s principle when he first
communicated than he has now (probably not so deep), but his want of
acquaintance with the Service kept him from irreverence, indifference,
and wandering thoughts: but now this accidental safeguard is removed,
and as he has not succeeded in acquiring any habitual reverence from
former seasons of communicating, and has no clear knowledge of the
nature of the Sacrament to warn and check him, he is exposed to his own
ordinary hardness of heart and unbelief, in circumstances much more
perilous than those in which they are ordinarily displayed. If it is a
sin to neglect God in the world, it is a greater sin to neglect Him in
church. Now is the time when he is in danger of not discerning the
Lord's Body, of receiving the gift of life as a thing of course,
without awe, gratitude, and self-abasement. And the more constant he
is in his attendance at the sacred rite, the greater will be his risk;
his _risk_, I say; that is, if he neglects to be jealous over himself,
to watch himself narrowly, and to condemn and hate in himself the
faintest risings of coldness and irreverence; for, of course, if he so
acts, the less will be his risk, and the greater will be his security
that his heart will not betray him. But I speak of those who are not
sufficiently aware of their danger, and these are many.

Here, too, let me mention another sin of a similar character into which
communicants are apt to fall; _viz._ a forgetfulness, after
communicating, that they have communicated. Even when we resist the
coldness which frequent communion may occasion, and strive to possess
our minds in as profound a seriousness as we felt when the rite was new
to us, even then there is often a painful difference between our
feelings before we have attended it, and after. We are diligent in
preparation, we are careless in retrospect; we dismiss from our memory
what we cherished in our expectations; we forget that we ever hoped and
feared. But consider; when we have solemn thoughts about Holy
Communion only till we have come to it, what does this imply, but that
we imagine that we have received the benefit of it once for all, as a
thing done and over, and that there is nothing more to seek? This is
but a formal way of worshipping; as if we had wiped off a writing which
was against us, and there was an end of the matter. But blessed are
those servants who are ever expecting Him, who is ever coming to them;
whether He come "at even