pardon, justification, righteousness, and life to every one of them; that He sets them apart to make them as fragrant as flowers in His garden, and calls them the lilies of the valley; He comes down to gather them when they are full blown; He sets them apart for His own bosom, and they shall dwell with Him to all eternity. These are the people who may say," the Lord our God," whose omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, and eternity, are all owned in their petitions and their praises, and are all put forth for their preservation, salvation, and eternal glorification. "The Lord your God." Whatever is the object of your supreme affection is your god. I read of some who make a god of their riches-others, more beastly still, make a god of their belly. Whatever is the object of your supreme affection, that is your god, whether creatures, created things, self, or self-righteousness; anything that can be presented to the senses, and that wins the heart, absorbs the affections, and rises superior to God, that is your god. Now do not claim an interest in the Lord God of Israel if your affections are elsewhere. "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed with a curse." All the people of the Most High may claim to be rich if the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven." " Let us glance, in the next place, at these persons in union with their covenant Head, God the Son: and here a subject, that is most magnificent, opens to my view. The co-equal, co-eternal Son of the Father, in Divine essence, and in all Divine attributes and perfections, one with the Father over all, God blessed for evermore, did, before all time, before all worlds, before sin existed or angels fell, betroth His Church to Himself in unchanging love to be afterwards in continuance brought forth in all her members. So that the union was formed in heaven-the union was ratified upon the throne. The Father smiled, and gave each to the other in bands of wedlock, so to speak, in betrothing love. The Holy Ghost viewed the engagement with sacred delight, and recorded it in the Book of Life-Christ and His Church in union. These are the people who, standing in eternal affinity to the Most High, can say, "The Lord our God." But this sacred union, ancient in date, and immutable as the very existence of Deity, is never known until it becomes vital-that is, on earth. But when, by the power of the Holy Ghost, a poor alienated sinner, who had been like the wild olive-branch in the wild olive stock of old Adam nature, is cut from thence by the sword of the Spirit, severed or plucked from thence by the hand of God, or, as the phrase used by the apostle runs, "taken out of the wild olive, and grafted into the true," and becomes one with Christ vitally in the exercise, and by the instrumentality of living faith, by the power of the Holy Ghost, so as to derive life, sap, nourishment, spirituality, and all that pertains to the gospel of salvation immediately from Christ, he is in the enjoyment of this vital and covenant union with the covenant Head, and God will never allow either of them to be severed or taken away. "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Here, then, mark the dignity of the Church, that God has allowed us to "the Lord your say, God." 66 Keep the passover unto the Lord your God," for He is yours in solemn oath, He is yours in covenant, He is yours in visible manifestation, He is yours by Divine operation, He is yours by the indwelling power, and the claim, and appropriation of faith, and shall be yours unto all eternity. Oh, for power to love Him, power to praise Him, and power to proclaim Him in this precious oneness with His Church! "The Lord your God." I do hope, before I quit this part of our subject, some of the dear people of God, who have hitherto been trembling at these assertions of mine, will claim their affinity-will be enabled to lay fast hold of this precious privilege. It is my ardent desire that every man's chains may fall from him, and that, being brought into the liberty of the gospel, he may walk with God, and exclaim, "He is the Lord my God." In order to this, take one thought more. How this people, who are addressed and commanded to keep the passover unto the Lord their God, are partakers of the life of God within, by the power of the Holy Ghost. I have given you already the engrafting process-the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, bringing us into vital union with Christ. Let us glance a moment at the participation in the life of God. I am overwhelmed with awe. I lie abashed and ashamed before my God. I look upon myself as less than the least of all His saints, when I think of this vast privilege. Partaker of the Divine nature. In union with Christ. A habitation of God through His Spirit. Adopted by paternal love, and favoured with the Spirit of adoption, so as to be able to say, "Doubtless thou art my Father." I am astonished that earth can have any charms for me—I am astonished that the devil and his wicked crew can make me for one instant unhappy-I am astonished that the vileness of all its evils can ever discourage me-I am astonished that I should ever attempt to charge God foolishly, or murmur at His righteous dispensations. Oh, the blessed satisfaction of having the life of God dwelling within the soul, and each of the Persons in the glorious Trinity condescending to proclaim it. The Father says, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and will be their God, and they shall be my people." The Son of God, in appealing to His heavenly Father, has condescended to say, "I in them, and thou in me," and they one in us. Only mark the majesty of that appeal to the Father, "I in them, thou in me." So that God the Father may be said to be doubly within every real believer. In Christ, and Christ in me. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" Consequently the glorious Three in One taking up His abode in the heart of the sinner, calls forth love, creates spiritual desires, appetites, strength, longings, associations, prospects, delights, and feastings, and ultimately conducts to eternal glorification. Say, then, my hearers, are you thus distinguished? Is Jehovah my God, your God? Does He dwell in your heart? Is He precious to your soul? Are your affections supremely centered in Him? And is His eternal habitation your longed-for home? Then "Keep the feast of the passover unto the Lord your God." III.—I will now attempt to lead on your attention to the direction given the tenor of the festivity, "as it is written in the book of this covenant." I have shown you a little of the covenant Person, the covenant transactions, and the covenant union. Now let us glance at the covenant order and direction for keeping this feast. First, then, it is to be personally participated in: a whole Lamb-the personal participation in a whole Lamb; pointing to the grand truth that nothing less than a whole Christ, all that pertains to His person-all that per tains to His official character-all that pertains to His work-all that pertains to His relationship-all that pertains to His promises-all that pertains to what He has done, and is still doing-all that is essential to the salvation of the sinner, that nothing short of this will be of any avail. We have no half-and-half gospel, no profession of Christ followed by a denial of Him; it is a whole Lamb. A whole Christ must be received by the Christian, or the passover is not kept according to the covenant. Look at the injunction. The order was so strict that the lamb should be apportioned to the number of persons inhabiting the house, so that they might eat it all, and have no appetite for anything else, except the unleavened bread, and not even have leaven in the house. Oh! what a mercy to be so filled with love to God, as to have room for nothing else; no appetite for the world, its toys, its trash, and its wild grapes; but filled with the preciousness of Christ, receiving a whole Christ, and a whole salvation in Him. Then there must be personal participation; but this is not obtained in the participation of the bread and wine. I solemnly fear that thousands who have participated in the bread and wine at the periodical return of the Lord's Supper are gone to hell. Oh! it is a solemn thought that they may have gone there "eating and drinking their own damnation." Appalling reflection! but I fear too true. But not one who has participated in the precious Lamb of God by faith, fed upon Him spiritually, embraced and received Him into his soul, can, by any possibility, be lost. This is a saving ordinance, then, in a spiritual point of view, though only an emblematical one literally. Oh! the vast importance of viewing this precious Christ as wholly devoted to my use in all that He has, and is, and does: to be claimed by my faith, appropriated for my enjoyment, eaten and drunken in the exercise of living faith by the power of the Holy Ghost. This is living upon Christ. Eat the passover unto the Lord your God with thankful hearts unto Him for giving you such a feast, imparting to you the power to partake of it, and sealing your forgiveness whilst you receive it. Now there is one point of view which will, in all probability, not be quite so welcome: it is, that they shall eat it with bitter herbs, as we read in the twelfth chapter of Exodus, "with bitter herbs shall they eat it." And I am inclined to think that the attempt to participate in the name, and doctrine, aud promises of Christ without bitter herbs, is presumption, and deception, and evidence of a carnal mind. What, say you, am I to understand by bitter herbs? There is a great variety growing in this wilderness. I shall confine myself to a few only. You can easily discover the rest. The first I will mention is bitter conviction of sin. And here allow me to observe and insist, without fear of contradiction, that no soul of all Adam's race ever enjoyed the preciousness of Christ whilst a stranger to conviction of sin. "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall convince (or reprove) the world of sin," and no man will learn to prize Christ, or discover His preciousness, until sin has been found out and felt to be an evil and a bitter herb. What, in your secret moments, will