SERMON V.

COMMUNION OF SAINTS.

1 JOHN 1. 7.

If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.

A CORRECT notion of the grounds on which we are forbidden to judge one another, will go far towards establishing the limits, and explaining the true nature, of that communion of saints, which is referred to in the text. In this communion we continually profess our belief. And whilst many of those who do so, rarely think at all about the matter, and have perhaps never attached any definite meaning to the words, there are some who have attached to them a sense which Scripture no where authorizes, and which is directly at variance with many positive Christian duties. Let us then first ascer

tain the scriptural character of the saints who are supposed to enjoy this communion. Which they are individually no man can decide, but we may safely assert generally, that they are the poor in spirit, and they that mourn, the meek, and they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace makers, and they which for righteousness' sake endure persecution suffering wrongfully; all these who do the works of the Gospel, by the grace of God and in the faith of Christ, all in short who according to the apostle's phrase, walk in the light, enjoy this blessed fellowship one with another. (See Matt. 5. 3—11.)

Agreeing then as to the general character of the saints amongst whom this communion exists, let us proceed to examine what that communion is, as far as the expression applies to their intercourse with their own fellow creatures. For indeed it is well known that by the communion of saints is understood also their communion with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that which they

hold with the blessed angels, and with the spirits of the just made perfect, as well as this, of which we enquire, which subsists between man and man in our present state.

I. Now the error, in which a youthful and ardent mind is most apt to indulge on this subject, is the supposing that there exists on earth, or may be formed, a distinct discernible society of holy persons, all members not only of the outward church of Christ, but of the mystical body of his true servants. There is an utopia in the church as well as in the state; and many a pious imagination has pondered on the delightful vision, till the mind has been induced to attempt to give reality to the scene. In that consecrated region, the certainty of a Christian's hope is no longer in any degree a secret in the divine counsels, but is made evident to the knowledge of his fellows; and every one enjoys the full conviction that the rest are as securely as himself inheritors of eternal glory. In that hallowed society, the affections are expanded without

fear of disappointment, and the devout heart is continually cheered by the sympathy of the devotion of others. There is there no longer any need of the wisdom of the serpent, where all are harmless as doves, no longer any duty to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, where the children of this world, with the wisdom of their generation, are excluded. The enthusiastic fancy connects these visionary views with its own peculiar wishes; and the pleasures of religious excitement derive additional interest, from being associated with the tenderness of the affectionate, or with the ambition of the haughty. Such is the picture in which well disposed minds have sometimes indulged, and which many have unhappily mistaken for a really practicable course of life, for a true exemplification of that fellowship one with another, which is promised to the saints of God. But that fellowship it can never be; or the promise would become of no effect; for the state of society here imagined can never be realized in this mortal life.

As