upon, that the body goes on healthfully. He is the Head of us all, of the greatest and of the humblest. Have we a high station, great influence, great powers ?-yet what are we to that perfect Man who is our Head? What are our faculties, what the value of our best services, when we think of His infinity? Can we do but little, are our powers very humble, our means very small, our opportunities of doing good next to nothing; are we very young or very old, very sick or very poor; are we such as society would scarcely miss, whose place a thousand seem ready to fill? yet we are no less members of the body of Him who filleth all in all; and He values us and loves us with an infinite love; and prizes our souls so deeply, that He gave His own life to save them. So in Him we each shall find according to our need; humiliation, if we are exalted in our own strength; exaltation, if we are humbled in our own weakness.

The state of union with one another, and with Christ, of feeling ourselves to be, in St. Paul's words, the body of Christ, and severally members one of another, is the perfection of a Christian life; it is that perfect communion of which the outward sign is the act of communion at the Lord's table. For that body of Christ of which they who worthily communicate at that table become partakers, is and can be only His spiritual body, that body of which He is the Head, redeemed by the offering

of His natural body once for all, and now so united to Him, that whoso is a partaker of it partakes of Him, and truly belongs to Him. It were then to separate what He hath made one, to look upon the communion of the Lord's Supper as a mere act between Christ and our single selves, as if we alone were or could be His body. Rather is it our communion with Christ in all His fulness; the being joined heart and soul into the fellowship of His body, and so as He himself expresses, the being one in Him and in His Father. Therefore we go thither to increase our love to one another as well as to Him. We go thither to learn the feelings that become His members: sympathy and kindness towards each other, a desire to minister to each other's good and to His glory, by the use of all the gifts which He has given us. So indeed would there be no division in His body, no unkindness, no neglect, no pride; but all would care for one another, and value one another; and all, whilst improving to the utmost their own gifts, and honouring those of their neighbours, would have found out also that more excellent way of which St. Paul speaks; the way of love towards God and man; the way, in short, to express it in the highest possible language, of communion with Christ's body.

RUGBY CHAPEL,

September 27th, 1835.

SERMON XXIX.

EXCITEMENT.

EPHESIANS, v. 18, 19.

Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

On the first reading of these words, it may not be evident to every one what is the connexion between the first part of them and the second, between the command not to be drunken with wine, and the bidding them to be filled with the Spirit. When we begin to think, however, about it, we shall recollect that when the Spirit first descended on the day of Pentecost, some of those who saw its effects, said mockingly, " These men are full of new wine;" and when we consider it a little more, we shall see that the direction of the Apostle in the text relates to that which in this generation

66

ment.

is even more familiar than it was of old; to that which varying in form is yet in one shape or other universally acceptable, and is found to be one of the greatest of human pleasures,-I mean, exciteThe Apostle notices one sort of evil excitement, the lowest certainly, but one of the most common of all; and on the other hand he notices one sort of good and wholesome excitement, not indeed the most common of all, yet the best and purest.

Let us first see what we mean by excitement; a term which may not be quite clear to all of us, or at least our notions may not be distinct about it, though we may understand its meaning generally. Now here, if we understood our own nature perfectly, we might perhaps be able to describe what excitement properly speaking is, how it is caused, and on what part of our system it acts. But, as in so many other instances, the imperfections of our knowledge oblige us to be content with much less than this; we cannot do more than describe excitement by its effects. To speak generally, that is excitement which interrupts our quiet and ordinary state of mind with some more lively feeling; which makes us live more consciously, and in a manner quicker, than we do in common. This more lively life, if I may so speak, is pleasant universally, or almost universally; but the nature of the excitement, or rather the things which are

capable of exciting different classes of men, and different individuals, are of course exceedingly different. Highly agreeable and intellectual society, which to some is one of the most exciting things in the world, is to others one of the least so; and the same may be said of poetry and of music. But whatever does excite us, also pleases us; and the pleasure, or at any rate the craving, grows with the indulgence; whence arises the known difficulty of persuading a confirmed drunkard to leave off his habit of drinking. Life is so insupportable to him when robbed of its excitement, that he cannot persuade himself to abandon his propensity, although knowing its sin and its danger.

The direction of the Apostle in the text bids us choose that excitement which is good and healthy, instead of that which is bad and mischievous. And, as I said before, the command which was needful in his days is even more so now. I do not mean, indeed, with regard to the particular excitement of drunkenness; for although that was not, probably, a very general vice in those days amongst the inhabitants of a warm climate, yet neither is it in our rank of society general amongst us now. And comparing our own country, and the richer classes in it especially, with what they were forty or fifty years ago, we shall find that there is much less danger from this temptation now than formerly; in fact, in the ordinary