alone, be sufficient evidence that he in whom it resides has received some commission from God, is a proposition which, perhaps, admits of satisfactory proof. This proof, however, is derived from various and complex considerations; and the truth of the proposition, whether in this abstract form it may be established or not, was certainly not generally admitted by the Jews contemporary with Christ. They were an ignorant and superstitious people. The prevalent belief in the reality of false miracles existed among them equally as among the Heathens. Some narratives in their Scriptures might easily be understood as proving the doctrine, that the power of performing miracles was not confined to the messengers of God, or to those on whom he looked with favor. They believed in the agency of evil spirits as interfering with the course of nature and inflicting diseases of body and mind. There were persons among them who were regarded as able to cure such diseases by casting out dæmons. They believed in magic, and consequently had no doubt that miracles might be effected through means and agents condemned by God, and which exposed those who employed them to his displeasure. But, holding such false opinions, they were fully prepared to resist the

conviction which the miracles of our Saviour must have produced in men more intelligent and better informed. They were familiar with the imagination and belief of false miracles, and were therefore less likely to be affected by real miracles. Believing such effects to be often produced without the interposition of God, by bad agents, they were furnished with what they deemed a sufficient account of the miracles of Christ, though his divine authority were denied. His enemies held the same opinion concerning them, which many Christians have held respecting the pretended miracles of Paganism. They regarded them as performed through the assistance of evil spirits. In addition to what has been said, it may be well to recollect, though it is not a consideration of primary importance, that the principal scene of Christ's ministry was in Galilee and the neighboring country, and that it was here that most of his miracles were performed; while, on the other hand, the stronghold of his enemies was at Jerusalem, where his character, preaching, and actions were less known.

But the majority of the Jews were not likely to be deterred from their opinion respecting the miraculous powers of Christ, either by the holi

ness of his character, or by the conformity of his doctrines and precepts to our highest conceptions of God. In order to perceive and feel the display of divine excellence which was manifested in his life and religion, no inconsiderable degree of purity and elevation of mind is required. Moral corruption must shrink from it with aversion and pain. Instead, therefore, of commanding the respect of his countrymen, it was one cause of their offence with him and their hatred against him. But there were other powerful causes in operation.

The Jews were oppressed by the Roman power, and despised and exasperated by their oppressors. Insulated among nations, not less by mutual feelings of hostility than by other causes, they gloried in their peculiar relation to God. They were his people, and the rest of men were their enemies and his enemies. Their pride was their consolation and their hope; and the more they were humbled, the more obstinate and deep-rooted it became. It drew strength from all their national and all their religious sentiments. The hour was coming, as they thought, when God would interpose for his chosen people, and destroy their oppressors. The times of the Messiah would be a period of deliverance and vengeance and glory.

This expectation was an article of religious faith, and the cherished object of their strongest passions. But when Christ appeared, it was to prostrate those hopes, and humble that pride which oppression and suffering had only confirmed. No distinguishing favor of God to the Jewish people was manifested through him. He came to teach them, that they were not, as they believed, a holy people, but sinners and aliens from God; and that it was only by a renovation of character that they could obtain his favor. He came, not to exalt them in triumph over their enemies, but to place the rest of men on an equality with them, to do away the distinctions in which they had gloried, and to make known the impartial goodness of God. He came, not to gratify their passions, but to require them to relinquish those passions. No shock or discouragement, however, could at once subdue those strong hopes which his appearance had called forth. Though unsatisfied, there were still some of their number who were ready, with, or even without, his consent, "to make him king." But he repelled from him those who came with such feelings. He turned into hostility the passions which he refused to gratify. At the same time, the place of his birth, the condition of his

family, his mode of life, the character of his few followers, the hopes which he held out to them, were all foreign from what they had expected in their great Deliverer. Was it strange, then, that they refused to acknowledge him as the Messiah, who corresponded to none of their conceptions of the Messiah, and who, instead of accomplishing, had come to destroy, the hopes of his nation?

But this was not all. Jesus Christ was, in the highest sense of the words, a moral and religious reformer, the most open and uncompromising, exposed to all the hatred which may ever attach to this character. The Jewish religion had become grossly corrupt. It was, as other forms of superstition have been, little more than a religion of substitutions for holiness and virtue; not leading men to goodness, but furnishing them with some other imaginary means of obtaining the favor of God. Now when, in any case, a reformer exhibits the true character of such substitutions, and presents to view the real requirements of religion, the natural effect will be, that those who have founded their pride upon the former will regard him as profanely endeavoring to destroy men's reverence for what is sacred. He will be viewed by them as an enemy to religion; for he is an enemy to