unerring guide to all that was pious, all that was good, and all that was truly and intrinsically great.

Preserving the same character of dignity blended with mildness and affability, he accommodated himself to persons of every rank and condition. Among the wise and the learned, the Doctors of the Sanhedrim, the haughty Pharisees, and the sceptical Sadducees, how does he shine in detecting their malice, confuting their cavils against his conduct and precepts, and establishing clear and useful truths! Among the publicans and sinners, how does he disseminate the purest morality without unnecessary harshness! Among the low and illiterate, the fishermen of Gallilee and the populace of Jerusalem, how does he condescend to their contracted understandings, and adapt his precepts to their habits of life. Even women and children, because considered as capable of that instruction which leads to eternal happiness, are particularly regarded by the universal Teacher of Mankind. Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children, was his benign address, when he wished to turn their attention from his own sufferings to the impending woes of their country. Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. In this various accommodation to high and low, young and old, can we be inattentive to a quality of our Saviour's mind, which is peculiarly calculated to attach every feeling heart to his service-do we not remark that he was as amiable, as he was great and wise?

He who reflects with due attention and reverence upon the dignity, purity, and holiness of this divine character, will be sensible of the great difficulty of doing justice to the subject, as the Saviour of the world is presented to our observation in a manner so peculiarly striking. The inspired Apostles and Evangelists can alone satisfy our inquiries concerning him; and every other writer, conscious of his own incapacity to conceive, and his want of eloquence to describe, such unparalleled excellence, must point to the lively and expressive portrait, which they alone, who saw the original, wére qualified to draw.

It is reasonable to expect that so extraordinary a personage, distinguished as he was by every moral and intellectual quality, must necessarily make his testimony concerning himself perfectly credible. The positive and direct proofs of his divine mission are equally founded upon the prophecies, which foretold the most remarkable circumstances of his birth, life, and death, and upon the miracles by which he

proved to demonstration, that he was the promised Messiah of the Jews, the Mediator of a new covenant between God and man, and a divine Teacher sent to reform and save a guilty world.

III. THE PROPHECIES.

The Old Testament contains a long series of predictions, which are expressed with greater distinctness, and marked with a more striking and appropriate reference to a particular train of events, in proportion as the prophets approached more nearly to the time of the Messiah. As he was the great object of the general expectation of the Jews, so was he the great end of the Prophecies. Sometimes he is pourtrayed as the innocent, patient, and unrepining sufferer, pierced with grief, and sinking under unmerited calamity for the sake of mankind; He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, who hath borne our sorrows, and was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah liii.); and sometimes, with all the fervour and vivid colours of Oriental poetry, are described his temporal grandeur, the transcendent attributes of his divine character, and the glory and eternity of his kingdom. His name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah ix, 6.). These surprising intimations that occur in the Prophets of various ages, like rays of light proceeding from different quarters, all meet in the same point, and illuminate the same object. Here is none of that latitude of interpretation, or ambiguity of expression, in which the oracles of the heathens were conveyed. The history of Christ, as related by the Evangelists, may be considered as an enlarged and finished copy of the Prophecies, and the Prophecies themselves as the original sketches. The proportions and the outlines are uniformly preserved, and faithfully delineated. The colours indeed are more distinct and glowing, the figures have their just animation, but still their character and expression are the same.* Ineffectual have been the endeavours of the Jews to pervert the true meaning of these Prophecies; their literal sense is peculiarly applicable to our Lord, and to him alone they must necessarily be re

*Stillingfleet's Orig. Sacræ, book ii, ch. v, &c. Paley's Evidences, vol. ii, p. 67. Grotius de Veritate, lib. v, c. 17, 18. Gibson's Pastoral Letters, vol. iv, p. 52, of the Enchiridion Theologicum. Jortin's Re. marks, vol. i, p. 73, 74. Prideaux's Connections, vol. ii, p. 161. Josephus de Bello Judaico, lib. vi, c. 4, sect. 5, 6, 7, 8, compared with the predictions that relate to the Temple, as recorded by the Evangelists

ferred. Without mistaking their object, or perverting their clear and obvious sense, they cannot be applied to any other person whatever. Whilst these predictions strike the mind. of an attentive reader of Scripture, with various degrees of evidence, there are some of them which cannot fail to impress him with the fullest conviction, as they immediately relate to the mission, miracles, and character, as well as the exact time of the coming of Christ. Isaiah and Daniel more especially seem rather to describe the past as Historians, than to anticipate the future as Prophets. We know, from the authority of Scripture, that multitudes of Jews, who had diligently studied the Prophecies from their youth, and acknowledged their divine authority, felt the force of their application to our Lord, and were converted to his religion. And not to appeal to other instances, we also know that the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, so circumstantially descriptive of the suffering Messiah, effected the conversion of the Eunuch of Ethiopia, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, and contributed greatly to produce a conviction of the truth of Christianity in the mind of the profligate Lord Rochester.*

The books, which contain these Prophecies, have been most carefully preserved even by the enemies of Christianity. Such are the Jews, whose religious belief is founded upon an acknowledgment of the divine inspiration of the Prophets. Hence they are undesignedly the supporters of that faith, to which they are confessedly hostile. A wide difference of opinion has prevailed among them in various ages; for their interpretations of the Prophets, before the coming of the Messiah, agreed much better with those of the Christians, than any they have given since the establishment of Christianity. And it is very much to the purpose repeatedly to take notice, that whatever construction they have put upon the words of the Prophecies, they have never raised any doubt, or brought any arguments to invalidate their authenticity.

