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the Heavenly Manna, becometh to every man what he needeth, and what he can receive; to the penitent perhaps chiefly remission of sins and continued life to those who have "loved Him and kept His word," His own transporting, irradiating Presence, full of His own grace and life and love; yet to each full contentment, because to each His own overflowing, undeserved goodness.

Having then, on former occasions, spoken of the Fountain of all comfort, our Redeeming Lord, His Life, for us, and Intercession with the Father, as the penitent's stay amid the overwhelming consciousness of his sins, it may well suit, in this our season of deepest joy, to speak of that, which, flowing from the throne of the Lamb which was slain, is to the penitent the deepest river of his joy, the Holy Mysteries; from which, as from Paradise, he feels that he deserves to be shut out-from which, perhaps, in the holier discipline of the Ancient Church, he would have been for a time removed, but which to his soul must be the more exceedingly precious, because they are the Body and Blood of his Redeemer. While others joy with a more Angelic joy, as feeding on Him, who is the Angels' food, and " sit," as St. Chrysostome (2) says, "with Angels and Archangels and heavenly powers, clad with the kingly robe of Christ itself, yea clad with the King Himself, and having spiritual armoury," he may be the object of the joy of Angels; and while as a penitent he approaches as to the Redeemer's Side, he may hope that having so been brought, he, with the penitent, shall not be parted from It, but be with Him and near Him in Paradise. "To the holier," says another, (3) "He is more precious as God; to the sinner more precious as the Redeemer. Of higher value and avail is He to him, who hath more grace; yet to him also to whom much is forgiven, doth He the more avail, because "to whom much is for given, he loveth much."

Would that in the deep joy of this our Easter festival, the pledge of our sealed forgiveness, and the earnest of endless life in God, we could, for His sake by Whom we have been redeemed, lay aside our wearisome strifes, and that to speak of the mysteries of Divine love might not become the occasion of unloving and irreverent disputings. Would that, at least in this sacred place, we could dwell in thought together, on His endless condescension and loving-kindness, without weighing in our own measures words which must feebly convey Divine mysteries; rather intent (as so many in this day seem) on detecting that others have spoken too strongly on that which is unfathomable, than on ourselves adoring that Love, which is past finding out. "When we speak of spiritual things," is St. Chrysostome's (4) warning, on approaching this same subject, “be

there nothing of this life, nothing earthly in our thoughts; let all such things depart and be cast out, and be wholly given to the hearing of the Divine word. When the Spirit discourseth to us, we should listen with much stillness, yea with much awe. For the things this day read are worthy of awe. 'Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you.''

The penitent's joy, then, in the Holy Eucharist is not the less deep, because the pardon of sins is not, as in Baptism, its direct provision. The two great Sacraments, as their very signs show, have not the same end. Baptism gives; the Holy Eucharist preserves and enlarges life. Baptism engraffs into the true Vine; the Holy Eucharist derives the richness and fulness of His life into the branches thus engraffed. Baptism buries in Christ's tomb, and through it He quickens with his life; the Holy Eucharist is given not to the dead, but to the living. It augments life, or death; gives immortality to the living; to the dead it gives not life, but death; it is a savour of life or death, is received to salvation or damnation. Whence the ancient Church so anxiously withheld from it such as sinned grievously, not as an example only to others, but in tenderness to themselves, lest they break through and perish; "profane," says St. Cyprian, (5) "the Holy Body of the Lord," not themselves be sanctified; fall deeper, not be restored; be wounded more griev ously, not be healed; since it is said, he adds, "Whoso eateth the Bread and drinketh the Cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord."

The chief object, then, of the Holy Eucharist, so conveyed by type or prophecy, by the very elements chosen, or by the words of our Lord, is the support and enlargement of life, and that in Him, In type, (6) the tree of life was within the Paradise of God, given as a nourishment of immortality, withheld from Adam when he sinned: the bread and wine, wherewith Melchizedeck met Abraham, were to refresh the father of the faithful, the weary warrior of God; the Paschal Lamb was a commemorative sacrifice; the saving blood had been shed; it was to be eaten with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and with bitter herbs the type of mortification, and by those only who are undefiled. The Manna was given to them after they had passed the Red Sea, the image of cleansing Baptism, and, as he himself interprets it, represented Him as coming down from heaven to give life unto the world, the food of Angels and the holy hosts of heaven; The Shew-bread was eaten only by those hallowed to the Priesthood (as the whole Christian people has in this sense been made kings and priests), and when once given to David and those that were with him, still on the ground that the "vessels of

the young men were holy (7)." The Angel brought the cake to Elijah, that in the strength of that food he might go forty days and forty nights unto the Mount of God. In verbal prophecy, it is foretold under the images of the very elements, and so of strengthening and overflowing joy, "Wisdom," that is, He Who is the Wisdom of God, in a parable corresponding to that of the marriagefeast, crieth, "Come eat of My bread and drink of the wine I have mingled." Or, in the very Psalm of His Passion and atoning Sacrifice, it is foretold, that "the poor shall eat and be satisfied;" or that He, the good Shepherd shall prepare a Table for those whom He leadeth by the still waters of the Church, and giveth them the Cup of overflowing joy ;" or as the source of gladness, "Thou hast put gladness into my heart, since the time that their corn, and wine, and oil (the emblem of the Spirit of which the faithful drink) increased,” and "the wine which gladdeneth man's heart, and the oil which maketh his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart;" or of spiritual growth, "corn and wine shall make the young men and maidens of Zion to grow;" or as that which alone is satisfying, "buy wine without money and without price," for that "which is not bread;" or as the special Gift to the faithful, He hath given meat unto them that fear him ;" or that which, after his Passion, He drinketh anew with His disciples in His Father's kingdom, “I have gathered my myrrh, I have drunk my wine with my milk; eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved."

