And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshiped.— EXODUS, 12 : 26, 27.

Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.—I CORINTHIANS, 5 : 7, 8.

As we read in the Old Testament of the greatest of all the Church feasts, and note the accuracy with which it prefigures the true Paschal Lamb and the holy communion with divine Principle—the true Pass-over from death unto Life—demonstrated in the triumph of Jesus, we stand in awe of that great unit of consciousness—Moses—who lifted a nation to a sense of an incorporeal God as Mind. Moses caught a glimpse of the pattern shown in the mount,— the Christ-ideal,—and he thereby met and overcame the asserted forces of idolatry and necromancy, demonstrating the one supreme incorporeal Mind, the God of Israel. We may well realize the majesty of Moses' spiritual perception, and the fitting reference of Jesus when he said, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote of me." Only through a symbol's cruder teaching, however, could he express it to those who followed him through the wilderness of doubts and fears toward that Eldorado of Spirit where man rests in the consciousness of God, good.

The remarkable chapter in Exodus referred to above, accurately describes him who should redeem the world. Moses said, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me." This was what Moses saw of the ever-present Christ who should come into human as the man Christ Jesus,— "a lamb without blemish and without spot," —the type of perfected humanity.

As we recognize the clearness of this prophetic vision, we wonder that creed, ritualism, and materialism should have hidden from the Jews the "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," but, as Paul says, "their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ," Not only to the Israelitish consciousness has this vail remained, but until our beloved Leader removed it, through her wonderful vision and inspired writing, the Christ was but dimly dimly understood, even by Christendom.

Christian Science discloses the deep and sacred meaning of the passover to each individual, showing that self-immolation alone can effect the transition from sense to Soul, from beliefs of material existence, with its sin, sorrow, and limitation, to the true consciousness of man and the universe as spiritual, harmonious, and eternal, —perfect because the Father is perfect.

Jesus came in the flesh to show the power of Spirit over the flesh by dispelling its illusions of disease and discord.

In banishing them from his own consciousness as unreal, he bridged over the seeming separation between God and man, became our passover from an unreal to a true sense of glorified being, thus making us at-one with the Father—our Life—and revealing to each individual his own inseparability from God. This spiritual idea forever abides with us, breaking down the middle wall of partition, and uniting all in the one body of Christ—in the unity of Spirit—the bonds of divine brotherhood.

At this Communion season, if those who have named the name of Christ, having escaped from all unworthy aims and selfish desires, having purged out the old leaven, having immolated selfhood in matter, should unite and attain, as they may, a purified consciousness, bound together in love and unselfed desire for "on earth peace, good will toward men," such a wave of divine Love would touch the universal thought that the very heavens would be opened, the glad song of angels would again be heard, and the risen Christ in Christian Science would irradiate the earth.

The call of the hour is for this consecration, for this unity in thought and deed, to have one aim, the establishment of the kingdom of Love, good on earth, the reign of righteousness. Our hopes are gladdened on every side by the evidences of honest reform, of sincere aspirations for right and justice, and we know that the leaven of truth which the woman hid in the three measures of meal is working in social, political, and religious realms, heralding a reign of rightness—righteousness. Our communion need not be local, nor dependent on time, for all who are healing the sick in Christian Science—destroying sin and sorrow—are ever communing together in the one Mind. Though separated by oceans, or deserts, the ever-present Christ unites all in the one desire and design.

This lesson of the Passover is interestingly illustrated in Jewish history by the crossing of the river Jordan, which rushes precipitately and turbulently down through the hills and valleys of Galilee—emptying into the Dead Sea. It has great prominence in Bible history. It marked the boundary between the region of desert wanderings and the longed-for Canaan. Its crossings and recrossings symbolized the vicissitudes of the children of Israel. Elijah passed over it at his ascension, and many noted events occurred on its banks, but more significant than all these is this, that through the ministry of Christ Jesus the boundary between sense and Soul which it prefigured was bridged for all to pass over, —not through, but over. Christ, the spiritual idea in Christian Science, has bridged all material sense, and man may pass over, not through death, but through transfiguration, through communion with the Mind that is Life.