the sage, "who is concerned for thee. He feels for thee an admirable regard."

To the same early revelation must unquestionably be attributed the general impression, which, as may be learned from Tacitus and Suetonius, prevailed throughout a large portion of the world, that Judea was to give a ruler to the nations.

To the Old Testament, then, let us turn, as the source of satisfactory and authoritative information on this subject. It is impossible to take more than a selection of passages. But by these, and by general reference to others, it may be made to appear that the Christ whom we acknowledge is foretold; that the circumstances of his advent are minutely described; the time, the place, the manner, his lineage, his rank, and worldly condition; the kind of reception he should meet with; the errand on which he should come; the offices he was to exercise, his qualifications for executing their proper functions; his success; his humiliation and sufferings; his exaltation and reward; his conflicts and victories; the nature of his kingdom, the spirit of his religion; the extension of his cause among the nations of the earth; the superseding of the introductory dispensation, or the perfecting of its design in that simpler and more spiritual system which was to be superinduced upon it.

Above all, the New Testament is not more precise than the Old, in asserting the divine and glorious majesty of the Redeemer of the world; and the terms which the Old employs finely accord with those of the other, in asserting the mysterious union of the Divinity with a holy humanity in him, "the Wonderful one," on whom man's "help was laid," and who was at once to appear the virgin's Son and "the Mighty God," representing him as one who, being far above suffering in his own nature, did, in the other nature which he assumed, become subject to the precepts and to the curse of the law, in the character of our surety,, and wrought out a great redemption, not without such opposition and conflict as a mere creature power alone must have been inadequate to bear

up under, and to overcome.

He is described as uniting in himself the offices, never in any other case found associated, of prophet, priest, and king; and as one who, being rejected by the Jews, his own nation, should become the blessing of all nations, and should receive the homage and subjection of the world.

Taking a general survey of the Old Testament Scriptures, we might trace the references to Christ downwards from the early promise of a Redeemer given to the first human pair, while in trembling despondency they heard the voice of their offended Creator reckoning with them in their now unhappy character of sinners against him. The relieving notice of purposed mercy was given, not directly in the address to the woman or to the man, but mingled with the threatening directed to the tempter, ere the threatening against either of the parents of mankind was yet pronounced; thus anticipating their despair and mercifully preventing it. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." Gen. iii. 15. On this comforting announcement, usually called the first promise, the prophets in all their respective generations seem to have had their eye fixed, while they spake of the coming redemption, and the destruction of the power of the devil. It certainly prepares us well to expect, in the Messiah, a combatant and champion against our great enemy, or, as is expressed in New Testament language, one who should save us from our enemies, and from the hand of them that hated us-one who should "reign till all his enemies shall be put under his feet." Nor is it less explicit on the means of redemption, than its nature or results. It points to one who is emphatically said "to be made of a woman." The New Testament affords a rich commentary on the promise, in the Gospel of Luke, who, in his third chapter, shows how, (as Lightfoot expresses it,) through seventy-five generations, Christ is this seed of the woman; and, in the fourth chapter, how, through three temptations, this seed began to bruise

the head of the Serpent; where the reader may observe how the devil tempts Christ, in the very same manner that he had tempted Eve, though not with the same success.” *

Coming down in the sacred history, we might notice, in the words of Adam, perhaps in the very names of Eve, of Seth, of Cain, indications of the hope of the Messiah, and of the restitution of all things by him. We might speak too of Noah, and his sacrifice. But especially in the revelation to Abraham, of one in whom "the nations should be blessed," we have a clear unfolding of the Gospel as it was afterwards to be possessed by gentiles as well as Jews. And, in the language of the patriarch Jacob, in blessing Judah, we have no obscure notice of the future reign or sovereignty of Christ; the benignity of his rule and its large extent:-"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." Here it is prophesied that the sceptre should come into the hands of Judah; and when it should come, it should not depart thence till the Messiah should appear; and when the sovereignty should cease, the gentiles should come and own the Saviour whom the Jews would reject. The Jews

