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his days, and seeing his seed, and there being no end of his kingdom.z

I need not tell you that these and many other particulars were accomplished in the person of Christ, and confirm, beyond all hesitation, the claim resting on the circumstances of the time of his birth, his descent, and the messenger who preceded him.

III. But more than this. Not only were these numerous events predicted which infallibly mark out our Lord as the true Messiah; but also such other events were foretold, as constituted of themselves independent proofs of a divine mission. The miracles of Christ were, as I have before observed, the object of divine prophecy. The lame that walked, the blind that received their sight, the lepers that were cleansed, the dead that were raised to life-miracles in themselves, original marks of a divine commission-were foretold of the Messiah. When Christ cometh, will he do greater things than these? was the remark of the multitude when witnessing our Lord's mighty works.

The doctrine also which Christ taught, the gospel addressed to the poor, the consolation and peace infused into the breasts of the broken-hearted, were objects of prediction. The sermon preached at Nazareth, had been delivered before by the prophet Isaiah.a

The agreement of the prophecy with the event, in such instances has an additional force, because these miracles conjoined with the doctrine, were of themselves credentials of a divine authority.

IV.

Further, such particulars were foretold of the Messiah as constituted, in connexion with those already considered, a character of the most peculiar kind, and uniting qualities and attributes apparently the most contradictory; and therefore, if found in the person of our Lord, proving his Messiahship in a still more decisive manner. For, besides his sufferings already noticed, he was to be a branch from the root of Jesse, to grow up as a tender plant, and a

(z) Isai. liii. 10, 11; ix. 7.

(a) Isai. Ixi. 1-3; Luke iv. 16-29. (b) Isai. xi. 1.

root out of a dry ground; to be rejected and despised of men, to be oppressed and afflicted, to be a worm, and no man,d to be the servant of rulers, to be a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, to have no form nor comeliness, to be hated without a cause, to endure shame and reproach, to be accused by false witnesses, to have his visage marred more than any man; in a word, to be emphatically the Son of man, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.1

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And yet, on the other hand, the Messiah was to be the Son of God, the Shiloh," the Star out of Jacob," the Redeemer, the Living One, the chief corner-stone, the Lord of David, the Ruler and King of Israel, Emmanuel, God with us; Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Father or Possessor of eternity;" whose goings forth were of old from everlasting; the supreme God," Jehovah,—in a word, the object of adoration, hope, devotion, confidence, love, and religious homage; the eternal and immutable Being, the Creator of all things.a

It is hardly necessary to observe, that these high, and yet humiliating descriptions; these prophecies of depressed mortality and exalted glory; these names of manhood and of deity; of frailty and of power; of the creature and the Creator; were all fulfilled, and fulfilled clearly and plenarily in the person and character of Christ; and fix by the apparent contradictions which they involve, the identity of his perThis Man of Sorrows he was, as well as the King of Glory. Nor has there ever appeared a person beside him, during the four or five thousand years which have elapsed since some of these prophecies were delivered, to whom these wonderful, and varied, and numerous, and apparently

son.

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contradictory particulars were ever capable of being applied.

It may assist the mind in conceiving the force of this part of the argument, to be reminded, that the probability of any number of particular facts occurring in the case of any one person, is exceedingly small. Supposing only fifty independent circumstances had been predicted of the Messiah, and that there was an equal chance, to use the language of mathematicians, for the happening or the failure of any one of the supposed particulars, the probability against the occurrence of all the particulars in any way, is that of the fiftieth power of two to unity, that is, greater than eleven hundred and twenty-five millions of millions to And this computation is exclusive of the considerations of time and place. It supposes also the affairs of the world to be left to blind chance. I only mention this circumstance in this cursory manner; the argument needs it

one.

not.

But I observe,

II. That the NUMBER AND VARIOUS AGES OF THE PROPHETS by whom these predictions were delivered, and THE INDEPENDENCE OF THEIR PREDICTIONS one of the other, increase the proof of divine prescience.

