he was David's Lord by his existence | the Son, unto whom GOD said, "Thy before, all worlds were made. He was David's son in his human nature he was David's Lord in his divine nature. throne, O GOD, is for ever and ever" -the object of worship among all ages. According to one Scriptural description, he hungers, and thirsts, and sleeps, and is wearied, and has not where to lay his head; and yet, according to the same Scripture, he is Lord "over all, GoD, blessed for ever," in whom "dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily," God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself-the omnipotent, for all power is his, in heaven, and in earth,-the omniscient, for he knew what passed in the hearts of his disciples. He prays to the Father, he knows not when the day of judgment shall take. place, he abjures the title of God, he declares himself unable to dispense honour in the kingdom of heaven; and, finally, he dies on a cross: and yet he declares that he and the Father are one, that he is perfect as the Father is perfect, that he was the giver of the kingdom of heaven, and that for ever. These seeming opposites, I say, ought not to have been to the Jews, if their faith had been ripe, a stumbling block; but how was it with them? They adopted all the grandeur of the Messiah's kingdom literally, and shut their eyes to his humiliation, though the Scriptures which they had in their hands were the authority for both. Now to apply this principle to ourselves. There are various seeming contradictions respecting the character of the Messiah which an unlearned man, or the supercilious philosopher of this world, or the superficial examiner of Scripture, ought not to turn into condemnation, or rejection, merely because his mind is not yet ripened for understanding them because he has not yet sufficiently applied his study to the sacred volume-because he has not yet acquired a knowledge of those truths by which these difficulties may be removed. The fault lies not in the word of God, but in his own mind; his prejudice must be surmounted, his ignorance must be enlightened, before he can perceive the beautiful correspondence of these contrarities. Witness those prophecies which represent the same Son and Lord of David as both exalted and depressed, both triumphant and afflicted. For instance, it is asserted that our Saviour is to be born in the fulness of time, and in the same breath it is declared, that, "his goings forth have been of old from everlasting:" he is of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, of the lineage of David, and The prejudices of our modern unyet the prophet Isaiah says—“ Who believers are of a different cast; and shall declare his generation:" while the perverseness of their judgment the Psalmist adds, that, his birth was takes an opposite direction. They before that of the morning, that he are continually dwelling, and dwellis the Son of God and seated at his ing exclusively, on the lowly and the right hand. One prophet announces human parts of our Saviour's chahim as a lowly individual about to be racter. The Jews were perplexed despised and rejected of men; a man to discover how He a king, a conof sorrows, and acquainted with grief: queror, a deliverer, should come in and we hid as it were our faces from so mean and lowly a form. Our unhim; and yet, according to the same believers stumble at the difficulty divine authority, he is the word which how a person, with so many imperfecwas with GoD and which was GoDtions and ordinary features of our hu manity, should be the king of the universe, the Son of GoD, the heir and Lord of all things in heaven and in earth. The root of the error in both cases is an imperfect study or a partial notice of the divine law. If they, and if we, searched the Bible diligently and embraced the full meaning of its scope and tenour, and studied all its parts, the discovery would burst upon us that there is a key to this enigma-a doctrine which reconciles the apparent incongruities in it. And thus we say to the Socinian opponents, you will never understand the Bible if you look at one point, and shut your eyes to another; you never can come to the knowledge of the truth if you choose what you will adopt, and what you will reject, in that record which is of inspiration. But that Jesus was GOD of the substance of his Father, existing before all worlds; a man, of the substance of his mother, born in the world, gives, and alone gives, harmony and consistency both to the prophecy, and the gospel; and ought to teach us, as a general rule, not to reject a doctrine imparted by the word of God, merely because through a defect in our minds, through prejudice, or through our imperfect at tention, we cannot at present fully comprehend that doctrine. In the Second place, God may have very wise reasons for withholding for a time a clear exposition of particular doctrines. Thus, had the doctrine of the triune GOD been as fully set forth in the Old Testament as in the New, a chosen people-slow of understanding, not yet capable of intellectual refinement, or spiritual abstraction, surrounded on all sides by palpable idols, by a representation of deity, addicted to the sins and prone to the vices of the neighbouring nations might not have been so strongly fortified, as was needful for that state of society, in that principle which constituted their grand distinction from idolatersthe unity of GOD. The doctrine of a triune GoD was therefore hinted in the Old Testament; so insinuated in sacred gleams, that the wise, and the studious could not fail to discover, or infer it; yet not so strongly blazoned, or brought forth in full relief, as to mislead the vulgar who were not yet able to avoid the error on any classification, or modification of the grand article of Jewish belief, and Jewish insulation of all things-GOD is one GOD. Now, as