While Jesus Christ and Him crucified was the theme of James W. Alexander’s ministry in New York, it was at the times of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that many of his most remarkable sermons on the atoning work of Christ were preached. For these communion seasons he also gave to the world his incomparable translation of Paul Gerhardt’s hymn of praise, O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded, and never was the praise of Christ more abundant in New York than in the closing years of his life which saw the great revival of 1857. His death, two years later, was marked by this commemorative book, made up of a selection of his ‘sacramental discourses’.

Nothing, Alexander believed, can make the contrite happy but the assurance of God’s love. And that love is to be seen in looking to the Saviour and to the cross, of which believers will never cease to sing,

‘These eyes, new faith receiving,
From Jesus shall not move,
For he who dies believing,
Dies safely through Thy love’.