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to whom the eye of faith has disclosed the mysteries of his birth, the dignity of his character, and the blessedness of his commission.

Through every dispensation the original promise of redemption has been moving onwards to its final accomplishment. No state of human affairs, no contrariety of human opinions, has impeded the progress or changed the plan of the divine councils. The consolatory hope which Adam was taught to encourage, and which was afterwards renewed in the deliverance of Noah, the grant made to Abraham, the successor foretold by Moses, the prefigurations of the Temple, the spirit of prophecy, and the expectation of ages, are all carried forward without a single defect of testimony to center in Him, who was incarnate for our salvation, to manifest the glory and goodness of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

Under so many descriptions and characters, and with such attesting pledges, has the Almighty guarded this covenanted truth, that unless it be admitted, sacred history has no reality, and prophecy no interpretation. Nor

is the expression of the Evangelist intelligible, without a reference to one progressive and uniform design of GoD's dispensations; without a reference to the intended blessing to his faithful people, to be communicated through Him, whose goings forth have been from everlasting, who had been their Creator and Deliverer, who was to be their Saviour and their Judge.

He came unto his own, says the Apostle, and his own received him not. Had the Law and the Gospel stood upon separate foundations, the application could have gone no farther than that a Prophet had arisen among them, in lineal descent from their revered progenitor, and who was come to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation. With a rigid attachment to their own ritual form, they might have received Him as a Prophet sent to instruct them, (and indeed many did acknowledge Him in this capacity) without allowing that He brought any farther credentials than those miraculous exertions of power, of which the Almighty had also made their own great lawgiver his instrument.

When, therefore, the supposed Son of Joseph and Mary professed to abolish their divinely

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ordained ceremonies; when the very object of his mission was to expose the insufficiency of the Law, and to take from it every justifying plea; when the children of Abraham, the adopted of Gop, were called upon to renounce their exclusive privileges, and to partake with the rest of mankind in universal redemption; the refusal of the Jews to receive one, who, being born among them, arrogated such pretensions, could not have incurred such a pathetic and upbraiding remonstrance, unless it had been founded on the most significant and determinate indication of their Messiah's glory. The force and the conviction of the Apostle's argument rests on their rejection of the revealed will of God; it arraigns at once their obstinate prejudices, their misconceptions of the Law, their perversion of the Prophecies, and the ignorance of their spiritual state.

In rejecting Him who was to be born of the seed of the woman, and to bruise the serpent's head; who was to lead Abraham, and those who died in faith, to an heavenly Canaan; who was to be raised up among their brethren, a Prophet like unto Moses; and whom they were

to hear in all things;-they rejected the oracles of God, of which they boasted to be the guardians; they shut their eyes against express declaration, they hardened their hearts against an accumulation of evidence, and they renounced the same authority which they pleaded in defence of their own rights and their own superior distinctions.

Granting also the event, as a natural fact, to be incomprehensible, were not the miraculous interpositions of Providence on sundry occasions in their favour equally so? Did they disbelieve the burning bush, the plagues of Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, the waters that flowed from a dry Rock, or the manna in the wilderness, because they could not account for them from natural causes? On the contrary, did they not glory in, and produce them as so many visible proofs of God's holy covenant with them? From the same scriptures, and from their own prophetic records, they were told of the office, the birth, and the divinity of their Messiah to come; and the proclamation, by rejoicing Angels, of the advent of Him, who was made flesh, and to dwell among them, with all

its triumphant consequences, was only the' annunciation of completed prophecy-Behold your GOD.

In the human nature of Christ, therefore, when they refused to see the tabernacle of his divinity, they renounced their everlasting King and Priest, who, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, was by his eternal offering to make an eternal reconciliation for the sins of the people. When they disowned the heavenly Messenger of peace and pardon, they disowned the Messenger of the covenant, and the Lord who was to come to his holy temple.When they boasted to have Abraham to their father, and insultingly scoffed at the Son of Joseph and Mary, they denied the GoD who had chosen them of the seed of Abraham, the Lord who had promised, by the mouth of his servant Moses, to visit them in the latter days, and who was now come to claim them as his own, and to secure to them the inheritance of the Patriarchs' blessings.

Upon this ground, and upon no other, cau we justly place (if for argument-sake we dare use such an expression) the rejection and ruin

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