the women of Jerusalem, "If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" Yet, once more, if we are living a life not thoughtless, but over-careful; if it is not our bounding blood, but the intense activity and power of our minds' energies, which is making us to live twenty lives in one;-then, too, how wholesome, how humbling, yet how soothing and how ennobling, is the thought of Christ crucified! Wholesome and humbling; for it tells us that our minds' power could not have prevented us from being in God's sight more worthless than his lowest creature, turning his gifts, as we do, to other ends than his glory; yet soothing and ennobling also; for it speaks of a perfect peace when the exertion of our faculties becomes feverish from its intensity; it tells us of a height to be attained hereafter, so far above all our hopes and notions, that, for the purposes of that divine life, the intelligence which now seems able to compass earth and heaven, will be as useless as we should find for our present life the first feeble and dreamy conceptions of a child.

If, then, at every age, in every condition, the thought of Christ's death is so useful to us, how greatly should we prize the memorial of it! To have it brought again before our eyes, in a sort of living action, to be assembled together round Christ's table, eating the bread and drinking of the

cup, just as the first disciples were assembled, as they ate, and as they drank, on the night when he was betrayed to be crucified. Surely it is our own fault if this communion be no more than the flesh which profiteth nothing, when it may so well become the spirit that quickeneth. It will be that quickening spirit, if it, indeed, remind us seriously of Christ's death. It will be worse than the flesh which profiteth nothing, if we either turn away from it unheeded, or partake of it unworthily. For if we turn away from it, what is it but saying that Christ calls upon us to remember his cross, but we will not; that we love our state as we are, better than the remedies which that cross contains for it; that if we are serving God, we would fain take the merit of it to ourselves; that if we are struggling with temptations, we care not to seek the aid which may enable us to overcome them; if we are laughed at or thwarted in turning to Christ, we are not anxious to be strengthened by him, lest we turn aside and leave him; that if we are in health and cheerful spirits, we would rather think of nothing to make us sober and wise; if our minds are busy and powerful, we are contented to make them our idol. This is what we in effect say, if we refuse to remind ourselves of Christ's death. Or, again, if we receive the communion unworthily, if going only for form's sake, if not seeking really to keep Christ's death in remem

brance, but trying, as it were, to hallow one day, in order to be excused to our own hearts for getting rid of the thought of Christ altogether for the next month or two, thus at once making our participation a superstition and a blasphemy; then, also, we show that it profits us, and can profit us, nothing; it is the stone which we refuse to make as the corner-stone of our salvation, and which, therefore, if we touch it, will but grind us to powder.

May Christ's grace teach us better things than these; may we go with a true desire to awaken and keep alive in our hearts the remembrance of his death, in all its saving power! May we go, feeling our want of such a memorial, and desirous to apply it to the particular evils or dangers of our own individual souls! May we go, not superstitiously hoping to find a charm in the bread and wine, as if the flesh would profit us any thing; not hoping, I mean, to be spared the necessity of being watchful for ourselves, to be able to pray the less, or labour the less for the future, because we have been partakers of Christ's communion; nor yet let us go with the presumptuous hope that temptations will assail us the less, that sin's power will be subdued within us, that we shall have no more falls, no more broken resolutions, because we have been admitted at Christ's table. We must not hope for this; for so should our conflict cease

enter into our We must not

before life was over; so should we rest before yet the sun was down. expect to have no falls, no more broken resolutions, but we hope to have fewer; we must not expect to be freed from temptations, but we may hope to have gained greater ability to withstand them. Let us go soberly and humbly, yet with a lively hope and a strong desire. What are we, that our Lord should admit us at his table? yet, seeing that he does so admit us, is it not an earnest of more that he will do for us; will it not further us in that race whose prize is life eternal? Indeed it was appointed to help us on in that race, to be to our spirits a quickening spirit, by setting before them continually the death of Christ. I have endeavoured to show you how it does this, and how great is the use of it; that it is not a mere ceremony, or intended to act secretly and mysteriously like a charm; but by meeting directly the wants of our nature, and supplying food for its best affections; by so cleaving us from evil, and so disposing us to good, that our hearts may be rendered fitter to receive the gift of Christ's Spirit, and so be quickened for ever.

SERMON VII.

CHRIST'S ASCENSION.

MARK, XVI. 19.

So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

ALL the great events of our Lord's life on earth, are celebrated in the course of the Christian year. His birth; his circumcision; the manifestation of his birth to the wise men; his fasting and temptation before he entered upon his ministry; and, lastly, his betrayal, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. But of all these, the resurrection has been ever considered the greatest. Easter, in this as in other points, has taken the place of the passover of the Jews, that it is the greatest of all our festivals; it celebrates that event in which, in an especial manner, the whole of Christianity is contained. It is notorious, that the festival of the ascension is, in common practice, now much less