S. PARTAKERS OF THE ALTAR

PARTAKERS OF THE ALTAR “Are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” - 1 Corinthians 10:18 THE maxim, or principle, which the putting of this question implies, is of quite general application. It covers all or any sacrifices, offered upon all or any altars. Whatever may be the altar, and to whatever god dedicated, and with whatever doctrine or ritual associated, if I eat of its appropriate and appointed sacrifices, knowingly and intentionally, I so connect myself with it that it becomes an inconsistency and contradiction on my part to have anything to do with any rival or antagonist service. I must choose the altar with which I wish to be identified; and I must confine my worship exclusively to that altar, with its appropriate and appointed sacrifices. I cannot therefore partake of the sacrifices of two opposing and inconsistent altars. I must hold to the one and reject the other. So far the argument is in itself plain enough. And it is confirmed and clenched by the appeal to Old Testament law. “Israel after the flesh” could have no doubt on this point. Their “eating of the sacrifices,” under such solemn vows to the Lord, and such awful warnings against idolatry, as their covenant involved, did indeed make them “partakers of the altar.” It would seem therefore, that in point of fact, there is a connection somehow formed between the worshipper and his worship, whatever his worship may be; and that, in the case at least of the true worship, the connection is one that is thoroughly exclusive and monopolising. Hence the importance of our inquiry into the nature, the principle, the rationale, of the connection, as indicated by the language here used to denote it. That language is very precise and exact; more so than our translation makes it. The expression “partakers of” (1 Corinthians 10:18), is the same as “communion” (1 Corinthians 10:16), and “have fellowship” (1 Corinthians 10:20). The word in 1 Corinthians 10:17 and 1 Corinthians 10:21 is different, and not so strong. But in these three verses (1 Corinthians 10:16, 1 Corinthians 10:18, 1 Corinthians 10:20) the English rendering ought to bring out the identity of phraseology in the original. In all the three verses the idea conveyed is one and the same. It is that of joint participation; implying community of a very close and intimate personal kind between those jointly partaking and that of which they jointly partake. They have all of them, alike and together, that in common with it which makes them and it, in some real and emphatic sense, one. In all the three verses, the object thus jointly partaken of is somehow connected and mixed up with an act of sacrificial worship. Thus (1 Corinthians 10:16) it is what is offered in sacrifice, the substance or body of the sacrificial victim. Again (1 Corinthians 10:18), it is that on which the sacrifice is offered, the altar. While once more (1 Corinthians 10:20), it is the god or gods, real or imaginary, to whom the sacrifice is offered upon the altar. We have thus the sacrifice, the altar, the deity. It is important to notice distinctly these three points or modes of personal connection between the worship and the worshipper.

1. I take the last of these instances first (1 Corinthians 10:20). It is the case of a heathen sacrifice. What the apostle tolls the Corinthians is this: - If you are parties to it, by eating of it as such, in the temple of the heathen gods, or at a feast in honour of them, you are partakers of, or joint-partakers with, these gods. You and they communicate with one another; you with them and they with you. You and they have fellowship, or are fellows. There is real community, of some personal sort, between them and you. This is a serious consideration. Nor is the force of it blunted or evaded by your reminding me of what I have often said; that as the idol is nothing, so what is offered in sacrifice to idols is nothing (1 Corinthians 10:19). True. If what has been thus used comes to be sold in the shambles as common meat, and set on the table at a common entertainment as common food, it is none the worse for the idolatrous use that has been made of it. It is still good, as a creature of God, and not to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, being sanctified by the word of God and prayer. It may be so received when it simply forms part of a common meal. But can it be so received when the eating of it in the idol’s temple, or in honour of the idol at the sacrificial table, is part and parcel of the sacrificial worship; or do I contradict myself when I warn you that, by receiving it in that way and on that footing, you have fellowship or joint-participation with devils? No! But I tell you a very solemn and awful truth. It is indeed the fact that the idols, or gods, whom the heathen worship with these sacrifices, are nothing; have no existence save in superstitious fond dream or abject fear. The worship of them, therefore, is so far to be accounted as no worship at all. The sacrifices are nought. But that is not really an adequate solution, or full explanation, of the deep and deadly mystery of heathen idolatry. It is not merely to be characterised, negatively, as an idle ceremony; the worship of nothing by means of nothing; offering to an idol which is a nonentity, a sacrifice that is a nullity. No. The idol temple is not thus all emptiness; nor is the throne of idol worship left all vacant. The true God being set aside, and there being none else to take his place; devils, malignant demons, evil spirits, the Satanic intelligences, the principalities and powers, once of heaven and light, now of darkness and hell, who have become spiritual wickedness in high places, rush in to fill the void, to occupy the empty shrine, to appropriate the service that is, as it were, going a begging for an object. Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Minerva, Venus - the chosen goddess of Corinth, and patroness of its nameless infamies - these are all unreal The things offered in sacrifice to them have, so far as they are concerned, no real significancy. As sacrifices to them, they have, strictly speaking, no real existence. They are nothing, as the gods to whom they are offered are nothing. But the system which owns these objects of worship, and this mode of worshipping them, is no mere negation or nullity. A diabolic agency is at work in it: diabolic inspiration is breathed into it: diabolic presidency is over it; and diabolic spirits recognise and accept its service as their own,

