man. Christ himself invited those who were weary and heavy-laden to come unto him that they might find rest unto their souls. He was the messenger of peace. He came, as he professed, to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the world, and to reveal the will of God to He published the terms of our acceptance. His word is still that of reconciliation, his law that of love; and all the duty he has prescribed tends to qualify man for spiritual and eternal felicity, for this is the sum and the object of it all. What more could have been given, and what less could have been required ? In similar terms do the prophecies of old describe the new law that was to be revealed, and the advent of the Saviour that was to come :- 66 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, thy king cometh unto thee.-How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Having read these words out of the law, in the gogue, Jesus said, "This day is the Scripture fulfilled." He was a teacher of righteousness and of peace, and in him alone it could have been fulfilled. The same character of joy, indicative of the kingdom of the Messiah, is also given by different prophets. He was to finish transgression, to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity; to sprinkle clean water upon the people of God, to sprinkle many nations, to save them from their uncleanness, and to open a fountain for sin and for uncleanness. Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him. syna I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sins no more. The Messiah was to be anointed to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. P And in the gospel of peace these promised blessings are realized. We now see what many prophets and wise men did desire in vain to see. The Christian religion has indeed been sadly perverted and corrupted, and its corruptions are the subjects of prophecy. Bigotry has often tarnished and obscured all its benignity. Its lovely form has been shrouded in a mask of superstition, of tyranny and of murder. But the religion of Jesus, pure from the lips of its author, and the pen of his apostles, is calculated to diffuse universal happiness; tends effectually to promote the moral culture and the civilization of humanity; ameliorates the condition and perfects the nature of man. It is a doctrine of righteousness, a perfect rule of duty: it abolishes idolatry, and teaches all to worship God only it is full of promises to all who obey it: it reveals the method of reconciliation for iniquity, and imparts the means to obtain it it is good tidings to the meek: it binds up the broken-hearted, and presents to us the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, or the most perfect system of consolation, under all the evils of life, that can be conceived by man. For the confirmation of all these prophecies concerning it, we stand not in need of Jewish testimony, or that of the primitive Christians, or of any testimony whatever. It is a matter of experience and of fact. The doctrine of the gospel is in complete accordance with the predictions respecting it. When we compare it with any impure, degrading, P Dan. ix. 24. Isa. lv, 7. Jer. xxxi. 34. Isa, lxi. 1-3. vicious, and cruel system of religion that existed in the world when these prophecies were delivered, its superiority must be apparent, and its unrivalled excellence must be acknowledged. Deities were then worshipped whose vices disgraced human nature; and even impiety could not institute a comparison between them and the God of Christians. Idolatry was universally prevalent, and men knew not a higher honour than the humiliation of bowing down in adoration to stocks and stones, and sometimes even to the beasts. Sacrifices were everywhere offered up, and human victims often bled, when the doctrine of reconciliation for iniquity was unknown. And we have only to look beyond the boundaries of Christianity,to Ashantee, or to India, or to China,-to behold the most revolting of spectacles in the religious rites and practices of man. Regarding the superiority of the Christian religion only as a subject of prophecy, the assent can hardly be withheld, that the prophecies concerning its excellence, and the blessings which it imparts, have been amply verified by the peacespeaking gospel of Jesus. -- But, in ascertaining the accomplishment of ancient predictions, in evidence of the truth, the unbeliever is not solicited to relinquish one iota of his scepticism in any matter that can possibly admit of a reasonable doubt. For there are many prophecies, of the truth of which every Christian is a witness, and to the fulfilment of which the testimony even of infidels must be borne. That the gospel emanated from Jerusalem; that it was rejected by a great proportion of the Jews; that it was opposed at first by human power; that idolatry has been overthrown before it; that kings have become subject to it and supported it; that it has already continued for many ages, and that it has been propagated throughout many countries, are facts clearly foretold and literally fulfilled. "Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and he shall judge among the nations. He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel; for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed."r In like manner, Christ frequently foretold the persecution that awaited his followers, and the final success of the gospel, in defiance of all opposition. "The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols he shall utterly abolish ;-from all your idols I will cleanse you ;-I will cut off the name of idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered. To a servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship. The Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers." The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness:-a people that knew me not shall be called after my name. In that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign to the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not; and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee."x At the time the prophecies were delivered, there was not a vestige in the world of that spiritual kingdom and pure religion which they unequivocally represent as extending in succeeding ages, not only throughout the narrow bounds of the land of Judea, Isa. ii. 3, 4. $ Matt. x. 17; Isa. ii. 17, 18. Micah iv. 2. r Isa. viii. 14. Psal. ii. 2. xvi. 18; xxiv. 14; xxviii. 19. Ezek. xxxvi. 25. Zech. xiii. 2. Isa. xlix. 7. 23; lx. 3. Isa. lxii. 2; xi. 10; lv. 3, 5. and those countries which alone the prophets knew, but over the gentile nations also, even to the uttermost ends of the earth. None are now ignorant of the facts that a system of religion which inculcates piety, and purity, and love,-which releases man from every burdensome rite, and every barbarous institution, and proffers the greatest of blessings,-arose from the land of Judea, from among a people who are the most selfish and worldly-minded of any nation upon earth; -that, though persecuted at first, and rejected by the Jews, it has spread throughout many nations, and extended to those who were far distant from the scene of its origin; and that it freely invites all to partake of its privileges, and makes no distinction between barbarian, Soythian, bond or free. A Latin poet, who lived at the commencement of the Christian era, speaks of the barbarous Britons as almost divided from the whole world; and yet although far more distant from the land of Judea than from Rome, the law which hath come out from Jerusalem hath taken, by its influence, the name of barbarous from Britain; and in our "distant isle of the Gentiles" are the prophecies fulfilled, that the kingdom of the Messiah, or knowledge of the gospel, would extend to the uttermost part of the earth. And in the present day, we can look from one distant isle of the Gentiles to another, from the northern to the southern ocean, or from one extremity of the globe to another,—and behold the extinction of idolatry, and the abolition of every barbarous and cruel rite, by the humanizing influence of the gospel. But it was at a time when no divine light dawned upon the world, save obscurely on the land of Judea alone; when all the surrounding nations, in respect to religious knowledge, were involved in thick darkness, gross superstition, and blind idolatry; when men made unto themselves gods of corruptible things; when those mortals were |