your conscience tell you concerning it? What will the application of the law to your mind and heart tell of it? What the bemoanings, the overwhelming depressions, the ardent cries, the groans, the deep concern, the earnest breathings of your souls with, "God, be merciful to me a sinner?" Were they not bitter herbs? But oh! when with these the paschal Lamb, the precious Christ of God, is received, and His whole salvation embraced; the bitter herbs were not regretted or lamented. You had Christ with them, and all was well. Moreover, after these, conflicts will be experienced in the soul, and those of the bitterest description, the flesh warring against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And sometimes so rampant will the lusts of the flesh be, and so powerful the temptations of Satan along with them, that the new nature appears for awhile as if vanquished, and really is wounded. Under the outbreakings of corruption, the graspings of temptations, the departures from God, the drinkings in of the spirit of the world, and losing the savour of heavenly realities, what bitterness is brought into the soul! What bitterness in the struggles with old Adam nature-in the endeavour to crucify and mortify the flesh. Was not that like bitterness of soul, or bitter herbs, which David experienced when he penned the fifty-first Psalm-when he said, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin." Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free Spirit." Every departure from God, everything that grieves the Spirit, will come back upon the conscience, and cause bitterness of soul. Fly then to Christ, plead the application of His blood, and obtain the seal of His pardon and forgiveness; so that you may realize what dear Mr. Hart says: "If guilt removed, return, and remain; Its power may be proved again and again." Personal interests, the interests of the family, of business, and of friendship, and even those which belong to the Church, in many instances these are bitter herbs. Sometimes the way is hedged up with thorns-sometimes persecutors let loose in swarms-sometimes the prince of darkness plying his heaviest artillery, and hurling his most fiery darts-sometimes an Absalom or an Amnon may break the heart of a David. Where is the remedy then? "Keep the passover unto the Lord your God." Take the bitter herbs with it, and cry for grace to thank God for them as well as the passover. Methinks I see a stubborn child seated at his father's board, with a sumptuous repast of lamb placed before him; but casting his eye along the table, he espies a dish of bitter herbs. He calls the servant to take that dish of bitter herbs away; but the servant is not at liberty to do so; the master had ordered it to be placed there. The child turns to its parent: "Oh, father, don't give me the bitter herbs;" but the father says, "No herbs, no lamb." "With bitter herbs shalt thou eat it," and whatever the bitterness of thy experience, the bitterness in Providence, the bitterness in privations, the bitterness in persecutions may be, here runs the covenant order and direction: "Keep the passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant;" that thou shalt eat it with bitter herbs. I know that my God will never put more herbs upon my plate than His covenant has appointed, and His infinite love and will have determined; and all I want, therefore, is grace to welcome the bitter herbs as well as the paschal Lamb. Oh, the blessedness of growing up to this standing in the things of God! By the order of this book, "according as it is written in the book of the covenant," the passover was to be kept as a remembrance of their former state and their marvellous deliverance therefrom; and I hope you will keep it so to-night. Thou shalt remember that thou wert a bondsman, and that the Lord thy God delivered thee. Thou wert a bondsman to Satan and to sin. Thou wert carnal and unregenerate, and had no fear of God before thine eyes. And remember the dying injunction of Christ, "Do this in remembrance of Me." Thou shalt remember His agonies in the garden-the efficacy of His life and death-the responsibility in which He voluntarily placed Himself the completeness of His work-how He magnified the law, and made it honourable-sheathed the sword of justice in His own heart-"put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself"-wrought out and brought in an everlasting righteousness "unto all and upon all that believe." Having run rapidly through these remarks, allow me just to turn your attention once more to this King's commandment-the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, who enjoins it on all His loyal subjects; and if you do not wish to be accused of disloyalty, think the matter over, and "Keep the passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of the covenant.' And may the Lord Jesus meet us at His table, and be known of us in the breaking of bread. HYM N. No. 230 OF ZION'S HYMNS. PASSOVER, 1 Cor. v. 7. OUR Jesus was slain, To save us from hell; And with us He'll dwell; Was slaughter'd for us, And cancel the curse. His merit and blood, No sword shall destroy, |