past sin is humbling us, the same shame is working in our brethren’s bosoms; if we are secretly resolving, by God’s grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no doubt, resolving the same.  There is the consciousness, (when and where else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that, coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one and the same current of feeling is working within us all.  And, if feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all!  We are all loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought to drink of the same Spirit.  Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so little with Christ.  Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our neighbour?  If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made at Christ’s table, why should we think that others have forgotten them?  We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us.  May not our neighbour’s silence also conceal within his breast the same good purposes?  At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy, yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which they need, in order to make them Christian.

Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the Lord’s table.  With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and hope.  But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is proportionably raised.  Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does not look upon us as fellow Christians? is it something cold to feel that he regards us only in those common worldly relations which leave men in heart so far asunder?  Then let us take heed that we do not ourselves feel so towards him.  We have learnt to judge more truly, to feel more justly, of our relations to every one who bears Christ’s name:  if we forget this, we have no excuse; for we have been at Christ’s table, and have been taught what Christians are to