Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. "By Christian communion the strength of one, the light, the trust, the piety, the peace of one, become the strength, and light, the trust, piety, and peace, of many."* Christian communion is a joint participation in the same religious hopes, affections, and aims. Sermons on Christian communion, accordingly, are discourses poured forth from deep Christian feeling, with the design of exciting it in others. As the Lord's Supper always revives this holy unity of mind, that occasion has thence taken the name of the Communion. It is observable that religious addresses to the affections and the will those which urge most impressively upon men the duty of consecrating themselves to God through the Saviour are wont to be in some nected with preparation for the Lord's table, and the profession of Christianity. Public profession and Christian communion, ideas not inseparable, are manner con a * Dr. Putnam. For though a serious by custom joined in one. Christian worshipper may be a communicant without any other open confession of Christ more formal or express, yet professing members, united as such, have a regular place in the established order of our churches. To be a professor or communicant implies a lively sense of personal obligation, and of active service due to Christ and the truth. It implies a fellowship of purpose with the Father and the Son, and a fellowship of hope with that unnumthat "cloud of witnesses,' bered multitude, ever ascending from earth to heaven, who have been partakers of the like spirit. It is an important use of the act of public profession to make the truth impressive to the community, while it is the effect of the rite of commemoration to render it affecting to the individual. It may, therefore, be said to be the design of the ordinance to deepen religious feeling and conviction. This work is not, however, confined to the special claims of that institution. Whether provided for the communion day or not, its plan, like its name, would include all sermons addressed to the religious sensibilities, both those adapted to awaken a tender sense of what is due to God and Christ, with a corresponding desire to commence a religious life, and those suited to advance the already awakened interest towards the highest attainments of the spiritual and heavenly mind. In conformity with this, the real though not formal arrangement of the contents makes a series of practical discourses of the persuasive kind,* relating to repentance, or the duty of beginning the Christian course, to edification, or the encouragements to progressive Christian improvement, and to the Eucharistic service, as affording exercise for all the grateful and devout affections of the heart in every stage of its subjection to Christian discipline. The design of this publication is, then, partly, to heighten the interest in the communion. But since interest in the communion is only a means of grace in connection with preaching, the great appointed means of keeping faith alive and fruitful in the world, it is hoped also that it may react upon the pulpit, through a response to the call for a style more persuasive and affecting. In the language of Sydney Smith, "The forms which the Gospel exacts are few, and instituted for the only purposes for which forms ought to be instituted, to awaken attention to realities." Preaching the word is only impressing through the ear those very realities which the communion symbolizes through the eye. Practically to regard the occasion as a stand-point at the outset of the Christian race, and the departing-place of the Christian's ever-renewed progress, might secure to the ministry the double benefit of greater unity of effort and more individual earnestness. "The want is, everywhere in the pulpit the want is of that simple and deep religious sensibility which would give a vitality and charm to many a discourse that has * See Campbell's Lectures, p. 221. sense enough and truth and wisdom enough in it, but yet is perfectly dead, and leaves the hearer dead, for want of that living earnestness in the preacher. If the plan have wholly succeeded, the reader, as he goes on, will increasingly feel the pulpit's moving influence upon the better part of his nature, -the more than human influence of the word, earnestly preached, to enlighten and convince, to excite and to soothe, to humble and to elevate, to comfort, establish, and control, and should he be so affected by but one sermon out of all the collection, the plan will not have entirely failed. He will meanwhile be led to form a just estimate of the true purpose and power of the pulpit. He will feel that its highest object is accomplished then, and then only, when, through its ministrations, the conscience has been aroused, deep religious impressions have been made, and, as the final result of these more serious convictions, men have been persuaded to take the decisive step in the Christian course of dedicating themselves to God in a life of simple religious obedience and high Christian endeavour. The volume thus prepared may serve, we trust, with the Divine blessing, to awaken a more fervent piety, to dispose men to more Christian methods of living, and to promote a revival of pure religion; and thus advance the pulpit's exalted work. THE EDITOR. * Dr. Dewey. |