if we are secretly resolving, by
God's grace, to serve him in earnest, the hearts around us are, no
doubt, resolving the same. There is the consciousness, (when and where
else can we enjoy it?) that we are in sympathy with all present; that,
coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual character, one
and the same current of feeling is working within us all. And, if
feeling this of our sympathy with one another, how strongly is it
heightened by the thought of what Christ has done for us all! We are all
loving him, because he loved us all; we are going together to celebrate
his death, because he died for us all; we are resolving all to serve
him, because his Holy Spirit is given to us all, and we are all brought
to drink of the same Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a
little forward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall
again be meeting one another, in very different relations; even in those
common indifferent relations of ordinary life which are connected so
little with Christ. Is it impossible to think, that, although we shall
meet without these walls in very different circumstances, yet that we
have seen each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together? if the
recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live in our
neighbour? If we are labouring to keep alive our good resolutions made
at Christ's table, why should we think that others have forgotten them?
We do not talk of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not
our neighbour's silence also conceal within his breast the same good
purposes? At any rate, we may and ought to regard him as ranged on our
side in the great struggle of life; and if outward circumstances do not
so bring us together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy,
yet we may presume that it still exists; and this consciousness may
communicate to the ordinary relations of life that very softness which
they need, in order to make them Christian.

Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not approach to the
Lord's table. With some it is owing to their youth; with others to a
mistaken notion of their youth; with others to some less excusable
reason, perhaps, but yet to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and
hope. But having once felt what it is to be only with those who are met
really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want this feeling is
proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to think that our neighbour does
not loo