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 day of the week, it proves also that it was for the purpose of breaking bread.

Such is the plain account which the Scriptures present to us as to the form and design of this ordinance. That it is a solemn institution no believer will question; for every service connected with the duty and worship we owe to God as our Creator, our preserver, and merciful redeemer, must be solemn and important; but it will be found, that in so far as we exalt any particular religious duty, we are very much in danger of depreciating others. The Lord's Supper has been distinguished as the most solemn approach to God, as a sealing ordinance, or devoting ourselves to the Lord, Nothing of this kind is indicated in the Scriptures. If we turn to that institution in the Old Testament, the, which is considered as analogous to that in the New Testament, we find it was expressly appointed to commemorate that deliverance granted to the Israelites, when the destroying Angel passed through the land of Egypt, and slew all the first born of the Egyptians. In like manner Jesus wrought out a great deliverance for his people, in redeeming them from the curse of that law which they had broken. In the character of the sinner's substitute, he obeyed the law in all it precepts: he magnified it and made it honourable, and brought in an everlasting righteousness, in which Jehovah is well pleased, and by which the ungodly are justified. The Lord knew the hearts of his disciples, he knew how readily they might forget him and his work,—and be knew also, that unless they kept them in memory, they neither would live by him nor to him; therefore he appointed this ordinance, not for any complex or mystical design, but, simply as a remembrancer of his dying love.

This ordinance, like Baptism, has been awfully perverted by superstition; and like it has been deeply involved in obscurity and error. Within the course of a few centuries, we find the simple rite of an assembly of Christians eating bread and drinking wine, in