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themselves. He took upon him to punish the sacrilegious profaners of the temple, without applying to the Sanhedrim; he publicly pardoned a woman, who by the Mosaic statutes had incurred the penalty of death; and he not only delivered new laws, but entirely anulled the ceremonial ritual and the symbolical services instituted by Moses.

How the threatening which closes the prophecy has been fulfilled, the history of the destruction of Jerusalem and the present condition of scattered Israel, without a temple and without a sacrifice, destitute of authority, and even strangers in every land, will strikingly demonstrate.

That the Messiah should be a divine person, possessing all the attributes of deity, was the general belief of the ancient Jewish church, grounded upon the persuasion that he was no other than the angel of the covenant, or the Lord of Hosts who appeared to the Patriarchs, as well as to Moses in the bush, and who led Israel through the wilderness. This belief was also supported by various prophecies, in which he is thus described; "thy throne, O "God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of

righteousness is the sceptre of thy king"dom" (Ps. xlv. 6). "The Lord said unto

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my Lord, sit thou on my right hand until I "make thine enemies thy footstool" (cx. 1). Still more lofty and explicit is the delineation of the Redeemer by the evangelical prophet;

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"unto us a child is born, unto us a son is "given, and the government shall be upon "his shoulder; and his name shall be called "Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, "the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (ix. 6). Again, pointing the attention of the people to the period when "death should be "swallowed up in victory," he declares "and "it shall be said in that day: lo! this is our "God, we haye waited for him, and he will save us; we have waited for him, we will be glad, and rejoice in his salvation" (xxv. 9). The prophet Jeremiah is very particular not only in marking the line in which the Messiah should come, but also in expressing his essential divinity, "Behold the days come, saith "the Lord, that I will raise unto David, a "righteous branch, and a king shall reign "and prosper, and shall execute judgment "and justice in the earth. In his days Judah "shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; "and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD, or JEHOVAH, OUR RIGH"TEOUSNESS" (xxiii. 5. 6).

The royal descent of the Messiah was intimated in the predictions of Jacob and Balaam, but the particular family in which he should come is declared by the Psalmist in many of his divine compositions. It was also promised unto him by the Almighty, that "his throne should be established for ever" (2 Sam. vii. 16); and in the last words of David the same truth

forms his great consolation, "there shall be a righteous ruler over men, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springeth out of the earth by clear shining after rain. Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow" (2 Sam. xxiii. 4, 5).The proper comment upon these words will be found in Psalm lxxxix. 3, 4. "I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David, my servant. Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations."

That the Messiah was to be born of a virgin of the royal lineage, is avowed in plain terms in the prophecy of Isaiah to Ahaz; "Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And he said, hear ye now, . O house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name IM

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* The literal meaning of this is "God with us," some have observed that the word rendered a virgin, signifies only a

There is a remarkable, though somewhat obscure prophecy in Jeremiah, which is illustrated by the passage just cited. It is this, "the Lord hath created, or will create, a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass a man," or rather "a male child." (ch. xxxi. 22). But there could be nothing extraordinary in this, nor could such a pregnancy be truly called a "new thing;" wherefore, to make the text intelligible, it must be understood only in the same sense with the wonderful sign mentioned by Isaiah, and which was fulfilled in the miraculous conception.

The place of the Messiah's birth is declared in the prophecy of Micah, "But thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from the days of eternity."

The Jews never denied that this prediction referred to the Messiah, and when Herod consulted the priests concerning the birthplace of Christ, they delivered it as their persuasion, founded on this prophecy, that it must be at Bethlehem. The word Ephratah,

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young woman," but in fact, the translation is so strictly correct, that no other word could have been adopted without paraphrasing and weakening the original, which denotes such a maid as in the Eastern countries is carefully secluded from men till the ceremony of marriage: and therefore the Septuagint reads the passage exactly as we do.

by which the prophet more clearly designates the place, is the name of David's family, and therefore it marks at once, that the person there to be born was no other than the hope of Israel.

But though his lineal descent was so plainly marked, and the place of his birth denoted, yet it was also foretold that the Messiah should be born in obscurity, and in a low condition. This indeed is sufficiently intimated in the passage last cited, which describes Bethlehem as "little and contemptible," thereby expressing that the person by whose birth she was to be honoured would be in a humble state. The same thing is intimated by Isaiah when he calls the Messiah a "rod or, a shoot of the stem of Jesse," who, though he was the father of David, was only a man of ordinary rank. But in that most exact description of the humiliation of Christ contained in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, it is declared that "he shall be as a root out of a dry ground, without having any form or comeliness," or any such circumstances as might comport with an object of desire, or of worldly admiration. The preparation and the circumstances of the Messiah's coming are sufficiently described in various prophecies, to fix the application only to him whose history is recorded by the Evangelists. Thus, that his approach should be ushered in by an extraordinary messenger from heaven, after

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