and it affords a striking illustration of the tender compassion of Almighty God: Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men that rule this people, which is in Jerusalem ;* because ye have boasted of your security, and have made lies your refuge, and have despised me, therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah; even yet I will not forget my loving-kindness; Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste. But judgment also will I lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet.

The figure under which the Messiah is here represented is principally that of a stone as the foundation of a building, the foundation of the spiritual church. The description, which is in these words given of that stone, is intended to show its fitness, its excellence, and its stability; it is a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.

(1.) It is a tried or an approved stone. The prediction here recorded was made upwards of seven hundred years before the days of the Messiah; but that God, to whom a thousand years are as one day, speaks of it as an event already at hand: as if the trials, which proved

* Ver. 14.

the suitableness of Christ for the work of salvation, had already been made. The expression is meant to intimate the perfect acquiescence of the Most High in His beloved Son, and His unqualified approbation of Him as the Redeemer of the world. Thus, in another part of the same book He says, Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth; and to the same purport in after ages, when the Son of God was just commencing his public ministry, was heard a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.† He had not yet encountered the temptation in the wilderness, or the contradiction of sinners against Himself; He had not yet proved by His labours and His sufferings that He was able to bear in His own person the iniquities of the world and to subdue our spiritual enemy: nevertheless, so perfectly qualified did He appear to answer the divine purpose of grace, that the Father represents Him as already tried and approved. Was there none among the hosts of heaven who might have become the foundation of a spiritual church? Without controversy, great is

* Isaiah xlii, 1.

+ Matt. iii. 17.

the mystery of godliness; and we know nothing on this subject except as it is revealed in the holy Scriptures; but if we could distinctly perceive and understand the ways of the Almighty in this plan of salvation, we should doubtless, from the view itself, be constrained to acknowledge that there was a peculiar fitness and sufficiency in the incarnate Son of God to be the foundation of this spiritual temple, this church, which He purchased with His blood and sanctifies by His spirit a fitness which could not be ascribed even to the first archangel. Without presuming to say that this was the only plan, by which a building suited for the habitation of God could be erected in our sinful world, this at least the expression of the prophet will authorise us to affirm, that by ampler knowledge and clearer views we should be still further led to admire the suitableness of it for the great end to be accomplished. If in the creation of the world we perceive the glory of the Creator, on this subject especially, which involves the redemption of mankind, we should be induced to exclaim, O the depth of the riches

* 1 Tim. iii. 16.

:

both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!* How gloriously do the perfections of the Most High unite and harmonize in this tried foundation!

(2.) The prophet represents the Messiah in the next place as a precious corner stone; the corner stone in the foundation being that which supports the structure, and more than any other serves to consolidate and unite it. This is the view which St. Paul takes of the phrase, in his epistle to the Ephesians, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. So that our blessed Lord is at once the foundation upon which the church is built and the corner stone which unites it: He is the support of His people, and in Him they all meet and have fellowship one with another.

And what a delightful view does this give us of the union which exists between Christ and His true disciples, and of the beauty and integrity of His church! We are told by St. Paul, that He hath brought the Jews and Gentiles together, making both one; and we here see that His real followers, in every age, + Eph. ii. 20. Eph. ii. 14.

*Rom. xi. 33.

are stones in the same spiritual building, fixed upon the same foundation, and connected by the same living influence. To a mind, which is by divine instruction capable of feeling the force of this passage, and which can enter with holy affection into the spirit of it, it will be obvious that there is no limit to the expansion of Christian sympathy and Christian love. Wherever the church of God has existed in times past, or in whatever part of the earth it may now be found, the disciple of Jesus Christ discovers there the foundation upon which he is himself built, and perceives that he is united to the members of it by the chief corner stone. What an elevation of feeling does it give to such a man, when he reflects that Enoch and Abraham, and David and Elijahthat Isaiah, who so remarkably prophesied concerning the Saviour-that John the Baptist, who, as the herald and forerunner of the Lord, was more than a prophet-that those who in early times stood forth as the confessors of Christ, or who passed with the crown of martyrdom on their heads from a world of suffering to a world of glory, are all related to himself and to each other, as a part of the same spi