heathen altar, was both, because in each case there was not merely a sacrifice, but a feast upon a sacrifice. As truly, then, as the Apostle says that there is a heathen idolatrous sacrifice which Christians can never have to do with, because if they do they would have fellowship with devils, so does he, by the very parallel he draws, and the whole scope of his argument, imply that Christians have a sacrifice, at which they can be, and are to be, continually present; in and by which they have fellowship with the Lord, which also is offered continually in their assemblies, and of which they eat. For as in the one there were the heathen feasts upon the victims or offerings offered to devils; so in the other there is the feast upon the Christian sacrifice, the offering made in that continually recurring commemorative oblation to God of the body and blood of Christ. If this be not to be offered up continually, since the one sacrifice completed as the propitiation by blood made once for all upon the cross, then there is no coherency or force in the Apostle’s argument; for there would be nothing in the Christian dispensation like, or answering to, those sacrifices to devils which the heathen used, and in which they were forbidden to join. The teaching surely is, and must be, as they who join in the heathen altar-worship are partakers of it, and have fellowship thereby with those to whom it is really offered, so they who join in the Christian sacrifice (not so made and passed in point of time as to be incapable of continued and continual recurrence by commemorative but real act) are thereby partakers in and of their feast upon their sacrifice, and have therein fellowship with the Lord. So this is the continual memorial of the one “sacrifice upon the cross, and of the benefits which we receive thereby,” also the appointed means of our receiving those benefits. And it would be absurd to think of the Apostle describing the worship of idols as a real act of adoration and sacrifice to devils, and as impressing a real character by a power upon them for evil in those who join in such worship, and not to see that he must allow an equal act of sacrifice, adoration, and homage in the sacrifice and the altar which he speaks of as the Christian’s constant privilege to frequent; and which is as much greater to impress a character for good upon the Christian and to nourish him to life eternal, as the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ is greater than the idol, which is nothing, or the things offered to idols, which are nothing.