foreground and background are brilliant. The description begins and ends in triumph. There is radiant glory lining the darkest clouds. Even death and burial do not interrupt his redeeming work. He makes over his soul as a sin-offering, he is entombed in the grave of a rich man, and then he prolongs his days, he beholds offspring, the pleasure of Jehovah prospers in his hand, he makes many righteous, he secures the great as his portion and the strong as his spoil! Of whom speaketh the prophet this? Tragic poetry lingers with fond melancholy over the untimely death of heroes, who conquer and die with only distant visions of victory. And history makes grateful record of the inheritance which posterity receives from the blood of martyrs.* But here, he whose soul travails in sorrow beholds the fruit of his suffering and is satisfied. This song of triumph seems to be inspired by the grave itself. It is precisely when he is dead and buried that the glorious redemption for which he has poured out his soul begins to attain decisive victory. Of whom speaketh the prophet this? Has this combination of two contradictory things also been exactly verified in history?

A few weeks after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, his apostles stood before a vast multitude of his murderers, transfigured with a new faith and hope. There was a strange reserve of power in their quietness and unhesitating courage to meet the present emergency, which hushed the turbulent assembly to silence. One of their number, who on the night of the arrest had become confused by the disappointment of all his hopes, and swore that he knew nothing about this Jesus of Nazareth, now steps forth, unrolls the prophecy we have in hand, and others of the same import, which he could never be made to understand before, and by just such a comparison of prediction with fact as we are now making, without the slightest appeal to passion, convinces every man of them, who will use his reason at all, that God has made this Jesus, whom they crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah.

What has made this marvellous change? What has suddenly opened this mysterious page of prophecy? What has mar

Knobel begs the question, by adducing this peculiarity of our prophecy as a proof that it refers to a collective class, so that when one dies others continue the work.

shalled in their true place all those magnificent descriptions of the Messiah's power and majesty? And that repulsive instrument of torture, from which every instinct of nature and every feeling engendered by their education made them shrink with a shudder; the cross, the hideous emblem of Jewish submission to Roman supremacy; the cross, where their beloved lingered in anguish and expired-what has tranformed it all at once into a standard of glory and victory?

For it was not on the day of Pentecost, but on the third day, and in Jerusalem, by the very grave of their lost Messiah, that this sudden revulsion of thought and feeling transpired. To this fact we have the testimony of a historical document whose genuineness no skeptic ventures to question.* Here is a stupendous miracle. The apostles did not expect a suffering Messiah. They could not be made to believe their own prophecies. The very night before he suffered Jesus tried in vain to make them understand that the last things written in our chapter and in the twenty second Psalm were just coming to an end. But they could not believe. They buried in his grave their last hopes. And three days later they did believe in a suffering Messiah ! In a few weeks they made thousands of the conspirators against him believe, by an hour's reasoning on the very prophecies that had always been sealed books to them. They have made millions in every age believe on Him. They have revolutionized the religious thought of the world.

One fact only can make such a miracle as this credible-the fact of the resurrection of the crucified Messiah from the dead. This sudden, complete, and enduring change of opinion could never have taken place without this intervening fact. Jesus the Messiah rose from the dead, was exalted by the right hand of God, received and shed forth the promised Spirit, and then convinced his disciples that the true Messiah ought to have suffered all these things, planted in their hearts hopes, never to be shattered again, that he would reign in all the majesty foretold in the prophets.

For this was a literal prolonging of his days. The Holy One was not suffered to see corruption. As soon as he was free from the travail of his soul he welcomed one redeemed soul to Paradise, and began to behold with satisfaction the accession of

innumerable offspring to the redeemed family of God. Among them are the great. The mightiest of the earth have been gathered for his spoil. And it is by his knowledge that this righteous servant of Jehovah is making many righteous. The fierce followers of the false prophet extended their conquests with the fury of the iconoclast and the devotion of the monotheist. But this strange zeal, the offspring of sensuality and of fatalism, has destroyed, never regenerated nor assimilated the ignorant nations of the earth. And Christianity sinks gradually to the level of Judaism and Mohammedism when its central truth, of justification through faith in the crucified Messiah of God, is outraged by bloody conquests, obscured by superstitious displays, or confused by false philosophy. The only trace of Romish missions surviving in many portions of China and Japan, is the suspicion of political conspiracy that clings to the Christian name.

