the continued danger of this tendency obtain a solemn emphasis from the fact that the Roman Catholics, whilst abiding by the literal words of Scripture, have made the very rite that we are considering the occasion for returning to as senseless a form of idolatry as that of those who bow down to wood and stone?

If the words alone of Scripture are to be our guide, then the Roman Catholics only exercise the required faith; for they do "discern the Lord's body" in adoring the bread and wine as the very body and blood of Christ; and so difficult is it to divest the mind of early impressions, that Luther himself never rose entirely above this superstition. Let us then thankfully dwell upon the words of Christ, which distinguish so clearly between the outward and the inward eating. "I am the bread of life. This is that bread which cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die." "This is that bread which came down from Heaven;" "not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever." How well do I remember with what convincing power these words impressed my mind once when, having attended a meeting of the Plymouth Brethren, I saw the bread and wine passed round, after an hour in which I thought we had already partaken together of the Bread of Life, though not as those who eat manna and are dead.

*So subtle is this form of idolatry that it is now, I fear, even in England, by no means confined to the professed Roman Catholics. An instance illustrating this was told me, with grief, by a lady belonging to the Church of England, who had been present at a sermon delivered at our parish church on transubstantiation. At the close of the service she remarked to a lady in the pew beside her, "I should never have expected to hear such doctrine preached in a Protestant Church." To which the other rejoined, "I do not agree with you, for I never take the sacrament without believing that I am partaking of the very body and blood of Christ," or words to this effect.

Considering the difficulty which is experienced by many in realising the invisible without aid from the visible, it is not to be wondered at that this rite and the rite of water baptism have not yet vanished away, sanctioned as they are by early usages. The advice of St. Paul, with reference to a kindred subject of discussion, may be adopted in this, when, to quiet and heal the divisions arising out of different degrees of emancipation from the Jewish Law, he wrote, "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not, and let not him that eateth not, judge him that eateth,he that eateth, eateth to the Lord, and giveth God thanks, and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks."

"

But this being so, may I here solemnly urge upon the latter class the responsibility that rests upon us, if we contend for spiritual communion only, of accepting and practising it in its fulness; that it be to us, when we assemble for worship, a reality and not a theory—a feast as well as a Eucharist. Let us not forget that we, being many, are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one Bread," and, if so, that we are members one of another in being members of Christ; so that we ought to rejoice or suffer in sympathy, "looking not only on our own things, but on those of others"; "bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ."

To come effectually at this experience, the "love of the Spirit," must be in ascendancy over all,-otherwise the petty differences, "the many things in which we offend all," the points in which our tastes are annoyed, or our amour propre is chafed by the infirmities common to all, will rob us of the refreshment of true "fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ," and one with another in Him.

But if this "love of the Spirit" does prevail, if we yield ourselves to His blessed influence, then the prac

G

82 Reflections suggested by Religious Ordinances.

tical result will be manifest in our willingness to share the good we ourselves receive. As the Apostle Paul describes it: "We shall come together in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ; we shall strive together in prayer one for another; the voice of praise and thanksgiving will be heard; the word of faithful counsel will be offered and received in humility, and thus, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, "the whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, will make increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love."

ANN F. FOWLER.

LEPROSY THE TYPE OF SIN.

WHAT a history is often compressed into a few verses of New Testament Scripture especially! A record of simple facts, scarcely one word being added beyond the actual requirements of the narrative-that is all; and the reader is left either to let his eye glide over the familiar phrases, seeing nothing there but that which lies on the very surface (how often, perhaps, not even that!), or by patient, diligent, aye, and prayerful study (let us never forget that last in this age of abounding error) to find unexpected stores of help and teaching in the very record itself, or in other parts of Scripture more or less directly connected with it.

The Bible is a whole; perhaps no single passage exists in it on which some other portion could not be found to throw real, not imaginary, light. It is well to be on our guard against fanciful interpretations, but, on the other hand, the tendency to deny typical teaching, to see nothing in the text beyond the literal words, is earnestly to be deprecated. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good;" neither receiving blindly nor rejecting scornfully, but bringing everything faithfully to the test of Scripture.

These thoughts have been suggested by the brief story related in Mark i. 40-45. To the hasty reader of what do those six verses tell? Of a sick man healed by Jesus! There is no name given, as in the case of Bartimeus; scarcely any details, as compared with the lengthened account of the opening of the eyes of the man born blind, or the raising of Lazarus. This leper steps out before the eye for a moment and

then vanishes again; the end of the chapter is reached, and the book is shut, and all the lessons, stretching far back into Leviticus, far forward to the day when, for the last time, those blessed words, "I will, be thou clean!" shall bring cleansing to a sin-covered soul, are shut away with it. And yet how priceless these lessons are! Shall we ponder over them for a little, first glancing at the narrative itself, and then turning to the old Mosaic law regarding leprosy, and asking what the rites enjoined therein most surely typified?

The Jews universally held that leprosy, whether inherited or otherwise, was, humanly speaking, incurable. No medicine was ever resorted to; the sufferer accepted his position as a doomed man; unless God's hand effected healing his case was desperate. The law could pronounce him unclean, it could pronounce him clean also, but beyond this it could not go. From Luke's description we may suppose that this man's disease was of long standing; hope--if any had ever lingered in his heart that his was only one of those trivial disorders which brought with them no ceremonial defilement-must have died out years before; but there was room for faith instead, and how strong that faith must have been we may guess when we see it bringing him, neglectful of all rule and restriction, close to the Great Physician-not as to man merely, for what could man do to heal his plague ?-with the old cry, Unclean! unclean!" forgotten, and the new language of hope and certainty, veiled, but no less intense, on his lips. Others might shrink away from the unhappy creature, whose lightest touch would cut off from Temple privilege,-indeed his very approach must have filled the disciples with terror,-but Jesus' hand of healing was not withheld for a moment. "I will; be thou clean," the response, meeting the prayer in every particular: then, almost before the astonished spectator had realised the scene, the leper of

66