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present, even if all human power had been combined for extending, instead of extinguishing the gospel. The diffusion of knowledge was then extremely difficult; the art of printing was then unknown; and many countries which the gospel has now reached, were then undiscovered. And, multiplied as books now are, more than at any former period of the history of man,-extensive as the range of commerce is, beyond what Tyre, or Carthage, or Rome could have ever boasted, the dissemination of the Scriptures surpasses both the one and the other :-they have penetrated regions unknown to any work of human genius, and untouched even by the ardour of commercial speculation; and, with the prescription of more than seventeen centuries in its favour, the prophecy of the poor prisoner of Patmos is now exemplified, and thus proved to be more than a mortal vision, in the unexampled communication of the everlasting gospel unto them that dwell on the earth, to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. Christianity is professed over Europe and America. Christians are settled throughout every part of the earth. The gospel is now translated into one hundred and fifty languages and dialects, which are prevalent in countries from the one extremity of the world to the other and what other book, since the Creation, has ever been read or known in a tenth part of the number? Whatever may be the secondary causes by which these events have been accomplished, or whatever may be the opinion of men respecting them, the predictions which they amply verify must have originated by inspiration from him who is the first Great Cause. What divine warrant, equal to this alone, can all the speculations of infidelity supply, or can any freethinker produce, for disbelieving the gospel?

It is apparent, on a general view of the prophecies

which refer to Christ and to the Christian religion, that they include predictions relative to many of the doctrines of the gospel which are subjects of pure revelation, or which reason of itself could never have discovered; and these very doctrines, to which the self-sufficiency of human wisdom is often averse to yield assent, are thus to be numbered, in this respect, among the criterions of the truth of divine revelation; for if these doctrines had not been contained in Scripture, the prophecies respecting them could not have been fulfilled. And the more wonderful they appear, they were by so much the more unlikely or inconceivable to have been foretold by man, and to have been afterwards embodied in a system of religion.

. It is also evident that there are many prophecies applicable to Jesus, to which no allusion is made in the history of his life. The minds of his disciples were long impressed with the prejudices, arising from the lowliness of his mortal state, which were prevalent among the Jews; and they viewed the prophecies through the mist of those traditions which had magnified the earthly power to which they alone looked, and obscured the divine nature of the expected reign of the Messiah. It was only after the resurrection of Christ, as the Scripture informs us, that their understandings were opened to know the prophecies. But while the accomplishment of many of these predictions is thus unnoticed in the New Testament, the fulfilment of each and all of them is written, as with a pen of iron, in the life and doctrine and death of Jesus ;—and the undesigned and unsuspicious proof, thus indirectly but amply given, is now stronger than if an appeal had been made to the prophecies in every instance; and, freed from the prejudices of the Jews, we may now combine and compare all the antecedent prophecies respecting the Messiah with

the narrative of the New Testament, and with the nature and history of Christianity; and having seen how the former is a transcript of the latter, we may draw the legitimate conclusion, that the spirit of prophecy is indeed the testimony of Jesus.

And may it not, on a review of the whole, be warrantably asserted, that the time and the place of the birth of Christ, the tribe and the family from which he was descended, the manner of his life, his character, his miracles, his sufferings and his death-the nature of his doctrine-and the fate of his religion, that it was to proceed from Jerusalem, that the Jews would reject it, that it would be opposed and persecuted at first, that it would be extended to the Gentiles, that idolatry would give way before it, that kings would submit to its authority, and that it would be spread throughout many nations, even to the most distant parts of the earth,-were all of them subjects of ancient prophecy?

Why, then, were so many prophecies delivered? Why, from the calling of Abraham to the present time, have the Jews been separated, as a peculiar people, from all the nations of the earth? Why, from the age of Moses to that of Malachi, during the space of one thousand years, did a succession of prophets arise, all testifying of a Saviour that was to come? Why was the book of prophecy sealed for nearly four hundred years before the coming of Christ? Why is there still, to this day, undisputed if not miraculous evidence of the antiquity of all these prophecies, by their being sacredly preserved in every age, in the custody and guardianship of the enemies. of Christianity? Why was such a multiplicity of facts predicted that are applicable to Christ and to him alone? Why, but that all this mighty preparation might usher in the gospel of Righteousness; and that, like all the works of the Almighty, his

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word through Jesus Christ might never be left without a witness of his wisdom and his power. And if the prophecies which testify of the gospel and of its Author display, from the slight glance which has here been given of them, any traces of the finger of God, how strong must be the conviction which a full view of them imparts to the minds of those who diligently search the Scriptures, and see how clearly they testify of Christ.

CHAPTER III.

PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE DESTRUCTION OF

JERUSALEM.

THE Commonwealth of Israel, from its establishment to its dissolution, subsisted for more than fifteen hundred years. In delivering their law, Moses assumed more than the authority of a human legislator, and asserted that he was invested with a divine commission; and in enjoining obedience to it, after having conducted them to the borders of Canaan, he promises many blessings to accompany their compliance with the law, and denounces grievous judgments that would overtake them for the breach of it. The history of the Jews, in each succeeding age, attests the truth of the last prophetic warning of the first of their rulers; but too lengthened a detail would be requisite for its elucidation. Happily, it contains predictions, applicable to more recent events, which admit not of any ambiguous interpretation, and refer to historical facts that admit no cavil. He who founded their govern

ment, foretold, notwithstanding the intervention of so many ages, the manner of its overthrow. While they were wandering in the wilderness, without a city, and without a home, he threatened them with the destruction of their cities, and the devastation of their country. While they viewed, for the first time, the land of Palestine, and when victorious and triumphant they were about to possess it, he represented the scene of desolation that it would exhibit to their vanquished and enslaved posterity, on their last departure from it. Ere they themselves had entered it as enemies, he describes those enemies by whom their descendants were to be subjugated and dispossessed, though they were to arise from a very distant region, and although they did not appear till after a millenary and a half of years: "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young. And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine or oil, or the increase of thy kine or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee; and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustest, throughout all thy land.” Each particular of this prophecy, though it be only introductory to others, has met its full completion. The remote situation of the Romans, the rapidity of their march, the very emblem of their arms, their unknown language and warlike appearance, the indiscriminate cruelty and unsparing pillage which they exercised towards the persons and the property of the Jews, could scarcely have been represented in more descriptive

1 Deut. xxviii. 49-52.

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