sion from which it would be absurd to infer that a distinct person from man was to be understood; because man is a compound being, consisting of matter and of spirit. But as God is altogether spiritual and uncompounded, the expression, "The Spirit of God," seems to point to a Divine, yet distinct Person from Him whose Spirit he is. On this subject, however, the modern Jews are in perfect harmony with the Mohammedans, and those who call themselves Unitarians, as well as in opposing the Divinity of Christ. They all consider the Spirit as an attribute or quality of God, and deny his personality.

The necessity of an Atonement is a doctrine, which runs through the whole ritual law of the Jews. They, however, reject the doctrine of Atonement by the blood of Messiah, and, in opposition to the whole spirit of their religious dispensation, refuse to receive Redemption from Him who was to finish transgression, to make an end of sin, and to bring in an everlasting righteousness. The pointed testimony of their prophets, and even that of Isaiah, to this doctrine, in the fifty-third Chapter of his book, they resolutely reject.-He who can, for a moment, suppose that the sacrifice of a bull, or of a heifer, of a lamb, or of a goat, can take away sin, or remove its awful consequences on the eternal state of man, must have formed ideas of the Divine Government and Laws, which are extremely inadequate to their dignity. In connexion with a glorious Antitype, the legal sacrifices were, indeed, highly valuable. They were daily admonitions to the Israelites of the necessity of a vicarious and atoning sacrifice, and as such they constituted both the records of human guilt, and the types of that great oblation, which was to expiate and to take it away. But here, as in all other parts of their holy things, that people have 2 B

VOL. 1.

eagerly caught the shadow, while they have suffered the substance to elude their grasp.

From the two states of Messiah described in their Scriptures, his humiliation and his exaltation, the modern Jews, (their understandings being blinded, that they cannot see to the end of their own dispensation,) have fancied that two Messiahs are necessary to accomplish their prophecies. The first, they say, is Ben Joseph, of the tribe of Ephraim, who is to exist in a state of humiliation and suffering and the other, Ben David, who is to succeed him; but in a state of exaltation and glory.—The distinction of tribes being now lost among the Jews, and yet the preservation of it being absolutely necessary to ascertain the descent of the Messiah, from the tribe of Judah, and from the family of David, is considered by Christians as an unanswerable argument, that the Jewish prophecies have already had their accomplishment in Jesus. The Jews have no other means of escape from the force of this argument, than by expressing their belief that, when Messiah shall appear, the spirit of prophecy will be restored to them, for the purpose of ascertaining by a miracle, what can be ascertained by no other

means.

The Messiah for whom the Jews have been condemned to wait, as a just punishment for rejecting and crucifying the Son of God, is a temporal prince, who, they expect, will restore that sceptre which has so long since departed from them, and raise their favourite nation to a degree of temporal power and glory, unrivalled in the history of the world. Instead of a Redeemer from that degradation and misery, to which the universal reign of sin and Satan has condemned our guilty race; instead of a Restoration to the favour of God, and to the blessings of his moral

government, by the regeneration of their minds to the love of God and to holiness, they expect a prince who, at the head of a victorious army, will conduct them again to the land of Judea; extend their conquests over all the nations of the world; and enable them to trample on the rights and liberties of the human race. In fact, their Messiah and they are to be to the other nations of the world, what Bonaparte and the French nation were for fifteen or twenty years to the other nations of Europe, their robbers and murderers. The Messiah is to be the grand emperor, and the glories of the great nation are to be extended and fixed. The French Jews found themselves able to trace, in Napoleon, the lineaments of their Messiah so accurately expressed, that in the festival of the fifteenth of August, 1806, the ciphers of the emperor and his consort, were blended with the name of Jehovah, Had Bonaparte only sprung from the Jewish stock, his character, as a Messiah to the modern Jews, had been complete.

The Jews believe that after the commencement of their Messiah's reign, their religion will be embraced by the whole world. It is strange they cannot see, that their religion never was designed to be universal; and that upon the supposition that it was, many of the most important parts of religion must, to ninety-nine parts of mankind in the hundred, be rendered altogether impracticable. According to their religion, all sacrifices were unlawful, but such as were offered up at Jerusalem; and at three different festivals in the year, all the males were obliged to attend at Jerusalem. Institutions such as these can never form a part of an universal religion. An universal religion must have institutions, that are equally practicable in every part of the world; and such are the

ordinances of Christianity. As Judaism was never calculated to be an universal, so it is evidently an unfinished religion. It is true, so far as it goes, but it makes nothing perfect. It is only the introduction to a system that is designed to be universal, and that has an absolute perfection in all its parts.

Per

It has been the subject of violent dispute, whether a future state of rewards and punishments constituted any part of the Divine Legation of Moses. Bishop Warburton has brought forward all the stores of Jewish learning, which his vast powers of mind could collect and invigo rate, to prove that temporal rewards and punishments were the only ones recognized by that legislator. Bishop Sherlock, Dr. Jortin, and several other respectable writers, have employed strong arguments to prove, that the legislation of Moses was connected with a future state. haps the statements on both sides are liable to some exceptions. As all men are sinners, the necessary consequence is, that the Moral Law could not possibly offer future rewards to those, who, by their violation of it, had already forfeited all the hopes that were suspended on innocence. It is for this reason that the law is called, a fiery law, the ministration of death and condemnation. Had the law been given to a race of innocent beings, there can be no question whether future rewards would have constituted the hopes which it would have presented to their minds, as powerful motives to obedience. But to have annexed to a law, which required perfect obedience, hopes which were inconsistent with its requisitions, would have been to mock the hopes of men, and not to lay a foundation for them. To the fallen sons of men, eternal life is the gift of God, through Christ Jesus; but if they could have claimed this as a reward, upon the foot of jus

tice, to which they had a right, by their own obedience to the law, Christ had died in vain. Had the law then contained "the words of eternal life," it must have been so much against the promises of God, as completely to have destroyed them and itself likewise. A law requiring perfect obedience, and yet promising eternal life to those who had broken it, must have been a compound of contradictions. So far then we see the consistency of the law with itself, and with the promises of God.

But it may be asked, if the law did not possess the promises of future rewards, did it contain the threat of future punishments? It did not, in direct terms, contain the threat of future punishments, but it certainly did by implication, and necessary consequence. Its sanction is, "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law, to do them."-Deut. xxvii. 26. Now, every man who reads this curse must perceive, that as it is the curse of God, it must attach, unless the punishment be remitted by such an act of grace as the Gospel has offered us, not merely to a part, but to the whole of our existence. It is therefore, evident that the sanction of future punishment was essential to the law, and, indeed, without a view of the law as thus armed, no man would ever feel the want of a Saviour, or of the Gospel of his grace.

But it may be again inquired, Did the law contain any direct evidence of a future state? The ceremonial law, which made a part of that dispensation, is represented to us as the shadow of good things to come, and so was designed to feed the hopes of the penitent and humble. It was their Gospel. Even the feeble light which it gave, conducted many of them, like the star in the east, to the blessed Jesus. They saw his day afar off, and were glad, and though they had not received the promises, they were