Really, therefore, whether they mean it so or not, the Gentiles do sacrifice the things which they sacrifice to devils and not to God. To have anything to do with their sacrifices, to eat of them, is to have fellowship with devils. It is the communion of devils.

2. When it is the Jewish sacrificial service that is in question (1 Corinthians 10:18) the object of the communion or joint participation implied in it is said to be, not the being worshipped, but, as it were, the organ or instrument of worship; not the deity, but the altar. The former idea, however, is really included in this new one. The altar has no meaning apart from the God whose altar it is. To be partakers of the altar, is to be partakers of it as an altar; as erected by the authority, and for the honour of him whose name it bears. It is therefore to be partakers of him as owning the altar, as being the proprietor of the altar, as accessible in and by the altar. Thus, by the altar we are to understand God, to whom the altar is dedicated. Not God absolutely, as he is in himself: but God, viewed in his relation to the altar; God, considered as acknowledging the altar-worship; propitiated by means of it, pacified, reconciled. Communion with the altar, in Jewish worship, is communion with God; with God contemplated as requiring and appointing, and receiving satisfaction for the violation of his law, an atonement for the guilt of sin.

3. In Christian worship (1 Corinthians 10:16) the object of this communion or joint participation is described as being, not he who is worshipped by sacrifice, nor the altar upon which the worship by sacrifice is conducted, but the actual sacrifice itself, the body and blood of Christ: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). The body and blood of Christ, Christ personally, Christ suffering and dying, Christ crucified; this is that of which now in the gospel dispensation we have the communion, of which we are communicants or joint partakers. He is now the sacrificial victim. And therefore now the fellowship may fitly be held to be not only with the Being to whom sacrifice is offered; and with the altar on which sacrifice is offered; but also with the sacrifice itself. This could not with propriety be said, so long as the victim offered on the altar was a bull, a goat, a heifer, a lamb. Community, or joint participation, with such a sacrifice, it could be no great favour - no high compliment, - to ascribe to any one. But when the sacrifice is Christ, it is another matter altogether. The fellowship or communion of the altar now is fellowship and communion, not merely with him, who on the altar and by means of it, is sacrificially worshipped; but with him also, who, on the altar, is sacrificially offered, or sacrificially offers himself. The community between me and the altar now is community, on the one hand, between me and the righteous loving Father, whom I see, in the altar, requiring, providing, accepting an infinitely worthy substitute to bear my guilt, and satisfy justice in my stead, and so make peace. It is, at the same time, on the other hand, community between me and the eternal, well-beloved Son, whom I see, in the altar, through the eternal Spirit, offering himself without spot unto God. It would thus appear that the connection implied in our being partakers of the altar, of whose sacrifice we eat, is real and personal. So much surely, at the least, may be concluded from the induction of particulars in this passage. There is more meant than simply that the worshippers have committed themselves to a particular kind of worship, with which their credit and standing are considered to be identified, and to which therefore they are under an obligation, in honour and consistency, to adhere; anything incompatible with it being religiously shunned. It is not merely that having made common cause with a certain system, they will best consult their interest and their character by being faithful to it; that only by being faithful to it can they expect to reap the full fruit and benefit of it; and that by trying, in this matter, to serve two masters, they may lose their hold of both. All that may be true; but it is not the truth here taught. A principle much more vital is asserted as regards the tie that binds us to whatever sacrificial service we make ourselves a part of. What that principle is, - that now is the question.

