Dear Mr. Editor :

It may seem strange to those who have been long and well instructed in the things of God to hear what I am now about to communicate; but in our parts, where the assemblies have comparatively few opportunities, they need in a special way to learn that order which is pleasing to our God, who loves not confusion, but the peace which flows from a well-regulated people.

First of all, I would say that Luke 22 :8-13 teaches us due respect for our Lord in preparing the table in a suitable way before the hour of meeting. We do not want ceremony, but reverence, as becomes His Presence and His holy things.

Then, our meeting begins at the appointed hour, does it not ? The "Tarry one for another" of i Cor. 11:33 has ceased when the hour appointed for the meeting has come; so that the belated ones are those in fault, and not those who have begun the meeting.

Then everything has now a collective form, has it not? The praise and worship arising from each heart to God blend in one, so that a "favorite hymn," or a prayer referring to individual matters, would be out of place there, would it not? So "individual cups," would they not? We are there as members of "one body," and everything should characterize that:our temporal offerings as well. Heb. 13:15 speaks of our spiritual offerings, and the next verse of our temporal. If both are collective offerings, should not the basket by which we offer our temporal be treated in the same manner, and pass from one to the other, as the bread and the wine, by which we offer our spiritual? By reason of long habit in being begged from, some do not seem to realize that our temporal offerings are as truly a part of our collective worship as the spiritual, though it may be of a lower order; and that it is the Lord who accepts the one as He does the other. If the thought of begging instead of worship is associated with the temporal, are we not losers of God's benefit?

Without prescribing or laying down any rule, is not the remembrance of our Lord in the breaking of bread the chief and primary thing for which we assemble ? If so, it should not be, as it were, a finishing of the meeting, should it? but rather the great, central part of the meeting, the preliminaries leading the hearts of all up to it, and the various instructions or exhortations following after.

If these things be faithfully observed and maintained in the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe there will arise from it an order pleasing to God.

Yours affectionately in the Lord,