* Lightfoot's Works: Erubhin, or Miscellanies--“ All the sins of the world are brought to these three heads-Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.' By these three, Eve falls in the garden she sees the tree is good for meat; and the lust of the flesh enticeth her: she sees it fair to look on; and the lust of the eye provokes her: and she perceives it will make her wise; and the pride of life persuades her to take it. By these three the devil tempts Christ: when he is hungry, he would have him turn stones into bread, and so tries him by the lust of the flesh; he shows and promises him all the pomp of the world, and so tries him by the lust of the eyes; and he will have him to fly in the air, and so tempts him to pride of life. But as, by these three, the serpent had broken the head of the woman, so against these three, the Seed of the woman breaks the head of the serpent. David prophesied of this conquest: The dragon thou shalt tread under thy feet.' The very next verse before this, the devil useth to tempt Christ withal: but to this he dare not come; for it is to his sorrow." Vol. iv. p. 70.

+ Septuagint, gordonia Over, the expectation of the nations:--Vulgate, "expectatio gentium."

are necessarily much perplexed with this passage: the Messiah is so clearly foretold here as to come while the sceptre was yet in the hands of Judah; whereas, the power of Judah as a state has now been lost for eighteen hundred years together. It is agreed by the more ancient Jewish Talmudists, and Chaldee Paraphrasts, that Shiloh is the Messiah; however variously the word may be rendered by some, "the Sent," by others, "the Peacemaker," &c. The Jews are forced therefore to adopt very opposite expositions of the place, which scarcely deserve confutation. How absurd to apply the prophecy to Moses, in whose day Judah had not yet obtained the dominion -or to Saul, in whose days the sceptre was transferred to Judah and David-not taken from it! Nor was "the gathering of the nations" to Saul, nor "their expectation towards him." Equally unreasonable is it to apply the words to David, the possession of the sceptre by Judah having begun with him, or to Nebuchadnezzar, who obtained indeed, for a season, the mastery, and led the Jews captive; but besides that this was rather an interruption than a cessation of the sovereignty, and that even during the captivity a shadow of its power remained to Judah, the Jews being permitted to live under their own rulers, and to obey their own laws; and it still happening very remarkably, that the sceptre did not depart from Judah to any other tribe, the Jewish writers themselves allowing that the successive heads or governors of the Exiles were always of the House of David-besides all this, it is unfavourable to such an interpretation, that the power of Nebuchadnezzar over the Jewish people was given him in the righteous judgment of God, as an instrument of the Divine displeasure against the sins of that nation, whereas the words of the patriarch here, are all referable to the blessing of Judah-the description of its prosperity.

In short, it is so clear that the Jewish power was to remain till the coming of Christ, and was to cease about that time, and it is so indubitable that for ages that power has in every vestige of it disappeared; no

matter whether the precise time of its departure be reckoned the period of Pompey, or the age of Herod, or the era of Vespasian; that either the prophecy has been falsified, or the Messiah has come.

From the Patriarchs we pass on to Moses, and to his announcement of a "PROPHET who was to arise from among his brethren like unto himself," (Deut. xviii.) to whom they were to hearken-a passage applied by the ancient Jews as well as by Christians to the Messiah; an evidence of which appears on the face of the New Testament, in the fact that Peter and Stephen, reasoning with the Jews on their received principles, accommodate these words to Jesus. (Acts iii. 22—vii. 37.) To this passage Le Clerc also refers those words of our Saviour, "Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust; for, had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me." John v. 45.

In a limited sense, all the prophets were like unto Moses; but it is a single person who is here spoken of, not a class. Christ alone was truly "like him," in being both a Prophet, and a King, and a Priest, and a Mediator, as Moses was. He resembled him in the excellency of his ministry and work—in the glory of his miracles-in his familiar and intimate converse with God. No prophet but the Messiah had such a near intercourse with God as Moses had. And not one of the Jewish prophets was a legislator. Not even their kings could alter the law and constitution divinely given. Jesus alone, as has been justly observed, was the founder of a new law, or authoritatively appointed religious ordinances. It was predicted of the Messiah, as we shall afterwards see, that in his days the Levitical observances should cease, and of course "the whole authority of that law should be abolished."* All the other characters given of the Prophet whom God was to raise up agree to Jesus of Nazareth. He was "raised up," in a sin

* Smith's Scriptural Testimony to the Messiah, i. 258.