among us, full of grace and truth' (John i. 14); God was manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. iii. 16). So that we are to understand God with us' to imply, God incarnated-God in human nature. Jesus is called Immanuel, or God with us, in His incarnation; God united to our nature, God with man, God in God in man, God with us, by His continual protection; God with us by the influence of His Holy Spirit in the Holy Sacrament, in the preaching of His word, in private prayer." And he goes on to say that "This is an irrefragable confutation of every argument a Jew can offer in vindication of his opposition to the Gospel of Christ." Such is the exposition of one of the highest authorities in the Church of the meaning of "Immanuel" and of the dogmas which that name embodies.

In the next lecture I shall attempt to show that if the principle laid down by this writer, that the addition of the name (God) to an ordinary person constitutes the one so named a divinity, were applied to the Scriptures throughout, the Bible would be to us something very different from what it is. It would not discover to us a unity, nor a duality, nor even a trinity of Gods, but a polytheism as numerous as that of the Greeks. Once adopt this principle, and then the monotheistic idea, which is the distinctive doctrine of Sinai, disappears, and a pantheon of Gods starts forth from the book of revelation.

IX.

ON THE PROPHECIES OF ISAIAH, DENOMINATED "MESSIANIC."

THIRD LECTURE.

WE have now to consider whether the assertion that the words of which the name applied to the promised child is composed implies that the individual so called is to unite in himself a divine as well as a human nature.

It could have hardly escaped the observation of any one, even partially acquainted with the original Scriptures, that it was a common thing with the Hebrews to mark by the addition of, and occasionally by that of the sacred Tetragrammaton itself, the name of a person or thing that had been, or was expected to be, instrumental in working out a decree of the Divine will. Of this fact instances innumerable might be cited from the pages of the Bible, but the mention of a few may suffice, first with respect to things, secondly to persons. First, when the hand of Abraham is stayed on Mount Moriah from proving his faith in the divine word by the immolation of his son, he commemorates

אל תשלח ידך אל הנער ואל the merciful charge

MIND i wyn, "Lay not thy hand on the youth,

I

1

neither do him any harm," by setting up on the spot an altar, which he names

"Jehovah

will regard.' Again, after the victory won by the unwarlike Israelites at Rephidim over the martial Amalekites, Moses, who ascribes the defeat of the enemy to the hand of God, hallows the field where the battle has been fought by raising on it an altar bearing the appellation of "", "Jehovah my banner." Of course it cannot be contended that either the altar of Abraham or that of Moses was a divinity, and yet both are called after the most sacred and awful name of Jehovah. Also, in the 33rd chapter of Jeremiah, it will be found that "Jehovah our righteousness," is applied by the prophet to the capital of the kingdom of Judah. "In those days Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem shall abide in safety; and this is the name by which she (i.e., the city) shall be called, "Jehovah our righteousness."4 Here, then, the very same phrase, which theologians of a certain school imagine to invest the promised

צִדְקֵנוּ the term

1 Gen. xxii. 12.

3 Exodus xvii. 15.

2 Ib., verse 14.

"THE

4 Verse 16. The same phrase, “The Lord our righteousness," occurs also in Jerem. xxiii. 7; and as the authorised English version would needs make it appear that the phrase employed in the latter instance denoted the divinity of the personage to whom it is applied, it is made to stand out in bold capitals, thus : LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." In ch. xxxiii., however, where the same words are applied to Jerusalem, the capitals disappear, and the phrase is given in smaller type, like the rest of the verse, because no theological advantage could be reaped out of the application of the said words to a city.

Messiah with a divine character, is applied to a Hebrew city.

Secondly. As regards the interweaving of, (God) with the proper names of persons, instances appear in the names of Nathaneel (), Bazaleel (b), and also where some of the letters of the Tetragrammaton are compounded with the name of the individual, as Jonathan (), or Jonadab (7, literally "God-given"), all of which are precisely of the same character

עמנו אל Immanuel). If) עמנו אל and import as

must needs be interpreted to mean a divine personage, by reason of the appended, on what grounds should the attribute of divinity be withheld from Samuel (signifying, "Heard of God"), or from Elihu ("He is God"), or from Elijah "Jehovah is God")? In the face of evidences like these, all testifying to the common practice of the ancient Hebrews to compound the Divine name, or letters of it, with that of persons, there is surely some justification for the remark with which the preceding lecture closed, that if the canon of criticism employed in relation to the words y were consistently applied to the Scriptures throughout, polytheism, and not monotheism, might be set forth as the outcome of the Hebrew Bible.1

I The instances cited above have induced Christian commentators, including some of the most orthodox Churchmen, to abandon the theory that implies that the person so named is to be considered as a divinity. It is remarked by Dr. Pye-Smith, "that it is an unquestionable fact that the gratitude or hope of individuals, in the ancient Scripture times,

There is nothing in prophetic utterance nor in scriptural record that enables us to fix with any certainty on the particular woman or child to whom Isaiah refers in his message to King Ahaz; nor is certainty in this matter very essential, after what the Bible tells us, that the promised child was born shortly after the giving out of the divine oracle. The real value and test of the prophecy, considered in reference to the effect it was intended to produce, resided in the time of its accomplishment. Not the person, but the date, constituted the primary object of what Isaiah was charged to announce to Ahaz, in order to satisfy him that, without any help from the king of Assyria, God Himself would protect Jerusalem and defeat the schemes of those who were threatening its safety. This proposition is readily admitted by a very distinguished non-Jewish Biblical scholar, who says, "Any son of Jerusalem, arriving at the years of discretion within the stated time, would fulfil the main conditions of the announcement, and, as a sign of divine deliverance, might receive the name of Immanuel." 1

That the child promised by the prophet was born

was often expressed by the imposition of significant appellations to persons or other objects, in the composition of which divine names and titles were frequently employed. These are, therefore, nothing but short sentences, declarative of some blessing possessed or expected." (Quoted from Wilson's "Illustrations.")

1 See Lecture V., by James Martineau, on "The Proposition that Christ is God, proved to be false." ("Unitarianism Defended.") The expositions by this able critic of Isaiah, chap. vii., have been occasionally placed under contribution in the present lectures.