nd imposing
ceremonies to replace those which Moses taught him, he would perish like
any Egyptian who devised nothing, but simply cowered under the shadow of
the impending doom.

Nor was the salvation without price. It was not a prayer nor a fast
which bought it, but a life. The conviction that a redemption was
necessary if God should be at once just and a justifier of the ungodly
sprang neither from a later hairsplitting logic, nor from a methodising
theological science; it really lay upon the very surface of this and
every offering for sin, as distinguished from those offerings which
expressed the gratitude of the accepted.

We have not far to search for evidence that the lamb was really regarded
as a substitute and ransom. The assertion is part and parcel of the
narrative itself. For, in commemoration of this deliverance, every
firstborn of Israel, whether of man or beast, was set apart unto the
Lord. The words are, "Thou shall cause to PASS OVER unto the Lord all
that openeth the womb, and every firstling which thou hast that cometh
of a beast; the males shall be the Lord's" (xiii. 12). What, then,
should be done with the firstborn of a creature unfit for sacrifice? It
should be replaced by a clean offering, and then it was said to be
redeemed. Substitution or death was the inexorable rule. "Every
firstborn of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb, and if thou wilt not
redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck." The meaning of this
injunction is unmistakable. But it applies also to man: "All thy
firstborn of man among thy sons thou shalt redeem." And when their sons
should ask "What meaneth this?" they were to explain that when Pharaoh
hardened himself against letting them go from Egypt, "the Lord slew all
the firstborn in the land; ... therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all
that openeth the womb being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I
redeem" (xiii. 12-15).

Words could not more plainly assert that the lives of the firstborn of
Israel were forfeited, that they were bought back by the substitution of
another creature, which died instead, and that the transaction answered
to the Passover ("thou shalt cause to pass over unto the Lord").
Presently the tribe of Levi was taken "instead of all the firstborn of
the children of Israel." But since there were two hundred and
seventy-three of such firstborn children over and above the number of
the Levites, it became necessary to "redeem" these; and this was
actually