Church, is surely no annual commemoration of an historical deliverance. It is a perpetual feeding on the Living REDEEMER. Easter gathers us up year by year into the sympathies of His resurrection. Yet not in such a way as to absorb those sympathies, leaving the whole year besides in dulness and death. GOD forbid! The joy which Easter stimulates is a joy of life, which should thus be intensified for the energies of all remaining time. Not only now do we offer our Paschal oblation. Not only on one day of the year, but in continual celebrations, we are called to show forth the LORD's death until He come, to do our Paschal sacrifice, in remembrance of Him, presenting before GOD the Bread and Wine of a new harvest, which He Himself has quickened with the consecrating power of an inward and spiritual grace. The old Passover of the Jews spoke of redemption, but it could not speak of life. By it they were redeemed from the bondage, but their life was, as before, the life of earth. Our Christian Passover speaks of life, as well of redemption. The mere political regeneration of the Israelites is more than fulfilled in the regenerate condition of the Christian's spiritual being. The blood was sprinkled on the door-post while they ate the flesh

of the sacrifice. We are invited to eat the Flesh of CHRIST, and, more than that, to drink His Blood. O wondrous gift! "In the Blood is the life.” We are not merely delivered from an outward foe, but we are made partakers of an inward power.

Let not this power be lost upon us! Let us not any longer live to that world from which we are redeemed! "CHRIST, our Passover, is sacrificed for us; therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

SERMON XII.

THE RANSOMED PEOPLE.

THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.

1 PET. ii., 11.

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

I

spoke to you last Sunday, my dear brethren, of the Paschal deliverance of Israel as a type of the redemption of CHRIST's Church from the bondage of the world, and, more than that, a sacramental link, if I may so say, between the ancient people of GOD and the promised Saviour. The Paschal sacrifice, and the Feast which followed, were an ordinance looking backward in one respect, but forward in another and higher sense. They told of that great exodus which the true Paschal Lamb should sanctify-the exodus of "the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people, who should show forth the praises of Him Who called them out of

darkness into His marvellous light." exodus, that the pilgrimage, to w alludes in the text which I have jus -the exodus of those whom the G calls to follow Him, out of the da world, into the glorious light of Hi fellowship. We are called out of become one with the Paschal Lam unity of the Body of CHRIST t glorious liberty of the children of G

Whatever may have been our na in the world, we cannot go forward Zion, except in union with CHRIST the Door. CHRIST is the Way. Life of the redeemed. "It is one shall justify the circumcision by fai cumcision through faith." Jew and be made one in Him.

Who, however, were those to wl words were primarily addressed? to this question lies their specia "To the strangers scattered throu Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bith were they whose forefathers had 1

with the Jews of the original deliverance from Egypt, and all the promises. They had fallen away from GOD's covenant. Thenceforward there had been for them no hope of restoration. They had lost their hold on the temple. They had no longer a share in the hope of the people of GOD. So had the name rested upon them-the name of of which Hosea prophesied. "The dispersed

among the Gentiles "* continued in the midst of the nations where they dwelt, as Lo-ruhamah, the Unpitied,† for GOD has broken them off.

But although there was no longer any place remaining for them in the outward polity of the chosen people, there was a deliverance proclaimed to them, for they had been "elect according to the foreknowledge of GOD the FATHER, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the Blood of JESUS CHRIST." There was "an inheritance reserved in heaven for them, if now they were kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." They who had fallen away from the ancient Temple and its services, might be restored if they would come to Him Who is "the living Corner-stone, elect, precious."

* S. John vii., 35. † llosca i., 6. ‡ 1 Pet. i, 2, 4, 5.

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