By the late Rev. JONATHAN R. ANDERSON.
THE feast, intending communicants, to which you have come is emphatically a feast of love. It is love that provides the refreshments which it offers to the pilgrims of Zion. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”: it is love that issues the invitation on which you have this day come to His banqueting house. “Come,” says Heavenly Wisdom, “eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.” It is love that furnishes the guests with all that is needful to prepare them for receiving and relishing the good which is presented. “But God who is rich in mercy for the great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.” It is love, which like a golden chain, binds together the guests and their Heavenly King: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another.” In this dark and sinful world, what a marvel is it that a feast of this description should be provided and that the guests invited to it should be those who by nature be hateful and hating one another. To those of you intending communicants, whose hearts are duly affected towards your Lord, this feast will appear quite congenial to your feelings and you may perhaps be disposed to say with the Church, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.” But it is possible that there may be some of you who know and believe that it is a feast of love, but who, instead of finding comfort in this reflection, are only the more distressed by it, because of their own coldness and carnality. In the ordinary occupations of life, and in intercourse with your fellowmen, it may not be matter of very deep and sensible distress, that your hearts are so full of vanity and distraction. But it is a burden and a grief to you to come with such hearts to a feast, where all that you see and hear and handle and taste impresses you with the fact that it is a feast of love. You may even question whether you ought to take the privilege of sitting at the Table of the Lord and appearing as witnesses for Him. But whether should one that is carnal go, but to Him who is the Fountain of life? Where will you get your hearts melted, if not under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness? How will your affections be drawn out towards heavenly things, but by communion with Him in whom they dwell? Oh, beware, intending communicants, of marring the sweet solemnity of this service by any inclination, however secret, to try expedients of human device for quickening, enlivening, and firing your hearts. The greater your sense of unworthiness, the more you need the worthiness of the Lamb: the livelier your consciousness of guilt, the more urgent should be your application to the Lord our Righteousness: the stronger your bonds of iniquity, the more speedily should you betake yourselves to Him who gives deliverance to the captives. Let it be your simple aim, your sincere desire, now to have the love of Christ so manifested, and applied to your souls, that you shall be constrained to say, “We love Him because He first loved us.” “For it is only the apprehension by faith of the Redeemer’s love that can awaken and sustain the grace of love in your cold hearts. His is the life and nourishment of yours. And as well may we suppose that flowers shall expand their beauties and emit their fragrance without the influence of the sun as that the graces of the Spirit shall thrive and blossom without Christ. Whatever then be your case, seek in this service to come under the hallowed influence of the Lord Christ, and hearing His voice, though dead, you shall live, touching His garments, though diseased, you shall be healed, receiving His salvation, though hungry, you shall be filled with good.
Have you, communicants, at all realized the service of communion as a feast of Love? Then does it not become you to bear testimony to Christ who instituted it by walking in love? To this appeal your hearts may at this moment cheerfully respond: for where if not at the Table of the Lord are all wrathful and discontented feelings subdued. But do not imagine that you will be able to retain your present impressions or to keep your present frame of mind without a struggle. The well of carnality within you is very deep and though the stream may for a little be checked, yet be assured that it will again burst forth, and that too at an hour when you are little aware. Yet be not cast down or perplexed by this: for hath not the scripture said, “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” Let it be fixed in your minds that while the grace of love in you may change, at one time strong as a furnace, at another, weak as the glimmering of a taper, and while carnality may seem for a season to prevail against you, yet the love of Christ changeth not. Hasten therefore to Him and abide closely in Him that the power of sin within you may be kept in check and subdued and that faith and love may be maintained in strength and purity. The feast of love at which you have now been entertained lays you under the strongest obligations to lead a life of love. Let the love of God be shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost, and keep yourselves in the love of God by praying in the Holy Ghost. And see that you cherish an unreigned affection to the whole household of faith, and love one another with a pure heart fervently. And as to the world at large, ever regard them with the benevolence due to the creatures of God, and with the compassion which you owe to those who are still in the condemnation from which through sovereign mercy, you have been delivered. Nor let enemies be denied a place in your regard. “But I say unto you,” says our Lord to His disciples, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you: do good to those that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” To maintain this spirit and to pursue this walk, it will be needful that you live habitually by the faith of Him who is at once the pattern and source of Christian love. In vain will this holy flame be preserved, if it be not continually fed with nourishment from Christ Jesus, the Head and fulness of all grace. Would you then walk in love? Be exhorted to walk by faith: for it is only when you act faith in Christ, that this or any other Christian grace can thrive or grow strong. Be exhorted also carefully to avoid all which tends to damp the flame, or to abate the fervour of holy love. Be on your guard against the world: for the influences which come from that quarter are most hostile to the grace of love: they may engender envy, bitterness, strife, and contention, but never will they produce love. Live near to the God of love, draw largely from Christ the fountain of love. Commune habitually with the Spirit of love, and associate cheerfully with those who shew that they are Christ’s, by loving Him and all His saints. Whatever be the difficulties you encounter in the maintenance of this principle they will soon, very soon, disappear, and you shall be transported to that happy world, where love holds a universal and endless reign:—”For now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”
“You will find that the sweet sense of Christ’s love in the heart will enable you to rejoice in suffering, and then you need not fear but it will enable you to rejoice in the sufferings of death; for who or what shall separate believers from the love of Christ?”—Rev. William Romaine.