corresponds to our present "Lord's day." Such a coincidence should not be overlooked and was manifestly designed. If tbe Passover speaks of the death of Jesus the firs~ fruits are surely intended to speak of his resurrection. The death of the Pa;cbal lamb and the presentation of the firstfruits occupy the same temporal relation as the death of Jesus and his resurrection. Hence we find in this arrangement the following lessons:- !. THE FIRSTFBUITS HALLOWE_D TIIE SU11SEQUENT HARVEST. They were a grateful acknowledgment of God's hand m the harvest, and at the same time the condition of its being properly gathered. Aii one writer has very properly said "It removed the impediment which stood opposed to its being gathered, the ceremo;ial impurity if I may so say, which was attached to it previous to the waving of the sheaf befor~ the Lord, until which time it was unlawful to make use of it, The prohibition on this head was express. 'And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be ~ statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings' (ver. 14). There was, then, you perceive, an imputed uncleanness attached to the harvest before the offering of the firstfruits, but which, when the sheaf was presented, was done away• and thus it is written, 'he (the priest) shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you.'" 1 Now, it is very plain from this that Christ, the Firstfruits, hallows the subsequent human harvest. The great ingathering of souls ciepends on the preceding Firstfruits for consecration and acceptance. Thus do we see in symbol that he was "raised for our justification" (Rom. iv. 25). II. THE FIBSTFBUITS WERE THE EARNEST OF THE COMING HARVEST. Here was a sample of what was coming and was at hand. It was first ripe, but the rest was on its way. In the very same way, the resurrection of the Saviour is the earnest and pledge of that of his people. Hence Paul says, " But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the Firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the Firstfruits ; aftcrward they that are Christ's at his coming" (Cor. xv. 20-23). Hence we take the risen Saviour as at once the pled_qe of the resurrection of his people, and the sample of what our resurrection is to be. On the pledge implied by his resurrection we need not dwell. It is clear from 1 Cor. xv. and from other Scriptures that his resurrection is the sure guarantee of ours. The other thought involved is quite as precious. "Our citizenship is in heaven ; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto hie glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things uuto himself" (Phil. iii. 20, 21 ). Just as Jesus in his post-resurrection life of forty days on earth showed marvellous superiority to the laws of nature by which these bodies of humiliation are bound, just as he was able on ministries of mercy to pass with the speed of thought from place to place, to enter through barred doors, and vanish like a vapour when he had dispensed his peace,-so do we hope to be possessed of an organ more consonant to the aspirations of our spirits, and better adapted than our present bodies can be to fulfil the purposes of God. The forty days befure the ascension of our Saviour afford the insight now needed into the conditions of our future life, when we too are gathered as sheaf's that are ripe into the garner above. "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him." -R. M. E. The Pentewst. Ch. xxiii. 15-21 ; cf. Acts ii.; also Jer. ii. 3 ; Rom, xi. 16 ; and J as. i. 18. Having found in the firstfruits a typical reference to the resurrection of Christ1 we have no difficulty on the same line in finding in the harvest festival seven weeks thereafter typical reference to the harvest of the Church of God. Primarily it was eucharistic in character, but this does not exhaust its meaning. It was exactly fifty days after the Exodus that the Law was given on Sinai, an<l so Pentecost was associated from the outset with the "revival of the Church of God." What happened in the Pentecost after our Lord's last Passover was the baptism of the Holy Ghost and ~ revived interest in God's holy Law.
1 Lowe, on' The Annual Feasts of the Jews,' pp. ",7, is. CH, XXIII. ~ . ] THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS. 363