Here few words ought to suffice. Nothing can be more plain than the revelations of scripture concerning God’s character as infinitely pure and holy――as a Being who not only can never sin himself but can never be pleased to have others sin, and above all can never put forth his power to _make them sin_. God can not be tempted with evil, “_neither tempteth he any man_” (Jam. 1: 13). When he declares so solemnly and so tenderly: “O do not that abominable thing which I hate”! shall it still be said――But he puts men to sinning; pushes them on in their sin; inclines their heart to sin and hardens them to more and guiltier sinning? Never! Shall it be claimed that with one hand God gives his Spirit to impress the truth on human souls unto their salvation; and with the other sends his Spirit to augment the forces of temptation and to harden men’s hearts unto their damnation? Shall the same fountain send forth both sweet water and bitter? Shall the same God renew some human hearts unto holiness and harden other human hearts in sin――all by the same direct and similarly purposed agency, each work being done under the same impulses of infinite love?――――Surely there must be some egregious misconception of God’s character involved in supposing him capable of acts so fundamentally opposite and incompatible――not to say, in supposing him capable of tempting men into more and greater sin! The fact that He wisely and mightily over-rules sin to bring good forth from it should never be construed to imply that he abhors sin any the less because he can extort some good results from its existence. CHAPTER XIII. THE PASSOVER. THE first of the three great annual festivals of Israel, and the one which above all was commemorative in character――a memorial service――was the _Passover_. It was designed to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage――the great birth-hour of the Hebrew nation. Especially did it commemorate the scenes of that last eventful night when God caused his angel of death to _pass over_ the houses of Israel as he went through the land of Egypt, smiting the first-born in all her households.――――The central thing in this institution was the slaying of the paschal lamb――one for each household――and the sprinkling of its blood upon the two side-posts, and upon the lintel over the door of each house. This sprinkled blood, seen by the destroying angel, became his authority for _passing over_ and by that house, sparing its first-born, while he spared not one first-born of all the families of Egypt. There were numerous collateral points in the institution, designed to fill it out more completely and make it most impressively a memorial service for all the future generations of Israel; _e. g._ the following: