so, but the day of the festival was marked in the calendar as the beginning of the ecclesiastical year. Ex. xii: 2. This arrangement gave to the Hebrews a double computation of time. The civil year was reckoned from September or October, and the ecclesiastical from March or April; not unlike the method in use in this country, whereby important state papers bear two dates, one running with the vulgar era, and proceeding from the first of January, and the other governed by the Declaration of Independence, and beginning with the fourth day of July. The Jews were required not only to keep the feast, but to perpetuate in the memory of all their generations the great events from which it took its origin. "It shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses." Ex. xii: 26, 27. They were commanded to eat unleavened bread, and indeed to allow no leaven to be found in their houses for seven days, in remembrance of the haste with which their fathers came out of the land of Egypt. Deut. xvi: 3. With bitter herbs were they to eat the flesh of the roasted lamb, in memory, as is commonly supposed, of the hard and bitter bondage from which they were delivered. Ex. i: 14. The festival was, therefore, an enduring monument of the past, a great ordinance of redemption.

But its prospective import was more remarkable; since the things which it foreshadowed were better far than those which it commemorated. The matter of the ordinance was a lamb; the lamb was without blemish; it was slain; it was slain by way of a sacrifice; not a bone of it was broken; and the flesh was eaten by the people of God assembled for the purpose. All this was done, moreover, in memory of a wonderful act of redemption of which God was the author, his chosen seed the subjects, and sprinkled blood the token and the price. This redemption was, still further, two fold, a salvation of the firstborn of Israel from the destruction of the first-born of Egypt, and a deliverance of the whole body of the church from its house of bondage. Well might the apostle expound and sum up the whole transaction in those few and weighty words: "Christ our Passover was slain for us." He who can not see

Christ, and him crucified, foreshown in the Passover, could hardly be expected to discern the Lord's body in the sacrament of the Supper.

The terms in which the Passover is described in the Pentateuch conclude directly to the proposition that the ordinance was a sacrament; one of the two sacraments of the Abrahamic covenant. Circumcision was the first in order and was appointed at the giving of the covenant itself. Four hundred and thirty years had elapsed since that memorable transaction; nearly two hundred years had passed since the Almighty made any communication of his will to the chosen seed, whether by vision, by covenant, or by oral revelation; and for nearly a hundred years they had been enslaved and polluted likewise by the heathen. When Jehovah came to the rescue, and the church took to itself power from on high to emerge, as a great nation, from its bondage in Egypt, it pleased God not only to remember his covenant, but to institute a new sign thereof in the form of a second sacrament. The relation of the rite to the Abrahamic covenant is immediate; for, although, like circumcision, it was adopted into the Mosaic institutes, it is older than the Sinaiatic covenant, the Levitical priesthood, and the ceremonial law; it pertains, therefore, to the former covenant. It was a new and further act of worship added to the initiatory rite of circumcision.

The mode of determining whether a particular ordinance is a true sacrament is somewhat circuitous. The Scriptures contain neither the term sacrament nor its equivalent, nor do they define the ordinance itself. The theologians have framed a definition by beginning with the proposition, which is universally accepted, that Baptism and the Lord's Supper are true Sacraments. Then by comparison and analysis they have ascertained the properties which are common to these two ceremonies, and which distinguish them also from all other divine ordinances; and out of these elementary ideas they have constructed the definition. The application of this definition to any act of worship, the sacramental character of which is under consideration, terminates the inquiry. Now, the sacramental character of the Passover is to be recognized, first, in the fact that the ordinance was of divine appointment, in the absence of which no observance can be a true sacrament.

Next, the two parts which are essential to every sacrament, namely, the outward visible sign and an inward grace signified thereby, are found in the Passover. The lamb killed, roasted, and eaten with unleavened bread, was the sign. Deliverance from the destruction of the first-born and from bondage in Egypt, was the immediate blessing represented; but redemption from sin by the blood of Christ was the spiritual grace signified and exhibited in the ordinance. Moreover the ministers of the sacrament were divinely appointed; in Egypt the head of the family, and in the final form of the ritual, the priest jointly with the master of the household. Still further, the truths set forth in the symbols are those which are proper to a sacrament. The killing and roasting of the lamb conveyed the idea of an offering made for sin, by the knife and by fire. Its body laid on the table, unbroken and entire, represented the unity of the chosen seed and their communion with God in the sacrificial feast; bitter herbs represented not only their bondage in Egypt, but their own desperate guilt in serving the gods of the heathen. Leaven was the product of incipient corruption, and the symbol of lurking, inbred depravity; and was, therefore, to be put away from the feast and from their houses also. Ex. xii: 15; Lev. ii: 11; Mark viii: 15; 1 Cor. v: 6-8. The burning of what remained after supper-the giving it back to God by fire-indicated that this was not an ordinary meal, nor an ordinary sacrificial feast, but that the flesh of the lamb was set aside from a common to a sacred use. Finally, the gracious affections, proper to a true sacrament, were demanded in the right observance of the Passover. Repentance for sin, represented by the bitter herbs; the putting away of all inworking corruption, represented by the exclusion of the leaven; a joyful sense of union and communion with God, awakened by feeding on the unbroken body of the lamb; and above all, a living faith in the Coming One, the Lamb of God, evidently set forth in the paschal sacrifice: these all were affections suitable to the observance.

