LIX. PASSOVER. 'Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.' 1 Cor. v. 7. THIS word occurs in fifty-six instances, but is only applied to Christ in this place. The word Pascha or passover is taken, 1. For the passing over of the destroying angel. 2. For the paschal lamb. 3. For the meal at which it was eaten. 4. For the festival instituted in memory of the coming out of Egypt, and the passage of the destroying angel. 5. For all the victims offered during the paschal solemnity. 6. For the unleavened bread eaten during the eight days of the passover. 7. For all the ceremonies of this so lemnity. The passover was one of the most interesting and solemn festivals that was held among the Jews. All those writers who have described it, represent it as a most animating and thrilling occasion. Each head of the family went through his house to search for leavened bread. When he had gone through to the outer door, he said, 'Whatsoever leavened thing there is in my house, which I have not seen or put away, may it be scattered in pieces, and accounted as the dust of the earth.' A very interesting author gives the following animated description of the appearance of the holy city during this grand festival. What a scene! The whole environs of Jerusalem were turned into an encampment, all the hills and valleys, all the streets and open places, were covered with tents. It was impossible that the houses should contain all the strangers, notwithstanding the unbounded hospitality which was practised on these occasions, and hence it was necessary that a large proportion of them should remain in tents during the festival. In the pleasant season of the year, at which the Passover was held, this had nothing inconvenient or disagreeable in it; it was the universal custom at the feast of tabernacles, and it reminded them of the patriarchal life, and the wandering in the desert. This gave to Jerusalem a singular but very interesting appearance. All was motion, life, and animation, and the thought of the purpose for which these myriads of men had come up from near or distant regions, filled the mind with solemn and elevated feeling. A million of human beings have frequently been assembled here on such an occasion, all for the purpose of appearing with prayer and praise before Jehovah.'* Such was the passover. How many beautiful associations must have existed in the mind of a Jew when he thought of this interesting festival. And our Lord and Master is called our Passover. It may be well to remark, that some believe that Jesus was crucified on the same day and hour that the paschal lamb was offered. It has been stated as a very remarkable fact, that after the destruction of the holy city, the paschal lamb ceased to be offered by the Jews throughout the world. They continue the * See HELON'S Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, vol. i. p. 169, et seq., in which the author has endeavored to present, in a fictitious dress, ‘a Picture of Judaism in the century which preceded the advent of our Saviour.' passover, but without any sacrifice, notwithstanding their deep-rooted, inveterate antipathy against Jesus Christ, our Passover, who has been sacrificed for us. We do not consider the controversy concerning the time of the passover to be of that great importance which many have supposed. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, and that is the great truth we all need to know. That fact is all-important to a dying world, and it would be well to let all minor points go, and rest all our hopes on that alone. But in what sense is Christ our Passover sacrificed for us? It may be difficult perhaps to get a clear view of the resemblance between the Jewish passover and Christ our Passover. With regard to the points of resemblance, Lightfoot points out seventeen ;* Godwin has enumerated thirteen;† Keach, nineteen.‡ Herman Witsius, however, is said to present the most judicious view of this subject.$ The following parallel may point out the resemblance to some extent. Jewish Passover. Christ our Passover. 1. Temporal deliverance. Ex. 1. Spiritual deliverance. Matt. xii. 11. i. 21. Luke iv. 18. 2. Lamb was unbroken. Ib. 2. Bones unbroken. John xix. 46. 3. Lamb slain by whole as- 3. sembly. Ib. 6. 4. Lamb unblemished. Lev. 4. xxii. 21. * Lightfoot's works, pp. 1008, 1009. 33. Slain by whole nation. Luke xxii. 13. Sinless. 1 Pet. i. 19. Godwin's Moses and Aaron, pp. 114, 115. Keach's Key to Scripture Metaphors, pp. 979, 980. 2d ed. See also M'Ewen on the Types, pp. 148-152. § Witsius, de Economia Fœderum, lib. iv. c. 9. sections XXXV.lviii., or vol. ii. pp. 275-382 of the English translation. There are undoubtedly many other resemblances, some of which we may notice, but these are the principal. An excellent writer has drawn the following very just comparison. Speaking of Christ at the Last Supper with his apostles, he says, 'And they ate their passover together. They commemorated Israel's deliverance of old; Israel, now on the eve of its solemn rejection of the Messiah, and of its renunciation thereby of God's covenant. The original blessing and the final crime were blended in his contemplation. The one prepared for the establishment of their polity, the other for its dissolution. The one set up their tabernacle, the other destroyed their temple. The one made them a people, the other made them fugitives. The one prostrated Egypt at their feet, the other crushed them beneath the tread of Rome. The one freed them from generations of laborious slavery, the other sold them to centuries of ignominious bondage. From the one they became monuments of the wise laws which they received; from the other, of the gracious gospel which they refused. This made them a victorious nation in Canaan, that scattered them in subjugation among all the countries of the earth. By the one, God constituted them his peculiar people; by the other, they made themselves the outcasts of religion.'* And when the disciples in all the countries and all the churches would be scattered, with what propriety might they say, in view of the comforts which the religion of Jesus brings, 'And even Christ our Pass * Sermons on the Mission, Character, and Doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth. By W. J. Fox. In 2 vols. Vol. ii. ser. x. London. over is sacrificed for us.' Our main object now will be, to give a practical turn to the whole subject. Benson supposes that this epistle was written just before the celebration of the passover, and that the Apostle makes use of the approaching festival to urge the church to greater purity in life and conversation. It appears that there had been an enormous crime committed in that church; 'one not so much as named among the Gentiles;' and the Apostle exhorts them to cleanse out the old leaven of lewdness by casting the incestuous person out of the church, and to keep the feast of the Lord's Supper, not with the old leaven of sensuality and uncleanness with which they were formerly corrupted, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread, or qualities of sincerity and truth.* The Apostle says, 'Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?' By which he would have them understand that this individual, if suffered to remain, might corrupt the whole church, as bad leaven corrupts the bread. 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' The great moral to be learned from this subject is, that we are to lay aside 'all malice and wickedness,' and be governed by 'sincerity and truth.' And what a moral! Would to God the world would be governed by this excellent advice to the Corinthian church.† * See Macknight on 1 Cor. v. 7. † We learn from the motto, 1. The strictness of discipline exercised in the primitive church. 2. That the disciples of Christ began very early to celebrate the Lord's Supper with peculiar solemnity, annually, on the very day on which the Redeemer suffered, which was the day of the Jewish passover, called in modern language Easter. 3. That in all the severity of discipline in the primitive age, the salvation of |