His chariot are tarrying\emdash and outer nature, in her majestic unvarying sequences, seems to countersign the doubting thought, "All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." From this Mount ofO Ordinances the chimes of the Advent Bell break on the listening ear. "Ever since, has this blessed Institution lain, as the golden morning light, far out even in the Church's darkest night, not only the seal of His presence and its pledge, but also the promise of the bright day of His coming."\par \par I have recently been privileged to stand, so to speak, on a divinely-built watch-tower, looking for that day-dawn\emdash "the blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of the Great God our Savior."\par \par "Yet a little while, and He who shall come will come, and will not tarry." That Advent season has its date in a yet unrevealed future. Meanwhile, be it mine to be so living and acting, that the cry can never be heard too soon or too suddenly\emdash "Behold, the Bridegroom comes!"\emdash Ever ready to hail Him with exulting welcome; and so at last, to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the festal throng of the glorified, in my Father's Kingdom.\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } F5eB13 Private Meditations after Communion #3{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\ucDRf the Lord God" (Ps. 71:16). The Feast is ended\emdash but let me solemnly feel that the vow remains. The pledge to the Great Redeemer has been given\emdash the fulfillment is to come. All the sincerity of this fresh consecration is yet to be proved\emdash all the fidelity to the Heavenly Captain\emdash all the loyalty to the Heavenly King. Will He who walks in the midst of the candlesticks\emdash the Blessed Master of assemblies, be able on the next similar sacred occasion to say of me, as He did to the SChurch of Philadelphia of old\emdash "You have kept my word, and have not denied my name"?\par \par My position recalls that of the old Hebrew Paschal Pilgrims, which formed the theme of meditation today\emdash as the silver trumpets proclaimed that the feast was ended\emdash and caravan by caravan, company by company, were seen retraversing the familiar highways to their several distant homes. The imperious call of work summoned them again to their appointed labors. Nor was there any incongruitTy between the two. Work\emdash everyday work\emdash the drudgery of brain and hand and sinew was a divine thing then as now. The Passover was not appointed, or designed to be, a perpetual Feast all the year round. Rather\emdash (one at least of its purposes was, apart from its commemorative object), to fortify and invigorate for the duties of a busy world. These Israelites would doubtless carry back to their homes and their toil many hallowed festal memories. Their cares would be lightened\emdash their soUrrows soothed, their faith quickened; their devotion to the God of their Fathers deepened and intensified, by all they had witnessed in the City of Solemnities.\par \par In common with my fellow-communicants I now leave the New Testament Passover Feast to retraverse the beaten paths of life; to return, some of us to its green pastures and still waters, and the sunshine slopes of its 'Delectable Mountains;'\emdash others, to its 'Hill Difficulties,' its Marah pools and valleys of Baca. But, alongV with higher and diviner verities there taught, may we all feel it, as it was designed also to be, a strengthener in the discharge of daily duty\emdash the old tribal blessing and beatitude of Israel's God resting upon us\emdash "Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out, and Issachar in your tents." The Lord God our Sun and Shield\emdash grace given us in this world, and the the promise of glory in the next (Ps. 84:11).\emdash Happy is that people that is in such a case, yes happy is that people whose God is tWhe Lord.\par \par This suggests a similar lesson from a different portion of God's Word, which also formed subject of recent contemplation. It is the beautiful vision of the girded angels given in the Book of Revelation (15:6); and to whom the words were addressed by the Great Voice out of the Temple\emdash "Go your ways." These angels had been listening with rapt reverence to the song of the Harpers by the glassy sea. But the hour of duty had come. Forth they go to the world beneath them, to exXecute the behests of their divine Lord.\par \par Am I leaving the "Temple of the Tabernacle of the testimony," like them, "clothed in white and pure linen, and girded with golden belts"? Am I about to return to my daily avocations with the blessedness of the pure in heart who have seen God? resolved, in a strength greater than my own, to keep my garments clean\emdash "unspotted from the world," having my loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness\emdash desirous Yto follow the path of obedience whatever that may be\emdash filling my earthly sphere for His glory and my neighbor's good\emdash ready, when my task is finished, to bring, angel-like, the emptied incense bowls of service, and lay them at the Master's feet, saying\emdash 'Lord, I have sought, however unworthily and imperfectly, to do Your holy will'?