courses. For the most part they are eloquent treatises, expounding some difficult passage, or unfolding some important theological principle; and although their warmth and vivacity may have secured the attention of an unlearned auditory, and although their singular perspicuity may have made it easy for ordinary attention to follow, most of them are sermons more adapted to readers than hearers, and none but accomplished divines can appreciate their entire force and originality.

The Lord come to His Temple.

There are three particular passages of His life in which this prophecy appears to have been more remarkably fulfilled, and the character of the Lord coming to His temple more evidently displayed in Him. The first was in an early period of His ministry; when, going up to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover, He found in the temple a market of live cattle, and bankers' shops, where strangers who came at this season from distant countries to Jerusalem were accommodated with cash for their bills of credit. Fired with indignation at this daring profanation of His Father's house, He oversets the accountingtables of the bankers, and with a light whip made of rushes He drives these irreligious traders from the sacred precincts. Here was a considerable exertion of authority. However, on this occasion He claimed not the temple expressly for His own; He called it His FATHER's house, and appeared to act only as a son.

He came a second time as Lord to His temple, much more remarkably, at the feast of tabernacles; when, "in the last day, that great day of the feast, he stood in the temple, aud cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto ME and drink. He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." That you may enter into the full

sense and spirit of this extraordinary exclamation, it is neces

*Malachi iii. 1.

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sary that you should know in what the silly multitudes to whom it was addressed were probably employed at the time when it was uttered. And for this purpose, I must give you a brief and general account of the ceremonies of that last day, the great day of the feast of tabernacles; the ceremonies, not the original ceremonies appointed by Moses, but certain superstitious ceremonies which had been added by the later Jews. The feast of tabernacles continued eight days. At what precise time I know not, but at some part of the interval between the prophets and the birth of Christ, the priests had taken up a practice of marching daily during the feast round the altar of burnt-offerings, waving in their hands the branches of the palm, and singing, as they went, "Save, we pray, and prosper us!" This was done but once on the first seven days; but on the eighth and last it was repeated seven times. And when this ceremony was finished, the people, with extravagant demonstrations of joy and exultation, fetched buckets of water from the fountain of Siloam, and presented them to the priests in the temple, who mixed the water with the wine of the sacrifices, and poured it upon the altar, chanting all the while that text of Isaiah-" With joy shall ye draw water from the fountain of salvation." The fountain of salvation, in the language of a prophet, is the Messiah; the water to be drawn from that fountain is the water of His Spirit. Of this mystical meaning of the water, the inventors of these superstitious rites, whoever they might be, seem to have had some obscure discernment, although they understood the fountain literally of the fountain of Siloam; for, to encourage the people to the practice of this laborious superstition, they had persuaded them that this rite. was of singular efficacy to draw down the prophetic spirit. The multitudes zealously busied in this unmeaning ceremony were they to whom Jesus addressed that emphatical exclamation-" If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." The first words, "if any man thirst," are ironical. "Are ye

famished," says He," with thirst, that ye fatigue yourselves with fetching all this water up the hill? Oh! but ye thirst for the pure waters of Siloam, the sacred brook that rises in the mountain of God, and is devoted to the purification of the temple! Are ye indeed athirst for these? Come, then, unto Me, and drink : I am the fountain of which that which purifies the temple is the type: I am the fountain of salvation of which your prophet spake: From Me the true believer shall receive the living water, not in scanty draughts fetched with toil from this penurious rill, but in a well perpetually springing up within him." The words of Isaiah which I have told you the priests were chanting, and to which Jesus alludes, are part of a song of praise and triumph which the faithful are supposed to use in that prosperous state of the Church, which, according to the prophet, it shall finally attain under Jesse's Root. "In that day shalt thou say, Behold, God is my salvation: I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and song, he also is become my salvation: therefore with joy shall draw water out of the wells of salvation." Consider these words as they lie in the context of the prophet; consider the occasion upon which Jesus, standing in the temple, applies them to Himself; consider the sense in which He applies them; and judge whether this application was less than an open claim to be the Lord Jehovah come unto His temple. It is remarkable that it had at the time an immediate and wonderful effect. "Many of the people, when they heard this saying, said, Of a truth this is the prophet." The light of truth burst at once upon their minds. Jesus no sooner made the application of this abused prophecy to Himself, than they perceived the justness of it, and acknowledged in Him the fountain of salvation. What would these people have said had they had our light? had the whole volume of prophecy been laid before them, with the history of Jesus to compare with it? Would they not eeded in the prophet's triumphant song-" Cry out

ye

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and shout, O daughter of Zion! Great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee!" This, then, I take to be the second particular occasion in the life of Jesus in which Malachi's prediction, "that the Lord should come to His temple," was fulfilled in Him,-when Jesus, in the last day of the feast of tabernacles, stood in the temple and declared Himself the person intended by Isaiah under the image of the "Fountain of salvation." For by appropriating the character to Himself, He must be understood in effect to claim all those other characters which Isaiah in the same prophecy ascribes to the same person, which are these: "God, the salvation of Israel; the Lord Jehovah, his strength and his song; the Lord, that hath done excellent things; the Holy One of Israel.”

A third time Jesus came still more remarkably as the Lord to His temple, when He came up from Galilee to celebrate the last passover, and made that public entry at Jerusalem which is described by all the evangelists. It will be necessary to enlarge upon the particulars of this interesting story; for the right understanding of our Saviour's conduct upon this occasion depends so much upon seeing certain leading circumstances in a proper light. upon a recollection of ancient prophecies, and an attention to the customs of the Jewish people that I am apt to suspect few now-a-days discern in this extraordinary transaction what was clearly seen in it at the time by our Lord's disciples, and in some measure understood by His enemies. I shall present you with an orderly detail of the story, and comment upon the particulars as they arise; and I doubt not but that, by God's assistance, I shall teach you to perceive, in this public entry of Jesus of Nazareth (if you have not perceived it before), a conspicuous advent of the Great Jehovah to His temple. Jesus, on His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, stops at the foot of Mount Olivet, and sends two of His disciples to a neighbouring village to provide an ass's colt to convey Him from that place to the city, distant

not more than half a mile. The colt is brought, and Jesus is seated upon it. This first circumstance must be well considered; it is the key to the whole mystery of the story. What could be His meaning in choosing this singular conveyance? It could not be that the fatigue of the short journey which remained was likely to be too much for Him afoot, and that no better animal was to be procured. Nor was the ass, in these days (though it had been in earlier ages), an animal in high esteem in the East, used for travelling or for state by persons of the first condition, that this conveyance should be chosen for the grandeur or propriety of the appearance. Strange as it may seem, the coming to Jerusalem upon an ass's colt was one of the prophetical characters of the Messiah; and the great singularity of it had perhaps been the reason that this character had been more generally attended to than any other; so that there was no Jew who was not apprised that the Messiah was to come to the holy city in that manner. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!" saith Zechariah: "Behold thy King cometh unto thee! He is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even a colt the foal of an ass!" And this prophecy the Jews never understood of any other person than the Messiah. Jesus, therefore, by seating Himself upon the ass's colt in order to go to Jerusalem, without any possible inducement either of grandeur or convenience, openly declared Himself to be that King who was to come, and at whose coming in that manner Zion was to rejoice. And so the disciples, if we may judge from what immediately followed, understood this proceeding; for no sooner did they see their Master seated on the colt, than they broke out into transports of the highest joy, as if in this great sight they had the full contentment of their utmost wishes; conceiving, as it should seem, the sanguine hope that the kingdom was this instant to be restored to Israel. They strewed the way which Jesus was to