And now Christ our Passover is slain and we are asked to determine whether we will use His sacrifice or not. We are not asked to add anything to the efficacy of that sacrifice, but only to avail ourselves of it. Wherever there was faith there was a man in the twilight sprinkling his lintel, and resolved that no solicitation should tempt him from behind the blood till the angel had passed by. He took God at His word; he believed that God meant to deliver him, and he did what he was told was his part. To us God opens a way out from all bondage and from all that gives us the spirit of slaves.
U Stephen Grellet was the child of French parents of the nobility, and was born in the city of Limoges, in the beautiful district of Limousin, a few years before the great Eevolution broke out in France. He was brought up as a Eoman Catholic, and shared in the sufferings of the Eoyalist party like other members of the nobility. In the fortunes of war he was captured and ordered to be shot. But at that moment a commotion arose and he escaped to America, and began soon
1 Christina G. Rossetti, Poems, 168.
1 86 FOR THE FEAST
after that life of wonderful usefulness which carried hirn several times across Europe on errands of mercy, brought him before kings and popes, exposed him to perils of war and imprisonment, and made him one of the first workers in the United States for the abolition of slavery. Upon what did that career turn? First, upon a sense of conviction of sin so keen that an awful voice seemed to call from Heaven to him as he walked in the fields " Eternity ! eternity ! eternity ! " and he felt himself sinking as in the lowest hell. Then, when he was like one " crushed under the millstones " with the sense of his sin, there came " the fulness of heavenly joy" through trust in a living Saviour. He realized that "there was One, even He whom I had pierced — Jesus Christ the Eedeemer — that was able to save me. I saw Him to be the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world. ... On my earnest petition being put up to Him, the language was proclaimed, 'Thy sins are , forgiven, thine iniquities are pardoned.' " x
T[ Safdar Ali was the son of a Moslem judge in a native state of India, and attended Agra College, studying among other things very closely the Moslem faith. After leaving college he obtained the post of Deputy-Inspector of Schools in the Punjab, and there he came across Sufi philosophers and fakirs. From them he learned to practise austerities of life in order to obtain purity of heart. But he failed to find it, and when he told them of his failure they answered that he must find an infallible director. Among sheikhs and fakirs he sought for such a one in vain, till at length he decided on the pilgrimage to Mecca. As he was preparing for it he met with a copy of Pfander's Mizan-al-Haqq, or " Balance of Truth," a defence of Christianity against Moslems. This led him to decide to study the Christian faith, and for three years, instead of going to Mecca, he pondered over the Bible and Koran side by side, deserted by his wife, but helped by a Christian convert Nehemiah. The result was that he found Christ as a personal Saviour, and could say: —
My Friend was near me, and I roamed far in search of Him; My well was full of water, while I was parched and thirsty. Praise upon praise, to-day my journey is ended. Now the last stage is reached — my pilgrimage is o'er.2
3. But the particular reason why the Apostle here states that our Passover has been sacrificed is to offer a reason why the old leaven should be purged out. His thought, accordingly, is that
1 W. Guest, Life of Stephen Grellet, 24. 2 History of the C.M.S. ii. 555.
i CORINTHIANS v. 7, 8 187
Christ is our representative ; in offering Himself He offers us to God ; and we are no longer our own.
Christ is our passover, because through Him there is made the acknowledgment that we belong to God. He is in very truth the prime and flower, the best representative of our race, the first-born of every creature. He is the One who can make for all others this acknowledgment that we are God's people. And He does so by perfectly giving Himself up to God. This fact that we belong to God, that we men are His creatures and subjects, has never been perfectly acknowledged save by Christ.
Tf Only those of us who can see that we ought to live for God can claim Christ as our representative. Only those who wished to go free from Egypt to serve God sacrificed the paschal lamb ; the service of God, the living as His people, was the object they had in view. What object have we ? If we mean to be of His spirit, if we mean to count it our meat and drink to do God's will, if we are really disposed to seek the advancement of God's purposes, and not to seek great things for ourselves, we may speak of Him as our Substitute and Sacrifice. If He is our Passover, the meaning of this is that He gives us liberty to serve God, that He comes to redeem us from all that hinders our serving Him. The one question is, Do we at heart wish to give ourselves up to God ? Do we find in His life and death, in His submission to God and meek acceptance of all God appointed, the truest representation of what we would fain be and do, but cannot ? *