as long as you do your best to prepare yourself, as long as you are a sincere seeker of the heavenly way, and truly anxious to obey and please God as a teachable and loving child.

Indeed, the Lord's Supper is meant to help such persons on their way. We do not spread meat before those who are full, nor drink before those who feel no thirst; so your Saviour does not bid the spiritual Feast of His body and of His blood to be spread for those who are perfect in righteousness, for those who have no weaknesses, no faults, for those who are full of all good things. It is for such as crave for heavenly help, for such as greatly desire to be stronger, more righteous, more holy, more guileless, more like Christ, more unworldly, more heavenlyminded; and who know that they cannot of themselves make themselves what they want to be.

Therefore ask your own heart and conscience, ask your own self, these questions. "Am I really wishing to be more religious? Am I sorry from my heart for all my sins and faults? Do I wish to give up and utterly forsake and completely conquer, the sins that have mastered me in past times, and that have had the greatest power over me? Am I resolved by God's help to

cast off my favourite sins? Am I in love and charity with all men? Am I longing to love God more and more? Am I, in short, truly, sincerely wishing to be saved by the merits of my Saviour, and so to please Him in my earthly course as to have hope of His mercy on the last great day ?" Ask yourself, I say, these questions, and if you can answer and say, "I do feel all this; I do now purpose by God's grace to forsake my sins, and to serve my Lord more earnestly, more faithfully, more entirely in time to come," then I advise you by all means to become a partaker of the Lord's Supper.

While I would strongly urge you not to come too hastily, so I would advise you not to draw back too fearfully, nor to let unreasonable scruples hinder you from coming. Be not over-forward, or over-bold; at the same time be not over-timid, or over-scrupulous. Though, at first, you may be in a very imperfect state, yet the Feast itself will help you to a better state; and if you continue to take it, you may hope in time to reach a higher and still higher state, to advance step by step in God's favour and in power over yourself, to draw more benefit and more grace from this blessed Sacrament. We must do all things at first imperfectly; but how shall we ever do

them better, if we never make a beginning? As long as we are really in earnest, God will overlook our imperfections and infirmities, and if we persevere in seeking the means of grace which Christ Himself has ordained, we shall make gradual growth in godliness and acceptable service. to be saints all at once. Only let us start on the right way, only let us persevere when we have started, only let us press on and try to improve in the manner and the spirit of doing the Lord's will, and we shall be helped forward by God's Holy Spirit. But if we hold back from the means of grace and wait till we are perfect, we shall never stir a step; we shall be like hungering men holding back from the very bread that would help to make them strong.

Our Lord does not expect us

Of course, you must make careful preparation for that heavenly banquet; you must repent deeply; you must pray fervently; you must examine yourself strictly; and then in faith draw near, in faith kneel down and offer both your soul and body to God, in faith partake of the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

JOHN HENRY PARKER, OXFORD AND LONDON.

A LETTER FROM A CLERGYMAN TO A PARISHIONER ON CERTAIN POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE ATHANASIAN CREED.

MY DEAR F

You tell me that you have several times of late found yourself in company with people, who spoke very vehemently against the Creed of St. Athanasius and the anathemas which it contains, and you ask me to furnish you with some ready and plain answer to their objections. They urge, you say, "that this Creed goes far beyond the Bible in its way of stating the mysteries of the Godhead, that the truth as it is in Jesus is a simple thing, but that the Athanasian Creed is full of abstruse points of theology, and that not one in a hundred of those who say it over can be expected to understand its subtle distinctions.' And then as to what they call the “damnatory clauses," the verses which condemn so emphatically all who dissent from its positions-" Where does Scripture," they ask, " say any thing of the kind? Many people do not find themselves able to believe them, who lead very good lives not

withstanding. And are all they to be condemned eternally? And many more cannot understand them, and many again have never heard of them; and yet the Creed sentences them all in sweeping unqualified language, and declares that without doubt they shall perish everlastingly." In short, the objections you hear put forward so confidently simply amount to this: that this noble Creed, which has been recited in Church so many centuries, is at once unintelligible and uncharitable.

And these charges, my good friend, seem to have made a little impression on you, and you half own to a sort of reluctance at being called, every time this Creed is used, to pronounce such an anathema on any fellow Christians, however misbelieving they may be.

Now to you I would say, first of all, and you will feel the force of the argument-Remember how many years this Creed has been used, without cavil or in spite of it, by the wisest and best Christians that have gone before us. And it is not likely they would have done so, if it had been either unscriptural, or uncharitable. It was drawn up fourteen hundred years back, and it has made part of the Churchservice for nearly twelve hundred years. At the