green pastures, and eat up every green thing, represent the principles of malignant opposition arising from a thoroughly infidel state of heart-opposition to all the secret counsels of our Heavenly Father-eating up and removing out of the soul all joy and hope, all trust and confidence. They leave the whole soul as solitary and as barren as a desert, where no green thing is.

This plague of the locusts is representative of a far lower condition of the soul than that which we have previously met with. It first defied the Lord, and would not obey, but it kept up appearances. Step by step, it now sinks to the utter wreck of every thing heavenly, and of every thing from the Word, which would have been a comfort and strength to the soul.

The forlorn condition of Pharaoh disposed him to make some concessions. He said,-We will let the men go, but nothing else. He has been endeavouring to make some arrangements of his own all the way through. Such is the custom of a rebellious spirit. It will not do what the Lord requires. It will do something; it offers some arrangement short of the demands of heaven. It won't do its simple duty. On the next occasion, when the plague of darkness came, Pharaoh was quite willing to let the men and the little ones go, but not the flocks and the herds. Moses said, "There shall not a hoof be left behind." Because Pharaoh is representative of that very condition of the soul which lays hold of a sort of partial religion-of something which it substitutes for that thorough submission of the heart, that entire giving up of the inmost affections of the soul which renders the whole man what true religion requires.

The second plague you will perceive is the natural consequence of the first upon which I have remarked.

For if all these sweet and gentle, and encouraging truths which are represented by the grass upon which the soul lies down, are destroyed by locusts, the necessary consequence will be the next plague-utter darkness. If religion, if the Word, if eternal things are eaten up and destroyed, and blotted out of the soul, what is there for all of us but utter darkness? It is reducing the soul to that condition that the ancients gave as an accurate description of prejudice,-a thing without eyes, and without ears.

Lastly, there was the death of the first-born.

You are aware that it is a sublime doctrine of true religion that we must be born again. The birth of true religion in the soul is, however, twofold, first faith, then charity. The first-born

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born of Pharaoh spiritually signifies the birth of such a faith as a person has, who has no obedience, and no charity. He has, perhaps, what he calls a plan of salvation" or a "scheme of salvation." In reading some departments of theological teaching you will often find a description of the plan of salvation, the scheme of the atonement, in which it is taught that the Lord's death, which was the manifestation of His love to win us to obedience, without which there is no regeneration, nor salvation, is the SUBSTITUTE for obedience. This is a miserable human substitute for that glorious divine rule which the soul learns from the Lord, and which is epitomised by Him as love to God and love to man, perfected in obedience. Any faith which induces a man to say,—I shall be saved, because I believe such or such a creed, is a first born of the Egyptians, either of Pharaoh on his throne, or the maid-servant grinding at the mill, or the captive of the dungeons; that is, either of one who dictates such a faith, or of one who diligently seeks to support it, or of one of its most stupid followers. The faith of the gospel is a faith in the Lord Himself the living Regenerator, and His divine commandments. Our Lord never said to any of those to whom He was about to give a blessing,-What are the articles of your belief? But where a person showed his faith by his acts, and lovingly obeyed, He said—this is saving faith.

The first-born of Pharaoh is a persuasion that a person is a favorite of heaven because he belongs to the right creed. This is a sort of delusion which leads men into plagues and ruin. The time comes when the delusion serves them no longer-such a faith perishes. The first-born of Egypt dies-man has not been bettered by it. He looks back on his life, it is a mere wreck. He has gone from misery to misery, and now what is he? The firstborn dies before the divine truth,—there is no spiritual life in it There is nothing but condemnation, distress, darkness, despair.

On the contrary, the Israelites had light in their dwellings. Those who are of the class of which the Lord speaks "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile "-who have endeavoured to fight against their own passions and evils-those in the nearness of judgment have light in their dwellings. All around may be dark, but they have the light of life, "In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace." True faith works from love. True faith embraces the Lord Jesus with the heart, trusts Him, loves Him, and lives to Him, by keeping His commandments.

SERMON XI.

THE PASSOVER.

"And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover.Exodus XII. 11.

It is one of the laws of Providence ever to forestall his creatures for good, and thus forearm them when dangers are ahead. It is hence a wise maxim never to be elated in prosperity, but rather humble and grateful; never to be cast down in adversity, but rather to feel confidence. Just as day follows night, and morning follows evening, so the afflictions of the present will be turned by infinite love and tenderness into speedy consolation, comfort, and blessing. You will see this exemplified in numberless instances, and especially in the case before us.