The numerous predictions which we have cited, to which many more might have been added, were not delivered by one prophet at any one given period. If they had; if every one of the prophetic marks of the Messiah had been foretold, for instance, by Haggai or Malachi, after the Babylonish captivity, the argument would have been conclusive. But there is much more in the case before us as it actually stands. We have a succession of prophets during four thousand years, who arise one after another, to predict these things of the same person, the Messiah. We have a chain of prophecies, the links of which are indescribably minute, or apparently unsuitable to each other, and yet which form, when brought together, one unbroken series.

(b) Gregory.

The first prediction of the birth of the great Deliverer was uttered, as we have more than once observed, in the garden of transgression, four thousand years before the accomplishment. Two thousand years from this time passed before the family of Abraham was designated. After a lapse of three or four more centuries, the descent of the Messiah was limited to Judah; and after another interval of six or seven hundred years, to the house of David, the son of Jesse. Another prophet, separate from all the preceding, and three hundred years later than the promise to David, fixes the place of Messiah's birth. Isaiah about the same time announces, that a voice in the wilderness should call on men to prepare his way. But an express precursor and messenger was only predicted, as prophecy was closing its first commission, at a distance of three hundred years from the preceding.

And it is to be observed, that this series of continually narrowing limitations, did not in any way arise, the one from the other, by any human deduction or calculation. They were all independent prophecies. It by no means followed from the Messiah being of the seed of Abraham, that he should descend from the tribe of Judah. It by no means followed by any necessary deduction, from the prophecy of the sceptre in the tribe of Judah, that David's should be the individual family from which the Messiah was to spring. It in no way followed, from the descent from David, that the birth should be at Bethlehem; nor did it follow from any or all the preceding limitations, that a voice, uttered by a messenger like to Elijah, should introduce the Messiah.

So far from any succeeding prophet deducing the matter of his predictions from those who went before him, he did not himself fully understand his own. They inquired and searched diligently what and what manner of time the spirit of Christ that was in them did signify, when it testified before-hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Each prediction, therefore, in every age, was a distinct sign of a divine prescience; and the harmony of all in the one person of Christ, was a most illustrious proof of the infinite wisdom from which the whole proceeded.

But not only are the long succession of prophecies, and the independence in the delivery of them to be noticed; we are to observe further, that here is an entire people, as the inimitable Pascal remarks, who announce the Messiah by all their institutions, usages, laws, ceremonies, the whole of their religion: this people subsist from the time of Moses to Christ, to give in a body their testimony to their assurances of his coming, from which nothing can divert them, however threatened or persecuted. Here is a national and religious polity, all the parts of which are symbols, in one way or other, of the kingdom of Messiah. The priesthood, the tabernacle, the temple, the sacrifices, the festivals, are all representative of the same blessings; and unite with the predictions of the prophets to point out the same extraordinary person. It is not only all this; but it is all this subsisting till the Messiah appeared, and then dissolving and vanishing away; the people dispersed, (as we shall see in the second part of our present lecture,) the polity annihilated, the institutions closed, the prophetic voice silenced, the whole scene withdrawn, in order to throw an unsullied brightness around the person and kingdom of the Saviour, for the faith and adoration of mankind.

To say that all these wonderful predictions, accomplished in the Messiahship of Christ, prove a prophetic inspiration, and the truth of the revelation which it communicates, is to say little they pour upon that revelation, and upon the Saviour, a flood of evidence and of glory, which is entirely in harmony with the unparalleled dignity of his person, and the infinite value of the benefits he came to procure for

man.

But we may remark,

III. That the CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED with the accomplishment of these predictions, and especially THE ACCUMULATION OF PROPHETICAL INSPIRATION, increase the proof of divine foreknowledge in the prophecies which we are considering.

1. Had these several predicted events occurred in the history of our Lord, in any manner whatever, the necessary proof would have been furnished of his Messiahship. But

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