but that which solves the whole difficulty, without having recourse to force or evasion, maintains one consistent principle of interpretation, and has the sanction of the Lord Jesus Christ, when he says'O, fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory.'

LECTURE VI.

ISAIAH XLIV. 26.

That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers.

THE

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'HE man who can make a direct appeal to the Almighty and draw forth an immediate display of Omnipotence, has an unanswerable argument for the truth of his religion. When the son of Amram divided the Red Sea, his followers believed in the Lord and in Moses his servant. And when Elijah cried to his God and obtained an answer by fire from heaven, the waverers in Israel were convinced, and cried out The Lord he is the God. The Lord he is the God.' Men feel that such mighty deeds necessarily exceed the mightiest efforts of impostors, and necessarily imply an exertion of divine power. An appeal to God's attribute of foreknowledge is equally conclusive, inasmuch as it is equally the sole prerogative of God. It is just as impossible to counterfeit one attribute as the other. If, therefore, we can adduce a clear exertion of the Divine prescience in proof of our religion, we make as direct an appeal to Deity, and in the coincidence of prophecy and history have an argument for its

truth as valid in the eye of reason as the suspension or change of the laws of nature. Such were the remarks with which these lectures were commenced, and such the appeal which we proposed to make on behalf of Christianity. In the subsequent lectures the appeal was actually made, and it now only remains to recapitulate the particulars, draw the conclusion, and press upon you the practical result.

The first great point to which your attention was drawn, was the existence of certain prophecies known to have been uttered and written centuries before the occurrence of the events referred to as their accomplishment. It is a known truth, that the revelation of St. John, and the writings of David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other Hebrew prophets lay claim to the character of inspiration, and profess to know and to announce the future destinies of nations and of individuals. It is a fact which even the most ignorant sceptic would not deny, that the writings of St. John are at least 1600 years old, and that the very latest of the Hebrew prophecies was translated into Greek, and must therefore have existed at the least 180 years before the Christian æra. The sceptic will, however, if learned, admit his conviction that the youngest of the prophets of Israel lived 500 years before Christ, and some at least 500 years sooner. Your attention was directed, in the next place, to the coincidence between certain predictions and events which have since taken place, which coincidence in some most

remarkable instances is open to our daily observation. The Hebrew prophets announced that one individual of their nation should be acknowledged as God, even to the very ends of the earth. The light of noonday is not more clear than the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is thus acknowledged. 'His hand is set in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers. They that dwell in the wilderness bow down before him. The kings of Tarshish, and of the isles bring presents.' The most notorious if not the most extraordinary fact in the history of our species is the divine worship paid by the most enlightened portion of the human race to the Son of Mary. The Hebrews, however, went farther, and announced faith in the Gentiles, and the unbelief of the Jewish people, and sixty generations of the children of men have witnessed the wonderful coincidence. We still see with our own eyes, that to Christ has been the gathering of the nations-that the isles wait for his law-that he has been found of them that sought him not; and that, whilst he is still despised and rejected by his own countrymen, and one whom the nation abhorreth, kings see and arise, princes also worship; he has been made the head of the heathen, and nations whom he had not known serve him. Yea, the predictions which we have considered not only announce the relative position of Jew and Gentile, but predict a remarkable phenomenon in the history of those Gentiles who were to embrace the faith of Christ. Some of them foretel the relapse of a great

and powerful Church into open and shameless idolatry, and not only particularize pseudo-catholicity and persecuting cruelty as the prominent features of her character, but describe her geographical position as seated upon seven hills; and lo, for six centuries and more the Church of Rome has been the mother and the mistress of all harlotchurches-drunk with the blood of the saints, and besotted with a senseless idolatry, ' to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.'

Thus in all the great outlines of divine honour given to a Jew, faith in the Gentiles and unbelief in the Jews, and the subsequent defection of a powerful Christian church, there is an astonishing coincidence between the announcements of professed prophets and the events of history. The testimony of writers, contemporaries of that Jew whose influence has been so wonderful, points out coincidences still more striking and more minute. The prophets name the family, the time, the place of his nativity, the mode of his betrayal, the manner of his death, his resurrection and ascension. The epistles of St. Paul, the genuineness of which is conceded even by the infidel, assure us that in the most important of these particulars, the history of Jesus coincides with the declarations of the prophets. He was of the family of David; he came in the time of Pontius Pilate, i. e. during the second temple; he was betrayed; he died a violent and ignominious death; and Paul saw that he had risen and ascended