fall, proclaims the greatness of that fall. There still remains some little affection between husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, master and servant, monarch and subjectthough there be none to God-though in Him all goodness, all patience, all long-suffering, all fidelity, all beneficence, all gentleness, all tenderness, all love, all beauty, all loveliness, all moral excellence, all greatness exist in an infinite degree—though we stand in a closer relation to Him than we ever can to a fellowcreature-though that relation never can be broken, for we are indeed the workmanship of His hands. So terrible has been the fall that men by nature seem unconscious of having a soul. On a holiday, when our population are strolling about in their Sabbath attire, when every one is appearing to advantage, with what surprise would they receive this question-"Did you, this morning, take as much time in beautifying the heart as you did in decking out the body?" Nay, put that question to the members of the church on the Sabbath day, and it will rub against conscience like a file. All nature is ransacked for materials to decorate the dust, while not a single thought is spent upon the imperishable soul. Every day numbers of gentlemen may be seen comparing their watch with one or other of the clocks controlled by electricity. A healthy Christian on observing this, without effort lets the thought arise-"Would, my Father, my heart kept as true to Thee and to Thy law as this clock to the sun." Were he to address this question to some of the gentlemen-"When did you compare your heart with the law of God?" no doubt he would be taken for a bedlamite. It is true, men by the fall have ceased to know. they have a soul.

2nd. The Trinity. We can see no more difficulty in three distinct persons of equal power having a complete oneness of nature, aim, and action, than in three steel wires of equal diameter, length, and tension, in a grand piano giving the same note in unison. We know that the three strings do give precisely the same sound, and we believe that the three Persons in the Godhead are, like the strings, separate from each other, and yet one in purpose. And we would rather believe in a Trinity than in one personal God, even as we would rather play upon a piano with three strings to each note than upon one with a single string. No maker in the world, not Broadwood, Collard, Erard, nor any other, could construct an instrument with only one string to the note to give as sweet a tone as another with three. A piano to give as loud a tone could easily be made, by having the single string thicker and the scale a little larger, but the instrument would not have the same sweet tone. On raising the damper from the strings of a note, and drawing the point of a penknife over them, a delicate ear delights in the unison of their vibrations-it fancies they are joyfully whispering accord to each other. If only one be struck, the other two sympathize in deli

cious, soft, faint resonance. It is more agreeable to the social nature of man to believe that there are three persons in the Godhead than only one; the mind is pleased to find the social principle even in Deity. But it is not because we like the idea of Trinity better than that of one solitary immense Being dwelling alone, that we entertain it. Our belief rests entirely on its being a revealed truth. In the distant eternity the Father said -"I will provide a ransom for man." The Son said-"Father, I will be that ransom." The Holy Spirit-"I will apply the salvation." The three smiled in each other's countenance; for in the same instant each one's heart had sounded in God-like holy harmony.

3rd. The Divinity of Jesus Christ. In the Bible, as in Providence and Nature, there are on every question two sides. On the one side are ranged appearances, on the other facts. There are always appearances sufficient to lead astray those who wish to believe in error; and facts enough to conduct to a sound conclusion those who desire the truth. There is darkness sufficient in this life to be an apology for the perverse heart, and light enough to arm conscience after death with the thunderbolts of remorse. No man is a real inquirer after truth who does not recognise the existence of these two sides-of appearances and facts; who does not search for the appearances that he may reject them, and for the facts that he may found on them alone. God has intentionally subjected men to this sore trial, that the thoughts and desires of each heart may be revealed. But He has not left us in ignorance of there being two sides. His command to every man and woman is-"Prove all things, hold fast that which is good," 1 Thes. v. 21. God does not seek to deceive man, but He has left him liable to deception. And men are deceived every day by appearances, as the mistakes of even men eminent in every branch of science prove to all. And men will be deceived to the end of time, unless they shall patiently, and with their whole heart, separate the appearances from the facts, and regard nothing as a fact which has not been repeatedly subjected to the closest scrutiny. Since on every subject there are two sides, we are prepared to find in the Bible appearances against the Divinity of Christ, and facts for His eternal power and Godhead. There were appearances against His Divinity when He was on the earth, and there are appearances even now. Those Jews who, like Simeon, knew from the teaching of the Holy Ghost that their real enemies were the lusts of their own hearts-enemies compared with which the Romans were friends, saw enough facts in the ministry of Jesus Christ, to enable them to recognize their long promised deliverer; and those whose hearts were not renewed, and who groaned under no tyranny but that of the Romans, saw sufficient appearances in the career of the humble teacher and healer, the

friend of publicans and sinners, to convince them that He was not the predicted king of the Jews-the Shiloh unto whom would the gathering of the people be-the mighty prince who was to restore the kingdom. Each class believed according to the state of the heart-their partialities were their interpreters. The prophecies regarding Messiah, like all predictions, were so obscure that men could not divine their meaning until His appearance. Some of them referred to His human nature, as "The seed of the woman, &c.," Gen. iii. 15; others to His Godhead, as Ps. ii. 7; others to the united Divine and human natures, as Is. ix. 6, 7. Some to His humiliation, others to His exaltation. The extremes which these prophecies indicated were so great, that no human being, without the help of the Holy Spirit, could have allowed them a moment's place in the imagination. On the one hand the Deliverer was to be the Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting One, existing from eternity; on the other he was to be a child, born of a virgin, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, despised and rejected of men. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was a perfect mystery to the Jewsnot one in ten millions could have supposed it referred to Messiah. No wonder the Ethiopian Eunuch asked if Isaiah spake of himself or of some other man, Acts viii. 34. All the prophecies taken together, signified that Messiah would have two natures, the divine and the human, and that by His own death He would overcome death and hell, and deliver His people from their sins. But no created mind, neither man nor archangel, could conceive of such things. Man could always suppose that by sacrifices presented by himself, the justice of God could be appeasedhence in every land men erected altars to their deities-hence even now, among false Christians, the dependence on works-but such a thought as God Himself becoming the sacrifice for the sins of His creatures and subjects, was the thought which found a place nowhere in the universe but in the heart of God. Again, who could entertain the paradox that by His death He would deliver them from their enemies? A warrior king delivers by the actions of his life, not by lying under the heel of death.

