The best preparation for taking this sacrament, better than any or all
of the books or tracts composed for this end, is, to read over and
over again, and often on your knees--at all events with a kneeling and
praying heart--the Gospel according to St. John, till your mind is
familiarized to the contemplation of Christ, the Redeemer and Mediator
of mankind, yea, of every creature, as the living and self-subsisting
Word, the very truth of all true being, and the very being of all
enduring truth; the reality, which is the substance and unity of all
reality; _the light which lighteth every man_, so that what we call
reason, is itself a light from that light, _lumen a luce_, as the
Latin more distinctly expresses this fact. But it is not merely light,
but therein is life; and it is the life of Christ, the co-eternal Son
of God, that is the only true life-giving light of men. We are
assured, and we believe, that Christ is God; God manifested in the
flesh. As God, he must be present entire in every creature;--(for how
can God, or indeed any spirit, exist in parts?)--but he is said to
dwell in the regenerate, to come to them who receive him by faith in
his name, that is, in his power and influence; for this is the meaning
of the word "name" in Scripture when applied to God or his Christ.
Where true belief exists, Christ is not only present with or among
us;--for so he is in every man, even the most wicked;--but to us and
for us. _That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him,
and the world knew him not. But as many as received him, to them gave
he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his
name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt
among us._ John i. 9-14. Again--_We will come unto him, and make our
abode with him._ John xiv. 23. As truly and as really as your soul
resides constitutively in your living body, personally, and
substantially does Christ dwell in every regenerate man.
After this course of study, you may then take up and peruse sentence
by sentence the communion service, the best of all comments on the
Scriptures appertaining to this mystery. And this is the preparation
which will prove, with God's grace, the surest preventive of, or
antidote against, the freezing poison, the lethargizing hemlock, of
the doctrine of the Sacramentaries, according to whom the Eucharist is
a mere practical metaphor, in which things are employed instead of
articulated sounds for the exclusive purpose of recalling to our minds
the historical fact of our Lord's crucifixion; in short--(the
profaneness is with them, not with me)--just the same as when
Protestants drink a glass of wine to the glorious memory of William
III.! True it is, that the remembrance is one end of the sacrament;
but it is, _Do this in remembrance of me_,--of all that Christ was and
is, hath done and is still doing for fallen mankind, and, of course,
of his crucifixion inclusively, but not of his crucifixion alone. 14
December, 1827.