The table of the Lord

Chapter I. On External Ordinances

God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The bended knee, the sacramental sign, the worded formulary and stated service were not devised for Him. He knows what we want before we ask, and needs not that any man should tell him. He knows what we are before it has been manifested in thought, or word, or deed — before one thought betrays the yearning of our affections — one word confesses the persuasion of our minds — or one act exposes the principle that reigns within us. Nay, the mere voiceless consciousness of the soul is not necessary to Him: He knows our love or hate before it knows itself: He knows — how much! that we have never known, of the heart from which He requires this spiritual worship. " When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee." — Saw what? not the man Nathanael in the act, as he probably was, of prayer; this would not have surprised Nathanael into an immediate recognition of his 2 diety. Jesus saw under the fig-tree a chosen disciple who had not yet known his Saviour, unconsciously made ready to choose him and confess him when he appeared. " Rabbi, thou art the Son of God." All the discovery was on NathanaePs part; the Master had known his servant under the fig-tree — and long — how long before! "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee." — " According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world." He sees the love that never saw itself, and accepts the unconscious service. "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee?" He feels the hatred that knows not its own object: "Who art thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." He accepts the faith that doubts of its own existence — minute as a grain of mustard-seed; and how he estimates the guilt of sins unconsciously committed, is apparent in the sacrifices appointed for them under the Mosaic dispensation.

It is not for Deity, then, that the manifestations and expression of devotions are required. It is not for himself God has appointed forms and places and symbolic signs, nor to himself he has adapted them. Mark here the pride and absurdity of human reasoning. We hear it said, "What does God care for forms and ceremonies? What can it signify to Him, who reads the heart, whether I pray in one place or another, or any where at all, if I live under a sense of dependence upon Him? Is there any charm in the posture of the body, in the sprinkling of water, and muttering of words, and setting apart of days and sanctifying of places? — Every man is before God what he is in his heart, in spite of creeds, and formularies, and institutions of religion; irrelevant all to the nature of the Eternal Spirit; and what have they to do with the spirit of a man?" We answer, no more than the paper on which our words are written, and the characters in which they are expressed, have to do with the thoughts and feelings they convey from the mind of him who writes, to the mind of him who reads. Religious ordinances are the medium of communication God has appointed between himself and us, suited, not to His nature, but to ours. In earthly language, by material images and with sensible signs, the Deity holds communion with his earth-born creatures, and chooses to receive communications back again. It was left for the intellect of fallen man to discover that they are superfluous, contemptible — to mock at the simple machinery of the forbidden fruit, by which the first movement of sin was to be detected: to cavil at the similitude of earthly passion ascribed to the mind of the impassible God, of joy, and grief, and anger, and repentance; above all, to pour out the full vial of his scorn, the very spleen of his indignant reason, against that great device, that mystery of godliness — God manifest in the flesh. Were we informed what was the necessity of submitting Deity to mortal sense, of working out redemption with material instruments amid sensible things, rather than in mental and spiritual abstractions, it might help us to discover why God had joined, and required us to join, the outward and visible sign of devotion with the inward and spiritual grace, alone essential, and alone acceptable to Him. Meantime it is enough for the submitted intellect to know, that He has so appointed — that He does so require — and that He accepts, not the ordidances, but our spiritual worship in them: or rather all in Christ — apart from whom the emotions of the heart and the adoration of the understanding, are of no more value than the flexions of the knee and the utterance of the lips.

From the beginning God has instituted sacramental signs; material emblems of spiritual things; memorials and witnesses between himself and man; pledges of promise, and tests of obligation. Hard by the tree of knowledge, which tested his obedience, stood the tree of life, its blessing and reward. The lusting eye, the profaning hand, transgressing instruments of the guilt-stirred spirit, should have been instruments of prevention; for there, within touch and sight, stood the pledge ^nd emblem of the life they were to forfeit. Those senses through which the criminal desire was engendered, when the woman saw the tree that it was pleasant, should have been the safeguards of her innocence. Sense was not meant for a base handmaid to immortal mind; a defenceless inlet by which the soul's strong hold was to be betrayed and taken. That opening had its outworks — it had its own peculiar guard, and should have tended to the soul's defence. If the woman had looked upon the other tree, sense would have helped her to the memory of God, and all the bliss she was putting to the venture.

