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persion of her people, because they had rejected his person and despised his claims; another and a more consolatory view presented to his mind the picture reversed; and he looked with the triumph of a spiritual conqueror upon the gradual rise and progress of his religion, and the perpetuity of its existence upon the earth under every trial, and against all opposition. He looked upon the victory of the Gospel over the prejudices of the Jew, the contempt of philosophy, the persecution of power, and the offences of weak or perverted brethren; and rejoicing in spirit at the glory of the prospect, broke forth into the language of holy gladness and divine assurance. "Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”* Here we have a prediction which comprehends the entire history of the Christian Church, from its first foundation to its final triumph, and which has been fulfilled in its former and is still fulfilling in its latter part, with a clearness which leaves no room for hesitation as to its having proceeded from one who could look into the ages which hereafter should be, and, contemplating the future, as an historian

*Matt. xvi. 17, 18.

does the past, could speak of the things which were not yet, as though they had already been.

To the former part of this prediction, which speaks of the foundation of the Christian Church, no less than three several interpretations have been assigned by different commentators, in every one of which it has pleased the goodness of God that, for our satisfaction, it should be fulfilled. Some have conceived that when our Saviour spoke of the rock upon which the Christian Church should be built, he pointed and referred to himself, as the only true and spiritual rock of believers in every age; and this exposition may be fully justified by the language of St. Paul,* who solemnly warns the Corinthians against laying or building on 66 any other foundation than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Unusual also as may appear the manner in which our Lord is thus supposed to allude to himself, it is completely sanctioned by his expressions in another and very memorable prophecy. "Destroy this temple," said Jesus to the Jews," and in three days I will raise it up."† Now this they understood of the temple of Jerusalem; but this "he spake of the temple of his body," says the Evangelist, which they did destroy, and which he did raise up again from the

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dead. Whether, therefore, we consider the form or the meaning of the phrase, this exposition may be allowed to be both critically admissible and substantially true. The words will bear the sense alleged, and in that sense were strictly fulfilled. Jesus is indeed the rock of the faith of his Church, the only solid foundation upon which all we live by and look to is built.

By a second class of interpreters, this rock of foundation for the Church is applied to that doctrine of the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus, which was contained in the confession of Peter. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," said that Apostle. "And upon this rock I will build my Church," answered the Lord, and this faith is indeed the foundation of the whole building of Christianity. "What doth hinder me to be baptized?" asked the Ethiopian eunuch?* And Philip said, "If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered, and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." This is the very confession, and these are almost the very words of Peter. Here then we have another interpretation in which the expressions of our Lord may be fairly taken, and were legitimately fulfilled; for upon this belief in the Messiahship and derivation of Jesus from God, as upon a rock,

*Acts viii. 36.

the living stones of the temple of his body, the members of the Church, which is the assembly of the first-born, both ever have been, and ever must be built.

There is still a third, and perhaps a more probable interpretation than either of the former, which considers St. Peter himself as the foundation-stone of the Church of Christ. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock" or stone "I will build my church," was at once a promise and a prophecy from Jesus. Now the intimacy in which the two ideas are connected together, and the pointedness of the allusion to the name of Peter "which is by interpretation a stone,' * immediately and almost necessarily persuade us to regard the Apostle as the object intended to be designated under that peculiar emblem. Nor was the fulfilment less conspicuous than the propriety of the denomination; for by the efforts of Peter were formed the first beginnings both of the Jewish and the Gentile Church.

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But why should we be compelled to confine ourselves to any one of these modes of interpretation, when it is evident, first, that Jesus in the boundlessness of his wisdom might contemplate them all, and, secondly, that the prediction was

* John i. 42.

not only literally and separately fulfilled in each; but that the original foundations of the Christian Church were laid in the combined completion of the whole. It was Peter who first lifted up his voice on the day of Pentecost,* and let all the house of Israel know that God had made that same Jesus, whom they had crucified, both Lord and Christ." Such was the substance of those many words with which he "did testify and exhort" the men of Judea to repent and be baptized; and by the piercing power of this appeal " they were pricked to the heart, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Now this we are authorised to consider as the very first foundation of the Christian Church, not only because it is the first instance of the conversion of any considerable number of persons to the faith of Jesus as the Messiah, but also because it seems to have been regarded, by the sacred writers themselves, as the first regular formation of Christians into a distinct religious body. Frequently as the word Church is to be met with in the pages of the New Testament, we meet with it but twice throughout the whole of the Gospels. Once it is introduced as a prophetic designation of that Church which should afterwards be formed, and a second time as a common designation of any religious body. *Acts ii. 36.

+ Acts ii. 41.

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