Son

was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God." (And Rom. ix. 5:) "Whose are the Fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Messiah came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." (And 1 Tim. iii. 16 :) And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness; GOD manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory." (Titus i. 8:) "But hath in due time manifested His word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandments. (Heb. i. 8:) "But unto the he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." (Heb. iii. 4 :) For every house is builded by some man. but He that built all things is God." Compare with (John i. 3:) "All things were made by HIM; and without Him was not any thing made that was made." 2. He is called the true GOD. (1 John v. 20:) And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is TRUE, and we are in Him that is TRUE, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the TRUE God, and eternal life." He is called the mighty God. (Isa. ix. 6.) "For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." He is called the Lord God Almighty. (Rev. xv. 3.) And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints." He is called the Almighty. (Rev. i. 8.) "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the ALMIGHTY." He is called the only wise God. (Jude 25.) "To the ONLY WISE GOD, and our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." He is called the Great God. (Titus ii. 13.) Looking

for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the GREAT GOD, and our Saviour Jesus Christ." He is called the God of Israel. (Ex. xxiv. 9, 10, compared with Ex. xxxiii. 20; and John i. 19; John vi. 46.) He is called Jehovah in several instances. (Zech. xii.; Isa. vi. 1, 3, 5, 8, 11. 12; John xii. 40, 41.)

He is called Jehovah of Hosts. (Isa. vi. 3. 5.) II. The natural attributes of God are ascribed to Messiah. 1. Eternity. (Rev. i. 10, 11; ii. 8; Isa. xliv. 6.) 2. Omniscience. (John xi.

7; Matt. xi. 27; Rev. ii. 23.) That the searching in heart implies omniscience is manifest. (1 Kings viii. 39; John ii. 23, 24.) 3. Omnipresence. (Matt. xviii. 20; Matt. xxviii. 20.) 4. Omnipotence. (Rev. i. 8; Heb. i. 2; John i. 3.) 5. Immutability. (Heb. xiii. 8; Ps. cii. 27, compared with Heb. i. 10.)

Another consideration is worthy of note, viz., that your Messiah sustains the relation of God to His creatures. 1. He is King. (Johni. 49.) "Nathaniel answered and said unto Him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the KING of Israel." Ps. ii. 6; Luke xxiii. 2. 37; 1 Tim. i. 17; vi. 15.)

(Isa. vi. 5; John xviii.

He is the

Redeemer of mankind. (1 Cor. i. 30; Ephes. i. 7; Heb. ix. 12; Rev. v. 9.) He is the sanctifier of mankind. (1 Cor. i. 30.) He is the Judge of mankind. (Acts xvii. 31; Acts x. 42; Rom. ii. 16; Acts xiv. 10.) To the above I will add several other proofs. 1. The fulness of the Godhead is ascribed to him. (Col. ii. 9.) "For in him dwelleth all the FULNESS of the Godhead bodily." 2. All the divine perfections are in him, and He is the express image of God. (Heb. i. 3.) 3. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. (Phil. ii. 6.) 4. He is the image of the invisible God. (1 Cor. xi. 7; 2. Cor. iv. 4; Col. i. 15.) 5. He is the Jehovah which Moses saw in the bush. (Ex. iii. 2-6; xxxiii. 20; John i. 18; vi. 46.) 6. He claimed and received divine honours. (John v. 23; Matt. ii. 11; viii. 2; xiv. 13.) 7. He is worshipped in heaven. (Rev. v. 12, 14; Isa. vi. 1-5.) The Father commanded angels to worship him. (Heb. i. 6;)" And again, when he bringeth in the first

begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God WORSHIP Him." The proto-martyr Stephen, whilst being stoned to death, commended his soul to your Messiah, and humbly prayed for his murderers. (Acts vii. 60.)

We ask in conclusion, was not Messiah understood by your ancestors to assert his own absolute divinity? Did He not work miracles in his own name, and by His own power? Did He not affirm His own pre-existence as God? (John viii. 58, compared with Ex. iii. 14.) Does not the rejection of Messiah's divinity destroy the moral power of the Gospel? Is it not a fact that the churches planted by the Apostles held the proper divinity of Messiah? If Messiah is not God, it does not appear that there is any God revealed in the Bible. Again, if he is not God, the Bible is the most blasphemous book in the world. And once more, if Messiah is not God, it is truly unaccountable that the Bible should speak of Him in a manner so entirely different from that in which it speaks of any created being. Our fervent aspiration to Messiah is, that each of you will ere long be able, through divine grace, to adopt the confession of Thomas, as your own, and say, "MY LORD, AND MY GOD."

JUDAISM ON THE THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY.

REV. M. WOLKENBERG.

(Concluded from page 228.)