It is described in such a way as to suggest something like incorporation or identification. The worshipper, it might seem, in some sense, loses or foregoes his separate individual standing as he enters into the great transaction of the altar, and realises his interest in it. A community of character; a certain unity, or oneness of nature, is wrought between him and it. This kind of communion, or, as it were, personal identification, may be considered in its application (1) to a heathen sacrifice; and (2) to the Christian sacrifice. For in this aspect of them, they have a certain analogy, in virtue of which they may be compared, as well as a deep element of antagonism, in respect of which they are to be contrasted.

(1.) In the case of a heathen sacrificial service, this sort of identification which I have been indicating is generally, if not always, at least when the service is sincere and earnest, very complete and thorough. It becomes, in fact, a kind of fusion or absorption. The enthusiastic or fanatic devotee sinks, we might almost say, his personality in the idolatrous ceremony with which he is incorporated. His individual powers and faculties are in a sense superseded; his very sensations are suspended. It is not so much the worshipper that now lives, as the spirit of the worship that lives in him.

Let that spirit be active and energetic. It is not always so. Sometimes the worship is dead and formal; a mere cold routine. Then, as happens always in similar circumstances, the worshipper will be a mere dead and cold formalist himself. But I assume the idolatrous organisation to be in full force and free play, and to be inspired and instinct with its own proper vitality. And I assume that I, the worshipper, am awakened to vitality too. I throw myself into the worship as many a poor deluded child of misery and guilt has done, and is doing. I am in earnest; terribly in earnest; on the rack of sinful lusts; goaded by the sting of remorse; my whole inner man, my entire spiritual frame, laid bare to the lashings of stormy passions and guilty terrors. In this estate my keen and sensitive soul comes in contact with a majestic idol car, or gorgeous idol temple, in which a ministry of expiation and purgation is continually going on. It seems to meet my case. It is what I need; what I want; and I give in to it. It masters me. And now, henceforth, it and I are one. It is not so much, that in it I live and move and have my being; but it lives and moves and has its being in me. It makes me; it moulds and fashions me. My experience, my character, my very being, it engulphs into itself and assimilates to itself. Its obscene and bloody rites, its horrid cruelties, its dark views of supernatural malignity and vindictiveness, scarcely appeased by the carnage of countless hecatombs and the incessant groans of the crushed and maimed, trodden under foot; these come to be common features between the spirit of the idolatry, and my spirit.

It is sympathy. But it is more than sympathy. There is fellow-feeling, on my part, with the method of atonement, which, with all its fell and foul attributes, has yet brought some broken relief to my vexed soul. The fellow-feeling, however, is the fruit of the self-abandonment with which, forsaking all, I hide myself in the close embracing arms of the demon who is making me his own. For there is a demon, there may be many demons, in the idolatry with which, in my fierce despair, I unite myself so convulsively. A satanic spirit does really meet my spirit in the midst of it. That satanic spirit and I become one. He whose devilish craft and cruelty devises the system, and whose devilish breath puts life in it; he and I, - I ceasing almost to be myself, seeing only through his eyes, feeling as he feels, - he and I are one. There is fellowship, communion, between us; not intercourse merely, but intercommunity of nature. The worship which he appropriates as his, and which? now appropriate as mine, makes us one. We are mutually, as it were, partakers of one another. It is his life that is now my life. We are one; and what he is, that I now become.

