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have eternal life, and they are they which

testify of me.' (John v. 39.) Now, the command to search, supposes that the truth is not so evident as to be known without searching. Accordingly, we read of certain Jews at Berea, in Acts xvii., • who received the word with all 'readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so; therefore, many of them believed.'

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This is the temper of mind which best befits feeble and sinful creatures, who are anxious to know and to do the will of God; and it by no means becomes any of the children of men to dare to prescribe to God what precise degree of evidence he shall afford us of the great truths of religion.

It is not upon one passage of the Old Testament, that Christians found their belief that Jesus is the Messiah, but it is upon the whole of the prophecies relating to the Messiah. By comparing scripture with scripture, they are convinced that the life, the doctrine, the sufferings, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, and the

second advent of Jesus, are all predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. And if it be necessary diligently to search the Scriptures, in order to attain this conviction, this is quite analogous to the whole economy of the providential government. In no part of the vast circle of knowledge does important truth lie on the surface. To be a good mathematician, an astronomer, or a logician; to attain a competent knowledge of any one of the arts which are necessary for the well-being of man, as a member of civil society, require the diligent and persevering application of our faculties. And shall it be thought that the only species of knowledge which is transcendently important, viz. that of the revealed will of God, is to be attained without diligent and solicitous inquiry? or that God will bestow it upon the idle, the careless, or the indifferent? Surely not.

This may show how unreasonable David Levi's objection is, even if it had not been proved, from the prophecies of Daniel, that there are two advents of the Messiah revealed in the

Hebrew Scriptures. Indeed, from the infidelity of many of his own nation, who, though surrounded by the strongest evidence of the truth of the Mosaic revelation, and themselves living evidences of its truth, yet do not believe a syllable of revelation, (see Levi's Dissert. Vol, III. page 141.) David Levi might have been led to see, that our reception of the truths revealed to us in the Scriptures depends less upon their being supported by over-powering evidence, than upon our being disposed to give a willing and patient hearing to the evidence actually given. What evidence, for instance, can be more over-powering to a candid mind, than that which arises from the fulfilment of the wonderful prophecies recorded in Deuteronomy with respect to the children of Israel? Yet it is a fact, acknowledged by David Levi himself, that many of his own people turn a deaf ear to this evidence, and believe not a syllable of revelation! Now, had it pleased the Almighty to give that precise degree and kind of evidence of the divine mission of Jesus

which Levi requires, how does he know but that this evidence would have been resisted in the same way as many of his nation resist that which supports the Mosaic revelation? Nay, how does he know but that he himself is now resisting that evidence which God hath seen fit to give of the mission of him who is the true Messiah?

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ISAIAH liii.

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Who hath believed our report?

and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we 'shall see him, there is no beauty that we 'should desire him. He is despised and re'jected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our 'faces from him: he was despised, and we

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