Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Then is sung a portion of Psalm CIII., to the tune Coleshill.

I O THOU my soul, bless God the Lord;

and all that in me is

Be stirred up His holy name

to magnify and bless.

2 Bless, O my soul, the Lord thy God,

and not forgetful be

Of all His gracious benefits

He hath bestow'd on thee.

After this, the communicants who have received rise and depart from the Communion Table. And their places are filled by others.

TABLE SERVICE II.

To this Holy Table we come oftentimes, Christian friends: Not so often as many of our fellowChristians do; yet as years pass on, our Communion

seasons mount up, and

grow many so many,

that we

cannot remember distinctly, most of us, each day on which we made this good profession, and how it was with our souls upon that day. We come to the Holy Table in all moods of mind: in all states of bodily health in all outward circumstances of joy or sorrow. We have our sunshiny Communion Sundays and our overcast ones; with their inward sunshine and shade. Perhaps we are wrong in asking for a uniform experience of even our unchanging Saviour's grace, in this world where unchanged truths do yet change their aspects to us as we ourselves change. The returning anniversaries of the most touching and memorable events in our family histories are not the same: each has its own shade of character; and we cannot make them alike, do what we may. Is it not so, in some measure, with our Communion seasons? We think of our Saviour's

love and grace; and these are unchanged: Would

that we could always feel them as we ought! And perhaps we are wrong in looking, even in their contemplation on a day like this, for a glow of feeling which grows less common when we begin to grow old. We are but laying up disappointment for ourselves, doing so.

If our remembering our Lord at His Table, and our feeding upon Him by faith, were a mechanical work under the control of our will, then we might make sure, every time we did it, that it should be done equally well, and to equal profit. But whenever work comes to be mental, and yet more when it comes to be spiritual, it becomes difficult, and it becomes uncertain. And the simplest reliance on God's grace, and the most earnest prayer for God's Spirit, will never make it any other, while we remain the beings we are. The glow of devotion; the rapture which lifts up the soul as into the air of Paradise, and makes it walk as with angels through

the Land Beulah: these must come spontaneous, or they will not come at all. Yet though feeling be not at our command, purpose is: calm purpose here to show forth our Redeemer's death, and to declare ourselves His faithful soldiers and servants to our life's end calm purpose that by God's grace, promised and never-failing, we shall deny ungodliness and worldly lusts; and live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world: calm purpose that here by faith we shall, if God enable us, devoutly feed upon our Lord's broken body and shed blood: humbly and thankfully receiving whatever portion of the children's bread it may please Him to give us, even though it should taste less sweet and refreshing than we have known it do.

And looking at Christ's faithful ones, devoutly sitting at His Table of Communion, what minister does not feel, with advancing experience, as though they were best left mainly to their own meditation :

each one for himself recalling his own history: thinking of Christ's goodness to himself: calling to remembrance his own burdens and cares, and casting all upon the strong arm of Almighty God: thinking of work to be done, and asking that this spiritual food may strengthen to do it: praying with all prayer for a heart filled with the Holy Spirit: like the Psalmist of old, if the heart be cast down and weak, remembering God from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar: Not from the everlasting hills, from whence cometh our help, though to them too we shall lift up our eyes; but from the hill Mizar, the 'little hill;' the season in our own experience wherein we found our Saviour so merciful and true: when we were in great perplexity which way to go, and He wonderfully inclined us, we know not how, to that way which now we can see was right: when we were burdened with the

sense of sin, and were enabled truly to cling to the

« AnteriorContinuar »