a desire to preserve the Jewish people from idolatry might induce God to withhold, for a season, the full disclosure of his counsels under the law, so under the Gospel our Lord might have wise reasons for not having explained at first, and at once, and at all times while on earth, the mystery of his own Messiahship and the nature of his own kingdom. Had our Lord been sedulous to proclaim himself at once and every where in his kingly capacity-bad he in the outset assumed the titles of his divinity, instead of modestly introducing himself under the title of the Son of man come to minister, be might have been, humanly speaking. stopped prematurely in his career as a sedulous person, or as a blasphemer. Had he been precipitate, in the course of his ministry, to proclaim himself openly as the Messiah, the people could not, perhaps, have been restrained, seeing some of his miracles, from crowning him, and not their persuasion, but their rebellion might have been the result; or, the Gentile governors might have arrested him and put him to death as a treasonable person, before his miracles were sufficiently multiplied to satisfy all reasonable doubt-before he had GOD, then, has his wisest designs in leaving in revelation certain obscurities. For do we not see that nothing is more proper to prove, and by that means to strengthen our faith gone about doing good and unfolding | abuse-insights into eternity, which his sacred principles for three years, might too much withdraw our attenin illustration of the pacific, and be- tion from the necessary occupations nevolent nature of his religion-before of the present probationary life-a his doctrines and his lessons had been mystery, the full manifestation of fully expounded and developed which would interfere with the debefore his time was come-before he signs of Him who orders all things in could say, as he said in the end, "I number, breadth, and measure. have finished the work which the Father hath given me to do.” Had he not concealed certain things from his disciples, might they not in the early progress of their knowledge, and before their Jewish prejudices had been gradually dispelled, have been too much offended by his bold disclosures. It is evident, therefore, that Christ had two reasons for withholding for a season that full information, and satisfaction, which towards the end of his life he vouchsafed. He withdrew himself sometimes from public view, he forbade the anxious promulgation of a miracle, he could not walk in Jerusalem because the Jews sought to kill him. It was his policy to shape himself, in a certain measure, to circumstances, to act by means; to suffer his enemies at length to capture him, when he could have called ten legions of angels to his aid; to speak in proverbs and in parables. What these two reasons were we have in part explained, but no doubt one main object was to try the faith of his disciples, by planting some difficulty in their way, where a comparison of his character with prophecy, and a fair inference from his miracles, was still sufficient ground for their belief. Now similar reasons for the divine proceedings with respect to ourselves, no doubt exist. What truths or explanations God still keeps concealed or veiled from us, in whole or in part, are perhaps truths which we could not bear-information which would deaden our exertions our acquaintance with which we should that nothing is more capable of exciting our industry, humbling our pride, calling forth our reasonable studies, increasing and yet suppressing our vain curiosity, detaching us from insatiable speculations, and fixing our attention on real holinessupon the regulation of the heart and temper, which is the scope and end of all things? Great advantages, and surely preferable to the barren pleasure, or, rather, the dangerous presumption, of entering farther in our present state into the mystery of godliness. He knows, infinitely better than ourselves, what is good for us, we should be thankful, therefore, for what he manifests of himself; enough is revealed to us to lead us to everlasting life. Let us leave secret things to Him, only careful so to act as that the things which are revealed, shall lead us to acknowledge all the works of God's written law, relying on his wisdom, and believing his word, and submitting ourselves only to his will and plea sure. But, now, in the Third place, experience of the past may teach us to suspend our curiosity, without abandoning our faith, to the period of more ample illumination. If no obscurity which existed under the Old Testament dispensation had been done away-if in proportion as GoD proposed to us new truths of belief, having put away childish things, we shall know even as we are known. he had not shown light on preceding truths, and had only increased the subject of our perplexity and em- Let us not listen, then, my Chrisbarrassment, although this conduct tian brethren, to the cavils of prewould not have authorised us to re- tenders to superior knowledge, who fuse our consent on sufficient grounds start objections to this faith or to that to the religion proposed to us, still, doctrine. Let us set at nought the we must have found it more difficult. shallowness of the unbeliever, who But what is the fact? Have not the would shake our constancy in the ways of God in regard to his church faith as it is in Jesus, but whose been like the path of the just, of laxity of moral conduct, the frequent which Solomon speaks, and which he exposure of his sophistry, are the compares to the morning light which best proofs of the insufficiency of goes on shining, and which shineth these deistical principles as a check to more and more into the perfect day? moral evil. Let us humbly believe What was obscure to the patriarchs where we cannot fully comprehend, and ancient believers, is not at all and confide