rounded with superstitions. Not in one generation, perhaps, are they to be removed, much less in a brief essay like this. Yes, there are difficulties. Let us briefly consider them. One says that he feels a kind of dread-almost of horror, at the thought of approaching this service. Why, I ask, this horror? What is there, what can there be, more solemn in the act of communing, than in the act of praying? The latter is the most immediate approach to God, There is not, and there cannot be, an act in the universe, more justly fitted to fill us with awe, than that. And yet we come and put ourselves in the attitude of prayer, without any shrinking or dread. Be assured that there is, and there must be, some superstition about this rite of the Communion, that leads us to make such an irrational and unauthorized difference between it and everything else that is sacred. It was not so at the beginning. It was not intended to be so ever. Ages of error have distorted and darkened this simple and beautiful ceremonial, this sacrament of holy friendship, this rite of the affections. There is an order of devotees known in the Catholic Church, as "children of the sacred heart." This is the rite of the sacred heart. Originally it was a memorial of Christ, an expression of religious veneration for his character, his teaching, his living patience, his dying pain, his triumphant resurrection. If any feel this sentiment now, why shall they not express it in the way he has sanctioned and blessed? There have been ages when men felt the same horror of prayer, as a personal and solitary offering. Many felt that they could not pray without the priest; that it would be sacrilege to pray without him! It is all superstition! It is the superstition of minds that are devoid of all sacred and blessed familiarity with things divine. But, again, one may say," the Communion is a bondage to me. I am not struck with any horror at participation. I do not feel that this rite has any peculiar sanctity; it is no more sacred nor awful to me than the act of prayer. But still I feel a constraint about this rite. My thoughts do not easily mingle with it; my feelings do not freely flow in it; there seems to me something unnatural about it; it may have been easy to the ancients, with whom religious feasts were familiar, but eating and drinking seem to me to be strangely associated with the expression of religious sentiments; the elements, I feel to be in my way; they do not help, but hinder me. In short, if I can be a Christ ian if I can cherish devout affections, without this rite, I should prefer to be excused from it." Such is the difficulty. - Now, in the first place, I do not urge upon it the command which might be thought to put an end to all difficulties; because it is not a feeling of disobedience with which I am contending, but a feeling of bondage in obedience. The objector, I suppose, to be a devout man; he wishes to "walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless;" but he feels a difficulty about this ordinance in particular; a difficulty which seems to him peculiarly modern, and which leads him almost to doubt, whether the command could have been intended for all ages. In the next place, I do not feel warranted to threaten the neglecter of this rite, with perdition. I do not say that salvation depends upon this, more than upon any other rite; more than upon private prayer or public worship. The question really is, in my opinion, not whether this rite is necessary to save a man, but whether it is fitted to help a man in his religion. A man may say, he has difficulties about prayer; and many have difficulties. Shall I fail, therefore, to urge it upon him, as a thing very essential to his religious growth? A youth may dislike a particular branch of study; he may say that it is a burden and bondage to him. But you may see that it is very important to his thorough education, and you may therefore well urge it upon him; for although he may be educated, he cannot be so well educated without it. So in religion; we may not say to the neglecters of the communion to the Society of Friends, for instance, or to those who imitate them you have no religion and can have none, without this rite; but we may say, have you not left out of your discipline, one important means of religion? This, then, being the ground taken - what upon this ground have we to say to those who feel these difficulties? In reply to this question, I would desire them fairly to consider these difficulties; to consider, first, whether they are not, in fact, irrational and superstitious; next, whether they do not belong to a piety too generalizing and lax; and, finally, whether deeper views of life and duty would not bring them over to another feeling, and make the Communion meditation most natural and grateful to them. First, is not the objection irrational and superstitious? Are not the constraint and bondage you feel your own fault, and there fore to be corrected? You feel nothing of this when you go to an entertainment to celebrate a birth-day, or to commemorate some great event, or some great man, signalized in the history of the country. You do not then say, that eating and drinking are strangely associated with the expression of a sentiment. If you feel this in religion, then I say, you do not put yourself on the ground of nature but off from it; your feeling is not natural, but artificial and superstitious. It is because the occasion is religious that you feel thus thus unnaturally in fact; and this is the very essence of superstition. In the Lord's Supper we celebrate the greatest event in the world; the consummation of the grandest story that the world ever heard; we celebrate it with less ministering to the body indeed, but in a manner nevertheless substantially accordant with the usages, not only of ancient but of modern times. In the next place, I pray you to consider whether there is not something too generalizing in the religious feeling that is averse to the Communion? Does it come sufficiently near to Christ, I will not say in the Communion, but in any way? A personal reference and regard to him, is