(4) For another thing, some are not communicants because they fancy they are not yet worthy. They wait and stand still, under the mistaken notion that no one is qualified for the Lord's Supper unless he feels within him something like perfection. They pitch their idea of a communicant so high that they despair of attaining to it. Waiting for inward perfection they live, and waiting for it too often they die. Now such persons would do well to understand that they are completely mistaken in their estimate of what "worthiness" really is. They are forgetting that the Lord's Supper was not intended for unsinning angels, but for men and women compassed with infirmity, dwelling in a world full of temptations, and needing mercy and grace every day they live. A sense of our own utter unworthiness is the best worthiness we can bring to the Communion rail. A deep feeling of our own entire indebtedness to Christ for all we have and hope for, is the best feeling we can bring with us. The people I now have in view ought to consider seriously whether the ground they have taken up is tenable, and whether they are not standing in their own light. If they are waiting till they feel in themselves perfect hearts, perfect motives, perfect feelings, perfect repentance, perfect love, perfect faith, they will wait for ever. There never were such communicants in any age,--certainly not in the days of our Lord and of the Apostles,--there never will be as long as the world stands. Nay, rather, the very thought that we feel literally worthy, is a symptom of secret self-righteousness, and proves us unfit for communion in God's sight. Sinners we are when we first come to the throne of grace,--sinners we shall be till we die; converted changed, renewed, sanctified, but sinners still. In short, no man is a really worthy communicant who does not deeply feel that he is a "miserable sinner."