There are two grand foundation-truths set forth in the passover, namely, redemption, and the unity of God’s people. These truths are unchangeable: nothing can ever do away with them. Failure there may be, and unfaithfulness, in various forms; but those glorious truths of the eternal redemption and perfect unity of God’s people remain in all their force and value. Hence that impressive ordinance which so vividly shadowed forth those truths was of perpetual obligation. Circumstances were not to interfere with it; death or distance was not to interrupt it. “If any man of you or of your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet shall he keep the passover unto the Lord.” So imperative, indeed, was it upon every member of the congregation to celebrate this feast, that a special provision is made in Numbers ix. for those who were not up to the mark of keeping it according to the due order. Such persons were to observe it “on the fourteenth day of the _second_ month.” This was the provision of grace for all cases of unavoidable defilement or distance. If the reader will turn to 2 Chronicles xxx, he will see that Hezekiah, and the congregation in his day, availed themselves of this gracious provision. “And there assembled at Jerusalem much people to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the _second_ month, a very great congregation.... Then they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the second month.” (Ver. 13, 15.) The grace of God can meet us in our greatest possible weakness, if only that weakness be felt and confessed.[9] But let not this most precious and comfortable truth lead us to trifle with sin or defilement. Though grace permitted the second month, instead of the first, it did not, on that account, allow any laxity as to the rites and ceremonies of the feast. “The unleavened bread and bitter herbs” were always to have their place; none of the sacrifice was to remain till the morning, nor was a single bone of it to be broken. God cannot allow any lowering of the standard of truth or holiness. Man, through weakness, failure, or the power of circumstances, might be behind the time; but he must not be below the mark. Grace permitted the former; holiness forbids the latter: and if any one had presumed upon the grace to dispense with the holiness, he would have been cut off from the congregation. Has this no voice for us? Assuredly it has. We must ever remember, as we pass along through the pages of this marvelous book of Numbers, that the things which happened unto Israel are our types, and that it is at once our duty and our privilege to hang over these types and seek to understand the holy lessons which they are designed of God to teach.