done for their amendment and improvement. The trial is signified under the image of an essayist's separation of the nobler metals from the dross with which they are blended in the ore: The means used for the amendment and improvement of mankind, by the Messiah's atonement for our sins, by the preaching of the gospel, and by the internal influences of the Holy Spirit, all these means, employed under the Messiah's covenant for the reformation of men, are expressed under the image of a fuller's soap, which restores a soiled garment to its original purity. One particular effect of this purification is to be, that the sons of Levi will be purified. The worship of God shall be purged of all hypocrisy and superstition, and reduced to a few simple rites, the natural expressions of true devotion. "And then shall this offering of Judah and Jerusalem (i.e. of the true members of God's true church) be pleasant unto the Lord." These, then, are the particulars of the business on which the Messiah, according to this prophecy, was to come.

It yet remains to recollect the particulars

in which this prophecy, as it respects both the person of the Messiah and his business, hath been accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth. And, first, the prophet tells us that the Messiah is the Lord, and should come to his temple. Agreeably to this, the temple was the theatre of our Lord's public ministry at Jerusalem: There he daily taught the people; there he held frequent disputations with the unbelieving Scribes and Pharisees : So that, to us who acknowledge Jesus for the Lord, the prophetical character of coming to his temple must seem to be in some measure answered in the general habits of his holy life. It is remarkable that the temple was the place of his very first public appearance; and in his coming upon that 'occasion there was an extraordinary suddenness. It was indeed before the commencement of his triennial ministry: He was but a child of twelve years of age, entirely unknown, when he entered into disputation in the temple with the priests and doctors of the law, and astonished them with his accurate knowledge of the Scriptures. And in this very year the sceptre of royal power departed from Judah; for it was in this

.

year

that Archelaus the son of Herod the Great was deposed by the Roman emperor, and banished to Lyons, and the Jews became wholly subject to the dominion of the Romans. Thus the prophecy of Jacob was fulfilled, by the coincidence of the subversion of the independent government of the Jews with the first advent or appearance of Shiloh in the temple.

But 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 accounting-tables 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, and 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 necessary 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 in 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 burntofferings, 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