N accordance with the happy custom at Mildmay, the friends assembled in Conference united on Friday afternoon in remembering the Lord's death and coming again in the breaking of bread. The large hall was crowded in every part, by those desiring to share in the privilege of communion and fellowship.

The proceedings commenced with the singing of hymn No. 26"By Christ redeemed, in Christ restored, We keep the memory adored."

The Rev. A. M. W. CHRISTOPHER then led in prayer, closing with a portion of the Litany, in which a large number joined audibly. Matthew xxvi. 20-35 was then read, after which the following address was given by the

Rev. J. OSWALD DYKES, D.D.

Dear fellow-communicants, there is no need that we should remind one another at this solemn hour, gathered where we are around the table of our Saviour's dying love, with what feelings of deep reverence and humility it becomes us to approach this sacred ordinance. For there can be but one feeling in all our hearts, a feeling of trembling awe, of holy fear lest we come unready and unfit; lest coming to this sacred ordinance, gathering

round these memorials of Jesus' love, there should be amongst us so much as one in all this great company unworthy to appear; so much as one upon whom our blessed Lord's eye must be cast with disfavour and with judgment, as His eye was cast on that single traitor at the first table; and lest that one should be myself. Let each of us put to his own heart this solemn and searching question, which circled round the first table of communion, "Lord, is it I?" My dear fellow-communicants, those of us who have longest known the Lord Jesus, those of us who have reached the deepest intimacy with Him and have done the most in His service, although we may not accuse ourselves of conscious disloyalty or dishonesty, have yet need to abash ourselves in the very dust, when we come to the holy table, because of our felt unworthiness.

What a singular, sacred honour the Lord is conferring on you and me at this hour in gathering us creatures of the dust" beneath His banner of love! Is not this of itself a very urgent voice to our hearts, calling us to shame for our sins, and to humility in the presence of so great mercies? For here we are assembled as guests of God, as those whom He has admitted to a table of fellowship with Himself, as His friends. In these days of conference we have been hearing of the terms, the nature and the incentives to the service of our dear Lord, and it must have been a very unprofitable conference indeed, if it has not quickened in all our hearts a sense of our shortcomings as His servants employed to go forth on His errands of mercy to men. But we are here to-day as those called to a still more holy, a nearer, more privileged, and more sacred fellowship with Himself. And the voice which seems to me to reach each of our hearts just now is this, "Henceforth I call you not servants. . . . but I have called you friends." For we are here as those whom He admits, not now to wait His bidding at His feet, but to sit with Him at His table; as those to whom He addresses the words, "Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved."

Nay, more wonderful still, He realizes that picture which He Himself has given us in the Gospel, of the condescension of the master who, when he found his servants watchful, invited them first to sit down at the table, and girded himself to serve his servants. Here are we, a large company, and all of us would count it our supreme honour and blessedness to go and do at His dear bidding the most menial or servile office of personal

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ministry, if we might. But we are His guests. He has spread for us His family table; He has bidden us sit down, that He Himself may come forth, and, girding Himself (as after supper He did with a towel in the days of His ministry), may wash our souls in His precious blood, may sustain our hearts with the strength of meat, His flesh broken for us, and stay our weary spirits with wine, His blood poured forth, His love stronger than death. So He comes forth to serve; and in that ministering He has put such signal honour on our undeserving heads, heaping coals of fire on our heads, as may well crush us to the dust at His dear feet in lowliness and self-abasement, utter selfreproach and self-condemnation. For if His words of censure

and reproach be terrible to the conscience, more humbling surely are His gracious words when He comes forth to comfort and to honour His unworthy followers.

Surely we have cause to-day to feel thankful that He meets us, who are the guests at His table, with no reproach! Our own hearts reproach us. We condemn ourselves as we remember how poor our ministry has been, how full of fault, of neglect, of omission, of sin, of inconsistencies. We recollect a thousand things, about which we are ready to write bitter, bitter things against ourselves; yet not one of them does our tender Lord write here to-day. Are there any who have come here to-day trembling, almost afraid to come? Any in these pews who have had to do violence to their own self-distrust and to the upbraiding of their own wounded spirit and accusing conscience, fearing lest they should meet scant welcome! Oh, dear broken-hearted brother or sister, the Lord who cometh forth hath no reproach; He comes to meet you with as gracious a welcome as if you had been, what your love desires you had been, faithful in all things!

