ment, in its application to the soul by faith. The angel of destruction has gone, and goes continually, and at the last day will go finally, through every land—through the living and the dead-he makes but one distinction-acknowledges but one mark. Is the blood of the paschal lamb upon the door, or is it not? Has the blood of Christ been sprinkled through faith upon the conscience, or has it been neglected and trodden under foot?

The eating of the paschal lamb signified our spiritually feeding upon Christ by faith, and sacramentally in the Lord's Supper. As Christ is therein to be received, "not unworthily," so in the passover, all was to be done in a prescribed order. They were to eat it standing, with their staves in their hands, their shoes on their feet, and their loins girt, a posture of action, as those that go a journey. Though this circumstance might be peculiar to the first passover, it is strikingly figurative of the position of a believer in the Egypt of this world, from whose judgments he is to be exempted, and whose bondage he is to escape. It calls immediately to mind the language of the Gospel, "Gird up the loins of your minds.” 1 Peter i, 13. Be ready to act, to follow-"To follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." "This is not our rest:" however we be fed and protected by the Lord our passover, and strengthened and refreshed by the sacramental emblems

of his body and blood, we take them as the traveller takes his fare-prepared for departing -"Here we have no abiding city, but we seek one to come." Heb. xiii, 14.

The passover was eaten with sour and bitter herbs. Christ is fed upon with many a bitter thought of sin, and many a painful remembrance of His sufferings on our behalf. Repentance and godly sorrow are ever mingled with the sweet exercise of faith and love, and are indispensable to the due receiving of the Christian communion. Perhaps it was thus intimated also that we have a cross to bear before we reach our crown, and cannot reign except we suffer with him. They ate it with leaven— seven days afterward they might eat no leaven. The New Testament gives us the interpretation of this, "Purge out the old leaven, and let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of

sincerity and truth." 1 Cor. v, 7. "Let us

keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness." 1 Cor. v, 8. Falseness in principle and wickedness in the life, are the leaven with which our passover must not be eaten; the infecting, souring, corrupt admixture, which will make the spiritual food unavailable, and the sacramental bread a condemnation. For seven days: the scripture emblem of a completed period-to us the completion of all time. We must eat no more leaven, after partaking of the body and blood of Christ, "Resolve to lead

a new life." Walking henceforth in his most holy ways. "Serving the Lord in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives."

We

The whole of the lamb was to be eaten. must take Christ and the salvation of Christ entire. "We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness." We are not at liberty to receive a part and reject a part; to feed upon Christ for pardon, and upon ourselves for righteousness; to trust his death and our own merits jointly; nor yet to accept the security of his redeeming blood, and refuse the sanctifying influences of his Spirit. We are not at liberty to receive the doctrines of Christ and neglect his precepts; neither to receive his precepts and reject his doctrines.

The whole family were to eat it, or if too small, more than one family together, indicating that this festival, like the Lord's Supper, was an act of social worship and church communion; the whole church of Christ being one family, and one body in him. Our church has recognised this character of the sacrament, as being a social, not a private act of devotion, by requiring that it shall not be administered unless a sufficient number of persons are assembled; "that is, except four, or three at the least, communicate with the priest;"—it is to be a public celebration among the living, not a mysterious

ceremony performed in the lonely chambers of the dying.

Lastly, the passover, as before remarked, was allowed to no uncircumcised person. The mark of church-membership, like every thing else in the Jewish ordinances, was an external one: for it does not appear that any test was required of the state of mind of the recipient. This is in perfect accordance with the whole typical institution. The adoption of Israel according to the flesh, was a figure of the adoption of grace; not a figure of the world at large, or the external church, in which are the godly and ungodly mixed, but of the invisible church of Christ, the elect of God, chosen of him and precious. Individually, an Israelite of the circumcision, might or might not be of the family of Abraham, according to the faith; but they were all, as born of Abraham according to the flesh, members of the typical election, and as such entitled to partake of the typical privileges of that church. Now, like the true church of Christ itself, the mark of adoption is spiritual and not always discernible to the eye of man. But the exclusion is really as distinct and positive as it was formerly: none but the circumcised in heart, the true believer, can spiritually eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ.*

*The above illustration of the passover is principally extracted from Mather on the Gospel of the Old Testa

ment.

Such was the signification of the Jewish passover, and such the resemblance it bears to the Christian ordinance of the Lord's Supper; pointing, the one forward, and the other backward, to the same event; and both to the benefits we receive thereby. No mention, I believe, is made of the passover in the New Testament after the death of Christ; from which we may infer that no Hebrew converts to Christianity continued to keep it; and if some erroneously did so, it was among the things against which St. Paul remonstrates when he says, "Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" Again, "How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am in doubt of you." The substance had come, and the shadows had passed away: Christ had died, and the Christian commemoration of his death had been instituted by himself in the last supper. The memory of the former things is alone left for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. We turn from the shadow, to contemplate the very image of these things; of the mystery of redemption.

The narrative of the Last Supper is given with very little variation by three of the evangelists, the blessed partakers of the holy feast; to which, if we add the account of the apostle,