life throughout the history of the world would be perpetually struggling.

And when we read, that in this struggle, the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, while it should bruise his heel, it is no less clear, that here also the literal sense of the words head and heel is no longer to be thought of, but that in this great contest between man and evil, the triumph should be with man, although it should not be won but at the price of some loss and suffering.

Now taking it in this sense partially, and up to a certain point, the fulfilments of it have been many. All those good men of whom the Scripture speaks, from righteous Abel downwards, all who by God's grace lived in God's faith and fear, all found that in their struggle with evil they were conquerors; that it was good for them, and not bad, that they had ever been born. And all found also that, if saved, they were saved as by fire; their experience could enough tell them that evil was not without power to do them hurt.

Yet it is no less manifest that none of these cases came up to the full extent of the comfort required. At the Fall, evil had triumphed over the whole race of mankind; the state of things had become evil, which had before been good. If evil, that had done this were to be crushed and destroyed, it must be by the restoration of all things;

the human race must be recovered, which in its first struggle had been lost. And this could only be by a far greater and more perfect victory over evil than ever man had won; by such a triumph over labour and over death as should indeed show that the latter end of the human race should be better than its beginning.

Such a triumph was achieved by Jesus Christ, the proof of it being his resurrection. For thus it was shown manifestly that death had been overcome; that evil had been vanquished in all its parts, outward and inward; that man was again restored to his original righteousness, and that being in the person of Christ no longer lost to God, but one with God, suffering and death could have no dominion over him, but that his portion was the fulness of joy at God's right hand for ever.

In this same manner it is, that so many passages of the Old Testament are applied to Christ in the New Testament, which, taken in their original place, seem to refer to a subject much less exalted. And the reason of the application of them to Christ is this; that whereas all prophecy is addressed to the hopes of the good, and to the fears of the evil, so the perfect fulfilment of it, that is, the perfect satisfying of these hopes, and the perfect realizing those fears, is to be found only in the perfect triumph of good, and the perfect destruction of evil; of both which we have the pledge in

the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in his exaltation to the right hand of God, thence to come at the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead. So that if we would fully satisfy the highest sense of all prophecy, if we would give it its entire fulfilment, we must seek for it necessarily in Him in whom all the promises of God, as St. Paul says, are found to be true; who being alone perfectly righteous, has alone shown to us, by his resurrection from the dead, that good shall perfectly triumph, and the restoration of the seed of the woman shall be complete.

This of course might furnish us with matter to engage not minutes only, but hours and days. I can but notice now, in conclusion, how it illustrates the great stress always laid by the Apostles upon the fact of Christ's resurrection. That fact was the real fulfilment of all prophecy, the great assurance of all hope; the great proof that evil should not triumph, that the serpent's head should be bruised indeed. Other events, lesser mercies, earthly deliverances, are in part the subject of prophecy, and in part its fulfilment. But its language, the language of hope in God, naturally goes beyond these; it assumes a tone of unmixed confidence, it speaks of such an over measure of good, as far surpasses man's virtue on the one hand, or his earthly prosperity on the other. And therefore, it seeks elsewhere its real fulfilment: it tar

ries not on those lower heights which would receive it on its first ascent from the valley, but ascends and aspires continually to the mountain of God, to rest only at his right hand, when it has found Him who is there for ever exalted, Jesus Christ, both God and man.

RUGBY CHAPEL,

February 22nd, 1835.

(Sexagesima Sunday.)

SERMON III.

MOUNT SINAI AND MOUNT SION.

EXODUS, iii. 12.

This shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

In the chapter from which these words are taken, we have the first beginning of what may be called the earthly redemption of God's Israel, as in the accounts of our Lord's birth, in the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke, we have the beginning of the spiritual redemption of Israel. It is very desirable to bear in mind, wherever it is possible, in reading the Old Testament, the connexion of what we there read with ourselves and our own condition, lest we should regard it merely as so much past history, and separate it too much from any direct interest of our own. Now, the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt was not merely a great deliverance for a particular people; here, as