If this, or anything like this, is an explanation of the working of idolatry in earnest souls, is it any wonder that we should find its votaries, bearing in their character the stamp, and manifesting in their conduct the likeness, of the altar, of which they are partakers, and the gods, or devils, with whom, by its means, they have fellowship. Have we not, in this view, been accustomed greatly to understate the case, and to underestimate the power and influence of the heathen sacrificial service? We speak vaguely of the natural tendency of every act or habit of worship to beget a certain harmony between the worshippers and the being or beings whom they worship. Like priest, like people, is a principle which has passed into a proverb. It is as applicable with reference to the object of worship, as with reference to its minister. Or rather, at least, when there is earnestness in the worship, it is far more so. It is impossible for any one to render honest homage to a person whom he is taught to adore as divine, and to revere as both great and good, without growing insensibly into his image. I do not speak of express and studied imitation; still less of the hypocritical homage of those who give themselves a license to do whatever they have been told in fable that their gods have done. I refer rather to the insensible and almost unconscious working of what might be called the law of worship in an earnest man; and more particularly to the working of it in the service of sacrifice. It is a powerful natural law; and it cannot be doubted that it operates powerfully in all idolatry. It operates in connection both with the object and with the manner of the worship. The nature of him who requires sacrifice, and the nature of the sacrifice which he requires, both tell upon the nature of him who offers it. His principles of judgment and of conduct in his own sphere of activity come to be in accordance with both. What his god appears to be in his dealing with him, as he presents his sacrifice, he shows himself to be in his dealings with those around and under him. He wields the sword or tomahawk after the fashion, as he interprets it, of the using of the sacrificial knife. What his idol is, that is he. Naturally, by a sure though secret spell of sympathy, this process of assimilation takes place. But this is not all. Paul brings in another element; the element of supernatural satanic power; the presence and fellowship of a satanic spirit; the personal agency of the Devil. For it is devil’s work that is going on. It is according to the Devil’s mind, if not by the Devil’s inspiration, that the idol’s grim face is painted, and his vile shrine is reared; his cruel and capricious character drawn, and the horrid propitiation that is to soothe him devised. Well therefore may the Devil be personally in it all; supplanting the idol; joining himself to the idol-worshippers; who now not only fondly familiar with the vanities of false gods, but fresh from the fellowship of devils, may come forth from the altar of atonement to enact, perhaps, a devil’s part before a startled world, or to be found among the tombs echoing a devil’s woeful complaint, as if of one come to tormemt him before the time.

(2.) It is not needful to dwell separately on the Jewish sacrificial worship, which may be considered as merged in that of the gospel, and one with it, in so far as the present inquiry is concerned. I would speak now of your participation in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Here, as in the former case, we must recognise the practical power of the natural law of worship, which has just been noticed. You who make a covenant with God by this sacrifice of Christ, come under the operation of the law. Your connection with the sacrifice, on the faith of whose efficacy you draw near to God, is at all events such as to assimilate your nature to its nature. In this view, how all-important is it that your ideas of the nature of the sacrifice of Christ should be clear and sound. What think ye of Christ as the Lamb of God, as the propitiation for sin, as the great atoning sacrifice? How do you conceive of that wondrous transaction which was consummated and finished on Calvary; the substitution of the innocent and holy Son of God and Son of man in your room and stead; the transference of your guilt, the demerit, the hell-deserving demerit and guilt, of your sins, from you to him; and his endurance of the curse, the condemnation, the penal death, for you, and as your representative; that you might not die but live; in a word, his being made sin for you, who knew no sin, that you might be made the righteousness of God in him? It is possible to put a heathen and carnal meaning in that transaction, as thus described. And some, in these days, seem to take great pleasure in doing so. Nay, they will have it that the transaction, as thus described, if the language is literally understood, is capable of no other construction. It imputes vindictive and implacable feelings of resentment to the God whom we have offended; while at the same time it exhibits him as apt to be wrought upon by the friendly pleadings on our behalf of One who can appease his wrath by blood. And it puts our salvation on a footing, not of pure and perfect fatherly benignity in God awakening filial trust in us, but of a sort of bargaining for satisfaction or compensation upon his part, and a sort of fictitious legal plea of imputed righteousness and vicarious merit upon ours.

