to descend and you must come to him by the study of his word that is a celestial storehouse from which Christ and his Holy Spirit will furnish you with another supply; but you must not stop here, for if you only use part of the means of grace, when you are bidden to embrace them all jointly, the manna will cease to descend, the fountain to flow, and your soul will begin to languish. You must come to Christ through the most direct and blessed channel of all-you must come to him at the sacramental table-that is the fountain head; for he has left there the visible symbols of the everlasting sustenance, and he invites you with many a voice from heaven, "Come, for all things are now ready"-" Ho! every one that "thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that "hath no money," (that is, you who have nothing of your own which can purchase salvation) "come

ye, buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk, " without money, and without price; wherefore "do ye spend money for that which is not bread, " and your labour for that which satisfieth not ?" And now, if you place that passage of prophetic writ by the side of the text, will they not mutually illumine each other? "Labour not for the meat "which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of "Man shall give unto you."

If you wish then, brethren, to labour for the imperishable more than for the perishable, or so to

labour for the body that you may not clog and injure the soul, you must come to Christ at the altar, and there you will gain strength for the very labour enjoined. By nature, we have lost, alas! our taste for the heavenly food, but there, we shall regain it, if we pray sincerely; and if a temporal banquet would be but a mockery to the eyes of a sick man, the spiritual banquet, on the other hand, will prove to be heavenly medicine from the Physician, as well as ambrosial food from the Divine Host-it will implant an appetite, and mingle true enjoyment in the feast—the more you feed, the more you will desire, and fuller supplies of manna will descend, and larger fountains openin the luxuriant language of the prophet, "Your "soul will delight itself in fatness:" and whenever you are labouring for the body, may you be like the prudent man, who built his house upon a rock, or the wise Solomon, who reared, indeed, a magnificent palace worthy of its illustrious occupant, but made it not an idol to enslave his heart; for he well knew that, after all his labour, it was but another mould of the kindred dust from whence his own frail body arose, and with which it would soon again coalesce-and therefore he rather laboured for that temple where his soul might hereafter be enshrined; and when seated upon his throne, or at the banquet table, and receiving the homage of princes, he felt not the substantial joy, as when kneeling upon the foot

stool, and holding sublime communion with Deity. But we, brethren, are more privileged than even Solomon in all his glory. For as Christ said to his disciples, "Many prophets and righteous men have "desired to see those things which ye see, and "have not seen them, and to hear those things "which ye hear, and have not heard them," so may these words be truly applied to you, who have the rich feast of the Gospel before your eyes. May you dwell upon the great author of it-feed on him in your hearts by faith and so, by working out the faith in your daily practice, "labour for that meat which endureth unto ever"lasting life."

SERMON IX.

CHRIST THE LIVING BREAD.

* 'N VI. 51.

"I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

IN our last discourse, on the "meat which "endureth unto everlasting life," we endeavoured to establish the reality of the soul's spiritual demands, upon which ground alone can be reasonably entertained the doctrine of the spiritual supply alleged in the text to have been brought down from heaven by Christ. But the peculiar nature of that food, alluded to both in our last text and in the one now proposed for review, demands, on account of its

paramount importance, a separate consideration. We closed our former subject by simply pointing your attention to the words of the Great Teacher as identifying his own person with "that meat which "endureth unto everlasting life," and revealing thereby the great doctrine of his flesh being crucified for the life of the world; but we would now invite you to examine more minutely the peculiarity of this doctrine. And we think it right, in the outset, to guard you against the heresy of transubstantiation, which our erring brethren in the Roman Church have grounded upon the literal sense of this and other passages, whilst it is evident, both from the scope of the chapter, and from the whole tenor of the other texts bearing on the Lord's Supper, that they clearly and distinctly demand a spiritual interpretation. But whilst guarding you against that perversion, on the one hand, we must bid you to beware, on the other, of rushing into the opposite extreme; for it would be morally wrong, as well as absurd in reason, to fritter away such words, and to rob them of their full strength of spiritual meaning, through any fear of being misapprehended as giving an atom of weight to those who cling to the poison-cup of the literal.

With this caution, then, steadily kept in mind, we shall now proceed to an examination of the text, as it will be foreign to our present object to say more on the subject of a heresy which has been so often refuted. It will be first necessary to refer