Excerpt from The Heavenly Feast: Seventh Charge to the Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Delaware, by Alfred Lee, Bishop of the Diocese of Delaware

Correspondent with the great importance of this holy rite, as the express institution of Christ, a visible link connecting the Church of every age with the word incarnate and sojourning upon earth, and its intimate relation to profound and precious experience of the Christian life, is the necessity of clear views of its meaning and design. The richest of God's gifts are most dangerous in their perversion and abuse. Through ignorance, unbelief or superstition, the soul's meat may be come its polson. Ecclesiastical history is fruitful of illustrations of such perils. In regard to this sacred ordinance, the Apostle gave to the Cor inthian Church exceedingly solemn cautions. While we should be careful to remove from the minds of our people the erroneous idea' common ly entertained respecting his meaning, when he says, (as we read in the English Bible), He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh' damnation to himself, - as if he in tended everlasting perdition, and not, as the whole context shows, temporal chastisement, yet is the whole passage a strong testimony to the im importance of a correct and scriptural understand ing of the subject. From wrong interpretations of the words of institution have sprung systems of doctrine, false and fatal. Superstition has madethis sacred observance a field for her wildest fan cies, and a pretext for imposing her heaviest bur dens. Under pretence of reverence to his com mand, the Lord Jesus has been greviously dishon ored. Under color of exactest literal acceptation of his words, the truth as it is in Jesus has been trampled under foot, and pernicious counterfeits have been palmed upon men in place of the pure Heaven-sent gospel.

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