he continues, "I have nothing to add. "The characters of the religion of the "Jews are in themselves irreconcilable "with every common principle of hu66 man nature, and must therefore be re"ferred to some higher wisdom and fore

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sight than that of man. But, when all "the prophecies of this extraordinary religion are found to be accomplished,— "when, resting solely upon the future, "all that they predict of that future has

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really taken place ;-when all point to a "final and greater revelation, and when "all the circumstances of that greater re"velation correspond fully to the predic❝tions of earlier time, the conclusion is " inevitable,—that the Saviour whom we "worship is He that should come, and "that we ought to look for no other." "

On this passage, my brethren, which is far above my praise, I will not venture to make any comment, but, leaving it to

produce its own effect upon your minds, I proceed, in prosecution of the humbler view which I have suggested, to remark, in the first place, that the supposition of a series of prophetic discoveries, such as we have recorded in Scripture, gives to revelation a character of much grandeur and dignity. When we find, that, from the first hour in which man stood in need of a Redeemer, his future arrival was foretold, and that, not only in the occasional raptures of the pious, his "day was seen," but, even in the institutions of a whole nation, the purposes of his coming were shadowed out in types and signs; when, in the progress of this mighty preparation, we behold a continued succession of inspired men, who employed all the powers of their elevated minds to raise the thoughts of a grovelling people from the signs to the things signified, from the letter to the spirit of their rites and or

dinances, describing, at times, with all the vivacity of actual vision, events which were not to arrive for many an age :-it is impossible not to feel the lofty character of that religion which was ushered in with so much previous arrangement.

When it came, indeed, into open view, it seemed to be of a very humble and unimposing aspect; and it is not to be wondered at, that the gross minds of the people among whom it rose, should have found little in it to satisfy their earthly ambition, and that they should have closed their eyes to the import of those predictions which painted the sufferings of the promised Messiah. Yet, however mean his apparent condition, never was any prince preceded by so splendid a train of forerunners; and, surely, there was more real grandeur in the constant preparation which, from the first opening of the history of man, had been made for his

approach, than if he had come at last with the ensigns of worldly power, and amidst the glitter of a temporal sovereign, ty.

In the second place, my brethren, the dispensation of prophecy is no less conspicuous for its benevolence than for its splendour; and it is impossible for us to calculate the amount of that hope and faith which it was the means of producing in those ages that preceded the Gospel. It is a very low and illiberal view of the dispensations of Heaven, to consider them always with a reference to ourselves, and if they should happen not to be very interesting to us, immediately to conclude, that they were of little value in former periods of society. The full light of the Gospel has now come in place of the fainter illumination of prophecy, and the ancient predictions seem now only valu able, as they prove the divine origin of

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that scheme which was foretold by them: but at the period at which they were made, they served an higher, and a still nobler purpose. They were, then, a substitute for the Gospel. They, then, gave to the simple and pious heart, its best assurances of the moral administration and providence of God. Under the bondage of the Mosaic institutions, they anticipated the perfection of Christian liberty: they addressed the " prisoners of hope," and pointed to the "stronghold to which they "should turn,”—and spoke of that future age in which "the daughter of Zion ❝ should rejoice greatly.”

How many virtuous individuals, as well as the Ethiopian who was baptized by Philip, would, when they went to Jerusalem to worship, derive consolation, amidst the obscurity of the services in which they were engaged, from the divine raptures of the Prophet Esaias; and although, like him,