In the great moral dislocation of the fall, every faculty took its own course of wrong; one to its pride, the other to its sensuality — agreed in nothing but to depart from God. Mind went to war with matter, judgment with feeling, intellect with sense; what was once combination, became contrariety, and man was left at variance with himself; a thing so shattered and broken, that no finite power can make its parts agree, or fit them once more to a whole. And thus it is, that while the pride of reason affects to despise all outward ordinances and visible demonstrations of piety, feeling is prone to cling to them too much; the one decries the help that sense affords, the other loses all spirituality in it. But God, the wise, the merciful, when he determined to recover and renew his fallen creature, had regard to each of his dispersed faculties, and suited his ministration to them all. Those perverted senses through which the tide of corruption now flowed in with overwhelming force, sinking the soul in deeper and deeper night, were not given up by him, to be the exclusive ministers of evil; material instruments, seduced and seducing as they had become, were not so abandoned, that they should no longer have a voice to speak for God, or witness of his violated laws. Indeed when the divine image had departed, and the living soul, having put itself to death, proceeded to bury itself in the things of time and sense, man became so earthly, so animalized a creature, that the ministration of sensible things was found best adapted to his dulled intellect and blighted feelings.

The work of redemption was begun in signs and shadows of the things to come: in typical sacrifices and ceremonial service; every truth was exhibited under some sensible image, and every promise ratified by some external pledge. "It shall come to pass," says the Lord to Moses, after the most impressive exhibition of his will, with all the blessing and the curse attached, " It shall come to pass when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in unto the land whither thougoest to possess it, that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the curse upon Mount Ebal." We might have thought, that with all the supernatural evidences with which they were surrounded, the presence of God upon the mercy-seat, the Urim and Thutnmin by which his mind was known, and all the miraculous interpositions of his power, there could be no occasion for such memorials to bring to mind the sanctions of the law, no need of material pledges of his threats and promises. " Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringes of the border, a ribband of blue; and it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them." "How unnecessary! Could they forget the awful sentence that had just been executed upon the transgressor of the law? How ostentatious! Better write the law upon their hearts than upon their garments." Some reasoners would have said so; just as they say now, that it is better to be religious in heart than to make great profession of it, by separation from the world, observance of ordinances, and attendance upon sacraments.

God thought otherwise. He knew the heart of man — he knew that the time would come, as it did come to the Jews, when the divine ordinances would be perverted and made the substitute for spiritual worship — when they would make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments, while they made the law of none effect through their traditions. And he knew the time would come, as it is come to us, when the pride of man's intellect would revolt against all forms and institutions of religion, and make a boast of the spirituality of the gospel, while breaking its plain commandments in neglecting what has been ordained. But God yields no more to man's pride than to his sensuality: they are equally offensive to him, and equally in opposition to his will. To our weakness only he has bent himself; to our ignorance he has adapted the lessons of his wisdom, and to our imbecility the workings of his power. He does not require of us now the pure worship of heaven, but the humble tuitiveness of ignorance and simplicity: as little children " desire ye the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby." He has brought down his high, and pure, and spiritual religion to the condition of an earth-born, earth-bound creature, preparing, but ill prepared as yet, for a sublimer worship. To help our infirmity, and restrain our licence, he has most graciously appointed, and through all time required, external aids and manifestations of devotion, outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.

First, the Sabbath; remembrancer once of the finishing of creation's work; remembrancer now of the finishing of redemption's harder work: sweet emblem heretofore of the believer's rest in Christ; sweet foretaste now of our eternal rest: the Sabbath has been instituted from the beginning, unchanged as the gracious purpose that ordained it; the blessing of man's innocence, the solace of his fall, the pledge, and symbol, and means of his recovery. « I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they may know that I am the Lord that sanctify them/' One seventh day the sentence of labor was recalled, the expulsion from Eden was as it were rescinded, that man might return and hold sweet communion with his God; remember what he had been, and be re-assured of what he will be. But even this institution, so gracious in the design, so delightful in the enjoyment, so beneficial in its eifects; this dew of heaven on the arid earth, this breath of immortality in a dying world; even this finds no acceptance with fallen humanity. Wisdom disputes it, vice hates it, and independence treads it under foot. Religion can do very well without it; and spirituality does not so suffer under the deadening influence of week-day occupation, as to welcome the refreshment of the Sabbath service!

Preaching through an appointed ministry, is another institution that has existed from the beginning, at least of the economy of redemption. Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of judgment and of grace to come. Noah, the second sole progenitor of the human race, was a preacher of righteousness to his generation; and throughout the Jewish dispensation, there were men of God set apart and separated, to be the oral instructors of his people. " Thou hast appointed prophets to preach of thee/' Nehemiah vi, 7. " The Lord has anointed me tp preach good tidings/' said Isaiah. " Preach to it the preaching that I bid thee/' said the Lord to Jonah: an office distinct then, it would appear, from the officiating priesthood of the temple, and always existing, though peculiarly characteristic of the gospel dispensation. In the New Testament, preaching is so specifically ordained to be the standing means of conversion, is so universally commanded throughout all times and places, and so manifestly blessed by the accompanying spirit of God, that it is only another proof of the rebelliousness of man's heart, when any can be found to undervalue it: to say that it does not signify what we hear, or whether we hear at all: or whether the willing hearers be supplied with zealous and enlightened preachers, or the appointed preachers be duly sanctified and fitted for their office; as if the conduct of the public services and administration of religious rites were all that is essential in the office of a minister. I am sure the Scripture gives no sanction to such an opinion. To preach and to baptize is the united commission, and there is no intimation given that one is of less importance than the other. " How shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher?" As the neglect of the Sabbath has always marked the growth of immorality and irreligion in the world, so indifference to preaching has ever attended the decline of spirituality in the church: and however any man's fancied experience may exalt itself against his Maker's provision for him, I believe the healthful condition of every individual soul is materially affected by the " word preached/' as a medium through which God has chosen to communicate with man; — sufficient without it as would be the influence of the Holy Spirit and the written word, had God been pleased to make them so.

A visible external church, in which his name should be professed, his appointed ordinances duly administered, and such order and discipline maintained, as should be suitable to the times and circumstances, was no doubt a very early institution of divine wisdom, for mutual assistance in a spiritual course, and the benefit of each other's gifts and graces. It has been supposed that such a communion is intimated by the casting out of the first open transgressor from the society of God's people. Genesis iv. And more plainly, when in the time of Enos it is said, "then began men to call upon the Lord," perhaps "to call themselves by the name of its Lord;" a professing church openly united for the service of God; a separation rendered necessary by the increasing numbers of the wicked, and their more open disavowal of their Maker. However this may be, we know that God did establish for himself at length, an outward and visible church, to bear witness to his name in an idolatrous world, and exhibit the tokens and emblems of redeeming love; admission to which, by circumcision, was open to all men, and to his people indispensable.

When these older things were ready to pass away, the Christian church, with its clearer light and more spiritual worship, established by the apostles under the immediate inspiration of the Spirit, took its place. At no time, as it appears to me, was this external church identical with the invisible church of God, although containing it. All were not Israel who were of Israel; and when we consider that there was a Judas at the first administration of the Christian Sacrament; and many professors in the apostolic church who walked disorderly, who crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and whose destruction was sure, I cannot think otherwise of a visible church, than as the net let down into the sea, to gather of all kinds, both good and bad, for the better preservation of the former. Ill indeed does it become us to despise such aid and encouragement as church-membership affords, and is by God intended to afford. We may have our opinion as to where and what is this external church. I do not think it can be better defined than by the Nineteenth Article of the Church of England. "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinances, in all those things that are requisite to the same." If this definition is just, it follows that nothing of man's devising or requiring, however really wise and beneficial, can make or unmake a Catholic church, or hold men of necessity within it, but by the assent of their conscience. However painful to every Christian mind are the separations and divisions upon mere external forms, where all are one in Christ, so sadly characterising the present times, and whatever be the sin of such divisions on any less than conscientious grounds, we cannot presume to say, of any one church exclusively, that it is the church of God, to which men ought to join themselves. But this I think we may say confidently, that they who are careless about uniting themselves with any church, or refuse to communicate with any, because they find none perfect, do set at nought the merciful provisions of God for their spiritual welfare, and despise one of his positive and permanent institutions.

