holds the resources of time and nature at command, to lift up the meek in triumph and overwhelm the proud with shame. It is the peculiarity of Christianity that it avoids both these extremes; but, true to the very nature of things, neither dispenses with obedience nor asks for it but on the basis of communion. It doubtless addresses us in the imperative voice of divine right; but not till it has made the whisper of our own conscience speak in the very same tones. It pronounces, with the calmness of inspiration, on the sublimest truths; but not without transposing us into a temper in which those truths evidence themselves. No thunders from the Lord of storms hurl upon our ear the terrible 'Thou shalt,' and 'Thou shalt not'; no lightnings from the desert's mountain-throne proclaim our God as a consuming flame. His blasting light, refracted through the mind of Christ, breaks into the sweetest hues, and paints and glorifies the life it else would set on fire. His sternest law, mellowed by the voice of him that bare our woes, is turned from the crash of Fate into the music of Love. By visiting us through a mediatorial mind on the confines of the human and the divine, steeped in the sorrows of one realm and kindling with the affections of another, God has abolished the infinite distance between us, shown us that what is dear and beautiful to him is the supreme of sanctities to us, and brought us to feel that, however vast the interval between mind and

mind, all live upon the same thought, and shine by the same light, and contain the rudiments of that creative reverence for good whence the universe and life have been shaped into forms so fair. Not only in the medium, but in the matter and the manner of our religion, are we delivered from mere obedience into communion. The Son of Man does not speak to us as strangers to a voice like his he never moves imperiously about, as among a race of spiritual serfs, who must be made to do an outside will they are not fit to comprehend. His tones are directed, not to overpower, but to penetrate. He does not bear down. against resistance, but touches the springs of native force. He appeals as to souls that bear kindred with his own; that secretly know the right from which, in the misery of delusion, they have turned away; that deeply love the purity and power of heart they have so sadly lost; and feel the shame and sorrow of an alienation, boasted of perhaps as freedom, but lamented with the hidden sighs of exile. He speaks as if his diviner sphere of thought created no separation, and made no difference in the free outpouring of his soul. And so it really was he had but to be himself and live that godlike life, to become a central light of human trust, and the most enduring object of human affection. I know no better answer to those who say that the mind of man has no perception of the Holy, and can vow no allegiance to the Divine.

This peculiar honour which Christianity pays to our nature,—this recognition of its diviner sympathies,— this claim of the highest kindred for it, is distinctly marked and fixed in outward expression by the rite of Communion. By this usage has Christendom, in every age, asserted and celebrated the family relationship of all souls. I cannot claim it, in the hard legal sense, as a rite imposed by the external authority of our religion; for it is the very point at which that religion forgets and renounces its authority, throws itself freely into the embrace of our affections, and boldly says, "if you cannot love me, I would not have you serve me." But it is a usage which certainly embodies the sublimest and the most genial characteristic of our faith, beyond which there is not, in the whole realm of thought, a deeper or a kindlier truth. The communion of all spirits with one another, through their common clustering round the sanctity of Christ,-can there be a more glorious and humanising vision than that? As we draw together round the table where the divinest form invisibly presides, and the saintliest throngs of all history are gathered round, we only say, 'Behold, there is but one heart for every age, one spirit for both worlds.' As we stretch our hand upon the bread once broken by a blessed touch, we do but say, 'All souls must feed on the same aliment of thought, and joyfully we take with thee, thou light and life of souls, the holy nutriment of the true and pure and good.' As we

taste the emblem of his suffering, and watch it as it passes down through centuries of hands, we simply think, 'That cup of sorrow, healthful to the soul, we too must expect to drink; but if it comes from thee, O Lord, and bears thy blessing in the draught, then welcome the lot which passes us through a sacred shadow to the light of the serenest joy.' To decline this venerable usage is virtually to insulate oneself in Christendom; to own our religion as a personal obligation to oneself, but no tie of sympathy with the great and good who have vowed our vows and breathed our prayers; to proclaim Christ our private master, to whom we would yield a blind submission, not the elder brother of the vast kindred of spirits, around whose glorious form we crowd with devout recognition, and mighty unison of heart. Have we not enough to isolate us in the low life of this egotistic age, that we should coldly decline the consecrated link that binds us to the saintly chain of ages? Nothing that is servile, nothing that is superstitious can come in contact with a usage so true to the human and the Christian heart. It expresses only what is most rational, most free, most joyous, most affectionate in our religion; and transmits through Christendom the voice which once spake in that upper chamber in Jerusalem; "Henceforth I call you not servants"; "but I call you friends"; "for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have delivered unto you."

VII.

The Way of Remembrance.

2 PETER iii. 1.

"I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance."

JOHN xiv. 26.

"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

HERE then the message of an Apostle, nay, even the teaching of the Holy Spirit, is identified with sacred remembrance; remembrance of holy words and deep impressions dropped upon the heart in the highest moments of life. The apprehension of divine things consists, it would seem, not in new discoveries, not in strained and laboured thought, but in the reawakening of the pure and simple mind, and the gathering up of every Christlike image and affection from behind and from within. To the ardent and reforming spirit, full of some dream of new religion, it may seem a poor thing to claim no more than this;-to reduce the Christian messenger to a mere monitor of the known,