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PART III.

HOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST

COMMUNION.

You are now a Confirmed member of the Church of Christ. Among other blessings it is your privilege to approach the Table of the Lord to receive the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood. You are invited to that Holy Table not because you are worthy, but because God is infinitely good and kind. You are now resolved to go, you have resolved to be a regular communicant. May God bless this resolution and give you grace to carry it out into practice! May you daily increase in all those graces that are necessary to make you more worthily to "eat of that Bread and drink of that Cup!" God grant that you may never deprive yourself of so great a blessing by your own negligence!

As the day will soon come when

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you will kneel before God's Holy Table, I should like to say a few words, first, as to what the Lord's Supper is; and second, as to how you may get ready to come to it with most advantage. I shall be very brief on both these subjects, because they have been fully explained in a little work which I recommend you to get for yourself, as it forms a sort of sequel to this book, that is "The Holy Communion," by Canon Ridley.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; what it is.

It is a Sacrament ordained by Christ Himself for two purposes, first for "a continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the Death of Christ and of the benefits which we receive thereby." Thus it is a memorial, a remembrance of the One great Sacrifice for sin. The Jews offered sheep, oxen, lambs, and goats as sacrifices. But the slaying of these innocent victims could not

take away sin (Heb. x. 4). Yet God accepted them because they were types or figures of the Sacrifice of Christ. When Jesus Christ came He offered Himself on the altar of the Cross for our sins, a "full, perfect and sufficient Sacrifice." He could do this, for He was a Priest (Heb. vii. 26). He was pure and holy, for He was God. He offered His own Body, it belonged to Him. He offered it for the sins of the world. Not for the sins of those only who saw Him die, or who were living at the time, but for the sins of all, whereever or at whatever time they might live. If we now sin and repent, He atones for our sins. His offering of Himself continues till the end of the world. This we call the Atonement. By this One great Sacrifice God and men were reconciled. Jesus Christ as our great High Priest is now in heaven, continually pleading with the Father the merits of His Sacrifice. He has appointed the Holy Eucharist to be a memorial, a remembrance of this Sac

rifice. In the Holy Communion we "show the Lord's Death." Thus the

Jews' sacrifices were meant to show Christ's Death before He came, and ours, which is a Sacrifice only so far as it represents the Sacrifice of Christ, is meant to show Christ's Death since He is come. Our Lord Himself teaches His people thus to remember Him, and what He did and suffered for their sakes. "This do in remembrance of me.' The celebration of the Holy Communion is a remembrance, before God and the faithful, of the Death which was the Atonement and Propitiation for our sins.

Again, this Sacrament was ordained for "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ." The "outward visible sign" in this Sacrament is the Bread and Wine. This "sign" is ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive the spiritual grace; that is, the Bread and Wine after being

consecrated as He has Himself appointed, have an inward part-" the Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." How this takes place is not for us to know; it is a mystery. It is enough for us to know that if we do the outward act which is commanded us, in simple faith, believing in God's promises, Christ, all unseen, will do His part. He will give Himself to us. He will feed and nourish our souls with His own Body and Blood. He will dwell in us and we in Him. We shall grow more and more into the likeness of our Blessed Lord, till when He shall appear again we shall be "like Him," and "see Him as He is." On the other hand, without this food the strength of your soul will wane away. As the life of the body would soon die without food, so the life of your soul without this heavenly nourishment will die out and perish. The Lord Himself tells us so,