Most beneficent, most necessary, and most imperative upon all men, are the Holy Sacraments, ordained by Christ himself, as a medium 3 of communication between him and us, a means in which, and through which, his grace may be received, his salvation commemorated, and his promises confirmed. In entering upon this subject, I feel, and shall feel, through all the following pages, the tender ground on which I am to tread. Truth itself is one — indivisible, invariable, incapable of difference or diversity. I cannot think it correct to say of persons who differ, that both may be right: it is as impossible as that there be more than one right line between any two given points. The dissentients may be partially right, or equally wrong, or there may be no real difference in the mind, while they differ in expression: or they may be so far correct, as that contemplating the truth in a different point of view, and through a different medium, there is, in the mental vision of each, that which they describe, though diverse in their statements. Two artists drawing from different positions, will produce totally different perspective, and equally correct: but in that case, neither draws the object as it is, but as he sees it; and no one supposes the object to be diverse from itself. The probability is, considering the weakness of our comprehension, and the vastness of the truths to be comprehended; the poorness of human speech, and the d illness of human hearing, to receive and to convey the mind of God, the earthly atmosphere through which every beam of heavenly light must pass, the blindness of the eye that transmits it, and the pervertedness of the mind that finally receives it, the probability I think is, that while God secures his own purpose by making the truth sufficiently manifest to every single eye and willing mind — light still increasing unto perfect day — no one in this twilight world has so clear and exact a vision of any thing, as to make those who differ necessarily wrong; which would be the case, if any one's conceptions were the perfect truth.

From this imperfection it has come to pass, that while there are points of revealed truth, about which the children of God, taught by one Spirit, are every where agreed, there have been at all times lesser points, about which they have differed; or seeming to agree, would be found to differ, could each produce the exact impression of his own mind. Of those who kneel at the same altar, and break the same bread, using in perfect honesty the same form of words — united in one faith, one hope, one love — members together of one body, even of Jesus Christ: could each communicant lay open his impression, feeling, and understanding of these ceremonies, I believe a great diversity of form and coloring would be found, whilst all are vitally and essentially agreed. And thus it does always happen, whenever any one submits to the public eye his own impression of divine truth, he may express himself as cautiously as he can, some fello \v -christian will be shocked; he may speak as mildly and modestly as he can, some brethren in Christ will be offended; as moderately as he can, and yet some tender spirit will be wounded. Perhaps the reader or the hearer who feels any of these things, does not always know how deeply the preacher or the writer feels it too — how often the fear of man, or the love of man, would close the lips, or take away the pen, the spirit shrinking from the collision it anticipates. I have no authority to say what a preacher of the gospel feels; but if I may guess one thing by another, had he no impulse to obey but that of nature, were not a necessity laid on him to preach the gospel of Christ, he would shrink from the wounds he has to give and to receive, as much as the coward dreads the field of battle.

If I proceed with the subject I have entered upon — if I state what I understand by the Sacraments ordained by Christ himself; what I expect when I approach his holy table; what I mean, when I make use of the prescribed words, and what I believe and feel when the rite has been performed; I know that I shall cross the persuasion of many — I do not mean of the world, who hold not like precious faith with ourselves, that we expect of course, and intend no otherwise — but of those who are joined together in holy communion of the body and blood of Christ. Some will think perhaps, I fall short of the truth in estimating the design of the Holy Sacraments, or misstate their real nature, or hold myself too free of human authority respecting them: Some I am sure will think I take too lax a view of the right of admission to them, while others may feel that I am too exclusive in the benefits received. Very possibly I may seem to exaggerate, and be the occasion of discouragement to some who have never found it what I may describe. None of this is intended, though it is all foreseen. I write nothing inconsiderately, or as it were at a venture; if any thing is mistaken, it is nevertheless the well-examined, well-established persuasion of my mind, not the mistake of haste or carelessness; if any thing is deficient, or any thing in excess, my error is the communicant's, rather than the writer's: for mine are thoughts, not words; I put down nothing that I have not realised, as I believe in the administration of the holy ordinance. I am induced to write, notwithstanding this anticipation, because I trust that for one who is wounded by the awkwardness of the administrator, many will be healed by the divine truths exhibited; the mistakes will be mine, and the truths will be God's; and I trust that he will bless the one, the other notwithstanding.

