The solution of the apparent discrepancy between this passage and Numbers 18:18 seems to lie in the custom of inviting the worshippers to share in the feasts provided by their offerings. View the sanctification of the firstlings as symbolical.

1. Of God's claim on the first and choicest of what we have for his own service.

(1) Of our property.

(2) Of our affections.

(3) Of our powers of body and mind.

2. Of God's right to redeemed life. The firstlings were redeemed by God for himself on the memorable night of the deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 13:12). God claims redeemed life as peculiarly his own (Isaiah 43:1-4; 1 Corinthians 6:20).

3. Of God's right to young life. A symbol of early consecration.

4. Of happy fellowship with God. The fellowship was a fruit of the dedication of the best. - J.O.

"Year by year." It might seem at first sight, antecedent to experience, a surprising thing that the mere mechanical movement of the earth through the heavens should have any special relationship to man's mind and spirit. Yet we know that it has. Our memory associates special experiences with certain seasons and days. As the season or day returns the event is recalled, and sometimes the impressions awakened by it have, apparently, all their original sharpness. So, in this regard, the course of the heavens comes to be, as it were, a colossal memorandum book.

1. There is a sure evidence of the event seen in the fact of its commemoration.

2. We are taught how comparatively rare are these conspicuous and startling events which punctuate our public and private life. It is well for the sanity of the human mind that life is not filled with startling events. It would be like substituting pyrotechnics for the moonlight, or the stars for the silent skies. It is in the ordinary quiet on going of life that we find healthfulness of heart.

3. Life is always, serious. For we are ever treading on the edge of something unexpected, it may be something terrible. Let us walk circumspectly, and realise that we may always dwell under the shield of God's providence and under the light of His promises.

4. We see the innate superiority of mind to all temporary events. You recall perhaps your wedding day, the hour, the place, the guests, the joy, through a score of years, a half century ago. Intervals of time fade from view in presence of this supreme experience, just as you look from one lofty peak to another and think not of field, valley, and river between. You see those shining points of life when you were at twenty, forty, or sixty years of age, and lesser experiences are hidden. The mind itself is superior to mere measurements of time, and so is constituted for immortality; is akin to Him to whom a thousand years are but as yesterday.

5. How deep in us is the element of affection which has its expression in the anniversary or festival. As we review the past our memory clings to those experiences in which the heart has a part, those which have touched its springs of joy and grief. We properly cultivate intellectual strength, power of will and endurance, but, after all, it is love that is supreme. Love brings us nearer Him who is perfect love.

6. A sweet illustration of the grace of God in the Gospel is furnished in the fact, with which every believer is familiar, that in these remembered events sorrow loses its sting and joy comes to be even more full in reminiscence than it was at first. Our sorrow only makes more glorious the preciousness and amplitude of Divine grace and sympathy, just as the glory of the sun, shot through a dark cloud, illumines and transfigures it by its splendour and its peace.

7. What a rest it is to the aged to recall the past when they are released from life's active and strenuous struggles! They are like ships home from long voyages, moated in a quiet harbour, where the memory of storms that are past only enhances the serenity and peace enjoyed.

8. Whatever measurements may hereafter be had as to time and eternity in our immortal life, one thing is certain: we will keep one point in vivid remembrance — that of our entrance into life, when we first knew the joys eternal.

(R. S. Storrs, D. D.).