And having fellowship with our Lord, we have fellowship with one another. We partake of the same loaf and of the same cup. Our sympathies, our prayers, and our praises, are those of a brotherhood of which Christ is the centre and the glory. The source of our life, the foundation of our hope, the reason of our faith, the cause of our joy is the same; and the tie that binds us to Jesus, binds us to one another, and to the whole family of God upon earth and in heaven. Coming to Christ, we come to all who have found refuge and rest at His cross. Loving Him, we love all who drink into His spirit and bear His image.

"The saints on earth, and all the dead,
But one communion make;
All join in Christ, their living head,

And of His grace partake."

Thankful we are, and ought to be, for our communion seasons here; and as we behold the King in His beauty," and banquet with Him at His table, we wish that these seasons were more frequent. But we anticipate a fellowship far richer and sweeter than we can ever have upon earth. The Lord's Supper, even when received worthily, is no passport to glory. It is, however, to devout, believing communicants, a help heavenwards. It awakens heavenly feelings, calls forth heavenly desires, enriches us with heavenly benedictions, and sends us on our heavenly way with fresh hope and fresh courage. "Blessed are they which shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." 66 Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." "The Lamb, which is in the midst of the

throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." And ere long, brethren, we shall, through the grace by which we are saved, celebrate the great redemption in heaven.

But this is "our solemn feast-day" upon earth, and the state of our minds ought to be in harmony with the scenes we contemplate, and the merciful circumstances in which we are placed. Let us be serious, for these holy solemnities are well calculated to inspire us with reverence and godly fear. "Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever." Let us be meditative. "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus." Consider Him. Meditate on His love, condescension, sufferings, humiliation, death. Think of His compassion, faithfulness, power, grace, glory. With meditation there should be believing, earnest prayer. Prayer to the Lord Jesus that He would meet us, bless us, and manifest to us His presence. Prayer in His name to the Father for the gift of the Holy Ghost, whose influences of life and power are so much needed. And can we be otherwise than contrite? With His agony in the garden, and with His death upon the cross, we must associate our personal guilt. But for our sins He would not have suffered; and as He suffered for the express purpose of putting them. away--of blotting them out entirelyhow can we commune with Him at His table without mourning with great bitterness of spirit! The Jewish Passover was to be eaten with bitter herbs; and as "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, let us keep the feast "

with broken and penitential hearts. But we should rejoice, as well as mourn. "Sing unto God our strength," sang the ancient church, "make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp, with the psaltery. Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast-day. For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob."

When Hezekiah sanctified the temple, and restored the worship thereof, "he commanded to offer the burnt-offering upon the altar. And when the burnt-offering began, the song of the Lord began also, with the trumpets and with the instruments ordained by David, king of Israel. And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded; and all this continued until the burnt-offering was finished."

The offering up of this sacrifice was acceptable to God, and an occasion of great joy to His people. "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement," or reconciliation. And in coming to the Lord's table to celebrate His death and also to realize the benefits of it, as affecting our present state, and as related to our future and everlasting blessedness, ought we not to be cheerful?

In our

grief-lined countenances. souls, in our families, in our providential circumstances, there may be cause for sorrow. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." "In the world ye shall have tribulation." But in the fact of our having been redeemed, and justified, and made nigh to God by the blood of Christ, there is greater cause for joy than there can be reason in our adversities for sorrow. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Unbelief curtains up the cross, hedges up the way to the mercy-seat, untunes the harp, and turns day into night. Faith in Jesus. is essential to the soul's freedom and peace, even at the table of the Lord.

And when the festival and the festive day are over, how should we feel? Thankful? Yes; for the privileges we have enjoyed have given a holy impulse to our religious life. Confirmed in faith and hope? Yes; for while we have once more taken the vow of discipleship, the Lord Jesus has renewed to us the tokens of His lovingkindness. Peaceful? Yes; for by the blood of sprinkling He has purified and calmed our consciences. Braced up for the duties and conflicts of life? Yes; for He has "strengthened us with all might by His Spirit in the inner man," and clothed us with power from on high. More alive to the Redeemer's honour, and more desirous of serving Him? Yes; for He has more deeply impressed us with a sense of our obligations to "yield ourselves to Him, as those that are alive from the dead." With stronger convictions of the vanity of all

created things, compared with the riches of grace, and the glories of heaven? Yes; for at the cross we have seen in its true light the world from which we have been redeemed, and have had foretastes of the glory to which we were predestinated.

our

Let us, then, brethren, carry with us into our daily occupations the lessons we have been taught, and the comforts we have received on this " solemn feast-day." Let us remember that the vows of God are upon us, and that things are, and ought to be, with us, as if the Lord's name were written on our foreheads, and as if an angel of light were visible as a brother, a companion, and a guide, at our side.

"Ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which God's."

are

"Our solemn feast-day" is not the only day for walking with God, and rejoicing in the light of his countenance. All places, sanctified by His presence, are as "the house of God, and as the gate of heaven." The times upon which He sheds His blessing, like rain upon the mown grass, and showers that water the earth, are times of refreshing, whether they constitute

the silent hour" of closet worship, or the day of hard physical toil.

resting-places." To them is given "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

Let us, then, go on our way in peace; "Sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance," we ought to "walk worthy of our vocation wherewith we are called, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." Yet, how often, we fear, is the work of God marred, and the testimony of God enfeebled, by the defective practical piety of His people.

Dear brethren, when you were last at the communion, did you not avow your faith in Christ, your love to Christ, your determination to glorify Christ? Were you not then re-sworn at the altar, re-registered among the living in Jerusalem ? and did you not then, with the cross in your eye, rededicate yourselves to the Crucified One? And is not irritability of temper, discontentedness with providential arrangements, distrust of the Saviour's care, want of faith in the blood of the Lamb for daily purification and daily peace, is not this, all this, and whatsoever is kindred to it, incompatible with your privileges, obligations, and professions? "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." "Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called."

"EVERYWHERE do we see mourning, everywhere do we hear sighs. The cities are destroyed, the castles are ruined, the fields are laid waste, the whole land is desolate, the villages are empty, and scarcely an inhabitant is left in the cities, and even this scanty remnant of the human race is daily exposed to slaughter."

Thus wrote, and wrote truly, Gregory the Great. War and rumours of war were rife on every hand; governments had almost ceased; imperial Rome had destroyed the nationalities of the world, and now herself was crumbling into the dust of age and enervation beneath the flame and sword of an energetic and invading barbarism. But amid the wreck of institutions and governments, the hymns of devotion might still be heard, and Christian poets arose to perpetuate and re-invigorate the

devotion of the Church.

One of these was Gregory the Great, of whom Neander says that he formed a point of transition between the old Roman civilization and the new Teutonic. He was born of patrician parents; was educated ecclesiastically; attained eminence in scholarship; was appointed pastor of Rome; and was possessed of a fortune considered boundless. He abandoned all; became a monk; founded monasteries, and was ultimately made bishop of Rome. Perhaps he is best known to us for his memorable remark concerning the Angles and angels whom he found in the slave-market of his capital; but he is also remembered by many as the probable author of the hymn attributed to Charlemagne,

We pass regretfully by the name of Bede-justly called the Venerablewho solaced his uneventful but laborious life by singing hymns to his Saxon harp, and whose death-bed scene was full of the poetry and pathos of his life, and we come down to the day of Bernard of Clairvaux.

The characteristics of the hymnody of these medieval times were striking. The songs of the congregation had been hushed by the usurpation of the choir and the priesthood. The pervading spirit and theme of the hymns had been changed, and especially the later ones had ceased to soar upon the pinions of a lofty praise, but had "drooped and sunk into the depths of a great sorrow." When the Te Deum was a new song, it resounded not only in the great congregations of the people, but in the field and the camp; and the responsive hymns of Ambrose were as we have noticed -the battle-cries of great theologic parties but instead of these, there were now heard the strains of a subjective pietism, of mournful meditatations over infirmities and sins. "Acts of adoration," says an acute and somewhat stern critic, "like the 'Te Deum' so aspiring and joyful, had collapsed into

:

'The world is very evil;

The times are waxing late.'

and the bright Easter songs and Christmas carols and sunny morning orisons which had come from the warm Orient, and not lost all their colour even under the blue glass of an Ambrosian translation, were now bleached into pallid and ghostly reminiscences of their former selves, or their place supplied by "Dies Iræ," "Stabat Mater," and such

other ditties, as doleful as everything ought to be where the grace of God is unknown, and where love is cast out by perfect fear."

But in the midst of these evil times, and from dark monastic halls, there broke the strains of many a devout and wistful spirit-strains which have not all died away, but which utter the thoughts and inflame the ardour of our worshipping congregations. The minstrels of the mediæval age include such names as Adam of St. Victor, the most fertile, and, as Dr. Trench thinks, the most eminent of them all; and Hildebert, whose verses number some ten thousand or more; and Peter the Venerable, born about 1093 of noble family in Auvergne, and made chief of that reformed branch of the Benedictine Order, whose head quarters were at Clugny in Burgundy; and Prudentius, who, Bentley says, was "the Horace and Virgil of the Christians;" and Thomas of Celano, the supposed author of the "Dies Iræ," a Fransiscan friar, and Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, "than whom, probably, no man during his lifetime ever exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his." At his name we must for a moment pause. Within sight of the Côte d'Or hills and not far from Dijon in Burgundy, a feudal castle once stood upon a little eminence, and a fragment of it remains. This castle of Fontaines was the home of one Tesselin, a brave and chivalrous knight, and of his gentle and devout wife, Alith. These were the parents of St. Bernard, who was born here in 1091. The influence of the mother seems to have been very powerful over her children, for there were seven of them