\par \par "Go your ways," says God. What the ways before me may be in this uncertain world, I cannot tell. Be this my comfort, that the summoning VoZice is His. "The Lord is in His Holy Temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him." There is elsewhere given the promise and assurance\emdash "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths."\par \par It is not the resolutions of a Communion season I must trust to. Rather, it is the going out into the world which will test and try their reality. Who has not read of the Roman legions of old, in pursuit of their Parthian foe, how they stood most in danger, not in the glow an[d excitement of triumph, but in following up the victory! The Parthian bowmen on swift horses, ever and anon wheeled round in their retreat, and emptied their quivers on the pursuing enemy, strewing the march of the conquerors, even more than the battlefield, with their slain. "When you think you stand," is the farewell monitory word which may well be heard in the name of the Great Master of the Feast\emdash "take heed lest you fall." "Beware lest you also, being led away by the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness; but grow in grace."\par \par "The holy rite is o'er\emdash the blessed sign\par Is given to cheer us in this earthly strife:\par The Bread is broken, and outpoured the Wine,\par Symbols of better life.\par O Touch our wayward hearts, and let them be\par In stronger faith to Your glad service given\emdash\par Until in the city of the crystal sea\par We sing the Song of Heaven."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } F5eB14 Private Meditations after Communion #4{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par "I will go in the strength oQ^ "It is finished!" (John 19:30). I have listened today in thought, at the Holy Table of Communion, to this victorious cry. Glorious is the fulfillment of the prophetic words\emdash "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied." A FINISHED work\emdash and so finished and completed, that, in the retrospect, the divine-human lips could say with complacency, yes proclaim with unhesitating triumph, "I am satisfied!" Satisfied!\emdash It was the very dignity and divinity of the majesti_c Speaker, which gave such singular meaning and emphasis to the assertion. The higher our aim, the more refined and elevated our views and attainments\emdash the less are we satisfied with our own ideals. A little thing will satisfy a little mind. It requires a great thing to satisfy a great mind. The child is satisfied with a toy or bauble; the savage with the trinket\emdash the gaudy bead, or piece of painted glass\emdash while the civilized and educated art, in very proportion to their culture, fastidi`ous\emdash swift to detect the literary blemish, or the faulty note in music; or the crude touch of color on the picture\emdash the flaw in the otherwise breathing marble. What pleases the unlettered villager will look poor in the eyes of the man of science.\par \par And so, the higher we ascend in the ranks of being. What must it require to satisfy the mind of an angel\emdash what must it be to satisfy the mind of God? Him whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom\emdash whose glory is set above athe heavens\emdash whose power is boundless, His wisdom infinite; His life-time eternity! Oh, what a work that must be, over which this all-wise and all-perfect Deity, in contemplating it, can say\emdash 'It is enough; I have reached my own divine Ideal. I am satisfied.' "Father, I have glorified You on the earth, I have finished the work You gave me to do!" In that moment of all moments, when His eyes were about to close in the sleep of death\emdash a gleam of radiance breaks from His eclipsed soul. He cbould wish no more\emdash the world's battle is won. With the smile of ineffable love and satisfaction on His lips, He cried, and cried "with a loud voice," as if He would wake the echo of all the ages, in order to proclaim the completion and the completeness of His victory\emdash IT IS FINISHED!\par \par "Satisfied"\emdash "Finished"\emdash blessed pillow for me to repose on in the retrospect of today! He has done all, and suffered all, and procured all for me. I see every attribute of the divince nature magnified. Justice exulting in the sublime vindication. Truth hastening to meet Mercy and Mercy meeting Righteousness. Let the rich man glory in his riches\emdash let the strong man glory in his strength\emdash let the wise man glory in his wisdom\emdash but God forbid that I should glory, but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!\par \par One other thought occurs in my contemplation of that mystery of darkness\emdash that superhuman soul-struggle; ending though it did in so triumphantd a victory. Yet vain, surely, is the question that has been asked, 'Could not less have satisfied? Could not anguish less dreadful in its accompaniments have sufficed? Could none of the ignominy and agony of that bitter path and that bitter cross have been dispensed with?' The analogy of nature would seem to tell that there is no useless nor unnecessary expenditure of agency even in the smallest of the works of God. If it be so with the lowlier divine operations, much more may we conclude that there will ebe no superfluous or unnecessary agency demanded in 'the work of works,'\emdash the work of Redemption. From the first pang of Bethlehem's Babe in the cradle, until the Great Surety trampled Satan under His bleeding feet on Calvary, all was necessary. There was not an unnecessary leaf in that chaplet of sorrow which the Man of Sorrows wore!