where we cannot unriddle. so to us in certain respects, and is Let us trust that God has good rea very little so in others. We have sons for withholding from us clearer seen the unveiled form of difficulties. information--that is to say, for withWhat was formerly an inexplicable holding it for awhile, for all will be mystery, and might appear like a revealed in the end; the mysteries palpable contradiction, is now de- of the law were developed by the monstrable and demonstative, just and Gospel, the myteries of the Gospel harmonious in all its parts. That will be fully developed at our Lord's very difficulty, for instance, suggested second coming; how GOD can be in the text, which all the knowledge every where present, yet, in an esand penetration of the Pharisees pecial manner, to the faithful-how could not surmount, is no longer a Christ can be God and man-how he difficulty even to children. They can he spiritually present in his know or at least are capable of know- church and yet in heaven - how Gop ing, that Christ is David's Lord, can know things to come, and yet while Christ as man, may be David's leaves free the human will-how Gop son and descendant; not the least should have permitted evil, or why shadow of contradiction or obscurity misery should be entailed. These, remains on this former mystery. and a hundred other perplexities, are Now, what has happened in regard all to be referred by the Christian to to this point, and so many others the declaration of our Lord to Peter, before noticed, or which your own when he washed that disciple's feet reflection will supply, will, we are at the last supper,-"What I do assured, take place with regard to thou knowest not now, but thou shalt every thing that now perplexes us, know hereafter." Meanwhile, we are when our faculties, which are now to attend to what is declared, and incompetent to the understanding of when seeming difficulties float on the some truths, shall be enlarged, and surface of revelation, for they go no those truths then become plain, having deeper than the surface, and they are arrived at the fulness of the measure but seeming and not real contradicof the perfect man in Christ-and, tions-we are to repress idle curiosity when no longer thinking, or speak-in the words with which the same ing, or understanding as children, but Saviour checked the same Peter when he would know what should be the | high doctrines of the Christian faith, destiny of St. John-“What is that almost, down to the level of natural to thee? Follow thou me." Nothing religion. It is assumed, and what can be more idle, nothing can be can be more arrogant and vain in more presumptuous, though nothing itself, that there can be no secret in is unhappily more common at the the far depths of immensity, nothing present day, than an attempt to bring in the counsels of omniscient, omnipo→ down all the high things of eternity tent, and eternal GoD, which cannot to the measure of human comprehen- be thoroughly scanned and demonsion, to the rejection of whatever our strated, by the pigmy faculties of a intelligence cannot fathom-when we short lived human race. And it is cannot fully discern its heights and thought, and affirmed, that in point depths, when we cannot demonstrate of expediency, that wide spreading it by the laws of nature, or the ana- morality, or rather immorality of logies of human life. As long as the the day-expediency! that shaker of evidence of the infallible truth of truth to the measure of advantage, Scripture shall remain unimpeached, that guide into all error, parent of all so long," it is written," is a sufficient evil; that weapon of the timid and answer to all supposed objections and the artifice of the narrow mind-it is difficulties. thus, I say, that in point of expedience, in sweeping away all difficulties from sacred truth by forced and overstrained reductions to the level of infidelity and scepticism, that a kind of support may be gained for it, among men of sense who would otherwise entirely reject it. Now, even if this end could be thus accomplished, the minister of GOD, or any other friend of the Gospel, has no right to suppress one point of truth, to distort one jot or tittle of doctrine contained in the divine revelation; he has no right to palm on me for christianity a combination of socinianism and deism; he has no right for any problematical advantage, for any advantage, to deny the full information of Scripture --- the power of GOD, the revealer of his own appointed course, of his own nature at his own time, for his own wise ends, and in his own will. The real fact, however, is, that all these concessions and temporizings, and base accommodations, never accomplish the end proposed by this shallow and unworthy policy; they only render the adverse party more obstinate in their cavils, more determined in The genuine spirit of the Bereans was evinced, not by an endeavour to argue out divine truths from the mere principles of reason and philosophy, but by searching the Scriptures daily, to see whether the things propounded by the apostles were sothat is, whether they were therein contained. When they were once convinced of this they had no further trouble, and their faith was founded. At present our danger consists in a system of lax theology, coming like a chilling blast from the ill regulated universities of Germany; although a large body of German divines have already denounced it. The object of this scheme, which has assumed the name of rationalism or neology, is to rend prematurely the veil of mystery, to reduce infinite things to the level of finite comprehension, to blot out whatever is supernatural or now unsearchable from the Scriptural scheme of providence. It is to twist, and to distort, prophecy into ambiguity, to quibble upon miracles as if they were natural effects of natural causes; and to reduce the |