that Catechism, even if it convinces you of many sins, and makes you sadly ashamed of yourselves again and again; for, believe me, it will prove your best safeguard in doctrine, your best teacher in practice, in these dangerous days—­ days in which every man who believes that right is right, and wrong is wrong, has need to pray with all his heart—­’From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word and commandments; good Lord, deliver us!’

SERMON XIV.  THE ROCK OF AGES

(Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)

1 Corinthians x. 4.  They drank of that Spiritual Rock which followed them; and that Rock was Christ.

St. Paul has been speaking to the Corinthians about the Holy Communion.

In this text, St. Paul is warning the Corinthians about it.  He says, ’You may be Christian men; you may have the means of grace; you may come to the Communion and use the means of grace; and yet you may become castaways.’  St. Paul himself says, in the very verse before, ’I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection:  lest . . . .  I myself should be a castaway.’  Look, he says then, ’at the old Jews in the wilderness.  They all partook of God’s grace:  but they were not all saved.  They were all baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea.  They all ate the same spiritual meat, the manna from heaven.  They all drank the same spiritual drink, the water out of the rock in Horeb.  And yet with many of them God was not well pleased;’ for they were overthrown—­their corpses were scattered far and wide—­in the wilderness.  The spiritual meat and the spiritual drink could not keep them alive, if they sinned, and deserved death.  ‘So,’ says St. Paul, ’with you.  You are members of Christ’s body.  The cup of blessing which we bless, is the communion of the blood of Christ; the bread which we break, is the communion of the body of Christ:’  but beware, they will not save you, if you sin.  Nothing will save you, if you sin.  If you lust after evil things, as those old Jews did; if you are idolaters, as they were; if you are profligates, as they were; if you tempt Christ, as they did; if you murmur against God, as they murmured, you will be destroyed like them.

Note here two things.  First, that St. Paul says that we really receive Christ in the Holy Communion.  He does not say, as some do, that the Communion is merely a remembrance of Christ’s death.  He says that the faithful verily and indeed receive Christ’s body and blood in the Sacrament.  He says so, distinctly, plainly, literally; and if that be not true, his whole argument goes for nothing, and will not stand.  The Jews, he says, drank of the spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ; and so he says to you.  But that did not save them from the punishment of their sins, when they went and sinned afresh:  neither will it save you.