\par \par I have been testifying today, through these significant memorials, to the sufferings of Christ; let me connect them with the glory which is to follow\emdash anticipating that everlasting communion Sabbath, when the sufferings and the glory shall be sung in one blended strain by the ransomed. I have heard the sound of the Bridegroom's feet today; I have listened to His festal summons to the Feast on earth; let me be so living, and walking, and watching, and working, that the great final cry and summons to the Festal Hall of heaven may be met with the glad response\emdash "Lo, this is our God\emdash we have waited for Him!"\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } 5iB15 Private Meditations after Communion #5{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par ]hraises unto You\emdash for You have delivered my soul from death" (Ps. 56:12, 13). This musing of the Psalmist is surely most befitting and appropriate for me on a retrospect of today's approach to the Holy Table. But he does not stop with this treble assertion. He adds a fervid appeal, a votive prayer\emdash if I may so call it\emdash to the God he has covenanted to serve. May I not endorse it also as my own earnest pleading in this votive hour\emdash "Will You not deliver my feet from falling, that I maiy walk before God in the light of the living?" (Ps. 56:13).\par \par Let me note that it is when under the deepest and most solemn consciousness of his covenant engagement\emdash "Your vows are upon me, O God"\emdash he anticipates the possibility of his feet stumbling. In the hour of elation and victory he contemplates the certainty of fresh encounters with spiritual foes. The past deliverance and the present vow are no guarantees against the seductive wiles of temptation. At the very moment whjen he has that votive resolution on his lips, and the hymn of praise on his tongue\emdash when his bark is on placid waters and no cloud disturbs his sky, he dreads and forecasts the storm. He would be forearmed as well as forewarned; and looking to the God who had put his vow on record, he cries\emdash 'Lord! in this very hour of my strength, I feel the reality of my weakness! You have delivered my soul from death\emdash (that is my present rapturous theme). But the future\emdash that unknown and often tkreacherous deceitful future!\emdash will You not\emdash who has promised "as your days, so shall your strength be"\emdash will You not help me in it?' "Will YOU not deliver my feet from failing?" Communions and Sacraments cannot keep me. The most sacred vows may be broken like airy spider webs. But hold You me up and I shall be safe. With Your voice behind me saying, 'This is the way,' I may, in the expressive words of Israel's singer\emdash "walk before God in the light of the living!"\par \par l And what is this, but the lesson and resolution of 'new obedience'? What a befitting season, by God's grace, to adopt fresh resolves, and to aspire after a higher standard of life and duty! Not to mystify so solemn a subject with figure\emdash If, in looking back on past months, or past years, I am conscious of the dominating influence of some evil temper, some ungodly passion\emdash some flaw in Christian consistency\emdash some neglect or omission of well-known duty, either regarding myself or with resmpect to others\emdash what an appropriate season is this to initiate and inaugurate a new and better life\emdash to turn over, as the common saying is, a new leaf\emdash to make this renewed votive service today, a fresh starting-point for eternity as expressed in the words just quoted\emdash "I will walk before God!" What a sure preservative against sin, to walk with the consciousness of His pure eye upon me! Seeking to go only where He leads\emdash to love only what He loves\emdash His paths my paths\emdash my longing aspiration and aim the coinciding of my will with His! This is obedience. No "snare for the falling feet" successful then. "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird" (Prov. 1:17). Rising on the wings of faith, and prayer, and love, and new obedience\emdash these wings bathed in the light of God and heaven\emdash they will be kept from being soiled by the degrading contacts of earth\emdash "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par } du9B17 Prayer after Communion{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\coloroy5MB16 Private Meditations after Communion #6{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION\par \b0\par "Your vows are upon me, O God; I will render pgptbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\sl240\slmult1\lang2058\b\f0\fs24 PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION\par \par \b0 O Lord, I beseech You to follow with Your rich and effectual blessing, the solemn service of this day. May Jehovah hear me