Prayer, and read, inftead of "Give us "this day our daily bread;"-" Give us this day the BREAD OF LIFE, the Bread' neceffary to our fpiritual existence; that is, vouchfafe unto us nourishment to our fouls, the influence of the Holy Spirit; without which, though our animal part may vegetate, we are affured by thy Son our Saviour, there is no life in us; none of that life which, affimilates us to the divine, and which, through thy mercy will conduct us to life eternal. Therefore we beseech thee to feed us with fuch food this day, and every day; but more particularly when we come to thy Table, and take the material bread in remembrance that Chrift died for us, and feed on it in our hearts by faith and thanksgiving."

It appears to me, that this mode of interpretation adds greatly to the fublimity and fignificancy of the Lord's Prayer; and at the fame time gives us reason to expect the Bread of Life in the inftituted rite of the Eucharift; which has been called by divines of the first character, as I have! before

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before observed, the Sacrament of Nutrition. The claufe means then, in its true fenfe as follows, "Oh! leave us not deftitute of the Bread that comes down from Heaven, without which whosoever liveth is dead before thee."

With respect to the next claufe in this most interefting prayer: "And for"give us our trefpaffes, as we forgive "them that trefpafs against us," I know not that divines have confidered it as particularly referring to the other great benefit annexed to the Holy Communion, the remiffion of fins; but as it appears, from what has been already advanced in this Section, that the fourth clause, and indeed the whole of the prayer was, with great appearance of reafon, appropriated to the Sacrament; I have no hesitation in saying, that this claufe must have a particular reference to the remiffion of fins, annexed to the worthy reception of the Eucharistical elements. It is placed next to the petition for the Bread of Life, or Grace; and the juxta pofition

pofition and connection by a copulative conjunction, induce me to think that our Saviour meant to combine, in these two clauses, the two great benefits of the Sacrament, grace and pardon. This interpretation of both claufes appears to me to difplay a connection, a harmony, a beauty, and an importance in the prayer, adequate to the dignity of its Author.

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SECTION XV.

Farther Confiderations on referring the Petition for Bread, in the Lord's Prayer, to the Bread of Life, Spoken of in St. John's Sixth Chapter,-that is, to the Bread of the Eucharist, or to Divine Influence.

N their journey through the Wilder

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ness, during forty years, the Jews had been fed from Heaven with manna: it was perfectly natural, therefore, that a people, on whom fo miraculous a supply muft have made a deep and indelible impreffion, fhould give the name of Bread from Heaven to all influence and affiftance which they believed divine. It is no wonder that our Saviour, addreffing a people whofe minds were fo ftrongly impreffed with the idea of heavenly food, fhould call the celeftial favours, which he had to bestow on them, by the name of

Bread;

Bread; a figure which, from its familiarity to their minds, almoft ceafed to be figurative. No wonder he taught them to pray for fpiritual or heavenly fuccours, under the name of Bread, that manna which their forefathers received from Heaven, at once nourishing their bodies. and confirming their faith. He condefcended to affume the very name himself, and to fay, "I am the Bread of Life." To the minds of the Jews there could be nothing harsh in this metaphor: it was their perverfenefs only which led them to understand the term in the grofs and literal fenfe. They could not, without peculiar tardiness or perverfeness, misunderstand it in the prayer of our Lord; because it was accompanied with an epithet (rendered from the Hebrew Epioufios) which at once fhewed that it was to be confidered as the food neceffary to fpiritual exiftence: fince oufia, whence the epithet is derived, is not the proper word for the life of the body, but the life of the foul.