If that were a true account of the doctrine of the atonement as you receive and hold it, then doubtless it might be expected, in so far as it exercised any moral influence over you at all, to exercise an influence altogether ungenial and malign. Nor is it wonderful that those who can take in no other impression regarding it should use strong terms in denouncing its paganism. But you have not so learned Christ. You form a more intelligent, as well as a more spiritual conception of what his voluntary offering of himself as an atoning sacrifice upon the cross, really means. You see in that scene on Calvary, that negotiation of your peace between the Father and the Son, something very different from mere power withstood and vengeance satiated. To you it shines all radiant with the beams of unspotted righteousness and holy love. And as you throw yourself into it with your whole soul in the fulness of an appropriating faith and an approving fellowship, you learn to think and feel in accordance with the principles of divine rule and government which it unfolds. Your heart comes to beat in unison with the divine heart there unveiled. And you all, “with open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

“By the Spirit of the Lord.” For he is in it and in you. He is to you, with reference to this altar and your being partakers of it, what the evil spirit, as we have seen, is to those who, joining in the worship of idols, have fellowship with devils. The effect is not left in your case, any more than in theirs, to be mere working of a natural law. A supernatural agency is put forth; a supernatural agent is present. The same Eternal Spirit through whom Christ offers himself without spot to God, is upon you and in you. It is he, the Eternal Spirit, who joins you to Christ. It is he who shuts you up into Christ. It is he who originates and sustains a real living personal union between you and Christ. Through the Eternal Spirit you are with Christ and in Christ, as he, through the Eternal Spirit, offers himself to God, What Christ is in that act, you are. What Christ sees, you see. As Christ feels, you feel. Imperfectly perhaps is this realised: but it is realised through the Eternal Spirit. Thus you are partakers of this altar. Let one or two particulars of this participation be noticed for illustration, as well as for practical improvement.

1. “Father, glorify thy name” (John 12:28). So Jesus prays when he has full in view the offering of himself, and what it is to cost him. It is as a time of strong crying with him. In public, before all the people, he cannot restrain himself: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.” For the Father’s name is worthy to be glorified. So the Son feels. He desires it to be glorified, as it is to be glorified in that very cross from which he so sensitively shrinks. In the judgment of the Son, what the Father is then and there to do, is to be very glorious to his name. The character, the nature, of the everlasting Father is to break upon the universe of created intelligence with an effulgence of moral greatness and beauty surpassing all imagination.

Such is the Son’s own notion of the altar of his sacrifice, and of the glory which it is to shed on the Father’s name. Is it yours? Do you, through the Eternal Spirit, see the Father’s name glorified on Calvary, as the sufferer on Calvary himself sees it? Have you anything of the same care and concern that he has about the Father’s name being glorified? Would you rather, as he would rather, that the Father should glorify his name, than that he should save you from the hour; the hour and the power of darkness? Ah! see to it that through the Eternal Spirit you are partakers of the altar; and of this feature or attribute of the altar, that it puts the glorifying of the Father’s name before and above even the saving of his chosen, his Beloved. The full discovery of the Father’s glorious name, the Father’s infinite perfections of righteousness, wisdom, truth, and love, that his suffering, the just for the unjust, is to give, is so dear and precious to the Son that it reconciles him to it all. Is it a discovery dear and precious to you? Are you glad of the insight thus got into the Father’s heart, and of the assurance you receive, that no attribute of his is compromised or sullied on your account, because for love to you he spared not his own Son? Are you, I might almost ask you, even more glad that the Father’s name is glorified than that you yourselves are saved? Are you, I may at all events ask you, glad of both these things? Does Calvary, as well as Bethlehem, suggest to you the song, “Glory to God in the highest,” first, and then “on earth peace?” “Father, save me from this hour.” But first, and rather, “Father, glorify thy name.”