in the day of trouble; may the name of the God of Jacob defend me; send me help from the Sanctuary, and strengthen me out of Zion\emdash may the Lord fulfill all my petitions. I bless You for all that my eyes have seen, and qmy ears have heard, and my hands have handled, and my lips have tasted of the good Word of life. I bless You that I have been enabled, through significant symbol\par \par , to listen to the dying cry, 'It is finished'\emdash proclaiming the great redemption complete; Satan's power overthrown; the kingdom of heaven opened to all believers. I would set up anew my Ebenezer of gratitude and thankfulness\emdash my stone of remembrance, and write upon it the inscription, "The Lord has helped me!" Whatr am I, that You should bring me to Your own banqueting-house; giving me angels' food\emdash the Bread of life; and that mine should be the blessedness of those that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb? Wash me after supper. Were I to be tried by my best hours and services, how would I stand condemned. I bring the iniquity of my holy things to be sprinkled with the blood of Atonement. Lord Jesus\emdash O great Intercessor within the veil\emdash let down Your censer filled with much incense, that stherein I may place, along with Your people, my polluted services and vows and covenantings; that mingled though they be with much imperfection and sin, yet perfumed with Your adorable merits, they may ascend with acceptance before the Throne.\par \par Impress on me the solemn thought, "Your vows are upon me, O God!" May I feel it to be in no empty or formal manner that I have anew consecrated myself\emdash all I am and all I have\emdash to You this day. Strengthen me with might by Your Spirit itn the inner man. Hold me up, and then alone I shall be safe! May the needful warning voice follow me from the Holy Table into the duties and occupations and temptations of life\emdash "when you think you stand, take heed lest you fall." Realizing in the past my own weakness, may I lean more confidingly on Your Omnipotent arm, and trust more unswervingly Your Omnipotent grace.\par \par While I have been led this day, through visible emblems, to look more especially to Jesus as my Surety-Savior\emudash may I be enabled to look to Him also as my Great Example\emdash to walk more closely in His holy footsteps, and to reflect more faithfully His holy image\emdash seeking more fully to realize my covenant position and calling, as no longer my own, but bought with a price, and bound to glorify Him in my body and my spirit, which are His. May His love be enthroned more as the ruling passion in my heart, and may His glory be more the great end of my being. May it be with joyful alacrity that I say, 'Blessved Savior, where You go I will go; where You dwell I will dwell\emdash Your people shall be my people, and death itself shall not separate between You and me.' Thus may I go up, and on, through the wilderness, leaning on the arm of Him who is the Beloved of my soul; and then, though an army should encamp against me, my heart need not fear. You who are with me, and for me, are greater far than all that can be against me.\par \par I pray for my fellow-communicants. Bless the young\emdash those whow have today made a first public surrender and consecration of themselves to You. May they have the ever-increasing conviction, that they have chosen a blessed service and a blessed Master\emdash and be enabled to live under the sovereignty of that lofty motive, to walk and act, so as to please You. May their arms be made strong by the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob; and may their hearts be fixed, trusting in the Lord.\par \par Bless Your aged servants. If heart and flesh do faint and fail, mayx God be the strength of their heart and their portion for ever. May they know the truth of Your own promise, 'those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.' And if opportunities are becoming fewer in the Church on earth, for their partaking in hallowed communion of the fruit of the Vine, may they rejoice that the day is approaching when they shall drink it new with their divine Master and Lord in the Father's kingdom.\par \par Lord, bless us all. Give us the benediction which makes richy and which adds no sorrow with it. Now, in descending the mount, may the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit attend me hence. May the pillar of Your presence ever go before me. As communion season after communion season passes by, do impart to me more and more the spirit of a pilgrim and a stranger. May my eye be more upwards and my footsteps onwards\emdash having the girded loins and the burning lamps and the ever-vigilant watchfulness, and being like those who are waiting for the coming of their Lord. And so, when all sacramental times, and sanctuaries, and means of grace are ended, may it be mine to have the promised abundant entrance ministered into the Church of the First-born, whose names are written in heaven.\par \par Now unto Him who alone is able to keep me from falling, and to present me faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy\emdash to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty,\par \pard\cf1\fs23\par }