He comes, as a King to meet His guests; and it is a day of banqueting and of feasting, but upbraiding He hath none. With both hands full He comes, and He hath royal gifts to give at the table of His love. We feel the presence of the King among us to-day, dearly beloved. And it seems to me, as He passes round from pew to pew and from soul to soul, He not only has the word to each, "Be of good cheer, thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee," but also this right royal and loving word, said once by a king to a petitioner at his table: "What is thy petition and it shall be granted thee, and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be per

formed." For the Lord Jesus Christ uses this blessed table as a ministry of grace and help to hungering, waiting, longing souls; not only assuring us of the forgiveness of sins by these shadows and emblems, but opening up the whole of His treasury of love to us, and bidding us ask what we will and it shall be granted us. Therefore, while we wait here at His table, and seek to eat and drink in memory of Him, let each one of us open up the whole of his large and long-cherished desires to Him. Each of us hath his own need. Oh, dear heart, that knowest thine own complaint, speak it to the Lord! Oh, mourner, who hast thy regrets, tell them to thy Lord, that He may solace thee! Oh, faint-hearted worker, despondent because of ill success, tell it, tell it all to the Lord, that He may gird thy loins for labour! Oh, weak heart, groaning under temptation and conscious of shortcoming, tell it all to the Lord, that He may bid thee be of good cheer; for His grace is sufficient for thy weakness! Whatever thou hast to speak of, tell it all, and gifts shall flow forth from His blessed hand. Oh, let us ask to-day something that shall send us forth from His table richer Christians, stronger for labour, fitter to endure the conflict, with more consecration, more love, than we have ever left His banqueting-house with before! Tell Him all the variety of our great need, and the Lord has a fit supply for us all in no scant measure, because it is Himself in all His boundless fulness.

If I might venture to single out any, amid the multiplicity of our needs, there are one or two I would suggest as appropriate we should ask for at the closing of a Conference like this.

And first, my brethren, shall we not ask now and here that, through His gracious communicating of Himself to us, He would give us more perfect consecration of ourselves for His service, that from this table we may be able to go surrendered to Him in heart, and will, and talents, and means, and strength, and time, and life, as we have never been before? Surely these emblems of the table call for it. They remind us of His ungrudged offering, keeping nothing back. He gave Himself for us. He who had a universe at His disposal has given Himself, to the last drop of His life's blood, for sinful men, for you and me. And by this self-offering, this unreserved surrender and consecration of Himself upon the altar of His cross to satisfy the justice of the Father, for your life and mine, He

pleads with us to-day to present ourselves in unreserved surrender to Him. Whatsoever has been kept back from Him we will keep back no longer; whatsoever we may lay at His feet we are here to lay it to-day. Thou, Lord, who gavest Thyself for me, I give myself to Thee. And as in my interest Thou didst keep back nothing that is Thine, I would, Lord, keep back nothing Thou dost need. Oh, take me, use me, exhaust me, spend me in Thy service, Lord of mine!

The other thing we may ask to-day from Him is a fuller, richer measure of brotherly love. We are gathered here, a large company, at a table which is not ours, but His; it is the family table of the household of God, and it is the meetingplace for the brotherhood in Christ. It is spread for all the Father's children, and at this place, as we pledge one another in the winecup that seals the salvation of our individual soul, and the salvation of us all, we pledge ourselves to be thus brethren and sisters, man to man and woman to woman. Let us see that, as the bread and the wine pass from pew to pew and from hand to hand, we long to realize individually and collectively our unity, not only with those sitting at the feast, but with the whole living Church of Christ the wide world over, as those linked in a bond not of man's forging or of man's prescribing, but of the Lord's fashioning and the Lord's prescribing. It is for us to see that we enter into the meaning of it, and do desire in our hearts to have a genuine, sincere, practical, Catholic love for all Christian men and women; not for those only who hold our creed, or belong to our branch of Christ's Church, but for those who do not in every particular what we like, for the most remote, the most diverse, for the furthest alienated by creeds, or confessions, or diverse forms, if they but love the Lord Jesus Christ; for there is a bond between them and us far more really intimate than forms or creeds. It consists in the common life of Christ given for each of us, in the single death for all our sins, and in the one love shed abroad in all our hearts by the one Holy Spirit He has given to us, which is for us a living, bright reality, to draw into our hearts the living fulness of the life of Christ. We are to eat and drink forgiveness first; but with forgiveness we are to eat and drink life-life for our souls, the life which is strength for duty and joy in tribulation-the strength of the bread, the joy of the wine: Christ our strength, Christ our joy. As we realize Him fully, and as we receive Him sincerely, as we take Him in all His royal and divine