2. “Not my will, but thine, be done,” is another voice from the altar of which you are partakers. It is the essence, as to the spirit of it, of the whole sacrifice. Self-abandonment and submission to God, entire self-renunciation and implicit obedience, these two elements together: or rather the one pure and simple principle of which they are the ingredients, - the principle of self-surrender to do the Father’s will, - that is the life, or living power, of the amazing sacrifice. Through the Eternal Spirit he thus offered himself to God. Is the same Eternal Spirit conforming you in this aspect of it to his death? Are you with him, in him, one with him, shut up into him, in this voluntary and unreserved surrender of himself to do the Father’s will? Are you so partakers with him, so identified with him, through the Eternal Spirit dwellng in you as in him, that his act becomes yours? that act of his of which he speaks when he says, “Lo, I come;” of which he speaks again when in his agony and bloody sweat he cries: Nevertheless, Father, though the cup pass not, thy will be done. It is folly, and worse than folly, to dream of your having any part or lot in that great transaction between the Father and the Son; the offered and accepted sacrifice of Gethsemane and Calvary; if you are not really and personally partakers of the altar, in the sense of your having a community of mind and nature with him who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself upon it to God. Substitution there is in that transaction; imputation there is also in the recognising of your interest in it. But to trust in the substitution, or to claim the imputation, while there is no real and actual personal participation, is folly, I repeat, and worse than folly ten thousand times befooled. Why does the Spirit work faith in me? Why am I summoned, in the gospel, to believe? Is it not that Christ and I may be one, intelligently one, confidingly and lovingly one, one by mutual consent and trust in one another, one in spirit, one in mind and heart, one in nature, and therefore - only therefore - one in law, one in interest, one in history, one in destination for ever? Oh! that the Eternal Spirit may bend and break this self-willed soul of mine, and breathe into me something of the soul of the holy child Jesus; that I may lay myself beside him, alongside of him, on that bloody altar of atonement; that I may be in him, part and parcel of his very self, as in his offering of himself he says, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

3. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That is a terrible part of the experience of the altar, in respect of which you are called to be partakers of it. You understand the meaning of that sore and bitter cry. It is the cry of the victim bearing sin. The bull, the goat, the heifer, on whose unconscious head were laid the confessed sins of Israel, uttered no such wailing moan. Your being partakers of the altar on which these victims bled and died might imply the utterance of no such wailing moan by you. But it is otherwise here at this altar, when it is one who feels it who bears the load! One who feels it! Yes, truly. Feels it as neither holiest man nor highest angel could ever feel it! Feels it as his being ever in the bosom of the Father qualifies the Son for feeling it. Guilt is upon him; hell-deserving guilt; the guilt of myriads of hell-deserving sins. And the doom of guilt is upon him: the dark and dismal doom of separation from his God! He is making his soul an offering for sin. And he feels it when he cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Ah, me! What is sin to me, and the guilt of sin, and the doom of guilt? Am I in Christ, is Christ in me, in that cry of his of unknown agony? Eternal Spirit, make me partaker of the altar where that cry was extracted from my bleeding, dying Saviour. Let sin be to me what it is to him in the lifting up of that fearful voice. To be forsaken of God! Let that be to me what it is to him. Let there be no indifference in me to what so wrung the soul of Jesus when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

4. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” It is sunshine now. The cloud has passed away, and there beams upon that altar the light of heaven’s brightest and most radiant smile. The divine victim is upon the altar still; he is suffering still; and he has yet to die the accursed death. But a glad and grateful sense of his acceptance in the Father’s sight sheds over his parting soul a pure and perfect peace. Yes. His offering of himself, he feels, is not to be in vain. In his endurance, and for his endurance, of the penal cross; in his thus doing, and for his thus doing, his Father’s will, he himself finds favour with the Father. And it is in quietness and assurance that he rests, as, seeing his Father’s countenance no longer turned away, he pours out from his closing lips the words of filial faith and love, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” May I hope to be partaker of the altar in this feature also of its experience? Here too let me, through the Eternal Spirit, join myself to Christ, and lose myself in Christ, in that great consummation of his offering of himself to the Father. Yes! Let me lose myself in him. For otherwise, how can I ever presume, living or dying, to commend anything of mine to God? My spirit, my soul, myself. “Woe is me! unclean! undone! guilty! all but lost! I dare not venture, either now for my present comfort, or when my last hour comes for my eternal hope, to ask or expect that the righteous and holy God should take charge of anything I committed to him. For, alas! in myself I am a wandering orphan; far gone from my father’s home and heart. And when breath is failing, what can I do but dismiss the trembling, shivering, tenant of my dissolving frame, shelterless and naked, into the dark unknown? But let me be in Christ on that cross; one with him there; crucified with him; his expiation of guilt of deepest dye mine; his endurance of its utmost penalty mine; the worth and merit of his obedience even reaching to that dark death mine; the Father’s acceptance of him mine. Then his commending of his spirit to the Father is mine. His prayer of hope is mine. “Bow down thine ear, Lord. Hear me, for I am poor and needy! Preserve my soul, for I am holy. Save thy servant that trusteth in thee” (Psalms 86:1-17)

5. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This also is part of that altar-experience of which I am to be partaker. These workers of iniquity, have they no knowledge? They irritate and persecute me. They harden their hearts against my kindness and my sorrow. Surely when they “talk to the grief of one whom God is wounding,” they know not what they do! Let me be with Christ, in Christ, partaker with Christ in his offering this prayer; offering it as part of his offering himself Father, forgive them. They know not what they are doing in crucifying me, for they know not what I am doing in being crucified for them. Show them that, Father! Let the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of grace and of supplications, at my intercession be poured out upon them to show them that! Then shall they know what they have done; and looking on me whom they have pierced they shall mourn, and be in bitterness and believe. Is this my desire, my longing, for my Lord’s enemies and mine? Is this the prayer whose spirit breathes through all my treatment of the lost and perishing around me, not only inspiring meek patience and forbearance, but prompting effort, persevering, self-sacrificing effort, that darkness may be dispelled by gospel light and obduracy overcome by gospel love; the blind eye opened to see the bleeding Lamb of God; the deaf ear unstopped to hear the tender remonstrance: “Why persecutest thou me?” and the lips that ignorantly uttered the mad shout, “Crucify him, away with him,” taught with mind, and heart, and soul to ask, “Who art thou Lord? Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?”

6. Once more. “To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!” Yes! It is but a little while, a brief hour, and all anguish of body, all travail of soul is over; for me, the cross-bearer; and also, thou fellow-partaker with me in my bearing it, for thee; for both of us together. We shall be together in blessedness. To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Holy Ghost! Eternal Spirit! Let me, by thy gracious working in me, be partaker of the altar, in this blessed assurance of its sovereign efficacy, to overcome the sharpness of death for the crucified one himself, and for me, crucified with him! for me, as for the dying thief when he got so marvellous an answer to his prayer, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom!” So I, more vile than he, cry to the Lord! Lost and miserable so I cry to thee! And what is that I hear thee naming? Paradise! sinless, painless, tearless Paradise! And I am to be with thee there? When, Lord? Lord, how long? If thou wilt to-day, Lord! But anyhow, Lord! be it to-day, or to-morrow, or years hence, - when the hour comes, let me be found in thee; partaker of thine altar, crucified with thee to the last! Prom thy cross let me pass to be with thee. Lord, in Paradise. And as crucified with thee, partaker of thine altar and its deepest love, let me be ever ready in thy name, and on thy behalf, to use these blessed words of thine for comfort to every poor perishing soul, moved by thy grace out of the depths to cry. Lord, remember me! Oh! let it be mine to be ever assuring every sin-smitten sorrow-laden brother, that thou wilt have him as well as me, to be with thee in Paradise! Nay him rather than me. For if I who am so great a sinner, of sinners the chief, am to be with thee there, to whom may I not hold out the bright hope of that amazing prayer of thine, “Father I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world!”

One thought more let me throw out in closing. There is this peculiarity about the Christian altar, that while he who offers himself as the sacrifice upon it is one in nature as well as by covenant with the worshippers, he is one also with him who is worshipped. He is therefore himself the object of worship. He is the true God and eternal life. In being partakers of the altar thus viewed, how complete should the process of assimilation or identification become! For we may know him as no other being who is worshipped, whether real or fictitious, ever can be known. He lays open to us his whole heart. His Spirit gives us an insight into its utmost depths. What can we know of the very best and fairest of the men or women who have been set up for even Christians to adore? What of Paul or John? What of Mary herself, as compared with what we may know of Jesus? Adoring any one of them, we may be confirmed to the likeness of a brave hero; a rapt saint; an amiable lady and tender mother; seen only in dim outline, on the canvas of an inventive fancy or devout imagination. But worshipping thee, Lord Jesus, we worship one whose mind, soul, spirit, heart, - whose nature, character, thoughts, and ways, we may know, if only we study thee that we may worship thee intelligently, sympathisingly, lovingly. Ah! how intimately and how familiarly may we know thee! And with open face beholding as in a glass thy glory, we may be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, by thy Spirit, Lord!