science. The one, apart from every other consideration, depends on testimony; the other is elaborated by the operations of the mind itself, and calls to its aid all facts which exert any influence over the question examined. Subjects that depend upon human testimony are sometimes of a character so extraordinary, that we are more inclined to believe the witness in error, or to suspect that we do not correctly apprehend his meaning, than to give credit to the statements which he offers. But if we are fully satisfied that he himself could not be mistaken, and that he has no motive for wishing to deceive us, and if we have every reason to believe that we correctly appreciate the design and amount of his representations, we have no right to consider the improbability of the facts which he avers, as any obstacle to our credence. Otherwise, we change the character of the inquiry; and from being a subject of faith, it becomes a subject of science.

But an error of this kind is fatal to the satisfactory investigation of truth. For testimony, in all cases, respects matters on which our data are insufficient for the purposes of science. Where we have access to all possible sources of information, we no longer need testimony, since we ourselves are as competent as any other person. It is where a subject is itself beyond our personal investigation; where another has resources which we do not possess, and which we cannot command, that we require the aid of testimony: and it is clear, that in such cases we are quite disqualified to decide, except by information conveyed through this medium. When we have ascertained the validity of the evidence, our business is, simply to accept its representations as matters of faith.

If a revelation is needful, it is so because its truths are beyond the range of our investigation. They cannot therefore be appreciable by science, but must depend

upon testimony alone. Happily, we are here relieved from all hesitation as to the competency of the evidence; for "if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater ;" and the subject of our present inquiry is, "the witness of God which he hath testified of his SON."* We are therefore to dismiss all considerations as to the improbability, real or supposed, of the doctrine in question, since the divine testimony is infallibly

true.

In questions determinable by human evidence, inherent improbability occasionally leads us to distrust our interpretation. But this supposes that the facts involved are of an accessible character. On a subject altogether out of our sphere of observation and experience, we cannot determine whether the representations are probable or otherwise. Now were the doctrines of revelation within our capacities of investigation, we might be justified in a degree of hesitation, respecting our expositions of such as appeared unlikely. But, so far as the fact is directly the reverse, we have no test to decide, whether or not our understanding of Scripture is probably correct. Hence, there is no alternative, but implicitly to take the meaning of the Bible from its own statements. We may, and we should, avail ourselves of all the aid which we can command, from grammar, philology, and criticism; but when these have been employed impartially, and irrespectively of the results to which they may possibly lead, further hesitation is irrational and impious.

One exception to this rule may however be admitted. For in expounding those Scriptures which treat of the divine character, should we arrive at no conclusion which appeared extraordinary, which, to human judgment, was improbable and mysterious; should we

1 John v. 9.

discover nothing to remind us of the feebleness of our powers, nothing that checked and repelled investigation, and produced an awful sense of immensity and grandeur; we might, on this ground, reasonably distrust the correctness of our exposition. If, in short, a system of interpretation developes nothing on the divine nature, which apart from revelation would be absolutely incredible, it is certainly unsound; since, on the most remote and inscrutable of all subjects, it does not allow what must be conceded to every branch of human science.* In treating of the internal relations of the Godhead, the doctrines really improbable are the ordinary, the easily comprehensible, such as present no remarkable variation from the suggestions of human reason, or are altogether within the limits of human capacity. And hence, if by a simple and unevasive method of Scripture exposition, we fall upon doctrines, singular, incomprehensible, utterly baffling to our most patient and enlightened philosophy, this very circumstance will supply a presumption of no inconsiderable weight to the correctness of our interpretation.

At all events, the subject of our present investigation will be treated justly, only so far as it is prosecuted

*Had a revelation been made three centuries since on chymistry or mechanics, it must have stated those discoveries and inventions of modern times, which, though perfectly familiar to us, would otherwise, to our ancestors at that period, have appeared the mere dreams of a distempered imagination. In the reign of Henry VIII., it would have required supernatural testimony to render it credible, that, after the lapse of three hundred years, our towns would commonly be lighted by means of a vapour, often conveyed many miles through subterranean passages. The wonders of the steam-engine would have startled our own childhood; and the rapidity of locomotion, which is likely soon to be common throughout the kingdom, would have seemed to us, still more recently, not less improbable than the quadrature of the circle, or the discovery of perpetual motion.

independently of all pre-conceptions, and upon the testimony of revelation alone. In order to our faith, we have no right to require evidence beyond what would be sufficient to establish a purely indifferent doctrine, and one which we have no difficulty in believing, or even in conjecturing, apart from all direct testimony. Our simple inquiry therefore, stripped of every other consideration, is, Do the Scriptures, according to their natural and most obvious import, represent the second Person in the Godhead as sustaining to the first the relation of a Son? It is perhaps not too much to say that, were all pre-conceptions laid aside as to the supposed improbability of the doctrine, and were our conclusions left solely to the decision of Scripture evidence, the number of dissentients from the affirmative judgment would be very inconsiderable.

There is one circumstance which has been supposed to invalidate the evidence to be employed in our present inquiry. It is, that the phrase "Son of God" is one of considerable latitude of meaning, and is susceptible of a variety of applications. Thus, angels are called sons of God. The like designation is applied to good men. Adam is described in a similar way. It has therefore been urged, that a phrase of apparently so vague import cannot supply the basis for a solid argument as to any particular aspect of our Lord's character.

But this remark, in a greater or less degree, is true of many other, if not of all mere appellations. Yet it will hardly be denied, that every one which is applied to Christ, however numerous the expositions of which it is susceptible, or the arguments with which it may be connected, has some primary and definite meaning, a meaning to which all others,-if any such can be excogitated, are not only subordinate, but also affixed by a figure of speech. Thus, for example, GoD is a name. applied to magistrates, to angels, to persons peculiarly

D

privileged with respect to divine truth, and to heathen deities. MESSIAH also, or the anointed, is, in the Old Testament, used to describe Priests, Kings, and the entire Jewish people. Yet in these cases the secondary sense is easily distinguished from that which is primary and proper.

This objection, it is well known, has been urged against the Deity of our Lord. It has been argued that, as in several passages divine appellations are understood in a sense lower than the supreme, no satisfactory conclusion can be derived from their application to Christ. But, granting that in cases where there is no possibility of mistake such titles are occasionally employed in a subordinate sense, it has been correctly replied, that this supplies no rational ground for rejecting their highest acceptation, where, as in their current application to our Lord, there is nothing to qualify their signification, or to limit their design. This mode of reasoning is equally forcible with respect to the title "Son of God," which though, like the former, occasionally, and where none could err as to its design, applied to other individuals, has obviously, as a regular designation of our Redeemer, a certain eminent and exclusive sense.

It is not disputed that every other appellation of our Lord has some precise and well understood acceptation. Is it probable, therefore, is it conceivable, that this alone, certainly not the least eminent, is an exception? And yet the ordinary modes of exposition leave it at the mercy or fancy of the reader; since by assigning to it, in the several places where it occurs, designs widely and irreconcilably diverse, they deprive it of every thing like distinctness and precision. In one case, it is represented as the appellation of our Lord's humanity; in a second, it is a periphrasis of the Messiah; in a third, it signifies a peculiar favourite of heaven; in a fourth, it is descriptive of the resurrection of Christ; in a fifth, it refers to