Where true belief exists, Christ is not only present
with or among us;--for so he is in every man, even the most wicked;--
but to us and for us. THAT WAS THE TRUE LIGHT, WHICH LIGHTETH EVERY
MAN THAT COMETH INTO THE WORLD. HE WAS IN THE WORLD, AND THE WORLD
WAS MADE BY HIM, AND THE WORLD KNEW HIM NOT. BUT AS MANY AS RECEIVED
HIM, TO THEM GAVE HE POWER TO BECOME THE SONS OF GOD, EVEN TO THEM
THAT BELIEVE IN HIS NAME; WHICH WERE BORN, NOT OF BLOOD, NOR OF THE
WILL OF THE FLESH, NOR OF THE WILL OF MAN, BUT OF GOD. AND THE WORD
WAS MADE FLESH AND DWELT AMONG US. John i. 9-14. Again--WE WILL
COME UNTO HIM, AND MAKE OUR ABODE WITH HIM. John xiv. 23. As truly
and as really as your soul resides constitutively in your living
body, personally and substantially does Christ dwell in every
regenerate man.
After this course of study, you may then take up and peruse sentence
by sentence the communion service, the best of all comments on the
Scriptures appertaining to this mystery. And this is the preparation
which will prove, with God's grace, the surest preventive of, or
antidote against, the freezing poison, the lethargising hemlock, of
the doctrine of the Sacramentaries, according to whom the Eucharist
is a mere practical metaphor, in which things are employed instead of
articulated sounds for the exclusive purpose of recalling to our
minds the historical fact of our Lord's crucifixion; in short--(the
profaneness is with them, not with me)--just the same as when
Protestants drink a glass of wine to the glorious memory of William
III.
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