In all these varied symbols, strength, renewed life, growth, refreshment, gladness, likeness to the Angels, immortality, are the gifts set forth; they are gifts as to the Redeemed of the Lord placed anew in the Paradise of His Church, admitted to His Sanctuary, joying in His Presence, growing before Him, filled with the river of His joy, feasting with Him, yea Himself feasting in them, as in them He hungereth (8). Hitherto, there is no allusion to sin; it is what the Church should be, walking in the brightness of His light, and itself reflecting that brightness.

And when our Lord most largely and directly is setting forth the fruits of eating His Flesh and drinking his Blood, He speaks throughout of one Gift, life; freedom from death, life through Him, through His indwelling, and therefore resurrection from the dead, and life eternal. "This is the Bread, which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. 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." Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." "Whoso eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood hath

eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last Day." "He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood dwelleth in Me and I in Him." "As the Living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, he also shall live by Me." "He that eateth of this Bread shall live for ever." No one can observe how this whole discourse circleth 'round this gift of life, and how our Lord, with unwearied patience, bringeth this one truth before us in so many different forms, without feeling that He means to inculcate, that life in Him is His chief gift in His Sacrament, and to make a reverent longing for it an incentive to our faith. Yet, although life in Him is the substance of His whole teaching, the teaching itself is manifold. Our Lord inculcates not one truth only in varied forms, but in its different bearings. He answers not the strivings of the Jews, "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Such an "How can these things be?" he never answereth; and we, if we are wise, shall never ask how (9) they can be elements of this world and yet His very Body and Blood. But how they give life to us He does answer; and amid this apparent uniformity of His teaching, each separate sentence gives us a portion of that answer. And the teach

ing of the whole, as far as such as we may grasp it, is this. That He (10) is the Living Bread, because He came down from Heaven, and as being One God with the Father, hath life in Himself, even as the Father hath life in Himself; the life then which He is He imparted to that Flesh which He took into Himself, yea, which He took so wholly, that Holy Scripture says, He became it, "the Word became flesh," and since it is thus a part of Himself, "Whoso eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood," (He Himself says the amazing words), "eateth Me," and so receiveth into Himself in an ineffable manner his Lord Himself, "dwelleth" (our Lord says) "in Me and I in him," and having Christ within him (11), not only shall he have, but he "hath" already "eternal Life," because he hath Him who is "the Only True God and Eternal Life (12);" and so Christ "will raise him up at the last Day," because he hath His Life in him. Receiving Him into this very body (13), they who are His receive life, which shall pass over to our very decaying flesh; they have within them Him Who is Life and Immortality and Incorruption, to cast out or absorb into itself our natural mortality, and death, and corruption, and "shall live for ever," because made one with Him Who Alone "liveth for evermore." It is not then life only as an outward gift to be possessed by us, as His gift; it is no more strengthening and refreshing of our souls, by the renewal (14) and confirming our wills and invigorating of our moral nature, giving us more fixedness of purpose, or implanting in us Christian graces; it is no gift, such as

we might imagine given to the most perfect of God's created beings in himself. Picture we the most perfect wisdom, knowledge, strength, harmony, proportion, brightness, beauty, fitness, completeness of created being ; fair as was that angel" in the garden of God" before he fell; "the seal of comeliness, full of wisdom, and complete in beauty-perfect in his ways from the day he was created (15)." Yet let this be a perfection, upheld indeed of God, yet external to Him, as a mere creation, and it would fall unutterably short of the depth of the mystery of the Sacraments of Christ, and the gift, the germ whereof is therein contained for us; although such as we actually are, we know that, for strength we have weakness, for knowledge ignorance, our nature jarring still, disharmonised, obscured, deformed, both by the remains of original corruption and our own superadded sins. For the life therein bestowed is greater than any gift, since it is life in Christ, life through His indwelling, Himself Who is Life. And Holy Scripture hints that the blessed Angels, who never fell, shall, in some way to us unknown, gain by the mystery of the Incarnation, being with us gathered together under One Head, our Incarnate Lord into His One Body; (16) the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. Certainly, Scripture seems to imply, that, although he "took not the nature of angels," but "of man," yet all created beings, "thrones and dominions, and principalities and powers," shall, if one may reverently say it, be more filled with God, when, this His Body being perfected, there shall be no check or hindrance to the full effluence of HisDivine Nature, circulating through the whole Body, into which He shall have "knit things in heaven, and things in earth," "the innumerable company of the angels," and "the just made perfect ;" and the whole glorified Church shall be clothed and radiant with Him, the Sun of Righteousness.

And of this we have the germs and first beginnings now. This is (if we may reverently so speak) the order of the mystery of the Incarnation, (17) that the Eternal Word so took our flesh into Himself, as to impart to it His own inherent life; so then we, partaking of it, that life is transmitted on to us also, and not to our souls only, but our bodies (18) also, since we become flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone, (19) and He Who is wholly life is imparted to us wholly (20). The Life which He is, spreads around, first giving its own vitality to that sinless flesh which He united indissolubly with Himself and in it encircling and vivifying our whole nature, and then, through that bread which is His Flesh, finding an entrance to us individually, penetrating us, soul and body and spirit, and irradiating and transforming into His own light and life. In the words of a father (21), who in warfare with the Nestorian heresy lived in the