Yes, believe it.  It is Christ in the child which makes it speak the truth; Christ in the child which makes it shrink from whatever it has been told is wrong.  It is Christ in the young man, which fills him with lofty aspirations, hopes of bettering the world around him, hopes of training his soul to be all that it can be, and of putting forth all his powers in the service of Christ.  It is Christ in the middle-aged man, which makes him strong in good works, labouring patiently, wisely, and sturdily; so that having drunk of the living waters himself, they may flow out of him again to others in good deeds; a fountain springing up in him to an eternal life of goodness.  It is Christ in the old man, which makes him look on with calm content while his own body and mind decay, knowing that the kingdom of God cannot decay; for Christ is ruling it in righteousness; and all will be well with him, and with his children after him, and with all mankind, and all heaven and earth, if they themselves only will it, long after he has been gathered to his fathers.

Yes, such a man knows in whom he has believed.  He knows that the spiritual Rock has been following him through all his wanderings in this weary world; and that that Rock is Christ.  He can recollect how, again and again, at his Sabbath haltings in his life’s journey, it was to him in the Holy Communion as to the Israelites of old in their haltings in the wilderness, when the priests of Jehovah cried to the mystic rock, ‘Flow forth, O fountain,’ and the waters flowed.  So can he recollect how, in Holy Communion, there flowed into his soul streams of living water, the water of life, quenching that thirst of his soul, which no created thing could slake; the water of life; of Christ’s life, which is the light of men, shewing them what they ought to be and do; the life which is the light; the life which is according to the eternal and divine reason; the life of wisdom; which is the life of love; which is the life of justice; which is the life of Christ; which is the life of God.

But if these things are so—­and so they are, for Christ has said it, St. Paul has said it, St. John has said it—­but if these things are so, will they not teach us much about Holy Communion, how we may receive it worthily, and how unworthily?

If what we receive in the Communion be Christ himself, the good Christ who is to make us good; then how can we receive it worthily, if we do not hunger and thirst after goodness?  If we do not come thither, longing to be made good, and sanctified, then we come for the wrong thing, to the wrong place.  We are like those Corinthians who came to the Lord’s supper not to be made good men, but to exalt their own spiritual self-conceit; and so only ate and drank their own damnation, not discerning the Lord’s body, that it was a holy body, a body of righteousness and goodness.

But if we come hungering and thirsting to be made good men, then we come for the right thing, to the right place.  Then we need not stay away, because we feel ourselves intolerably burdened with many sins; that will be our very reason for coming, that we may be cleansed from our sins—­cleansed not only from their guilt, but from their power; and cry, in spirit and in truth, as we kneel at that holy table—­