a part of our religion. To bring near to us his very life, his very death, and the very spirit and manner of his living and dying, is a leading feature of the great discipline of Christianity. Abstractions of truth there had been before; the world wanted a Saviour: systems of truth; the world wanted a life. Doubtless, at first, the danger was that of making too much of Christ as a mere person, and that danger has continued long. But now, in the reaction from those views, the danger is of too much generalizing; of sinking the historical view of Jesus into a vague spiritualizing about him, and of thinking this spirituality all-sufficient. The truth of Jesus is not all that commends him to us; the life of Jesus is more. Not then, when Jesus taught, was spiritual truth first taught; but then was it first lived in perfection. To the living and dying Jesus, therefore, must the disciples of Christianity especially and steadfastly look; and to this view are they emphatically held by the rite of the Communion. It dismisses abstract excellence, and sets before us the model of living and dying virtue. It bids us have done with generalities and follow Christ. Good Christians enough are we perhaps, in the general; but do we follow Christ? Many admire him, but few follow him. "Many are called, but few are chosen." Once more, and finally, I have asked if there are not deeper views of life, which commend to us the meditation and the vow which are implied in the Communion. In nothing does life seem to me to be less understood, than in the depth, the power, the might, the awfulness that belong to it. We think it something trivial, superficial, worldly; but it is not so, and never can be. The wisest of us are apt to be fancy-beguiled in this matter. Look at yonder country cottage, on a green bank; a sheltering wood on one side; on the other, a sparkling stream; and around, a small domain of waving grain-fields, and pastures covered with flocks! Does it not seem to you that it is the very bosom of peace and quiet enjoyment? Does it not seem to you as if worldly passions had retired from that peaceful spot, and all within were serenity and happiness? And so you think, perhaps, that you will one day go and live there. But be not deceived. There, even there, is carried on the inward strife of passions, desires, hopes, fears, that fill every human bosom. There, every day, is a spiritual struggle; conscience and pride and sense and, perhaps, tongues of discord are in fearful contention. And what is there, is here, is everywhere. Everywhere life embosoms an awful experience. Everywhere it is beset with dread foes. Everywhere a fearful destiny presses upon it. It is a land of probation and of peril through which we walk. Now, in such a pilgrimage, I deem it good to come, from time to time, to a place to an altar, which sets before me the consummation of that great work by which God has designed to redeem us from the greatest evils of life—from that which only, in comparison, is evil-from the power of evil passions. I deem it good to come there to meditate and pray. I deem it good to come there, and to vow obedience to my life's leader and Redeemer. I would come to it, and would say, "O altar, on which my Saviour was slain ! upon thee would I swear fidelity; erring, wandering, forgetful, here would I renew the great vow of life; here, in suffering, in sorrow, in death, did Jesus conquer through meekness, through love, through forgiveness; so let me conquer; I am poor, I am weak, I am unworthy; help me, O thou mighty power of God, according to the promise which thou hast sealed in blood upon this holy altar; 'Guide me, O thou Great Jehovah! 0. D. ART. IV. - A Broad Foundation the only Sure One. A Sermon preached in Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds. By CHARLES WICKSTEED, Minister of the Chapel. On the Powerlessness of Creeds and Articles to produce Identity of Opinion, and the Necessity of Christian Liberty and Union: Illustrated by reference to general and local events. Leeds, 1841. pp. 23. WE constantly see discourses like the one before us, issuing from the Unitarian pulpit of England. They strongly illustrate the condition of religion generally, in that country, and of our own sect in particular. They breathe of struggle and uneasy position; they are filled with remonstrance and aspiration; with remonstrance, which we fear is little regarded, and aspiration but coldly heard. They protest against the demands of the Church, and they rebuke the inconsistencies of dissent; but the Church in haughtiness despises the protest, and dissent is heedless of the rebuke. The establishment and the sects, both equally false to the great principles of Protestantism, and both equally violent in a contest in which party spirit is the strongest impulse, combine to pass the sentence of heresy against Unitarians, and thus practically to pass sentence of condemnation on the use of Christian liberty. It is therefore for this privilege divested of all extraneous associations, that Unitarian preachers, and Unitarian preachers alone, are incessantly contending. Unaided in the battle, they are compelled to watch every occasion, when an impression may be made. The Oxford movement has brought out the doctrine of church authority in undisguised consistency, and afforded such an occasion. Mr. Wicksteed, with others of his brethren, has not allowed it to vanish unimproved. Doctor Hook, one of the ablest and most zealous among the Oxford divines, ministers in the same town as Mr. Wicksteed; both are at extremes of the theological category; Mr. Wicksteed for the great peculiarity of Protestantism, and Doctor Hook for the great peculiarity of Popery; one the de fender of private judgment, and the other the defender of priestly supremacy. The discourse before us is written with plainness and power. The thoughts are simple and forcible, the language is earnest and honest; all is direct and to the point, with a clearness that distinctly marks its aim, and a vigor that exactly hits it. The operation of creeds and churches on the religious interVOL. XXXI. 3D S. VOL. XIII. NO. II. 27 |