were expelled; and if otherwise, were regarded with the forbearance which the imperfection of all claimed. To separate from her communion those whom she acknowledged to have communion with God, she considered a usurpation to be abhorred. There were also, as from the necessity of the case there must always be in the present world, distinct societies of Christians formed for the worship of God in the several places of their residence. Thus was the church of God at Rome, at Corinth, at Ephesus. But these were distinct only in the sense of their being parts of a whole built together as the temple of the living God on their common foundation. "The church," says Cyprian, "is one, which, by reason of its fecundity, is extended into a multitude, in the same manner as the rays of the sun, however numerous, constitute but one light and as the branches of a tree, however many, are attached to one trunk, which is supported by its tenacious root: and when various rivers flow from the same fountain, though number is diffused by the redundant supply of waters, unity is preserved in their origin." That such is the divine constitution of the church is sufficiently evident from the names by which its members collectively are in the New Testament so uniformly distinguished: "the church""the body of Christ"-" the house of the living God." And how often do the apostles call the attention of their brethren to the fact as one of high practical importance! When they would put down a rising faction; or repress feelings of pride and emulation; or shut out the spirit of party, they say: "As the body is one and hath many members and all the members of that one body, being many are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit. For the body is not one member, but many." Not only is this union essential, but it is peculiar. No other on earth is so near and sacred. Nor is it possible that those things concerning which any of those who are embraced in it may differ from each other, should be important, when compared with those things concerning which they are agreed. "There is one body and one spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." Hence their love to each other also is peculiar and distinctive. It is a divine complacencya love which is not to be distinguished in its nature from their

common attachment to their glorious head. They not only ought, but they actually do love one another in this manner. They all do this so far as they are what they profess to be. Only so far as the church is in this manner one, does it deserve the name of a church of Christ. Love is the badge of its profession; the principle of its religion; its nature and its glory. Of all this the supper of the Lord is a divinely constituted token and pledge. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ?" That is, the symbol of our joint participation of the blessings procured by his blood? "The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? for we being many are one body and one bread." With divine wisdom is it adapted to the end. Such is its appropriate significancy that no unbeliever,-none but a sincere and devoted servant of Christ, can partake of it, without belying all the sentiments and feelings of his heart; and such at the same time is its simplicity, that it fixes precisely on the sentiments and feelings which are common to believers without any allusion to those in which they may be supposed to differ. Here the christian profession is brought to a point. Here, then, all those who intelligently and heartily adopt that profession are to meet as they have opportunity; and, dismissing for the time their individual and conventional partialities, to pay their common honors at the Savior's feet, and bind themselves to each other as the common subjects of his reign and heirs of his glory. To refuse admission to this communion any of those who give reasonable evidence of their spiritual participation of it, is to belie their profession and pervert the ordinance from its sacred design; is to rend the body of Christ and to do violence to sympathies between his members which his own spirit has created; is to magnify the causes of their difference into a relative importance which they do not possess, and proportionably sink those in which they are agreed.

3. It is the duty of Christians universally, however erroneous or sinful they may be, to partake, as they have opportunity, in this ordinance, and therefore they ought to be received. The injunction, "Do this in remembrance of me," is plain and positive. It was addressed to the apostles as the founders and representatives of the church. It is therefore binding upon the whole church. Nor is the obligation limited to times and places. If the Saviour's command binds a disciple to come to his table when it is spread in the particular branch of his church

to which he belongs, it equally binds him to come, when it is spread in another branch, though on the opposite side of the globe. There also the command meets him, "Do this in remembrance of me." He dare not therefore refuse; and who has the right to debar him? It were absurd to suppose that anything can make it the duty of the church to debar him from an act which it is his duty to perform.

