boyhood, to the infinite mercies of Christ's redemption, all operate to make you generous, liberal, ready to do to others as you would they should do unto you, if you were called away from your homes to suffering and danger.

April 26, 1854.

II. THANKSGIVING FOR THE HARVEST.

LUKE XXII. 19.

Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them.

ON different occasions when we have met to celebrate the Lord's Supper, I have spoken to you of the various aspects under which that ordinance may be viewed. I have tried to explain to you the force of the name Sacramentum, as implying the pledge or oath, by which we bind ourselves to be Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end. I have shewn what is to be understood by the word Communion, our spiritual union with Christ in faith, and one with another in brotherly love. I have reminded you that the Lord's Supper is a means of grace, a help, that is, by which we may grow in Christian holiness and devotion; and that it is also a remembrance of Christ's death, designed to shew it forth and engrave it deeply on our minds till He come again to judgment. There is one other light in which it may be viewed, and which is especially connected with this day's peculiar service: I mean the consideration of it, as the great

thanksgiving of the Christian Church. You will remember, that besides the various names applied to this ordinance which have been already enumerated, Lord's Supper, Sacrament, Communion, there is one other which has not yet been mentioned. This name is Eucharist: a name founded on the very passage which I have chosen as my text. He took bread and gave thanks; or, as it is in the original, εὐχαριστήσας ἔκλασε. And so the verb is frequently used of the thanksgiving or blessing spoken before a meal. Thus when St Paul was encouraging his companions in the midst of the storm, he took bread, and gave thanks to God (evxapíOτnoe) in presence of them all, and when he had broken it, he began to eat. And so evxapioría is used of the thanksgiving in Christian worship in that passage of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, in which St Paul commends the gift of prophecy above that of tongues, How shall the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks? (Tỷ σỷ evxapioτíą†).

This word Eucharist then, or thanksgiving, was applied to the Lord's Supper from the custom of offering a prayer of thanksgiving or blessing before the distribution of the bread and wine. We have seen from the text that Christ Himself offered such a prayer at the institution of the ordinance. And so when St Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for I Cor. xiv. 16.

* Acts xxvii. 35.

irregularities in its celebration, he asks them whether the cup of blessing which we bless is not the communion of the blood of Christ* ? meaning by this expression the thanksgiving cup which we dedicate to God with a prayer of devout gratitude. Hence as this thought of thanksgiving was an essential part of the celebration of the Lord's Supper, there is a special propriety in our coming to that ordinance on any occasion of solemn thankfulness for mercies received from God. Let us then dwell on this thought a little longer; let us consider, first, the general blessings which we always celebrate in the Lord's Supper, and secondly, the special reasons which we have this day for shewing forth our gratitude to God. We shall find that the Eucharist is connected with the manifestation of God in grace, in history, and in nature, that in it we thank Him for spiritual mercies ever present to us, for mercies now past, but of which the effects are still around us, for temporal mercies bestowed upon us year by year. And this will bring to our hearts the thought, that for special as well as general blessings we are bound to approach Him this day with thankful and earnest devotion.

(1) Most obviously, the Eucharist is a solemn act of thanksgiving for the death and passion of our Saviour Christ. This is its peculiar Christian

signification, the meaning which our Lord in His own words distinctly impressed upon it. This do in remembrance of me: This is my Body which is given for you: This cup is the New Testament in my blood: all these familiar sentences are designed to fix this one great meaning on our memories, that we have sinned and Christ has died, and that through His death we are made partakers in the righteousness of God.

But (2) there are circumstances connected with the institution of the Lord's Supper which will remind us of other mercies. The covenant feast of Christ's Church arose from the greatest of the Jewish festivals. Without entering into minute detail concerning its first celebration, we shall remember that our Lord instituted it during the period of the Passover, that the very words thanksgiving which He uttered were part of the paschal ceremony, and that when St Paul speaks of Christ our Passover, he teaches us that His death is the fulfilment and antitype of the Jewish ordiWhatever mercies therefore were commemorated in that Feast, must not be forgotten amid the deeper and more earnest thankfulness of the Christian Sacrament. Now these mercies were two. The first of them was the deliverance of the chosen people from the land of Egypt, and the miraculous preservation of their firstborn on the night of their

nance.