It has been my endeavour to give every act which has been quoted its due and legitimate weight, and no more;-neither to insist too strongly on those which speak plainly and openly of the ministration of

sojourn at Jerusalem. The mode of the answer is intrinsically the same in all the Evangelists. There came a voice out of Heaven, saying; "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;-hear ye him."

There can be no question, but that the most obvious interpretation would be, that the Father Himself spake;—and if we could forget the affirmation of Jesus, we should doubtless so interpret it. But that saying reduces us to receive it in a more modified sense. The Divine commands which required personal intervention, were in ancient times usually performed by the ministration of angels;-Christ himself in this sense being an angel or messenger of the Most High. Taking into view the assertion of Christ;-considering the Supremacy and Dominion entrusted to Him, because of the alienation of the Father from mankind; reflecting on the ineffable Height, Splendor, and Majesty of the Eternal; and His aversion from men, UNTIL reconciled by the Atonement and Mediation of the Messiah; I cannot but think it possible, with this passage before me, that though the mind and will of the Father was in the voice, yet that it was actually conveyed by the lips of an angel. The voice uttered in the Heaven of Heavens-in that unimaginable centre, where the Fulness of the Divine Glory resides-may have been borne to earth by one of the attendant Spirits near the throne, and have been given with all the authority, but not the voice of the Eternal.

I would not however, be thought to lay a stress on this solution. It is obviously one framed to the occasion; and one which I should be loth to advance, if the truth of the enquiry rested wholly on the quoted passage. This however, is far from the case. God is stated never to have been seen, as well as never to have been heard. And Christ having once been proved to have assumed the titles of the Godhead, and to have appeared to men, the whole volume, by incessant connection, bears upon His Person in every subsequent or antecedent instance. This constitutes the real force of the System; and in this view possesses a strength which seems to my own mind insu

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Christ; nor to pass lightly over those which have been ordinarily interpreted of God the Father. It must however, be remembered that as many parts of the Old Testament were, in their language, accommodated to the belief of the Jews in the presence of that God whom we term the Father; so in the Epistles also, some are addressed to the Jews for their conviction under the same form. The opening verse of the "Hebrews" is an instance in point of the fact alluded to. God," writes the Apostle, "who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath made heir of all things; by whom also he made the worlds." Now the direct inference would be that the Father had personally superintended the world in the earlier ages, and that the Son had only intervened or "spoken" in the days of the Apostle. This however we know to be opposed to the Old

Son; which authority was
Christ exercised that au-

perable. An authority was given to the at a certain period to be yielded up. thority; and the voice which proclaimed the mind of the Father rather confirms than shakes its reality. Without the single, solitary assertion of Christ,“ ye have neither seen his shape at any time, nor heard his voice ;"—the latter clause occurring only once in the Evangelists, we should still hold the same views on Christ's supremacy over the earth;—and with it, we do not find that Truth at all diminished. The passage may perhaps in the minds of some be more restricted in its application; and seem to bear only upon that assemblage of perverse and rebellious Jews to whom he was at that time speaking; and who were boasting of their privileges and knowledge of God in opposition to his own claims. But however reconciled, it certainly does not destroy the other proofs which have been adduced;-though it might have appeared wrong to have passed it by unnoticed.

Testament; in that Christ personally ministered from the very first; and with this knowledge, and that of the peculiar tenets of the Jews, we resolve it, as we did formerly in the case of the prophets, into a form of address accommodated to their minds; one by which he first drew their thoughts to the Incarnation of Jesus as the Son of God; as a preparative to his main argument. The apparent discrepancy is abundantly cleared up in the body of the Epistle; leaving us in no manner of doubt of the truth of the conjecture.

But if Christ has received such unlimited power from the Father;-if he has exerted it from the first disaffection and fall of man from God; - if he still exerts it, (as we must fain acknowledge that he does) and will not relinquish it until our judgment shall have been pronounced of whom can we look for succour, O Lord, -but of thee! And if sinfulness and transgression-be they of whatever nature they may -are of such deep abhorrence in the sight of God, that nothing but the Descent- the Trial-the Innocence the Sufferings and the Immolation of God Himself, in the Person of his Son, could atone for the disobedient and restore him to a state of favour;-what hope, O God, can any descendant of the fallen dare to assume which is not built up on Thy Merits, and cemented with Thy Sacrifice! In very truth, to Man art thou the "Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end; the first and the last." He was condemned, and Thou hast given him life. He was prostrate; and Thou hast raised him up. He was weak; and Thou hast sustained him. He slept, and Thou hast watched over and

protected him. What a grand - what a stupendous view of Redemption do these things lay open to us! What love;-what intense anxiety in Christ that men should be saved do these great truths unfold to us, in that not a Law, not a revelation was vouchsafed to them, but that the Messiah Himself was the Personal agent, and dictator of the Divine Counsels. Much would it have been, if God had simply declared to man that his Sinful Nature would be redeemed; and be placed, by painful austerities and incessant mortifications, within the possibility of restoration. Much, if the Laws of God had been once only put before him; and he had been left, in this his state of knowledge, to prove, by stern obedience, and "strong crying and supplication" his anxiety for his soul's safety. But more- far more than thought can either express or even conceive that Christ Himself should have been so solicitous for his future welfare, that he would not entrust to Man's lips alone the declaration of his will; not to the given Law;-not to inspiration ;-not to repeated instances of his superintending Providence ;-not to ANY means but that which brought Him in his own Person before men, -a minister to their necessities, and the encourager of their Faith. In the very depth of man's depravity, he hath never been left alone. Christ hath sought us out that He might make known to us the riches of his glory. His reception from the first has been most unequal. Mark the course of History from the most ancient times. Christ has appeared; and has striven for man's advantage. He has striven often through neglect; often through disobedience; often through idolatry

and rejection; often through reproach; often through contumely; often through hatred and persecution; but has still striven through all "to seek and to save that which was lost." And wherefore this? Doubtless because in the spirit of the Apostle "knowing the Terrors of the Lord, he would persuade men.' Doubtless also, because it was recorded in Heaven -in the eternal counsels of the Father an immoveable and fixed decree. "That there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby they must be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”