The Israelites had arrived nearly to the termination of their period of bondage and distress. They were now about to enter upon their journey to Canaan. They would have many dangers to pass through. They were entering upon untried paths, surrounded by a great variety of circumstances that would bring them peculiar distresses, and so they were provided by divine mercy with an innitiatory feast. They were commanded to provide throughout all their homes a feast to the Lord. They were to have a joyous gathering of their families in every home, and having partaken of the Paschal Feast to be ready with staff in hand and loins girded, to encounter the trials that lay before them.

You will remember a great similarity to this, in the circumstance of our Lord's eating the Passover with His disciples immediately before He was taken from them. He accompanied it with these divine expressions, "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you, before I suffer." And so in the conduct of the divine mercy to us, we shall find we have never a burden, but the Lord has provided us with the means of bearing it, if we will be faithful.

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It is thus that we are furnished with the soundest and truest reasons for a conscientious attendance upon divine worship, and for faithfully and obediently taking the sacrament to which the Lord invites us. For, in these acts of worship, the Lord gives us the inner comfort, help, and strength, that are seen by him to be needed for dangers upon which we have not yet entered.

Such, then, is one of the first reflections that come to the mind when we consider this divine institution appointed at that peculiar time, namely, at the close of the bondage of Egypt, and just before the commencement of the march towards Canaan. The whole of the circumstances are full of interest, and full of edification.

Before passing, however, to the consideration of all that is implied in the arrangements of this divine institution, allow me to notice an objection that has been urged in comparatively recent times against the reality of this remarkable occurrence. It proceeds from the Bishop of Natal. He says "that at the time the Lord gave the command there was but one day for its being executed," for it is written in the 12th verse, "I will pass through the land of Egypt this night and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will exact judgment." And then it is written in the 36th verse, "And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. And it came to pass at the end of 430 years, even the self same day, it came to pass that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." Now, the objection runs thus here were about two millions of people in the capital of Egypt and the surrounding country. They must have covered a very considerable district, and how, (the objector asks,) could this command of the Lord, that they should all get lambs, and have them sacrificed and eaten, be carried out in one day? It does seem a rather difficult undertaking. But it is not a little difficult to understand how a grave and thoughtful reader could have made such a mistake as this objection implies. Notice the beginning of the chapter. You will read in the 3rd verse. 66 Speak ye to all the congregation of Israel, saying, in the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the houses of their fathers, a lamb for a house." Now, here the command is given on the very first day of the month ordering what they should do on the tenth day of the month-nine days after. And further, this lamb was to be

kept until the fourteenth day of the month, " And the whole assembly of the congregation shall kill it in the evening." And when we read of this self same day, it is not the self same day in which the command is given, but the self same day in which the lamb was to be sacrificed, that is to say, they had fourteen days notice. The objection involves an extraordinary oversight. When, too, we bear in mind that one of the peculiarities of the Israelitish mind is that it is more splendidly endowed with organising power, probably, than that of any other nation, there will then be seen to be no serious difficulty in their making all the different arrangements that were necessary to be made in fourteen days. If there was aught that was not provided for in the particulars laid down in the command, the Jews had so especial a power for organisation and arrangement, that what would have been difficult to others, would have been easy to them.

On this occasion you will find, that as soon as Moses himself received the command, he called all the Elders of Israel together. There was no crowding or giving the regulations out to the whole mass. They had their divisions of families, sections and tribes; they had their heads of families, their elders and chiefs. These were all called together, the divine will was given to them, and they instantly went about their work and got everything ready for carrying out the operations.

But, supposing this not to be the true account of the origin of the Passover amongst the Jews, what was its origin? How came it to exist? It does now exist-how did it begin? Every effect must have a sufficient cause. They have kept the Passover as far as all history gives us to understand, from its origin down to the present day. Every year as the time has come round, notwithstanding the growth of Christianity, and although the most powerful efforts have been made through dark and persecuting ages to compel the people to discontinue that which had been commanded to their fathers, they have in spite of fire and faggot, persecution, dungeon, torture and death, kept this festival, which they considered a divine regulation down. to the present moment. And would it not be irrational to suppose that they who have been so scrupulously particular, so careful as to what they believed was a divine regulation, had somehow or other got hold of it at first in such a negligent and foolish way that there was no true ground for belief in it whatever? This is far more difficult to conceive than any of the objections that have been brought against it can