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Excerpt from A Charge, Delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Diocese of Peterborough, at His Primary Visitation, October, 1872 But more important, infinitely, than even the frequent week-day Services, or the observance of the greater Festivals, is the frequent celebration of the Holy Communion. If daily prayer be the rule, fre quent Communion is assuredly the spirit and intent of our Church's Communion office. When our Church requires every Parishioner to Communicate at least three times in the year, she certainly never intended that no one of them should have the power of Communicating more frequently than this. This is the minimum' of observance that she enjoins; it surely is not the maximum of privilege that she provides for her children. It surely never was her mind that their souls should be strengthened and refreshed by the Body and Blood of Christ but three times in the year, as I grieve to say that in some, though happily but few, of the Churches in the Diocese is all that is permitted to the Parishioners by their Pastor. How the Clergyman can expect for himself that he shall have strength to do his Master's work, or bear his Master's Cross, if he thus starve himself of the heavenly food which his Master has provided for his soul's sustenance I cannot imagine. But I must ask where he has obtained the right thus to starve his flock NO Parish Priest can be justified or excused in thus laying his Parish for the greater part of the year under an interdict. Is it to be wondered at that from such Parishes there should come complaints of hindrances to the success of the Ministry, from the indifference and deadness of the people, and their utter disregard for all Church ordinances and privileges? What else is to be expected when the chiefest means of grace is so openly neglected and despised when the highest act of Christian worship, the very centre and core of it all, is made almost a work of supererogation, a kind of excrescence on the ordinary Christian life, a special compliment in honour of the great Festivals, but really no part of Christian worship proper Can we be surprised if those who have set before them so low a standard of Christian life and worship as this should fall below it still, should even plead in defence of their contempt for Holy things, their Pastor's open disparagement of the highest and holiest of them all? In most of our Churches, however, Holy Communion is now administered monthly, and this is certainly the minimum of Eucharistic privilege which should be provided in every Church. I could wish it, as I doubt not many of you do, more frequent. Weekly communion is that at which we should all of us aim, and to which we may yet hope to attain. It is not, any more thandaily prayer, to be hastily introduced 3 the people should rather be brought even to hunger for it, than that it be cast down before those who desire it not. But I trust we may yet see the time, and that ere long, when weekly Communion shall be the rule, and not as it is now the comparatively rare exception. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
