III. It would now be a hopeless task, and its accomplishment undesirable, to reduce preaching to the place it anciently occupied in the instruction of the church. Not only the custom, but the intellectual wants of the age require it in almost constant and universal connexion with our public service. But let it be observed that, in studying a present regulation of this duty, it must not be separated from the course of discipline originally prescribed by the church, but be made explanatory and confirmatory of this, and auxiliary to its great purpose in the formation of a Christian people as members of the church of Christ. Hence, as the vehicle of Christian instruction, it should not stand alone, or be regarded merely as an occasion of disserting on Christianity, as the public lecturer on any chosen theme may be supposed to entertain his auditory at his pleasure. We have a higher work to perform than to administer general and loose instruction on a particular subject of intellectual inquiry, we have to instruct the minds, guide the life, and mature the characters, of the members of the Christian church. But when we regard preaching at this point of view, the question arises, whether we should now seek to preserve for it that purely elementary character which was given to it of old, and which prescribes a peculiar plainness of instruction, belonging to the matter selected, and the circumscribed design supposed; or whether, coincident with an improved system of catechetical instruction in our parishes, (which must be always assumed in this case,) we should give to it a higher intellectual tone, in meeting the wants and excitements of the present day, and so adapting the most popular medium of instruction in the church to the erroneous and dangerous impressions which pervade thousands of our mixed congregations, as distributed throughout almost all the cities and towns of the kingdom? Now in many instances, especially in our rural parishes, the ancient elementary character of preaching should unquestionably be preserved; and no effort would be becoming which could possibly draw away the preacher from the greatest plainness in the matter and style of his instructions. But except in such cases to be determined by the common practical judgment of single-hearted men, there exists, I humbly submit, an imperious necessity for giving a higher intellectual, because a most instructive, character to our preaching in the present day. Our pulpit instruction must now be corrective and protective; it must propound and urge antagonist truths against the errors and perversions which exist in the public mind: it must also be progressive and expansive; it must give to theological truth its moral empire over thought and reasoning; it must make this truth, as incorporated in the form of our church, not only known in its elementary character, but familiar to the public mind in all its beauty and majesty, and capable of filling the most excited heart, without leaving a void to be occupied by moral error and false philosophy. The present is an age of intellectual excitement. All transition and revolutionary periods in the history of states have been of this nature. And what is the consequence? Thousands religiously disposed, and wellaffected towards our church, regard its pulpit instruction in general as beneath their notice. Multitudes of our youth read in the week what

strengthens their powers by exercise, without, we fear, advancing their solid improvement, who, when they listen to their preacher on the Sunday, feel the want of something with which their intellect may grapple, and which might preserve them from the errors and dangers by which they otherwise become fascinated for life. In this state of things the dissenting ministry gains upon the church. Its popularity is not always, nor mainly, I imagine, owing to its plainness. It owes much to its peculiarities of matter, in which our very elementary style will never correct its mischief. But more than this, it possesses a certain robustness and energy. If it be coarse it has strength. It ministers to the excitements, and, among the middle classes, to the intellectual craving, of the day. In such quarters it supplies matter for religious thought, for conversation, and controversy, and thus acquires power in its progress. It thus succeeds in giving its own religious character to much of the movement of the age. And for these reasons it obtains the patronage of many whose taste must recoil at its defects, but who think it, as a public instrument, and on the ground of its efficiency, preferable to the ministry of our church.

But I dare not, Mr. Editor, presume on your limits in extending these remarks. Allow me to urge upon your readers, a grave attention to the increased efficiency of the pulpit in relation to our present circumstances, connecting its subservience to the institutions of the church with a higher and wider adaptation to the intellectual and moral character of the age than has ever yet been systematically assigned to its instructions. PRÆDICATOR.

ON SOME PRACTICAL AND DOCTRINAL RESULTS OF RARE

CELEBRATION OF THE EUCHARIST.

