HOMILETICS. Man's ill-doing but ca'U6es God's wonders to be multiplied (ver. 9). God's wonders are either such as occur in the general course of his providence, or such as are abnormal and e:x:traorclina.ry. It is these last of which Moses especially speaks to us in the Book of Exodus. But the same law which applies to the abnormal wonders, applies also to those which are constant and ordinary. Men's perverseness leads to their multiplication. I. PARDON OF 61N IS MULTlPLIBD THROUGH HUMAN TRANSGRESSION. Nothing is a greater marvel than God's pardon of sin. How" tne High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity "-he who "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity "-can pardon sin, is one of those mysteries which must ever remain-in this life, at any rate-unfathomable. Man pardons his fellow-sinner without much difficulty, because he is his fellow-sinner -because he feels that he is himself so much in need of forgiveness. But for a perfect Being to pardon what is utterly alien to his own nature, what he must despise and abhor, what in his eyes is vile, base, mean, wicked, despicable, detestable-is a truth which faith may accept, but which reason is quite incompetent to understand. Yet God does pardon. St. Pau. must have been pardoned his persecution of the saints, before he was called to be " a chosen vessel." God bids us ask for pardon, and he would not bid us ask for that which he could not or would not give. And the marvel of pardon is being daily augmented, heaped up, multiplied, by the ever-increasing sum of human transgression. ll. GoD THE SPmIT'B CONDESCENSION GROWS AND INCilEABEB THROUGH THE SAME, '.i-od the Father declared once upon a time, "My Spirit shall not always strive with n,an" (Gen. vi. 3). Yet near five thousand years have elapsed, and his Spirit strives still. Man turns away from his Spirit, " grieves" him, vexes him, is deaf to h~ plead- iugs, sets at nought his counsel, wills none of his reproof (Prov. i, 25)-yet he does not ou. xu.1-20.J rHE BOOK O.F EXODUS.
withdraw himself. He" gives us the comfort of his help a.gain "-he "will not leave ue, nor forsake us." We may, no doubt, if we persist in evil courses, and set tr, work determinedly to drive him from us, in course of time cause him to withdraw, alienate him wholly, "quench" him. But, short of such alienation, our sins do but cause him to multiply the wonders of his love and his long-suffering, to be ever more gracious and more merciful, to plead with us more persuasively, more constantly, and save us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. III. CHRIST'S PROTECTION OF HIS CHURCH IS SHOWN MORE AND MORE MARVELLOUSLY AS ITS ASSAILANTS INCREASE IN POWER AND BOLDNESS. In prosperous times God seems to do little for his Church; but lot danger come, let men rise up against it, let Geba.l and Ammon and .A.malek be confederate together, and raise the cry, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground," and the wonders which he proceeds to work on its behalf are simply astounding. Arius would corrupt its doctrine with the Court at his back, and Arius is smitten in the dead of the night by a death as silent, sudden, and inscrutable as that which came in the time of Moses on all the first-born of the Egyptians. Julian would crush it by depriving its ministers of support and its members of education, and Julian is cut off in the flower of his age by the javelin of an unknown enemy. Atheism, Agnosticism, Rationalism, Materialism, and open immorality league themselves against it at the present day, and lo ! from without evidences are made to rise up out of crumbling heaps of rubbish in Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt ; while from within is developed a new life, a new zeal, a new vigour and activity, which give sure promise of triumph over the coalition. Man's opposition to God provokes God to arise and show forth his Inight, to confound and scatter his foes. So men may be led at last to know that he, whose name is Jehovah, is truly" the Most High over all the earth" (Ps. lmiii. 18).
SECTION VI. FIRST INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVEB.
EXPOSITION. ea.eh year in Egypt ; and it is so consonant to CHAPTER XII man's natural feelings, that, if the family of THE :INSTITUTION OF THE p ASSOVER AND Jacob did not bring the observe.nee with them THE REASONS FOR IT.- In the interval from Palestine, they are likely to have allowed by God, e.ccording to the precedent adopted it, when they became to some extent of former announced ple.gues, between the agriculturists (Dent. xi 10) under the we.rning concerning the first-bom e.nd the Pharaohs. It is, however, e. pure conjecture execution, Moses received instructions for the (Ewald) that the name given to this festival institution of e. new religious rite, founded was Pesach, from the sun's" passing over• at possibly upon some previous national usage, this time into the sign of Aries. The real but so re-she.ped, re-cast, and remodelled as to name is unknown, e.ud thero is every reason he.ve an entirely new and fresh character. In fo believe that the term Pesach we.s now for all Ee.stern nations, the coming in of spring the first time given a religions sense (upon we.s observed e.s a jocund e.ud festive time, the ground noticed in verses 11, 12) to what with offerings, processions, and songs of re- wus in reality a new rite. G1:id, being e.bout joicings. When the date of the vernal equi- to smite with death the first-bom in each nox we.s known, it we.s naturally made the Egyptian house, required the Israelites to u~arting-point for these festivities Early save themselves by mee.us of a. sacrifice. Each ilowers and fflllts, the fresh ears of the most Israelite householder was to select e. lamb ( or forwo.rd kinds of grain, or the grain itself ex- a kid) on the tenth day of the current month tracted from the ears, were presented e.s (ver. 3), e.nd to keep it sepo.ro.te from the tho.n.k-offerings in the temples; hymns were flock until the fourteenth day at even, when sung, o.nd acknowledgmonts ma.de of God's he was to kill it, to dip some hyssop in the goodness. Such a. festival wus celebrated blood (ver. 22) and to strike with the bys- l!:XOJllJij, s 258 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. [cH, XU, 1-4,