THE PASSOVER.

(Matt, xxvi:17-30.)

I. The Analysis,

1. The guidance of Christ over our service extends to the smallest details (verses 17-19).—We are accustomed to refer the greater decisions of our lives to the Lord's better wisdom, but we are equally accustomed to decide in our own wisdom the smaller problems of service. When we remember that the most important consequences often follow apparently unimportant actions, we should be warned to ask Him concerning even so small matters as: ''Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?"

2. The latent possibilities of evil in every heart (verses 22-24).—See below.

3. The meaning of the Lord's supper (verses 26-29).

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

The Passover and the Lord's Supper have very much in common; indeed, the latter feast may be regarded as the continuation, with larger meanings, of the earlier. Both alike are memorial—the one perpetuating the memory of the great deliverance in Egypt; the other of the great Deliverer of whom the Jewish passover lamb was but a type. Both commemorate a deliverance by blood alone (Exodus xii:13; Heb. ix:13-15; x:10). Both speak of that which renders secure from judgment all, however guilty, who apply the blood by faith. Both present a lamb—^the best expression in nature of innocency and non-resistance to evil.

The parallels might be farther drawn out, but these must suffice. For our concern is not so much to expound the lesson as to find in it that truth which is either uniquely taught here, no other Scripture having it; or (which is equally to the point), that truth better taught here than elsewhere. So considered, must we not say that it lies in that sudden overwhelming wave of self-knowledge which forced to all their lips the awful question concerning the betrayer, "Lord, is it I?" Mark it well—this is a final question. Just as the tremendous miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes credible all other and lesser miracles, so this question, "Lord, is it I?" if answered affirmatively render credible all the testimonies of Scripture concerning the incurable evil of the natural heart. Always, in all spheres, the greater includes the less. If we all, then, left to ourselves and to the unhindered work of our own hearts, are capable of the consummate infamy and crime of the betrayal of Jesus Christ, then such small matters as theft, murder, adultery, covetousness, and the like may at once be acknowledged as latent possibilities in every heart of man (Mark vi:21-23; Rom. iii:10-18; Gal. v:19-21). What is certain is that under the divine searchlight every one of the apostles saw the crowning crime to be possible to him; and they were at least as good as we.

"Lord, is it I?" It is related of a great preacher that, having to preach in the Massachusetts penitentiary, he was stricken dumb as he saw the long lines of fellow-men clad in the livery of shame, shamble, lock-step, to their places in the chapel. For he said, "How may I preach to these men? What know I of thieves and forgers and murderers? I have done none of these things. Between them and myself is a chasm hell deep which I can neither overpass to get to them, nor they to get to me." And then God showed him his own natural heart. Down through layers of Puritan tradition, of moral habit, inherited from generations of God-fearing ancestors, the revealing ray shot and lighted up the real heart underneath, and the man of God saw there the possibility of every crime represented in the long rows of furtive-eyed, low-browed, bestial-faced humanity before him—and then he could preach to them as a sinful man to sinful men.