Chapter II. On The Sacraments

By consent of all Protestant churches, the Sacraments are but two; and these so directly ordained and commanded by Christ himself in the New Testament, as to preclude any dispute against their authority, whatever differences may have arisen respecting the nature of them, or the mode of administration. " Go ye therefore, and teach all natious, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." " This do in remembrance of me." These two sacraments, therefore, are of divine obligation, and are not left to the choice of any church communion, to adopt or otherwise, neither to the will of any man, to do or to neglect. Although the responsibility of such a neglect will be more fully noticed in a subsequeut chapter, we would here observe how lightly this obligation is estimated, as being of God, distinctively, and independently of any human sanctions. That much more deference is actually paid to the authority of man in them, than to that of God, is manifested in stricter observance of the one sacrament, than of the other. Very few parents neglect to have their children baptized: the law of man requires it, and there are civil inconveniences attached to the neglect of it; but many never bring, or care to bring their families to the table of the Lord. Nay, they would not consider themselves Christians, if they had not been baptized: but no man's heart misgives him that he is not a Christian, because he does not, and will not, partake of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. And yet the authority is no greater and no less for the one than for the other, nor the command more positive and unrestricted. Most earnestly we would press this reflection upon those, of whom we fear there are many, who take their Christianity for granted, yet never have attended or desired to attend the communion; a communion equally unavailing indeed, with the sacrament of Baptism, to make us Christians: but as professed members of the Christian church, we have never perhaps considered why we attach so much importance to the one ceremony, and so little to the other; placed as they are, on exactly the same ground of benefit and obligation. In many cases the reason ultimately discloses itself; it is the authority of man, and not of God, that is respected in either sacrament. Men will not call us Christians, or give us a decent burial, unless we be baptized; but they will not inquire if we communicate or not; unless it be for some civil purpose enforced by law, in which case we are willing to comply. And thus our very compliance with either ordinance, is shown to be an act of obedience to man, rather than to God, who has appointed both.

The nature and design of the sacraments are more indirectly, but not less surely gathered from the word of God. Our own church thus defines them: "Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges and tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they be certain, sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace and God's good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in him." These are indeed the words of man, therefore imperfect, and therefore fallible — to be interpreted by the judgment of man, and accepted or rejected as they shall seem to be in conformity or otherwise with the word of God. Bnt to my apprehension, nothing can be added to make the definition more explicit, or more fully expressive of the divine purpose in the institution of sacramental signs. They are not mere acts of worship, obedience, and acknowledgment on our part, by which we make profession, before God and each other, of the Christian religion. This they are, but not this only. The man who performs either of these rites, does make the profession, and is responsible on his part, and as far as he is able, to fulfil it to the utmost letter of his engagement; how solemnly taken; how deeplyobligatory! It does not indeed create the obligation: whatever was due to God after the ceremony, was due to Him before, and would be so though they had never been instituted, or never complied with. This it is most necessary that we bear in mind: because if men do not in argument, they do in their hearts deny it; and from the one sacrament, at least, remain away, lest they make an engagement they do not intend to keep: and probably would do so from the other, were it not performed without their cognizance.

Baptism and the Lord's Supper are not arbitrary institutions, to create a relation between God and man which does not exist without them. Every man to whom the word of God has come, is bound to believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, to renounce the works of darkness, and become the faithful follower of Jesus Christ, whether in baptism he has promised it or not. Every one who hears the invitation of the gospel, to seek salvation by the blood of Jesus, is as much bound to renounce himself and trust in the righteousness of Christ, as if he had professed to do so at the altar. It was not for himself, to strengthen his own claims, that God appointed these ceremonies: it was to impress them on the memory of his creatures; to convict us from our own lips of the refusal of salvation; to take from us the pretence with which the soul deceives, and then destroys itself — the pretence of ignorance; to certify to us the new relationship under which the redemption of Christ has brought us, by affixing as it were our own seal to a deed, which is equally valid if we refuse to sign it. "Say unto them the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you," — if they receive you not, say, ' Notwithstanding be ye sure of this, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.' Your refusal to make these confessions, vows and promises, cannot change the case; but they will be witnesses between God and you, that in refusing to do so, you openly resist his authority; or doing so falsely, you confess the truth that will eternally condemn you, adding the guilt of a false profession to your other sins. We might think, of some persons who neglect these holy ordinances, that they take this last to be the only damning sin; so heedless are they how many they commit in their carefulness to avoid it. In what part of the decalogue do they learn that hypocrisy is a greater sin than disobedience? though far be it from us to advise that it should be added.