evangelists. The great importance of this Divine institution, rendered it necessary that great care should be taken in perpetuating the record of it. Four separate writers accordingly have been employed to hand it down to us. The language which our Lord employed, and the nature of the sacrament, are so wonderful, that it was well we should have every possible warrant for the view which the Church entertained of them, that we might not have to suspect that we were receiving any human invention for an ordinance of our Lord and Saviour.

The words of the inspired writers, in the several passages in which they describe the institution of the Lord's Supper, are but few. They only just mention what took place on that solemn occasion. They only relate the impressive words in which the blessed Jesus instituted the sacred feast which forms the most solemn rite of his religion. Revelation never attempts to explain to us mysteries which we could not comprehend. Faith could not be exercised if the Gospel set before us only

what was within the grasp of our reason. Especial care has been taken that we should know what our Lord actually said-no attempt is made to explain it. We may learn much from this. Our business with this, as with all the other mysterious parts of the Gospel, is to believe and learn, and to guard against curiosity and a spirit of speculation. It is no doubt perfectly

natural for us to desire to understand every thing. The gift of reason was given us that we might understand every thing that is comprehensible. And while we

have a right to suppose that a thing is comprehensible, we may lawfully exercise our minds in efforts to understand it. When it is confirmedly and obviously beyond our grasp, such efforts are all in vain. They are worse-they lead to positive and pernicious error.

Never was the danger of attempting to explain mysteries more strikingly exemplified than in the case before us. For many centuries, the Church was content to receive the words of our Lord in their obvious meaning, and while she employed the

visible elements of bread and wine in conformity with the Divine institution, believed that the body and blood of Christ were verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper. In subsequent times, two dangerous errors, most opposite to each other, but proceeding from the same fatal desire of making plain to the human understanding what God had left mysterious, have very widely prevailed in the Christian world. In the latter part of the ninth century, when society was in a state to be least shocked by anything extravagant and wonderful, and when superstition was but too likely to pass for devotion, the opinion began to gain ground that the bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist were, by the pronouncing of our Lord's words by the priest, actually changed into the substance of the body and blood of our Saviour. And this monstrous opinion, only tolerable as having probably proceeded from an excessive reverence for this blessed Sacrament, at length was recognised as the general opinion in the Church. But though it would at first sight seem

that this view is the most honourable to our Lord's institution, it is in fact only one of the many instances which show the impatience with which the human mind bears what it cannot understand. It is a desperate effort to get rid of a difficulty, though, as usually happens, it introduces another difficulty. Like all such self-willed attempts, it led to the most deplorable consequences. Not only did it tend to bring in upon the Church the most lamentable superstitions and corruptions, but it brought the very idea of faith into peril. It confused the whole subject of evidence; and as the subject came to be examined in times when the public mind was in a state of activity, it was found impossible to support it, but by the aid of a subtle philosophy, which, if carried out, must lead to universal scepticism.

At the period of the Reformation, when the minds of men, breaking off from old opinions, in too many instances, while they renounced corruptions and errors, lost sight of important truths, a very large portion of those who abandoned the doctrine of

Transubstantiation, substituted for it a most erroneous and defective view of the Lord's Supper. Alarmed at the mischiefs and abuses which had proceeded from the Romish doctrine, they adopted an exactly opposite view of the whole subject. They contended that our Lord's words were to be understood merely in a figurative sense. That the Eucharist is only a memorial of his death. That he is present in it, only as he is present whenever he operates by

his grace. And that, in point of fact, there is nothing peculiarly mysterious in this blessed Sacrament.

The Church of England protests against both these errors. In her twenty-eighth Article she says, "The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ."