been pronounced in imminent danger, and death seems unavoidable. In this last hour they hope to make their peace with Heaven, and when both mind and body are debilitated by sickness, to devote the wreck of the creature to his God. By a misconstruction of the Apostle's exhortation to the Church at Corinth, they conclude that, to fall from grace after they shall have received the Sacrament, is to subject themselves and their families to "divers diseases and sundry kinds of death." Had this been the error of the poor alone, you may well express your astonishment that the example of their superiors has not reclaimed them, but there will be found many among the higher orders of society who countenance this popular delusion. To remove these objections without treating the sacred ceremony too lightly, all your discretion will be necessary.

The language employed in this epistle is

certainly extremely strong, but the abuses against which it was directed were such as demanded the severest threatenings of punishment. To make that a feast of sensuality, which was ordained the hallowed memorial of a most tremendous sacrifice, was but to call down upon the head of the offender the wrath of an insulted God. Against such, it is true, "divers diseases and sundry kinds of death" were denounced, and our Church adopts the language of St. Paul in cautioning her followers to beware lest they receive the Sacrament "unworthily," lest they enter unprepared into the presence of their God; and while commemorating with their lips the sufferings of the cross, and outwardly acknowledging the atoning nature of the sacrifice, are not inwardly contrite for the sins of the past, nor resolved to forsake sin in the time to come.

Thus it will be seen that the threat is directed against the abusive reception, and is not to be applied to those transgressions into which we may be surprised after the reception of the Sacrament. Man is by nature prone to sin, but if he do not wilfully trespass on the divine mercy, if he involuntarily fall from the grace bestowed upon him, and bring his contrite heart to the altar, plead his own unworthiness, and pray for remission through the merits of his Saviour's blood, you are instructed to assure him the threat will not be visited upon him, -his offering will be once more accepted, his sin once more forgiven.

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While this is the error of some, there is

a less timid class of persons who are in the habit of receiving the Sacrament, as they attend their church, from custom, or on the principle of setting a good example, without

any preparation of heart, without one serious reflection on the vital importance of the ceremony. It behoves you, beyond a doubt, to check the confidence of these unthinking formalists, who press unprepared into the presence of their God. To these may be timely applied, and with the hope of good effect, the Apostle's caution to the sensual Corinthian. Here the restraining hand may be safely uplifted-the danger to the unworthy partaker be here happily urged. In most instances of the latter description, you will have to deplore a lamentable ignorance of the sacrifice on which the Sacrament is founded. If it be imputed to some that they have drawn too general an inference from the Apostolic threat, it is the great error of others that they regard it too lightly. These deem it sufficient to pared take in obedience to the command of their Saviour, without considering that they may

be sealing their condemnation by partaking unworthily; for not less fatal to the enlightened Christian will, eventually, be the celebration of this holy rite without sin repented of, and chastened resolutions of amendment, than were to the newly converted Greek his sensual excesses.

In both the cases to which I have alluded in this letter, and on all occasions, whether of conscientious hesitation, of fearful foreboding, or of sinful presumption, your duty will be (varying with the variation of circumstances) to descant upon the complicated sins of man, the justice of an offended God, not to be appeased by any sacrifice but the sufferings and death of his beloved Son,--to make known the time when, and the solemn manner in which, the institution was appointed. And, above all, fail not to impress upon the hearts of all