May all those who bear His name and desire to do Him service realize
what an inexhaustible treasury of Divine strength and power the Master
has provided for us in this Sacrament of His Love. Just a few words in
conclusion as to our use of it.
It is food, therefore, it must be received frequently and with
regularity. It is food, therefore it presupposes life and at least a
degree of health in those who take it. A corpse cannot receive food,
the sick have no desire for it. The Holy Communion is for those who
are Baptized and have received the life of the Risen Lord. It is for
those who have been forgiven and who long to show their gratitude by
becoming strong through the assimilation of Christ the Bread of Life to
do Him service and perform His will.
It is food, therefore not a Spiritual luxury for good people, but the
ordinary necessary food for us all, poor weak pardoned sinners, God's
Children reconciled in Christ, who are trying to become good and to
love Him who first loved us.
The realization of our own nothingness and the all sufficiency of
Christ is the condition of heart and soul requisite for a good
Communion. Repentance for the fact that it should be so with us, faith
that He will supply all our needs, because He alone can and because He
so wills, is the attitude of those who would really know what this
Sacrament was meant to be and can be to those who come to Him "as sick
to the Physician of Life, as unclean to the Fountain of Mercy, as blind
to the Light of Eternal Splendour, as needy to the Lord of Heaven and
earth, as naked to the King of Glory, as lost sheep to the Good
Shepherd, as fallen creatures to their Creator, as desolate to the kind
Comforter, as miserable to the Pitier, as guilty to the Bestower of
pardon, as sinful to the Justifier, as hardened to the Infuser of
Grace."
VII.
IMMORTALITY
By The Rev. Canon Cody, D.D., LL.D., Toronto.
IF A MAN DIE SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?
This question is as old as the race. Men cannot let it alone. It
exercises a strange fascination. One generation, immersed in pleasure
or in business, may think that _this_ world is quite enough and may
push the question aside: but the next generation will ask with
increased intensity: "If a man die, shall he live again?" At one
period of his life a man may care little for a question that carries
him beyond the horizon of the present; but by and by no question comes
to him with more poignant urgency.
The question will not rest, because death will not let us alone. As
long as death breaks into our family circles, the problem will recur.
Death came with his legions during the War and compelled a fresh answer
to his challenge. No one who can think or feel is able to look unmoved
on the face of death: he must ask "Shall he live again?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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