As the divine mission of Christ received such support from the Prophecies, of which he was the subject; so it is

This fact is recorded by Bishop Burnet. "To him Lord Rochester laid open with great freedom the tenor of his opinions, and the course of his life, and from him he received such conviction of the reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as produced a total change both of his manners and opinions. The account of those salutary conferences is given by Burnet in a book, intituled, Some passages of the Life and Death of John Earl of Rochester; which the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety." Johnson's Life of Rochester, vol. iv, p. 6, 12mo.

very strongly confirmed by those events, which he foresaw and foretold. He clearly described the manner of his own death, with many particular circumstances-the place where it was ordained to happen-the treacherous method by which he was to be betrayed into the hands of the Jewish governors, and given up to the Roman power-the cruel and unbecoming treatment he was to suffer, and the exact period of time that should elapse from his death to his resurrection. Such was precisely the train of events, as they are related at large by the Evangelists, and as those events were attested by the full acknowledgment and confession of the first martyrs, who sealed their belief with their blood. The Saviour of mankind speaks of future events without hesitation, not as things merely probable, but absolutely certain. He does not shadow them out in vague and ambiguous terms; but marks them in their rise, progress, and effects, in the clearest and most circumstantial descriptions. The interval between the prediction and its accomplishment, seems in his view to be annihilated; his penetrating mind pierces the veil of futurity, and the distant allusions of the Prophet are converted into the clear prospect of the spectator. Even at the time when Judea was in complete subjection to the Roman power, when a strong garrison kept its capital in awe, and rebellion against their conquerors, who had at that time the empire of the world, appeared as improbable as it was fruitless; he deplored the fall of the holy city, and pointed out the advance of the Roman standard, as the token of desolation, and the signal for his followers to save themselves, by flight, from captivity and destruction. At the time too when the temple of Jerusalem was held in the highest veneration by all foreigners, as well as Jews, what were the immediate observations of our Lord, when his disciples directed his attention, in terms of wonder and astonishment, to the vast and solid materials, of which that magnificent edifice was built? He lamented its approaching fall, and declared in explicit terms, that so complete should be its demolition, that not one stone should be left upon another. At a time likewise when the number of his followers was limited to a few fish-· ermen of Galilee, and when he seemed destitute of every means to accomplish his purpose, he predicted the wide diffusion of the faith, and expressly proclaimed, that before the threatened calamities overwhelmed the Jews, and subverted their empire, his gospel should be preached among all nations.*

See" History the interpreter of Prophecy," 4th Edit. for the illustra tion of this subject at large; a work to which I refer with the less reserve, as the public have received it with approbation.

The events, which happened about thirty years after the ascension of our Lord, completely verified these Prophecies. From the books of the New Testament, and particularly from the Acts of the Apostles, may be collected the fullest instances of the diligence and zeal with which the new religion was in a short time disseminated.

But Christians can appeal to an independent train of witnesses to Jewis hand to prophane authors, for circumstantial accounts of the fulfilment of our Lord's predictions. The historian Josephus, descended from the family, which bore the sacred office of High Priest, a distinguished general in the early part of the last Jewish war, has given a particular and exact confirmation of every circumstance. With singular care he has avoided to mention the name of Christ, and yet with singular precision he has illustrated his predictions relative to the destruction of Jerusalem. The important service he has thus rendered to Christianity is wholly unintentional. What he relates is drawn from him by the power of irresistible truth, and is a testimony far stronger, and more unexceptionable, than an explicit mention of the name of Christ, and a laboured encomium on his words and actions.

The curious details of Josephus, in his History of the Wars of the Jews, are confirmed by Tacitus, Philostratus, and Dion Cassius. It is probable they were all of them unacquainted with the works of the Jewish Historian; and yet they corroborate his account, and all unite to illustrate the Prophecies of our Lord.

IV. THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD.

The most illustrious evidence of the divine origin of Christianity, and that evidence to which its great Author most confidently appealed, when called upon to prove the authority of his mission, consisted in the exercise of miraculous powers. The miracles of Christ were so frequent, that they could not be the effects of chance; so public, that they could not be the contrivance of fraud and imposture; so instantaneous, that they could not result from any preconcerted scheme; and so beneficial in their immediate consequences, and so conducive to propagate the salutary truths he taught, that they could not proceed from the agency of evil spirits. They must therefore have been effected by the interposition of that divine power, to which Christ himself attributed them. Our Lord did not come according to the