It is impossible for any one to betake himself to the study of primitive antiquity without lighting at the very outset on one most important difference between the practice of the early church and our own. I mean the frequency with which the holy eucharist was celebrated in the one, and its comparative rarity in the other. I need scarcely say that in the early church the Lord's supper was consecrated and received at least every Sunday. It was not then an occasional service. The form of its celebration was styled the liturgy, and itself regarded as the central Christian act, whence flowed the whole spiritual life, and round which revolved all other services, prayers, charities, and duties. To suppose the services of the Sunday performed without the celebration by the priest, and the reception by the baptized, of this great sacrament, would have been the most monstrous thought that could have presented itself to the mind of the primitive believer. The difference between this practice and our own is so obvious as not to need being stated; and so powerfully has it been

*I need hardly remark that even when lax practice as to reception begun, the celebration of the eucharist and the sentiment of the church on the whole question continued as before.

recently felt, that one or two able and zealous clergymen are understood to have commenced a weekly solemnization of the eucharist with beneficial results.

It is by no means the purpose of the present observations directly to enforce their example. The writer neither feels qualified by age, station, or experience, thus to preach to his brethren in the ministry. Neither is he prepared to say that the sudden adoption even of that which is undoubtedly right would as a matter of course be safe or commendable. Where we are endeavouring to remove corruptions, or supply deficiencies, which have existed for ages, it becomes us to remember that, while their long duration diminishes our share of responsibility for their existence, so it adds to the necessity for wariness while we try to remove them. In the meantime, however, let us not decline considering a matter of such distinct importance. And it is in the hope that they may tend, however humbly, to aid the consideration, that the following remarks are made.

I apprehend that the subject has hitherto presented itself to most minds thus-" The early Christians must have known best what was right; and they celebrated the eucharist every Lord's day. We, very often, only four times a year." Can a practice so different from theirs be safe or right? And then the inquirer turns to the New Testament, and finds that the practice of the early ecclesiastical times was the practice of apostolic times also, and thus becomes fortified in a conviction of the necessity for our returning to that practice. Now I do not find any fault with this mode of prosecuting the inquiry. Undoubtedly it is the first and chief way of ascertaining the truth which a pious mind will adopt. But I do not feel qualified to add to what has been already said on this part of the subject, and at present mean to throw out a few hints on some collateral points which I think worthy of notice. I wish to shew that our rare celebration of the eucharist is productive of mischief in three ways,-first, as indirectly encouraging noncommunion; secondly, as hindering our apprehensions of the true nature of the eucharist; and thirdly, as doing the same in regard to our apprehensions of Christian doctrine in general.

I. I presume there are few orthodox clergymen who do not at times both publicly and privately endeavour to impress their flocks with the necessity of receiving this sacrament, and to convince them that in refusing it they are refusing the great appointed channel of divine grace, and consequently must be destitute of the strength requisite for the performance of their duties. In spite of all this, however, most clergymen will testify to the difficulty of persuading any tolerable proportion of their flocks to become communicants. Now of course one leading cause is, that evil state of the human heart which desires to make the most of this world before committing itself to that Christian service which is incompatible with many of its pleasures. Men delay communion now, from the same feelings as led catechumens to delay baptism formerly. And it is idle to contrast one age with another in this respect. But after allowing for this " root of bitterness," I think it plain that the evil in question is partly caused by misapprehension. The eucharist being celebrated only occasionally, and the importance of the Lord's day being in other respects strongly

felt, its services without communion have acquired an air of dignity and sufficiency to which under such circumstances they have no title. Men fancy that their prayers and praises may mount up acceptably to the throne without that which was given to be their vehicle, and thus they do not distinctly see what they are about; they do not see how completely they are cutting themselves off from the Christian fellowship in refusing communion. Whereas, were they offered it every Sunday, were its celebration considered the principal reason for the whole Sunday worship, then to turn away from it would be much more glaringly than at present to decline the Christian profession, and to court separation from the Christian fellowship.

II. I proceed to shew how much our present rare celebration of the eucharist tends to darken and perplex our views of the rite. A serious Christian, who has profitably studied the gospel of St. John, and explored his own heart, will confess that there is no possible spiritual life for him, no not for an hour, except what is derived from the divine humanity,-that every day of his life he must be nourished by the flesh broken and the blood shed for the world, or he must starve. Now suppose I come to warn him against Zuinglian or Hoadleian views of the Lord's supper; suppose I undertake to shew him, out of scripture and primitive antiquity, and the forms of the Anglican church, that this very benefit of Christ's flesh and drinking his blood is indeed the inward and spiritual grace of the eucharist; with my own views, I must consider myself as setting forth the truth. But what perplexity and confusion do I not introduce into his mind, while I seem to him to be confining a benefit of which he feels that he stands in hourly need to an ordinance in which it may be he only participates some three or four times a year. No doubt it is an ordinance which, even in spite of this rarity of celebration, he ought to perceive to be the central Christian act, which perception would at once remove his perplexities; and no doubt many are led to perceive this. But it is plain that our practice does not tend to render it at once apparent, and in so far is one source of the low views of the eucharist so generally prevalent.

Again, how difficult and perplexing is the sacrificial character of the eucharist rendered by its rare celebration! This rarity so separates it from Christian worship in general, that but few look upon it as an act of worship. Most people confine their view of it to the elements and the reception of them. I do not mean at present to determine how or in what respects the term sacrifice may or may not be applicable to the offering of them. But surely there is a large sense in which, as the central Christian act, as the great means of offering up ourselves, our wills, our thanksgivings, our worship, and our praise to the Majesty of Heaven, we may enter into the sentiments of the early church, and see in the rites of the eucharist the great substitute for all the sacrifices of the elder dispensation, a spiritual sacrifice, made acceptable by the sacrifice of Christ. But, as I have already said, the rarity of its celebration severs it in most minds from Christian worship in general, and thus hinders even devout communicants from exploring the riches or mounting up to the heights revealed by the true view of this subject. How few apprehend that, from the moment when the

priest summons them to lift up their hearts, they are indeed engaged in offering a sacrifice the sublimest that earth ever presented to heaven, save only that transcendent one from which this derives its meaning and life! The reasonable and unbloody service, the celestial liturgy, the angelic society, the thrice holy words with which Christians echo on earth the music of heaven, the mighty cloud of incense mounting up to the throne from the mingled worship of angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, apostles, confessors, and martyrs, saints in rest and saints in conflict on earth, the grand harmony of God's universal family,-how few, I say, see all this in the sacred rite which they, notwithstanding, devoutly observe! How few worthily apprehend that in duly observing that rite, their citizenship is indeed in heaven, and that they are standing among the celestial hierarchy at the right hand of God!

III. Turning from the Lord's supper itself to the general scheme of Christian doctrine, this one abuse of rare celebration will be found the fruitful source of error and perversity. Indeed, if the position I have taken be granted, this must follow from what has already been said. For if the eucharist be the very concentration of the evangelic œconomy, it is plain that false views of it must involve false views of the whole dispensation. And if our tendency be to self-exaltation in one form or another, (whether by magnifying the powers of our will, or by attaching an undue value to the facts of our own mental history and experience;) if we be able to conceive no communion with God unless our sensibilities be excited, and no workings of the Spirit except through the instrumentality of passion; if we are apt to enthrone faith itself above the glories revealed to it, and the benefits it embraces; if these, or such as these, be the habits of our minds, and if to these, or such as these, may be traced those schemes of doctrine so current among us, which, clamorously professing to be more evangelic and spiritual than the old church sentiments, yet continually shock thinking men by their anomalies, and earnest men by the bondage which they cast over the conscience; if this be so, it is manifest that by rarely obtruding on the attention that sacrament which takes us out of ourselves, and reminds us that God's power and promise are independent alike of human emptiness and human variations; that sacrament which neither addresses, nor in a healthful mind excites, any passionate emotion; that sacrament which really gives all the glory to God which the modern sectarian denies to man's will only to confer it on his feelings and experiences; that sacrament which shuts out such evil, by simply inviting us to eat and live; by the rarity, I say, of such a sacrament, we give no slight opening to all this fanaticism, emptiness, and self-idolatry.

Again, if almost all modern controversy and disquisition has been characterized by a forgetfulness of the body of Christ; if all sides seem alike to have laboured under the fallacy of considering the divine covenant to be made with individuals as such, instead of as members of a community; if from a state like this it has become well nigh impossible to make some persons even conceive what we mean by the church, so that no argument, however cogent, nor explanation,