You are a slaveholder, and are convinced that, in present circumstances you ought to hold your slaves under your personal influence and control. You consider your brethren who sit in judgment on your conduct in this relation and pronounce you guilty of wrong, as interfering with that which does not belong to them; breaking the charities which ought to be preserved between you as fellow-citizens and fellow-christians; and giving countenance to a system of measures which tends to spread discontentment and rebellion in domestic relations. Be it so that you judge rightly. You are permitted to debate the cause with them; and by every argument in your power, persuade them to desist. But if you fail to convince them, you are not therefore to insist on their silence, as the indispensable condition of your christian communion with them, unless at the same time it appear that they are not of those to whom the Saviour says, "This do in remembrance of me." Or, on the other hand, you consider the system of slavery to be repugnant to the principles and spirit of Christianity; and hence infer that slaveholding in every case is sinful. But you do not therefore decide that no slaveholder is a Christian. You are aware that such is the perverting influence of custom and education, and such in many cases are the difficulties under existing laws, in the way of emancipation, that slaveholders, criminal as they may be, may nevertheless not be supposed in every instance to sin wilfully, in refusing or delaying for a season, to dissolve the relation. "It is not for me to decide," you say, "that this may not be the case. Many of them may, for aught that I know, be good Christians, and their churches, christian churches; and I am bound in charity to consider those to be such concerning whom the contrary is not proved." You then consider it their duty to commemorate the death of Christ in those churches. But if it is their duty to do this among themselves, it is equally their duty to do the same when occasionally present with you, and would it not also be your duty to reciprocate the fellowship were you present on a sacramental occasion with

them? Most certainly, unless the command of the Redeemer which creates the obligation, entirely loses its power over you both, on an exchange of places; and this, although in both places you are only in different parts of the same church, and the table that is spread in both is equally the table of the Lord. But if it is their duty to come, you can have no warrant to hinder them. They may claim their seat by their Lord's grant and injunction, and you have no power to shut them away. When he positively commands, come, it is at your peril if you step in and say, forbear. The argument, it will be perceived, rests wholly in the assumption that you acknowledge them to be Christians, or at least do not decide the contrary. You receive them as you do all other members of the church on the assumption that their profession is sincere, till the contrary is proved; and that the bare act of slaveholding is not proof of the contrary, because there are circumstances in which those who adhere to it may be servants of God. Take the other ground; say that slaveholding is absolutely and universally a disqualification for the table of the Lord; and that it is not the duty of any one so long as he continues in it to approach that hallowed scene either at home or elsewhere; strike from the records of the faithful the many thousands who practise it, and call their churches synagogues of Satan; then indeed, you are consistent with yourself in refusing their communion.

4. There are injunctions of the apostles on the subject of christian communion which justify the same conclusion. These injunctions, indeed, have not for their object the communion of Christians in the sacramental supper particularly. With this view there was no occasion for them. In this sense Christians in their day never dreamed of breaking communion. But there were in some of the churches divisions of sentiment and feeling, tending to an open rupture, and encouraged by false guides, which it required all the wisdom and zeal of the apostles to repress. It is in their addresses with direct reference to these, that we find the great principle on which we have insisted, recognized. "Him that is weak in the faith receive ye; but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things; another who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not, judge him that eateth; for God hath received him." The case was this. The church at Rome consisted partly of Jews. Accustomed to the distinction of clean

and unclean animals, and cherishing also an abhorrence of all participation with idolaters, many of them retained the same scrupulousness after their conversion to the christian faith; so that lest purchasing their meats in markets where the flesh of heathen sacrifices and of unclean animals was exposed indiscriminately with others they should ignorantly offend, they abstained from meats of every kind, and subsisted on vegetables alone. Others understanding the ceremonial law to have been superseded by the gospel, had no such scruples. There was the same difference also in regard to days which that law had consecrated; and hence naturally resulted mutual jealousies and recriminations. It requires no effort of the imagination to conceive of the one class judging the other as sensualists, enemies to the law of Moses and pro-idolatry men; and these retorting the insinuations with the charge of ignorance, legality, bigotry, fanaticism and superstition. The apostle enjoined the abandonment of all such harsh censures and contemptuous epithets, and the suppression of the feelings which dictated them. Him that was weak in the faith, they were not to despise on account of his weakness, but to receive to the bosom of christian kindness and affection;-to receive not for the purpose of entering into altercation with him on points of difference, but for interchanges of fellowship on subjects of agreement; leaving him the same liberty which they, each for himself claimed, that of serving God in their own way. The ground of this decision was, not that the subjects in debate were matters of indifference, for they were not such in reality, and were very far from being such in the estimation of the parties concerned; but that they were not fundamental. On the one side they were deemed important as the purity of God's worship and the obligation of his law; and on the other, important as the truth of the gospel, and the freedom which it gives from a burdensome yoke of bondage; but neither could pretend that the preferences of the other were inconsistent with the faith of the gospel, and acceptance with God; and therefore on the ground of their common faith they were to meet in the full flow of those reciprocal affections which it was suited to inspire. "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth; for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth; yea, he shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand. One man esteemeth one day above