The Jews could make nothing of the prophecies but this, that Messiah was to be an earthly king, sitting upon the throne of David, and making their temporal foes flee before his victorious arms. We are not in the least surprised at their unbelief-any other nation would have acted precisely as they did. We, in Britain, would have rejected Jesus Christ in the same way; yea, we do reject Him in our hearts, and refuse Him the whole love of our souls. Not a single Jew believed on Jesus who was not made willing by the power of the Holy Ghost; and to the end of time the declaration of the Saviour will hold, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him," John vi. 44, by the attractive force of renewing grace. An un

regenerate man when reading the account of their wanderings in the wilderness, thinks the Jews were unaccountably foolish and infatuated to doubt and murmur so often, and provoke such repeated judgments as befell them; but a Christian well knows that he would have acted in like manner; the daily provocations that ascend from his own fallen heart, prove to him that the Jews were true types of humanity. If Caleb and Joshua sometimes opposed the universal murmuring, it was grace that then spoke, not their own nature.

We said there were appearances against the Messiahship of Christ when He was in the world, sufficiently numerous to mislead those who did not recognize Him by the inward revelation of grace, Matt. xvi. 17. It was prophesied that He was to be of Bethlehem. "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting," Micah v. 2. The fact was, He was born in Bethlehem, Luke ii. 4-7. But as Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth before the birth, and as they soon returned to it and there brought up the infant Saviour, the popular belief was that Jesus was a native of Nazareth. Earthand hell seemed determined to establish this appearance as truth. The Jewish nation universally believed He was of Nazareth. His own disciples held the same opinion, Luke xxiv. 19; John i. 45. The devils, if they knew better, took care not to undeceive men, they cried out-" What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth," Luke iv. 34. The lie must not be contradicted even on the cross. Pilate wrote this title"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," John xix. 19. But since the Jews all knew their deliverer was to come out of Bethlehem, the city of David, Matt. ii. 4-6, it was plain that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the promised one. Can there any

good thing come out of Nazareth ?" asked Nathanael, John i. 46. In vain Jesns spake as never man spake, John vii. 46. The common people scornfully asked-" Shall Christ come out of Galilee; hath not the Scriptures said, that Christ cometh of the seed of David and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was," John vii. 41, 42. The chief priests, rulers, and Pharisees, exclaimed with maddened contempt-" Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet," John. vii. 52. That a whole nation could thus be completely the dupe of an appearance, should be a warning to men to the end of the world to beware of appearances, and found on facts alone.

Another appearance was, that Christ was the son of Joseph. "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven ?" John vi. 42. We know not if there were more than three individuals in the world who did not suppose he was the

son of Joseph, these three being Mary, Joseph, and Jesus Himself, Luke iii. 23. Mary kept her own secrets and pondered them in her heart; so likely did Joseph; and so certainly did Jesus. To us it is an easy conception that Deity could with a word deposit the germ of a man in the appropriate soil without the aid of human agency-the omnipotence that formed the first Adam with a word, could also form the second. But this was an idea which could not enter the mind of the Jews. They could not understand that prophecy-" Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel," Is. vii. 14. Gazing on that face which had sprung from a germ that had no previous existence till the moment the Holy Ghost commanded it to its natural soil, the Jews could behold no visible sign of its being the product of a miracle, that face was so completely human. Man he appeared to be-man by nature's ordinary process; and, therefore, he could not be the Son of God. Numerous miracles He indeed wrought, but then mere men had wrought as great miracles before in the olden time. Their sacred writings abounded with the records of the miraculous. No, no, that poor man, that son of Joseph, that Nazarene carpenter, cannot be Messiah. His very words prove this to us. He says He must die, but we have learned out of the law that Christ abideth for ever, John xii. 34.

Not only were there appearances sufficient to mislead the Jews, but the language employed by Christ was indeed a fan which thoroughly separated the chaff from the wheat, Matt. iii. 12, which revealed the thoughts and intents of the heart, which showed how incapable our fallen race is of a single spiritual conception. Jesus did not try to deceive the Jews, but His language being often figurative, had an apparent as well as a real signification. The Jews unhappily always grasped at the apparent meaning, and thus the very teaching of Jesus confirmed them in their unbelief. He speaks of a man being born againNicodemus instantly thinks of a second natural birth; of living water-the woman of Samaria looks into Jacob's well; of Himself as the bread of life-His hearers petition for this bread for the use of their teeth, John vi. 34; of Himself as the everlasting nourishment of the soul-then "the Jews strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" John vi. 52. Even when He spoke plainly, they could not or would not understand Him. Does He refer to spiritual freedom, the result of knowing the truth, they indignantly reply" We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man," John viii. 33. Why do we take notice of the blindness of the Jews? To take a warning to ourselves. If they constantly misunderstood, if even His own apostles could not comprehend His words, with all the light thrown upon them by His tone, look, and frequent teaching of which we have no record, for the Gospels con