he reads any further, ask God to let the book do him good. He may say this short prayer. "O blessed Jesus, make this book to do me good, and to lead me to understand and love Thy Blessed Sacrament. Amen."

I shall divide what I write into three parts, under three heads.

I. I shall endeavour to explain the nature of this Sacrament.

II. I shall speak of the benefits which it is intended to convey to us.

III. I shall speak of the duty of receiving it, and of some of the excuses which persons constantly make for not coming to it-I shall hope to put some directions how to prepare for it into Part II.

I. As to the nature of this Sacrament, what it is.-This we learn from the accounts given us in the Bible of our Lord's first appointing it. We read these in St. Matt. xxvi. 26-28,

St. Mark xiv. 22-24, St. Luke xxii. 19, 20, 1 Corinthians xi. 23-25. If you read these passages attentively, you will see plainly that our Blessed Lord, as He was sitting at supper with His disciples, only a few hours before Judas betrayed Him, took up some of the bread which was on the table, broke it into pieces, blessed it (probably by laying His Hand on it), and then gave a piece to each one of them, saying to them, "Take, eat, this is My Body." Afterwards, He took up the cup which had wine in it, and He gave the cup to every one of them in turn, saying to them, "This is My Blood." He gave them bread and He gave them wine, and he told them that these things were His Body and His Blood. Now it is plain that there was a sense in which they would not eat His Body, nor drink His Blood. For the very Hand with which He held out to them

the bread was part of His Body, and His Blood was flowing in the veins and arteries of His frame as He sat there; and when they had eaten and drunk what He gave them, He still sat there just as before. And that which they did eat and drink was clearly and plainly Bread and Wine. It is plain then that in some way which we cannot understand, the Bread and Wine were His Body and Blood; and that the disciples did eat Bread and His Body, and did drink Wine and His Blood at the same time. We are quite sure that He gave them His Body and Blood, because He said so; their eyes, and hands, and taste, taught them that they ate and drank Bread and Wine.

This then is the Sacrament: it is Bread and Wine which are broken and poured out, and blessed in Christ's name; and it is Christ's Blessed Body and Blood. How it is both these at

once we cannot tell, nor need we care now to find out: it is quite enough for us to know that He said it was so, and we may believe Him. We are well assured that we do not eat such flesh as is on our own bodies, for we know that we eat bread. But we know for certain that we do eat His Flesh, for He says, "He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him."* We eat His Flesh by faith; that is, we believe that He gives His Flesh and His Blood to us, when we eat the Bread and drink the Wine as He has bidden us.

It is exceedingly good of God to give us this gift in this way.

For if He had bidden us take His Blessed Son's Body and Blood to feed upon in our souls, we might justly have made answer to Him, that they are so far above our reach that we cannot possiJohn vi. 56.

bly get them. But now he has given us the Bread and Wine in this SacraWe can

ment to bring Them to us. get this Bread and Wine; they are not too high for us to reach; so we can have Christ's Body and Blood by taking this Sacrament properly, which, as I hope to show, we all can do.

So much then for the nature of this Sacrament. It is the means by which we, poor miserable creatures, are to take and feed upon the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and to pray in His Name. Read now St. John vi. 51 -58. This Sacrament is to be taken especially "in remembrance of" Christ; that is, when we come to It, we are to think of Christ dying for us on the Cross, and to bring the remembrance of His Death before God. By this Sacrament, we put God in mind of what Christ did for us, and beg Him, for the sake of His Precious Death, to