This demonstration of the sacramental character in the Passover points distinctly to the Lord's Supper as the rite which has taken its place in the Church. There is a close resemblance in the externals of the ordinances. Both were

1863.]

THE EXODUS.

instituted a few hours previous to the events which they were
Both are festal,
respectively appointed to commemorate.

social, and symbolical. Each sustains similar relations to its
fellow-sacrament; none but the circumcised might come to
the Passover, none but the baptised may approach the Lord's
table. The Supper, like the Passover, is, by express warrant
of Scripture, to be often repeated. 1 Cor. xi: 26. Baptism,
on the other hand, following the analogy of circumcision,
may not be administered to any one the second time, because
both Sacraments, the old and the new, were appointed to be
The Chris-
signs of regeneration which can occur but once.

tian and Jewish Passovers are alike, moreover, in their
intimate nature. Both are historical monuments of a great
redemption; both are prophetic institutions, the Passover
foreshadowing the first coming of Christ, and the Lord's Sup-
per his second coming. The Lord Jesus, slain for sin, was set
forth in both; in the old sacrament by the lamb, in the new
by the bread and the wine. The sacramental actions in the
two are the same-the communicants feeding on the flesh of
the lamb in the first, and in the second on the symbols of the
body and blood of Christ. Repentance for sin, a joyful
faith in the saving efficacy of Christ's blood, and a lively
sense of union and communion with God and all the Saints,
are the graces suitable to the one and to the other.

Their historical relations lead to the same conclusion. It
was while Christ and the disciples were eating the Passover
The Saviour took the
that the Lord's Supper was instituted.

materials that he found on the paschal table, and set them
apart as the elements in the new sacrament. Before him was
the unleavened bread, the memorial of the afflictions of the
church in Egypt and its escape therefrom; this bread he took,
saying, "This is my body." Before him was the paschal
lamb; its blood had been shed in expiation for sin under the
provisions of the Old Covenant; he took the wine and said:
"This cup is the New Covenant in my blood." Thus the feast,
that began as the Passover, terminated, by a gentle and beau-
tiful transition, in the sweeter and holier solemnity, as the
morning brightens into the perfect day. It is impossible, per-
haps, to gather out of the Talmuds and the other conflict-
ing Rabbinical authorities, any certain knowledge of the

ritual of the Passover in the time of Christ. But a comparison of the authorities shows that several cups of wine, perhaps three, perhaps five, were drunk during the meal, and served to mark its progress. This circumstance explains the two cups described in Luke xxii: 17-20; the one in verse 17 was, probably, the first Passover cup; and that in verse 20, the third in order, was adopted by the Lord as the sacramental cup. The master of the paschal feast took the unleavened bread. and "blessed it," in a prayer of consecration; then he brake it, saying: "This is the bread of affliction which our fathers did eat in the land of Egypt." According to one tradition, he then took a piece of the broken bread, wraped it in bitter herbs, and ate it; according to another tradition, he distributed the broken bread among the communicants; the whole showing how close are the analogies of the old and the new sacraments in their respective forms, and even in the words of institution. The cup of wine used at the festival, after the roasted lamb was eaten, was called the cup of benediction, a circumstance which explains, Luke xxii: 20: "Likewise he took the cup after supper;" and 1. Cor. x: 16: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?" The smaller Halel, or selections from the Psalms of David, was chanted during the feast, and at its close the greater Halel was sung ending with the grand chorus of Psalm cxxxvi, "O give thanks unto the God of heaven, for his mercy endureth forever." In like manner at the close of the Lord's Supper, "they sang a hymn and went out.” These traditions, so far as they are worthy of credit, concur with the statements of the New Testament, in showing that the Lord's Supper was both a supplement, and in the intention of Christ, a substitute for the Passover. His own remarkable explanation of it all was: "I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's Kingdom." Matt. xxvi: 29. These words are commonly supposed to describe the fellowship in heaven between Christ and his disciples. But a simpler interpretation refers them to the change then made in the holy ordinances of the church. They taught the disciples that the wine, now that the Kingdom of God was nigh at hand, should from that time forth disappear as the wine of