Mere intellectual culture, without this divine knowledge, is no more effective in sprinkling the nations. During the lifetime of pastor Harms, his church of farmers and mechanics sent more missionaries to the heathen than all the wealthy congregations in New England, who deny the atonement and divinity of Christ, have commissioned during their whole history. The religion of unbelief is necessarily a religion of self-development, not of self-sacrifice for lost souls. These are not the religions of Prophecy. This Servant of Jehovah is neither the good man of rationalism, nor the awful Judge who cannot be approached without the mediation of saints. He is the sprinkler of nations. He is the bearer of infirmities and sins. He is the conqueror of the great by the omnipotent sway of divine love alone. He is spreading his bloodless and beneficent conquests wherever burdened souls feel their guilt before God, and find peace in the chastisement that was laid upon him. He has taken upon himself the sins of the world; he is making intercessions for transgressors; and in due time he shall see and be satisfied.

Art. III. THE LAW PASSING AWAY, NOT BY DESTRUCTION, BUT BY FULFILLment.

BY ADDISON BALLARD, Lafayette College.

Two entirely opposite ideas of liberty and progress are indicated in the assertion of Christ, that he came not to destroy, but to fulfill the law; coupled, as it is, with that other declaration, that "not one jot or tittle shall in any wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled."

These asseverations of Christ were necessary as guides and correctives to both the radical and the conservative thinking of his time. For while it is implied in them that the progress of his kingdom will be marked by the passing away of the law, the important distinction is made between a passing away of it by destruction, and a passing away by fulfillment. This distinction cannot be too clearly seen, nor too strongly emphasized. But in this we shall be helped by first considering how much is embraced in that law which Christ came to fulfill, but not to destroy.

It includes the Decalogue. He did not come to destroy one of those commandments, the whole of which he summed as supreme love to God and equal love to our neighbor. He did not come to paralyze or perplex the conscience, loosen the bond of virtue, or give new license to sin. Instead of destroying, he aimed to reconsecrate and to establish the law, by paying to it such honor and devotion as, in the nature of things, it could not receive from men or angels. Coming to save sinners, he undertook their rescue only on the condition that justice should remain uncompromised, and holiness untarnished. Thus did he who was above the law give to it its mightiest sanction by his voluntary obedience and atoning death.

Nor, again, did Christ come to destroy the ritualistic or ceremonial law. He did not destroy the Passover, nor Pentecost, nor the daily sacrifices of slain victims. He did not say to the Jews, "Leviticus is an antiquated, worthless book. Cut it out of your parchment rolls, and from new copies of the Scriptures see that it be rigorously excluded." Never did he disturb the temple worship, upbraid or ridicule the priests for the too exact performance of their duties, nor turn back any who were going to God's house with either money for its

treasury or lambs and turtle-doves for its altar. The temple he purified, but did not destroy. He drove out the men who defiled its sacred precincts by fraud and avarice, but molested none who resorted thither for instruction and worship.

Nor, again, did Jesus come to destroy the civil law. He expressed no purpose or wish to free his countrymen from their political obligations. Never did he pander to the plotting discontent of party faction. Not by act or word did he stimulate or encourage revolutionary zeal. Never did he seek to intensify the uneasy spirit of his time, or rally it to the support of any ambitious scheme of his own. Rather he strove to allay the fever of insurrectionary turbulence by directing the thoughts of his fellow-citizens to that prevailing corruption which was the true cause of their national humiliation. He had no quarrel with government. He did not complain of taxation. He spoke no rebellious words against Cæsar. On an attempt to inveigle him with some disloyal utterance, asking the loan of an imperial penny, with exquisite adroitness he inquired who was represented by the image and superscription stamped upon the coin; and when it was answered "Cæsar," "Render then," he said, "unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." As much as to say, "Do not expect that I shall justify your impatient bitterness under the restraints of civil order. Do not hope for my aid in dissolving the bands of political authority. I am not come to destroy the civil, any more than to destroy the moral, or the ceremonial, law."

This earnest declaration was an admonition to the progressive thought of those who imagined that the Messiah was to inaugurate a freer and easier system of both religion and government; that he would discard the old for one entirely new, with precepts less strict, and duties less onerous; who were weary of incessant painstaking in matters of religion; who were tired of restrictions, tired of exhausting performances, tired of monotonous and never-ending routine; who chafed under the triple yoke of restraint, service and penalty. For them the law was too severe in its exactions, the prophets were too harsh in their denunciations. They wished that both might be overthrown and pass away. At least, they longed that both might be disarmed: the law of its rigor, the prophets of their maledictions.