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cannot suppose any of you so unacquainted with the history of Christ, as not to be able familiarly to refer to all those passages in his life and death by which they were minutely and wonderfully fulfilled. Now, consider that no question is raised by any one, whether these predictions were made and published several centuries before the birth of Christ. The enemies of Christ, his crucifiers, have been the librarians of these writings.* The Jews preserved them for us, with sacred care, for many hundreds of years. They were translated from Hebrew into Greek at least two hundred years before Christ. The Jews then understood them to refer to the Messiah, as we do now; and it was on account of some of them that a general expectation of the speedy coming of Messiah prevailed so widely in Judea at the time of the public appearance of Christ.

That all these particulars were most remarkably combined in the person, character, works, sufferings, and burial of the Lord Jesus, I need not say. If the predictions did not originally refer to him, and only happened to be accomplished in him, it would be reasonable to suppose that out of the innumerable millions of men that have lived since they were pub

* Augustine, in the fourth century, spoke very often of the great advantage which Christians had in their arguments for the truth of the gospel, from the subsistence and dispersion of the Jewish people, who everywhere bear testimony to the antiquity and genuineness of the books of the Old Testament; so that none could say they were afterwards forged by Christians. He therefore calls the Jews the librarians of the Christians; he compares them to servants that carry books for the use of children of noble families, or that carry a chest or bag of evidence for a disputant. Ladner, ch. 2, p. 598.

lished, some other individual, if not hundreds, would

have appeared exhibiting the same correspondence. Where is the record of such an event? Can the per

son be mentioned in whom there was even an approximation to the fulfilment exhibited in the history of Jesus? I need not say, that no one ever pretended to be able to find such a person. These prophecies describe a combination of gentleness with power, merit with ignominy, benevolence with contempt— they bring together details of ancestry, of family, of birth, of time, of works, of sufferings, of death, which it were ridiculous to pretend have been united in any individual whose name is in the annals of man, except the Son of man, Christ Jesus.

But it may be said, that among these predictions there are some which human design might have brought to pass. It may be suggested that a band of men undertaking to promote an imposture, and having these predictions before them, might have selected for their leader one who had been born at Bethlehem, of the lineage of David, and might have ordered his appearance at the precise time of the prophecy. Let this be supposed, and let us overlook the fact that no possible motive can be assigned that could induce a band of impostors to desire the setting up of such a cause as that of Christ; still, how would imposture contrive to unite in its leader the fulfilment of prophecies which on one hand foretold him as eminent for wisdom and benevolence, and on the other for shame and suffering? How, on this supposition, could all those predictions have been accom

plished which relate to the agonies of the cross? Would a deceiver seek crucifixion for the sake of fulfilling prophecy? How was it managed that one should betray him, and afterwards, out of remorse, hang himself? How was it contrived that the enemies of Christ should measure the price of his blood at the exact sum predicted; and then, that the mercenary traitor should return it to them again, and they should use it in purchase of the predicted potter's field? How did imposture so artfully combine in its cause all the persecutors of Christ, that without any design to advance its interests they should have chosen precisely that mode of execution, those expressions of contempt, those instruments of torture, those companions of his sufferings, that mixture for his drink, that severity to his body while he was alive, and that forbearance to it after he was dead, which, if they had been anxious to prove him the true Messiah foretold in the Scriptures, would have composed the most effectual means they could possibly employ? Most evidently, the bitter adversaries of Christianity, not its friends, brought out the demonstration that Jesus was he to whom gave all the prophets witness.

And now, is there any possible escape from the absolute necessity of acknowledging that the Spirit of God was in the writers of the Bible, and that his Spirit has testified of Jesus? Will any one pretend that in the idea of chance there is any explanation of the coincidences which have been mentioned? It will not be useless to spend a moment on this matter

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of chance. It is conceivable that a prediction, uttered at a venture, confining its terms to but one event, and expressing that in a general way, may happen to result so plausibly as to seem like a genuine prophecy. But only let it descend to the minutiae of time, place, and incidents, and it is evident that the possibility of its success, by a fortuitous concurrence of events, will become extremely desperate. Hence, the oracles of heathen antiquity always took good care to confine their predictions to one or two particulars, and to express them in the most general and ambiguous terms. Hence, in the whole range of history, except the prophecies of the Scriptures, there is not a single instance of a prediction, expressed in unequivocal language and descending to any minuteness, which bears the slightest claim to the praise of fulfilment. But to set this in a more impressive light, I will quote a few sentences from one of the most scientific laymen of the present day. "Suppose," says Olinthus Gregory, "that instead of the spirit of prophecy, breathing more or less in every book of Scripture, predicting events relative to a great variety of general topics, and delivering besides almost innumerable characteristics of the Messiah, all meeting in the person of Jesus, there had been only ten men in ancient times who pretended to be prophets, each of whom exhibited only five independent criteria as to place, government, concomitant events, doctrine taught, effects of doctrine, character, sufferings, or death, the meeting of all which in one person should prove the reality of their calling as prophets, and of

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his mission in the character they have assigned him; suppose, moreover, that all events were left to chance merely, and we were to compute, from the principles employed by mathematicians in the investigation of such subjects, the probability of these fifty independent circumstances happening at all: assume that there is, according to the technical phrase, an equal chance for the happening or the failure of any one of the specified particulars; then the probability against the occurrence of all the particulars in any way, is that of the fiftieth power of two to unity; that is, the probability is greater than eleven hundred and twentyfive millions of millions to one, that all these circumstances do not turn up even at distinct periods." But this calculation, you must observe, specifies no particular period for these things to take place, but allows from the time of uttering the predictions to the end of the world for all the fifty particulars to occur. But if a time be fixed, at or near which they must happen, the immense improbability that they will take place exceeds all the power of numbers to express. This, moreover, is on the supposition of every thing being under the disposal of that fiction of unbelief, a blind chance. How infinite does the improbability appear when it is remembered that "all events are under the control of a Being of matchless wisdom, power, and goodness, who hates fraud and deception, who must especially hate it when attempted under his name and authority." This is enough, one would think, to silence for ever all pleas of chance, as furGregory's Letters.

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