THUS far, the adherents of traditional Judaism are treading on firm ground. Dark and horrible as the immediate prospect is which that creed holds out to its professors beyond the grave, it has at least the merit of certainty and definiteness. It tells the worst that may be expected. Its anticipated horrors exceed, indeed, any thing that could possibly be conceived by the most morbid imagination; but that is far more tolerable than to be abandoned to vague, undefined and unerring forebodings of sufferings dictated by infinite vindictiveness, and inflicted by Almighty power. The Rabbinist is told distinctly that even

innocent sucklings cannot escape the terrible beating in the grave. Much less, therefore, will his prayer avail to chase away the tormenting angel from the grave of adults, or to keep back from their still sensitive bodies, the fangs of devouring worms.* He knows that, if he is NOT wicked, he will have to pass, for a period of eleven months, through the purgatorial fires of hell. Whether he will enjoy rest and tranquillity afterwards is, to say the least, extremely uncertain; for these will still be bargained and prayed for by his surviving children as long as they live, and then he will be deprived for ever even of this doubtful benefit. Five initial letters, engraven on his tombstone, will alone attest to future generations the tender solicitude of his relatives and their earnest misgivings about his ultimate safety. Far more preferable ther would be the lot of the wicked, if any reliance could be placed upon the dogmatic teaching of Shulchan Aruch, Yore Deah; for, according to that Talmudic digest, their torments are ended by annihilation after twelve months' endurance of hell-fire. They must be too corrupt for the purifying action of the purgatorial flames, and are, therefore, entirely consumed by them. Unfortunately, this view of the end of the wicked is contradicted with no less dogmatic assurance by many other Rabbinical authorities; and thus the poor Israelite, when tottering on the brink of the grave, finds himself bewildered and tangled in a maze of inextricable confusion.

en

of

then at last awake to the enjoyment of never-ending and unalloyed happiness? Not by any means; for the very author of the articles suggests grave doubts as to whether he would at all partake in the resurrection. And it will also be seen below, that he denies the eternal existence the risen Jews. In folio 120 of his commentary on Tract Sanhedrin, Maimonides says:-"No one has a religion, or any connection with the Jewish religion, who does not believe in the revivification of the dead; but that (revivification) is only for the righteous. Such also," he adds, "is the language of Bereshith Rabbah, . . . the revivification of the dead has reference only to the righ

against that expressed by these three rabbis, who have exercised such a vast influence upon the religious be lief of the Jews all over the world, who, in a word, have essentially altered its character. Is it conceivable, that any Jew, whatever his estimate of himself may have been in his life-time, will, with his last gasp, still seek to persuade himself, that he belongs to the category of the "perfectly righteous? Will he do so after the recital of the 17), confession of sins, when he has scarcely ended his own self-accusation? Or will he really for one moment be inspired with any confidence in the acceptance of his prayer, that his approaching "death may atone for all his sins, iniquities, and transgressions, which he has sinned, committed, and transgressed before God?" 800

מיתתי כפרה על כל חטאים ועונות ופשעים שחטאתי ושעויתי Will he cherishany ושפשעתי לפניך

ותחיית המתים לצדיקים ".teous

7. This view, coming from such an authority, needs no confirmation; but if any be required, it is supplied by Rabbi David Kimchi, in his exposition of Isaiah xxvi. 19, where he adduces approvingly an identical utterance of the rabbis; and by Rabbi Joseph Albo in his Sepher Ikkarim, folio 43, col. 1, Warsaw edition, cap. 23 of the first Maamar, and fol. 173, col. 2, cap. 31 of the fourth Maamar, where the word

"the perfectly" righteous only, is added. Any other more lenient opinion on the extent of the resurrection is nothing in the balance negation of Christianity. The first denies that God created the world by Christ, the second rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, the third the incarnation, the fourth the pre-existence of Christ, the fifth prohibits prayer to Him, the sixth is probably against the spiritualising of Scripture and its misapplication by the Church; the seventh denies the superiority of Christ to Moses, the eighth is probably intended to establish the incorrectness of the New Testament quotations from the Septuagint; the ninth is against the abolition of the law, or the substitution of another in its place; the tenth is against the omniscience of Christ, the eleventh against justification by faith; the twelfth denies that the Messiah has come already, and the thirteenth is probably against the resurrection by Christ. This view of the aim of these articles is expressly confirmed by the author of the Sepher Ikkarim.

The same view is held by Rabbi Isaac Abhuhabh in his Menorath Hammaor, fol. 65, col. 4, cap. i.; also by R. Saadiah

such hope after having manifested by this very prayer, his mistrust in the efficiency of previous atonements prescribed in the Synagogue ritual in lieu of the sacrificial one enjoined in the Pentateuch? If the voluntary "diminution of his own fat and blood" by means of fasting; if the annual offering of a fowl on the day of atonement, and that day itself had not yet appeased his conscience and reconciled him unto God, how can that object be attained by his involuntary death? Besides, why should not its atoning efficacy be universal? Why limited to penitent Jews only.

Here, then, the Jew loses the poor comfort which he may possibly derive from the certainty of his awful doom during the first stages of his eternal existence. He is plunged in a sea of dark perplexity and agonising terrors, and not a ray of hope pierces the thick cloud, which hovers over his death-bed. He has just confessed, and his heart must have responded to it, that he belongs to the category of the wicked who are excluded from the benefits of the resur

in his book of Persuasions and Opinions, fol. 36, col. 2; Bechai on the Pentateuch, fol. 33, col. 4; and Kimchi on Ps. i. 5; and in many other places.