TRACTS FOR THE TIMES
5. Remark may be made upon the very circumstance, that, in the Christian Covenant, Standing Ordinances are made the channels of its peculiar blessings. The first use of Ordinances is that of witnessing for the Truth, as above mentioned. Now their sacramental character is perfectly distinct from this, and is doubtless a great honour put on them. Had we been left to conjecture, we might have supposed, that in the more perfect or spiritual system, the gifts of grace would rather have been attached to certain high moral performances; whereas they are deposited in mere positive ordinances, as if to warn us against dropping the ceremonial of Christianity.
This last observation leads to the brief notice of an objection sometimes brought against the necessity of a Christian's attention to Ordinances, grounded on the notion of the spiritual character of Christianity. Now,—1. Are we quite sure that we are more spiritual, and more independent of the external helps of the Church, than Samuel,—Hezekiah,—Josiah,—and Daniel?—2. What does our own experience say? Do we see the best and holiest of men becoming most independent and regardless of them, or the very reverse? 3. Are the feelings of love, affection, reverence, tender remembrance, which are entertained towards such places and things as are associated in our minds with the persons who are the primary objects of these feelings, inconsistent with spiritual-mindedness? Are not the Ordinances which Christ and His Apostles have appointed, the bond of perpetuated unity to the Church, a precious and mysterious medium for the "Communion of Saints" in all countries and ages? No one among us would think it a mark of weakness to cherish with attachment and respect a Bible which his father had used for half a century, from which he had learned the words of life and the way of salvation. And is it not a soothing and elevating privilege, to feel that we, even at this distant day, are allowed to come and walk in the very steps of all the holy men of old, the glorious company of the Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs, to take that narrow path, whose farther end they have now found to be in heaven? In walking over the very ground where the holy Apostles lived and walked as Bishops, or in following our Lord Himself into Gethsemane, along the beach of the sea of
