after the birth of Christ, an invention of the dark and superstitious ages! The two, indeed, must stand or fall together: we claim for both a reverend antiquity we appeal to the sacred archives of the ancient Jewish church, where both are registered in characters which do to this day, and we trust shall to the last, defy the injuries of time.

To these two characters of the Messiah, of Jehovah and Jehovah's Messenger, or rather to that one mysterious character which arises from the union of these two, another is to be added, contained in the assertion that he is the Lord whom the persons seek to whom the prophecy is addressed the Messenger whom they delight in. I doubt not but you prevent me in the interpretation of this character: you imagine that the general expectation of the Messiah is alluded to in these expressions, and the delight and consolation which the devout part of the Jewish nation derived from the hope and prospect of his coming. And if the prophet's discourse were addressed to those who trusted in God's promises, and waited in patient hope of their accomplishment, this would indeed be the natural interpretation of his words; but the fact is otherwise, and therefore this interpretation cannot stand. The text is the continuation of a discourse begun in the last verse of the preceding chapter, which should indeed have been made the first verse of this. This discourse is addressed to persons who did not seek the Lord, who could not delight in the Messenger of his Covenant, to the profane and atheistical, who, neither listening to the promises nor regarding the threatenings of God, take occasion, from the promiscuous distribution of the good and evil of the present life, to form rash and impious conclusions

against his providence, to arraign his justice and wisdom, or to dispute his existence. The expressions, therefore, of seeking the Lord and delighting in his Messenger are ironical, expressing the very reverse of that which they seem to affirm. You will observe, that there is more or less of severity in this ironical language, by which it stands remarkably distinguished from the levity of ridicule, and is particularly adapted to the purposes of invective and rebuke. It denotes conscious superiority, sometimes indignation, in the person who employs it; it excites shame, confusion, and remorse, in the person against whom it is employed, in a third person, contempt and abhorrence of him who is the object of it. These being the affections which it expresses and denotes, it can in no case have any tendency to move laughter: he who uses it is always serious himself; and makes his hearers serious, if he applies it with propriety and address. I have been thus particular in explaining the nature of irony, that it may not be confounded with other figures of an inferior rhetoric, which might less suit the dignity of the prophetical language; and that I may not seem to use a freedom with the sacred text, when I suppose that this figure may be allowed to have a place in it. Irony is the keenest weapon of the orator. The moralists, those luminaries of the Gentile world, have made it the vehicle of their gravest lessons; and Christ, our Great Teacher, upon just occasions, was not sparing in the use of it. A remarkable instance of it, but of the mildest kind, occurs in his conversation with Nicodemus, whom he had purposely perplexed with a doctrine somewhat abstruse in itself, and delivered in a figurative language; and when the Pharisee could not dissemble the slowness of

his apprehension, Jesus seems to triumph over his embarrassment in that ironical question, "Art thou a master in Israel, and knowest not these things? The question, you see, seems to imply a respectable estimation of the learning and abilities of those masters in Israel of whom this nightly visitor was one, and to express much surprise at the discovery of Nicodemus' ignorance; whereas the thing insinuated is the total insufficiency of these self-constituted teachers, who were ignorant of the first principles of that knowledge which Jesus brought from heaven to make men wise unto salvation. Nicodemus was a man of a fair and honest mind; but at this time probably not untainted with the pride and prejudices of his sect. Jesus intended to give him new light; but for this purpose he judges it expedient first to make him feel his present ignorance; which the triumph of this ironical qustion must have set before him in a glaring light. In the prophetical writings of the Old Testament, examples of a more austere irony abound; but we shall no where find an instance in which it more forcibly applied than by Malachi in the text. "Ye have wearied the Lord," says this eloquent prophet to the infidels of his times, "Ye have wearied the Lord with your words." He makes them reply,—"Wherein have we wearied him?" He answers,-“ When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord; or when ye say, Where is the God of judgment? — And are ye then in earnest in the sentiments which you express? Is this your quarrel with Providence, that the blessings of this life are promiscuously distributed ? Is it really your desire that opulence and honour should be the peculiar portion of the righteous, -poverty and shame the certain

punishment of the wicked? Do you of all men wish that health of body and tranquillity of mind were the inseparable companions of temperance, disease and despair the inevitable consequences of strong drink and dalliance? Do you wish to see a new economy take place, in which it should be impossible for virtue to suffer or for vice to prosper? - Sanctified blasphemers! be content: your just remonstrances are heard; you shall presently be friends with Providence: the God of judgment comes; he is at hand: he comes to establish the everlasting covenant of righteousness, -to silence all complaint, to vindicate his ways to man, to evince his justice in your destruction, to inflict on you a death of which the agonies shall never end." All this reproach and all this threatening is conveyed with the greatest force, because with the greatest brevity, in those ironical expressions of the prophet, "The Lord, whom ye seek; the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in." But although these expressions are ironical, they contain a positive character of the person to come; for the true sense of irony is always rendered by the contrary of that which it seems to affirm the Lord and Messenger whom infidels are ironically said to seek and to delight in is the Lord whom they do not seek, the Messenger, in whom they cannot take delight, the Lord who will visit those who seek him not, the Messenger in whom they who have not sought the Lord can take no delight, because he is the messenger of vengance.

This, then, is another character of the person to come, that he is to execute God's final vengeance on the wicked. But as this may seem a character of the office rather than of the person, it leads me to treat of what was the second article in my original division

of the subject, -the particulars of the business upon which the person announced in the text is said to come. There remains, besides, the application of every article of this remarkable prophecy to Jesus of Nazareth. These important disquisitions we must still postpone; that no injustice may be done to this great argument, on your part or on mine, - on mine, by a superficial and precipitate discussion of any branch of it; on yours, by a languid and uninterested attention