from that Sacrament which is the means of building them up to eternal life. are II. Allow me next to press the obligation of receiving the Holy Eucharist on those who hesitating as to the course they should pursue. You have been devoted to God in the Sacrament of Baptism; you have been blessed perhaps with much religious instruction; you have some good impressions on your minds towards God; your lives and conduct are amiable and respectable: but yet you delay the time of publicly devoting yourselves to Christ at his holy institution; you halt between two opinions. O, let me beseech you to choose this day whom you will serve. Let me urge on your consciences the duty of deciding for God. Let me remind you, that the nearer you seem to heaven, if at last you should fall short of it, the more lamentable will be the event. Let me tell you, that he that is not with Christ is against him; and he that gathereth not with him, scattereth abroad. O, remember now your Creator in the days of your youth; enter seriously on the consideration of the Lord's Supper; implore fervently the grace you require for partaking of it in a suitable state of mind; seal your covenant with God; confess your Saviour publicly before men; join yourselves fully to his mystical body; and doubt not of receiving your Saviour's grace at his Table to enable you to fulfil your vows. your vows. Thus shall you look back in future life on the season when you first approached the Holy Communion, as a time ever to be recorded with devout thankfulness to the God of your salvation. Lastly, Let me urge the obligation of receiving the Lord's Supper on those who are in the habit of performing this duty, with the view of exhorting them to a more regular and conscientious discharge of it. Too many are defective in these respects. Let me invite such to entertain an increasing esteem of this institution, and never to rest satisfied without receiving some distinct and practical and abiding advantage from it. Let no opportunity of joining in this celebration be willingly omitted. Rather look forward with anticipation and joy to the seasons as they approach. Cultivate that high value and love for it which will always bear some proportion to your love to the Saviour who instituted the Sacrament, and who never ceases to bless it. Be diligent in seeking the presence and grace of God in your preparation for it, as well as in the discharge of the duties to which from time to time it binds you. And may God grant that the writer of these lines and the readers of them, may ever continue united to the mystical body of Christ, may be nourished in the union of that body by the most precious food provided at the Supper of the Lord our Redeemer, and may be so strengthened and nourished by that and the other means of grace, that they may be preserved by the power and mercy of their Saviour, and the influence of his Spirit, through the various temptations of this life, till at length they attain to everlasting salvation! |