May such a life and such a departure be yours and mine. But just one other thought. I am not forgetting that we are coming to the Communion Table to-night. "Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, then, do it with thy might." In sight of Christ and His splendid doing for us, even unto death, wilt thou dare, my brother, my sister, to come to this table languidly, dragging thyself forward as though thou couldst barely come the length? Be ashamed of that come with purpose; gird up thy loins; come, notwithstanding a thousand failures, a thousand things that ought to keep us miles away from that bread and that cup; come; He asks you to come.

Take the Sacrament with your might, not with your weakness. With thy might profess Jesus Christ-with hand and heart, with body, and soul, and spirit, in this Sacramental testimony.

"According to Thy gracious word,

In meek humility,

This will I do, my dying Lord,

I will remember Thee."

Emphatically, heartily, unambiguously, with my might, I will do this in remembrance of Thee. Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

CHRIST OUR PASSOVER.

A Sermon

DELIVERED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

"Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning."-EXODUS xii. 21-22.

I WISH you to bear in mind all that comes before and all that comes after, but mainly to fasten your thoughts upon this particular 22nd verse, as being the hinge round which the whole of this wonderful story of that night in Egypt is made to swing; and I should also like to take just one word from the lips of Paul in the New Testament, in order to connect this whole narrative with Gospel teaching, with Gospel doctrine and illustration. Paul gives us a

headline for all that we have got to say or think about this old story of that night in Egypt, when he says in the 1st Corinthians, 5th chapter, and the 7th verse, referring to this very type, "Christ our passover is slain for us." Therefore," he goes on to say, "Let us keep the feast." Christ our passover is slain for us, and in that great bloodVol. II.-No. 3.

shedding is all our salvation: "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." In Him we have shelter from a doom compared with which the judgment that fell upon Egypt that night was a local, temporary, and small matter indeed. In Him we have a salvation which is not only, so to speak, from night till morning, but all through time's night till the eternal morning breaks-a salvation of which we get the beginnings here through faith in the blood of the Passover Lamb, but of which we shall sing through all eternity in the very words given to us in Revelation, "To Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory." The Lamb, then, is all the glory of this Old Testament deliverance, and He is all the glory of the New Testament Church.

I wish this morning to evangelize my congregation, and to evangelize my own heart-to begin this week of special meetings, at the beginning; with ourselves gathered together here, and by help of God's Word and Spirit to refresh in your hearts and in my own a few of those essential things about sin and salvation which are commonly, I had almost said too commonly, believed among us -too cheaply and too easily believed, but never sufficiently held with grip of heart and life.

The first thing that strikes one to say is this, that salvation then, that night, taking it in its narrow meaning— though always when I speak of our own circumstances, remember that I speak of salvation in its full-orbed meaning -salvation then and now is from impending doom.

Let us revive that essential idea of our most holy faith in all our hearts and minds. The times greatly need it. Salvation then was, and salvation now is, let me repeat it,

from impending doom. As there hung over Egypt that night the awful threat of God's descending wrath, so let my soul and yours never forget there hangs over this city the threat of impending vengeance. It has always been there. Nothing has been ever able to take that black cloud out of the sky; and as the times go on, methinks it gets not less black, but rather does it not look as if the world's dark night were thickening? Salvation from impending doom. And just because of that, a motive which worked that night upon the hearts of Israelites, and ought to work upon our hearts now, was, and should be, the element and moving principle of fear.

When I speak of impending doom, and then, when I say that out of that ought to come the urgent motive of fear, I know that naturally our hearts kick against that, and yet we must not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. My dear hearer, whether we like it or do not like itwhether we hear it or whether we forbear-such are the facts of revelation, and they receive their most powerful illustration in the Cross of Calvary, on which hung the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me reassert this : let me iterate and reiterate it-that fear is a legitimate motive in salvation. Perhaps the Israelites on that occasion were immediately drawn by loving obedience to obey what God had spoken. If so, they were different from you and me. If so, they were very much different from what they were on subsequent occasions; and I rather think that while some temperaments would just quietly and unquestioningly yield whenever Moses declared the mind and heart of God, as to what was coming of doom, and as to how salvation was to be secured, others would question; others would be reluctant; others would be very like

ourselves. But we do hope that, no matter how they felt "rubbed the wrong way " (if you will allow the familiar expression), they had sense enough, whether drawn by love or driven by fear, to sprinkle that blood and get in under its shelter in time, and stay there. So I say I stand not only on revelation. I stand on reason and common sense when I say if you have any glimmering of faith in God's Word at all—if you have any illumination of a natural kind to perceive that this world demands a time of doom and judgment-demands it, and will get it-then betake you as swiftly as you may to the one great refuge and shelter, while still the day of righteous wrath and revelation of God's judgment is withheld, and still the door of mercy stands wide open to the wall. Ah, yes, it is said to be unphilosophical and men say, and they get others to write it for them in very grand and seemingly philosophical speech-that if you do not draw men with love, you will never drive them by fear. I do not believe a bit of it. It is not philosophy at bottom; it is sheer nonsense. Men are moved by fear every day. Why did you go and insure your house last week? Was it not through fear? Why did you insure your life last week, even though the doctor told you that there was nothing wrong with you ? Was it not from fear? When you were

walking in the country the other day, and came to a railway crossing, and an express train arrived at the very time, I rather think that the express train got the crossing first.

You instinctively drew back, did you not? because there is implanted in the very constitution of your body as a life-preserving principle this instinctively moving principle and element of fear. Grand men, large broad-browed men, are men who are moved by fear. Methinks Noah was a grand,