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out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow-every tongue shall swear"-thus paraphrased in the language of the new covenant, by Paul in his epistle to the Philippians- That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Zeph. iii. 9.) "For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent." (Zech. xiv. 8, 9.) "And it shall be, in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem-and the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one." (Mal. i. 11.) "From the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts."

And, finally, if we admit, upon these indisputable premises, the universal and permanent prevalence of the religion of Jesus, we are led, by a most easy and natural deduction, to bail him as the "Prince of Peace," whose doctrine, whose precepts, whose example, as set forth in his gospel, shall have the blessed effect of correcting, and finally of extinguishing (under the superintending direction of the divine providence) all those irregular and baneful passions which are the fruitful sources of human calamity, and shall introduce uninterrupted order and harmony, love and good-will, among the great family of mankind, as brethren and children of one father.

When Zechariah had described the entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, so different from that of a warlike conqueror, he adds (ch. ix. 10.) "And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle-bow shall be cut off; and he shall speak peace to the heathen, and his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." In what lofty language does our divine prophet announce the approach (although so far distant the arrival) of this blessed æra! (Isa. ii. 2—4.) “It shall come to pass in the last days, that many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord—and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat th ir swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." These words are repeated in the prophecy of Micah, ch. iv. at the beginning, with this addition, v. 4"But they shall sit, every man under his vine, and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it." (Isa. lx. 15, &c.) "I will make thee an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations-I will also make thine officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls salvation, and thy gates praise. Thy people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified.”

In this rapturous vision, he beholds beasts of prey laying aside their ferocity, and gently associating with those they were wont to devour-tamely yielding themselves as subjects for the innocent sports of children; and even poisonous reptiles disarmed of their venom, familiar and hurtless. (Isa. xi. 6, &c.) "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt, nor destroy, in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Nor even at this point does the sacred rapture subside-in another place (ch. Iv. 12.) the whole face of nature is represented as assuming new forms of beauty and gladness, and the earth herself as breaking her everlasting silence to heighten the glories of the scene-" Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace-the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree, and (mark the conclusion, which justifies its application to the present subject) it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."

Thus, my friends, have I laid before you the principal of those passages of sacred writ which enter into the foundation of our faith and hope as Chris

tians-a foundation laid in the eternal power, truth, and mercy of God-immoveable as the everlasting hills sure and firm as the ordinances of heaven. Well might the disciples, with whom Jesus walked to Emmaus, and to whom he expounded all things in Moses and the prophets concerning himself, feel their hearts burn within them, while he talked with them by the way, and opened to them the scriptures. And is there not, even in that partial investigation which I have been humbly attempting, enough to make every ingenuous, pious, benevolent and philanthropic bosom glow with grateful satisfaction as to the past, and joyful anticipation, as to what is yet in the womb of futu rity, of the divine promises? Much that I have omitted, probably your memory, but more especially your diligent study of the sacred oracles will supply. For the omission of one particular, which doubtless is much dwelt upon in this day's addresses from the pulpit, I will ask leave to state my reasons. It is that in Isaiah vii. 14. "Behold a virgin shall conceive," and so forth. Read attentively from the first verse of that chapter to the sixteenth, and you will find it relates to a transaction, not of distant and future, but of then present interest. The invasion of Judah was threatened, by the king of Syria and the king of Israel, for the purpose of deposing Ahaz, and setting up another in his stead. The prophet, in the name of God, advises him to take heed and be quiet, for that this design should not stand nor come to pass, offering to confirm the prediction by a sign which -Ahaz himself should choose. This he declines, under the specious and respectful pretence, that he will not tempt the Lord, but in reality, as may be gathered from the history, because he was determined upon

resistance, whereby he brought sore calamities upon himself and his people. The prophet then, in a tone of angry reproof, declares that the Lord himself should give a sign, which was, that by the time a young female, then unmarried, should change her condition and become a mother, and before the child should be old enough to distinguish between good and bad, the hostile country should be forsaken of both its kings. Accordingly, within a certain period answering to the prophecy, both these princes werecut off by the king of Assyria. Now, although this is applied to the conception and birth of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew, yet as it is neither noticed at the beginning of Luke's gospel, nor in any subsequent part of the evangelical history, I conclude that it is a circumstance of no importance. Most certain it is, that Jesus is never called the Son of God (by which, as a term of distinction, I always understand the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed,) on account of his supposed miraculous conception, nor at any time previous to his baptism, when he had attained his thirtieth year. But, granting every thing that is contended for from the passage in question, it will prove no more than that our Lord was an human being, miraculously produced. What else indeed can be understood by the solemnities with which this day (supposed to be that of his nativity) is celebrated throughout the Christian world? And yet, (0 most astonishing!) while he is thus acknowledged to have been a new-born infant, needing all the cares of nraternal solicitude and tenderness-wrapped, as any of ourselves might have been, in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, it is at the same time believed and argued that he was God Almighty-the maker and

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