the two societies; how much anti-christian feeling is excited; how it injures the spirit of both parties; what envies, and jealousies, and evil speakings, commence and continue, to the injury of religion, and the triumph of its enemies! Let them, before they separate, endeavour to lay aside their prejudice, and hear for a season, with as much impartiality as possible, the man to whom they object. On his part, much consummate prudence is necessary, and the most conciliatory conduct. All he does and says should have a healing tendency. Much depends upon himself. Great credit is due to that minister,

WHO HAS CONCILIATED HIS OPPONENTS WITHOUT

ALIENATING HIS FRIENDS, and who has become THE RECONCILING MEDIUM OF TWO PARTIES, ONCE AT VARIANCE ABOUT HIMSELF.

In some cases, a division is necessary. Where this is unavoidable, great efforts should be made to effect it in love. If the two parties cannot unite in peace, at least let them separate in peace. separation take place without alienation. that this should so rarely be the case!

Let the

Alas!

What we want, to preserve the peace of our churches unbroken, is a more distinct recognition and a more powerful influence of the principles of the gospel; more humility, more spirituality, more zeal for the divine glory. We carry into the sanctuary, and into the church, our pride, our self-will, our personal taste. That spirit of mutual submission,brotherly love, and surrender of our own gratification to the good of others which the word of God enjoins, and our profession avows, would keep the church always happy and harmonious, and enable it to pass in safety through the most critical circumstances in which it can be placed. Instead of seeking the good of the whole, the feeling of too many of our members may

be thus summarily expressed-" I will have my way." Such a spirit is a source of all the evils to which our churches are ever exposed, and of which it must be confessed they are but too frequently the miserable victims.

On the Propriety of occasionally administering the Lord's Supper in private Houses, for the Sake of sick Persons who are incapable of attending the Solemnities of Public Worship.

I do not now allude to the practice, so common in the church of England, of administering the sacrament to dying persons, as a preparative for eternity; this custom, so unscriptural in its nature, and so delusory in its tendency, is unknown, I believe, amongst our churches. But instances have occurred, in which our ministers, for the sake of some of their members, who have been long confined to their own habitations by chronic diseases, without the prospect of ever going to the house of God again, have assembled a few others in the chamber of the afflicted person, and administered to them the Lord's supper. The infirm individual is supposed to be a real Christian, in church fellowship; the others, joining in the act, are also members of the same church, or Christians of undoubted piety; and the design of the act is not to countenance any pharisaic notions of human merit, which the sick person might have connected with the reception of the sacrament, but simply to give him an opportunity of expressing his obedience, and gratifying his love to Christ, by an observance of our Lord's own institution. Is it right under these circumstances to gratify his request, and observe with

him the sacred supper? I think not; and on the following grounds:

1. The Lord's supper is strictly a church ordinance, and not an exercise of mere social religion, such as joint prayer, and therefore ought not to be observed but when the church is professedly assembled. It is not an act of social religion, which may be performed in any place, where two or three Christians are convened together, by accident or design, but in the place of their public convention, and at the time when they are so convened. All the directions of the apostle, concerning this institution, are given to the church in its collective capacity; and besides this, there are many incidental expressions, which plainly show that this was the view which he took of it, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. In the eleventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, he interferes to regulate the abuses which, upon this subject, had crept into the Corinthian church. He begins the subject thus: "When ye come together in one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper." Now his meaning in this language must evidently be, that merely coming into one place together for a feast, was not enough, but in that one place conforming to all the other regulations delivered by our Lord concerning it. The act of coming together in one place was right so far as it went, but it was not enough. In 1 Cor. v. 8, the apostle says, "Let us keep the feast," i. e. the Lord's supper, "not with old leaven :" in the 7th verse they were commanded to purge out the old leaven, i. e. to put away the offending member; and this was to be done when they were gathered together; the feast was to be observed then, when the church were gathered together.

It is plain therefore that the Lord's supper is a

church ordinance, and can with propriety be only observed by the church in its assembled form. But it will probably be said, “Do not two or three persons convened together at any time, or in any place, constitute a church?" The answer to this question depends on circumstances. If these two or three meet together for the purposes, and in the character, of a distinct and separate society of Christians, and in the usual time and place of assembly, they are a church, notwithstanding the smallness of their number; but if they meet together as the acknowledged members of another society, which in its general capacity neither do, nor can, assemble with them in that place, they are not a church, but merely a part of one; and, as such, have no right to perform acts which belong to the whole number. This does not imply that it is necessary for every member to be present, in order to a meeting of the church; for, provided all be invited to assemble in one place, those who meet constitute the church, however few may attend. This may be illustrated by a reference to the British parliament. Two or three members, meeting together in one place, do not constitute the senate, nor are their acts legislatorial. The parliament are the members assembled by appointment, whether few or many, in the specified place of meeting. Such is the church, not a casual, ambulatory, or private meeting of a few of its members, but the body of Christians convened by general notice. The words of Christ, "Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," more immediately refer to the exercise of social prayer; but, viewed in their most extensive sense, will by no means countenance the idea, that two or three members of a church constitute

of themselves a church, until they have separated from their late connexion, and formed themselves into another distinct society.

2. The practice in question is contrary to one of the ends of the Lord's supper, which is to be a visible sign of the oneness of the church, of the union of all its members in one body. Hence said the apostle, "We being many are one bread (loaf) and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread (loaf.)" 1 Cor. x. 17. The loaf by its unity shows the oneness of the church; by its division into many parts, its many members. But is not this design of the Lord's supper defeated by its private celebration amongst a few members of the church? Are the two or three assembled in private, detached from the public body, a representation of its unity?

3. There is not a single instance of any company of Christians whose meetings were merely occasional, and who were not united for the purpose of stated fellowship as a church, in a particular place, observing the ordinance of the Lord's supper. And as we have no example, so we have no precepts for such things, not so much as a hint that they may be done. Should ministers, therefore, without the shadow of scriptural authority, consent to them?

4. As a precedent, the practice is dangerous; for if the scripture mode of observing the Lord's supper be departed from in one way, it may in another. If ministers depart from the regulations of the New Testament for the advantage of the sick, may they not be led on to do it in other cases, till even the purposes of faction shall be promoted by the practice?

It is not enough to justify it, to say that it is a