So, dear brethren, though our external celebration of this rite be dashed, as it always is, with much ignorance and with feeble faith; and though we gather round this table as the first generation of Israelites did round the passover, of which it is the successor, with staff in hand and loins girded, and have to eat it often with bitter herbs mingled, and though there be at our sides empty places, yet even in our clouded and partial apprehension, and in the imperfections of this outward type, we may see a gracious shadow of what is waiting for us when we shall go no more out, and all empty places shall be filled, and the bitter herbs shall be changed for the asphodel of Heaven and the sweet flowerage round the throne of God, and we shall feast upon the Christ, and in the loftiest experience of the utmost glories of the Heavens, shall remember the bitter Cross and agony as that which has bought it all.  ‘This do in remembrance of Me.’  May it be a symbol of our inmost life, and the prophecy of the Heaven to which we each shall come!

THE UNIVERSAL GIFT

   ’The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man
   to profit withal.’—­1 COR. xii. 7.

The great fact which to-day[1] commemorates is too often regarded as if it were a transient gift, limited to those on whom it was first bestowed.  We sometimes hear it said that the great need of the Christian world is a second Pentecost, a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of God and the like.  Such a way of thinking and speaking misconceives the nature and significance of the first Pentecost, which had a transient element in it, but in essence was permanent.  The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, and the strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient.  The rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it.  The tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from the heads.  The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent.  But that which these things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from a great reservoir, and the sluice was let down again after it, but as if it were the entrance into a dry bed, of a rushing stream, whose first outgush was attended with noise, but which thereafter flows continuous and unbroken.  If churches or individuals are scant of that gift, it is not because it has not been bestowed, but because it has not been accepted.

My text tells us two things:  it unconditionally and broadly asserts that every Christian possesses this great gift—­the manifestation is given to every man; and then it asserts that the gift of each is meant to be utilised for the good of all.  ’The manifestation is given to every man to profit withal.’

I. Let me, then, say a word or two, to begin with, about the universality of this gift.