AN EXTRACT.
MY feeling about the whole service is that we are in the joy of heavenly places, risen ourselves, and look back to the sufferings of Christ as that which brought us there. It is a broken body and shed blood— it is death. We are occupied with a broken body in the Supper, but it is those who are risen and in blessing by it who are so. Hence the joy flowing from our position has nothing amiss in it; but the more we are thoroughly at home there, the more shall we, as dwelling there, contemplate the sorrows and sufferings of Christ. But they are past, and He is at the right hand of God; so that, though occupied at the moment by how much He has suffered, when occupied with the act itself, there is the sweet consciousness that it is all over for Him, and we are risen in spirit with Him. In the Supper itself. (I do not say all that accompanies it) we are surely occupied with Christ's death, but it is viewing it not from outside the cross, as coming to it, or human interest in suffering human nature, but from the risen place in which our worship is carried on. We shall enter much more deeply into His sorrows, not now measured by our need, but contemplated from God's side of it—a much deeper feeling I believes it is a divine or heavenly contemplation of the cross. It is not coming to—not while it is accomplishing—but remembrance of Him, when suffering for us, which has obtained peace for us, who is now at the right of God. As to which comes first, we must have life before we know what death is, or our own dying to sin, which is another thing. But it is the applying death to ourselves that enables us to realize rightly life and glory. The "excellency of the knowledge" makes me count all but dross and dung, but it is as cc always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus" that we are enabled both to rejoice in the things the Spirit shews to us, and to manifest the life of Christ in our bodies. I desire that the believer may grow up to Him who is the Head in all things, contemplating His glory; but there is a judgment of self and of all the details of our life which, keeping down the movement of will in details, keeps up a practical separation from the world, which is a testimony. There was more of this at the first. Now many come in fresh converted or enjoying the fullness of truth. Tip in our parts I cannot say there is much worldliness, but in houses and other things much is in many places taken for granted which is of the world, and I think something is wanting in very many. I should be very glad to see retrenchment in many worldly symptoms; and I do not think the revival course of testimony tends to this. It looks for testimony in saving souls, all surely right, but it tends to overlook testimony in the path of Christians.
The death of Christ, which I contemplate in the Lord's Supper, is not exactly my death with Him, though if realized it leads me to it. It is His death—the love in it.