of Christ, and to be a shadowy representation of the glories of the new dispensation, for the double purpose of affording an object of faith and hope to those then living, and that the new economy might be better understood, more firmly believed and more extensively embraced. Detached passages

from such a scheme of history and prophecy are like the scattered ruins of an ancient temple. To form a just judgment the plan must be viewed as a whole as well as in its details. It could then be seen that the history of the Jews was the history of the lineage of Christ; the whole sacrificial ritual a prefiguration of the Lamb of God who was to bear the sin of the world; that the tabernacle and the temple, with their complicated services, were types of things spiritual and heavenly; that the prophets, who were the teachers and correctors of the people, were sent, not merely nor principally to foretell temporal deliverances, but mainly to keep the eyes of the people directed upward and onward to the great deliverer and to the final redemption. Detached passages can give no adequate conception of this stupendous scheme of preparation and prophecy, running through thousands of years, and its thousand lines all tending to one common centre, the CROSS OF CHRIST.

The argument from prophecy in support of the truth of Christianity, therefore, can be appreciated

by those only who will candidly study the whole system. Still enough has been presented to show that it is impossible to account for the correspondence between the prophecies of the Old Testament and the events recorded in the New, upon any other assumption than that of divine inspiration. We have seen that it was predicted, centuries before the advent of Christ, that a great deliverer should arise, to be born of the tribe of Judah, and of the family of David, and at the village of Bethlehem; that he should be a poor and humble man and yet worthy of the highest reverence paid to God; that he should be a teacher, priest and king; that he should be rejected by his own people, persecuted and put to death; that he should rise again from the dead; that the Spirit of God should be poured out upon his followers, giving them holiness, wisdom and courage; that true religion, no longer confined to the Jews, should be extended to the Gentiles and in despite of all opposition should continue, triumph and ultimately cover the earth; that the Jews who rejected the Messiah, should be cast off and scattered and yet preserved; like a river in the ocean, divided but not dissipated, a standing miracle, a fact without a parallel or analogy. Here then is the whole history of Christ and his kingdom, written centuries before his advent. A history full of apparent inconsistencies; a history

not written in one age or by one man, but in different ages and by different men, each adding some new fact or characteristic, yet all combining to form one consistent, though apparently contradictory whole.

Admitting then, what no one denies, the antiquity of the Jewish Scriptures, there is no escape from the conclusion that they were written by divine inspiration, and that Jesus Christ to whom they so plainly refer, is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. To suppose that Christ, knowing these ancient prophecies, set himself, without divine commission, to act in accordance with them, is to suppose impossibilities. It is to suppose that Jesus Christ was a bad man, which no one, who reads the New Testament, can believe, any more than he can believe that the sun is the blackness of darkness. It is to suppose him to have had a control over the actions of others which no impostor could exert. Many of the most important predictions in reference to Christ were fulfilled by the acts of his enemies. Did Christ instigate the treachery of Judas, or prompt the priests to pay the traitor thirty pieces of silver? Did he plot with Pilate for his own condemnation? or so arrange that he should die by a Roman, instead of a Jewish, mode of capital infliction? Did he induce the soldiers to part his garments and cast

lots upon his vesture, or stipulate with them that none of his bones should be broken? By what possible contrivance could the two great predicted events of the final destruction of the Jewish policy and the consequent dispersion of the Jews, on the one hand, and the rapid propagation of the new religion among the Gentiles, on the other, have beer brought to pass? These events were predicted, their occurrence was beyond the scope of contrivance or imposture. There is no rational answer to this argument from prophecy. The testimony of the Scriptures to the messiahship of Jesus Christ, is the testimony of God. Search the Scriptures, said our Saviour himself, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me.

God then has been pleased to hedge up the way to infidelity. Men must do violence to all their usual modes of argument; they must believe moral impossibilities and irreconcilable contradictions, and above all they must harden their hearts to the excellence of the Saviour, before they can become infidels.

This exposition of the grounds of faith is made in order to show that unbelief is a sin; and to justify the awful declaration of Christ, "He that believeth not, shall be damned." Men flatter themselves that they are not responsible for their faith.

Belief being involuntary, cannot, it is said, be a matter of praise or blame. This false opinion arises from confounding things very different in their nature. Faith differs according to its object and the nature of the evidence on which it is founded. A man believes that two and two are four, or that Napoleon died in St. Helena, and is neither morally better, nor worse for such a faith. Disbelief, in such cases, would indicate insanity, not moral aberration. But no man can believe that virtue is vice or vice virtue, without being to the last degree depraved. No man can disbelieve in God, especially under the light of revelation, without thereby showing that he is destitute of all right moral and religious sentiments. And no man can disbelieve the record which God has given of his Son, without being blind to the glory of God and the moral excellence of the Saviour. He rejects the appropriate testimony of God, conveyed in a manner which proves it to be his testimony.

It is vain, therefore, for any man to hope that he can be innocently destitute of faith in God or of faith in Jesus Christ. If the external world retains such an impression of the hand of God, as to leave those without excuse, who refuse to regard it as his work; surely those who refuse to acknowledge the excellence of his word and the glory of his Son, will not be held guiltless. The evidence which