-operation; and the patriotic celebration was to live on from age to
age by the instruction which parents should carefully give their
children (xii. 3, 26, xiii. 8).

The first ordinance of the Jewish religion was a domestic service. And
this arrangement is divinely wise. Never was a nation truly prosperous
or permanently strong which did not cherish the sanctities of home.
Ancient Rome failed to resist the barbarians, not because her discipline
had degenerated, but because evil habits in the home had ruined her
population. The same is notoriously true of at least one great nation
to-day. History is the sieve of God, in which He continually severs the
chaff from the grain of nations, preserving what is temperate and pure
and calm, and therefore valorous and wise.

In studying the institution of the Passover, with its profound typical
analogies, we must not overlook the simple and obvious fact that God
built His nation upon families, and bade their great national
institution draw the members of each home together.

The national character of the feast is shown further because no Egyptian
family escaped the blow. Opportunities had been given to them to evade
some of the previous plagues. When the hail was announced, "he that
feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made his
servants and his cattle flee into the house"; and this renders the
national solidarity, the partnership even of the innocent in the
penalties of a people's guilt, the 'community' of a nation, more
apparent now. There was not a house where there was not one dead. The
mixed multitude which came up with Israel came not because they had
shared his exemptions, but because they dared not stay. It was an
object-lesson given to Israel, which might have warned all his
generations.

And if there is hideous vice in our own land to-day, or if the contrasts
of poverty and wealth are so extreme that humanity is shocked by so much
luxury insulting so much squalor,--if in any respect we feel that our
own land, considering its supreme advantages, merits the wrath of God
for its unworthiness,--then we have to fear and strive, not through
public spirit alone, but as knowing that the chastisement of nations
falls upon the corporate whole, upon us and upon our children.

But if the feast of the Passover was a commemoration, it also claims to
be a sacrifice, and the first sacrifice which was Divinely founded and
directed.

This brings us face to face