A Manual for Communicants' Classes - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... 1. 'The Office of the Holy Communion has several stages of approach into its innermost sanctuary.' It has 'fence within fence, preparation within preparation ' (G.). This we may call the first approach. 2. Give us this day our daily Bread, even 'the Living Bread which cometh down from Heaven,' that 'a man may eat thereof and not die,' St. John vi. 51, 50. For so the primitive Fathers generally expounded this petition (Wh.). Coming into the Presence of God, Whose Eyes are as a flame of fire, and Who trieth the reins and the hearts, and being about to receive our dear Lord the King of kings into our souls and bodies, we here pray Him to cleanse us, and to prepare our hearts before Him, that they may be throughly furnished and rightly prepared for so great a Guest. So Psalmist, 'I will wash my hands in innocency, O Lord; and so will I go to Thine Altar' (Ps. xxvi. 6). 3. Magnify, i.e. 'tell forth His greatness. The Eucharistic character of the service is already recognised ' (D.). Turning to the people. Why? Because hitherto he has been looking another way, has been turning from the people, and facing East, as speaking unto God. Quite right that Priest should turn to the people when he speaks to them for God in Exhortations, Sermons, Lessons, Epistles, and Gospels; but when he speaks to God for them in Prayer, Thanksgiving, and Praise, then it is only meet and right that all--Priest and people--should turn the same way, and look towards God. The Bishops replied well to Puritan objectors to Eastward position: 'When the Priest speaks to the people, it is fitting that he turn to them: but when he speaks for them to God, it is equally fitting that he turn the other way, i.e. East, as they do.' 4. The Ten Commandments in this position are peculiar to the English ...