offer after meditating on the lessons from Olivet:

"Almighty and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy
faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service: Grant, we
beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that
we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; which exceed all
that we can desire; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord.
AMEN!"

THE LORD'S SUPPER

We are approaching now the end of our Saviour's life. The last week
has come, and we are in the midst of it. This is called Passion week.
We commonly use this word _passion_ to denote anger. But the first
and true meaning of the word, and of the Latin word from which it
comes, is--suffering. And this is the sense in which we find the word
used in Acts i: 3. There, St. Luke, who wrote the Acts, is speaking
of Christ's appearing to the apostles, after his resurrection, and he
uses this language: "To whom he showed himself alive, after his
_passion_;" or after his suffering and death.

In the midst of this last week--this passion week--one of the
interesting things that Jesus did was to keep the Jewish Passover for
the last time with his disciples. This Passover feast had been kept
by the Jews every year for nearly fifteen hundred years. It was the
most solemn religious service they had. It was first observed by
them in the night on which their nation was delivered from the
bondage of Egypt and began their march towards the promised land of
Canaan. We read about the establishment of this solemn service in
Exodus, twelfth chapter. The first Passover took place on the
fourteenth day of the month Nisan. This had been the seventh month of
the year with the Jews. But God directed them to take it for their
first month ever afterwards. They were to begin their year with that
month. Every family was to choose out a lamb for themselves, on the
tenth day of the month. They were to keep it to the fourteenth day of
the month. On the evening of that day, they were to kill the lamb.
The blood of the lamb was to be sprinkled on the two side-posts and
upper lintels of every door. They were to roast the lamb and eat it,
with solemn religious services. And, while they were doing this, the
angel of the Lord was to pass over all the land of Egypt, and, with
his unseen sword, to smite and kill the first-born, or eldest child,
in every family, from Pharaoh on his throne to the poorest beggar in
the land. But the