popular violence, but by perverted judicial procedure--not by being stoned, but by being crucified, that he had to expiate human guilt, and glorify God. While, then, the uplifted stones were ready to be hurled at his head, unprotected but by the invisible hand of his Father, he calmly expostulates with his infuriated enemies, and mildly asks them the reason why they were preparing to put him to death. By his divine power, he bridled their rage, and restrained their power, till he had set before them the wickedness of their conduct.

"Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?"i. e., are ye about to stone me? In arresting the lifted stone, how did our Lord manifest his power? showing that he was indeed He who stills the noise of the sea, the noise of its waves, and the tumult of the people; who says to the tide of human passion, as well as of the ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." And, in expostulating with these men, rather than destroying them, as he so easily could have done by a mere act of his will, what a display did he make of his forbearance, long-suffering, and pa tience? The general force of our Lord's question seems to be this I have never done anything to deserve such treatment. As a teacher, I have taught only the truth; as a worker of miracles, I have done only good. I have taught no false doctrine; I have done no injurious act. I have taught many important truths; I have performed many beneficent miracles. If you consider me as deserving to be stoned, it must be for teaching some of these truths,-for doing some of these miracles. Which of them is it that has provoked your resentment, and led you to meditate so severe a punishment?' The word "works" seems most naturally to refer to miraculous operations; yet it is plain that our Lord represents the teaching the truth as an important part of "the work" given him to do. "I have finished," says he, in his prayer to his Father, "the work which thou hast given me to do;" and he explains that work, as manifesting the Father's name to those whom He had given him out of the world-giving to them the words which the Father had given him. We are therefore disposed to consider our Lord as referring to all that he did, as the teacher sent from God, both in speaking and doing things which no man could have spoken or done, if God had not been with him.

7749

These works he terms "good works,' literally beautiful, morally lovely, and praiseworthy, or beneficent, kind works. His doctrines were "full of grace," as well as of "truth," and his miracles not more instinct with power than with mercy. What could be more morally beautiful than to teach men saving truth, and to afford them evidence of that truth, by bestowing upon them supernatural blessings? Holy benignity-the perfection of

48 John x. 32.

49 κaλù čрya. Comp. 1 Tim. vi. 18. Gen. xliv. 4. Numb. xxiv. 13. LXX.

moral beauty-was the leading characteristic both of his doctrine and of his miracles? Our Lord's works corresponded well with the design of his mission, and the nature of the economy he came to establish. The law was introduced in words and works of terror, and Moses' mission was accredited by thunders, lightnings, earthquakes, plagues. The mission of Christ was confirmed, not by striking his enemies with sudden sickness, and destroying them by dreadful deaths, but by healing the sick, dispossessing the demoniac, and raising the dead.

He had performed many of these works. His whole life was spent in teaching truth and doing good. How many miracles are distinctly recorded in the gospel history! how many do the evangelists mention only in general terms! how many do they pass over entirely in silence! "There are many other things," says the beloved disciple, "which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books which should be written." The miracles of our Lord are far more numerous than all the miracles recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures.

"I have showed you" these "many good works." Jesus taught his doctrine, and performed his miracles, in public. He drew men's attention to them; he held them up for examination. All the land of Canaan was brightened with the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. "These things were not done in a corner." "In all Galilee, and throughout all Judea, he went about," not, as his enemies said, perverting the people, but "doing good, and healing all that were possessed of the devil." He showed these many glorious works, not only to friends, but to enemies, who used all their malicious craft to discover some blemish in them, but found none-no falsehood in his doctrine, no imposition in his wonderful works.

And these numerous, glorious, public works performed by our Lord, were works from God. He showed them these many good works "from his Father." His doctrine was not his, but his Father's who sent him. It was the Father who sent him who did the works he performed: his doctrine was divine doctrine-his miracles divine miracles. The force of our Lord's words, then, is, I have, in my doctrines and miracles, publicly done many things, all of them of a holy and benignant character, and all of them of a divine origin.' 'This is our Lord's whole history. He did this, nothing but this. Not one word of an opposite kind did he ever speak; not one action of an opposite kind did he ever perform. Why then stone me?' says he, 'why, what evil have I done? If this violence be not utterly causeless, it must have its cause in some one or other of the many good works which I have showed you from my Father.' He well knew that the truth of his doctrine, and the excellence of his works, were the real cause of their enmity. They believed not, because he told them the truth; they hated him because of his excellence; and he put the question to compel them, as it were, to open the eyes of their

consciences to the baseness of their conduct. It is as if he had said, 'What injury have I ever done you, that ye seek, in so cruel and lawless a way, to take away my life? I have done you much good; I have never done any of you anything but good.' The ingratitude included in the conduct of the Jews, greatly aggravated their guilt. Our Lord was constantly engaged in bestowing favors on them, while they repay them by seeking to put him to death. His question is, 'In what have I deserved this at vour hand?' It puts us in mind of Jehovah's expostulation with his ancient people-"O my people, what have I done to you, and wherein have I wearied you? testify against me."50

Awed, apparently, by the calm undaunted appearance of Jesus, the Jews desisted from executing their purpose; and, unable to resist altogether the force of his mild and unanswerable expostulation, they "answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." Ingratitude is a sin which no man will own. None could be guilty of it in a higher degree than those enemies of Jesus; and yet they will not acknowledge the justice of the charge. They dare not, indeed, call in question the substantial truth of our Lord's statement. The cure of the man blind from his birth, in its whole circumstances, was so striking an example of the many beautiful things which he had showed them from God, and had taken place so recently, that they durst not meet his assertion with a counter one; but they intimate that, however numerous and however remarkable were the good things he showed, there was one bad thing which he had done, which more than neutralized the claims of them all, and justly exposed him to the punishment they had showed themselves ready to inflict on him. They thus prove, that there is no action so bad, but men may find out some excuse for it, not altogether destitute of plausibility.

The principles on which they go, seem quite tenable. No works of any kind can be an excuse for blasphemy, or free from obligation to severe punishment him who is guilty of a foul affront to him who necessarily stands alone in the possession of independent, eternal, infinite, immutable being and excellence. And any mere man is guilty of blasphemy, or speaking reproach fully of God, who claims equality with God. Neither can there be any doubt that they were correct in their facts. Jesus was a man, and though a man, he did claim equality with God when he declared, that he was God's own Son, and that he and his Father were one. In what, then, did the Jews err in their judgment? and where was the fault of their conduct? If I be lieved that Jesus was a mere man, nothing but a man, I should find it difficult to answer these questions; I could not defend him, nor could I greatly blame them. But Jesus was more than a man; and they had abundance of evidence of this truth. miracles proved his divine mission; and this divine mission gave

50 Mic. vi. 3.

51 John x. 33.

His

him a claim for implicit belief of whatever he declared respecing his person and work. And he frequently distinctly claims. divine perfections and rights.

There was a great appearance of reason in what they alleged against him, but it was only the appearance of reason. They judged according to the appearance; they did not judge righteous judgment. They were ignorant of what they might have known-of what they ought to have known,-that the Messiah was to be both human and divine, the Son of David, the Son of God, the inan, Jehovah's fellow,-a child born, the Almighty God; and they resisted the most abundant evidence, that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore must be both human and divine; and that he was a divine messenger, and, therefore, whatever he stated of himself must be true. This ignorance and unbelief led them to the fearful guilt of blaspheming and murdering him who was God manifest in flesh, while they thought they were doing God service, by exposing blasphemy and punishing a blasphemer.

This places, in a very strong point of view, the danger of false principles in religion: they not only lead men into sin, but they make men mistake the greatest sins for important duties. False views in religion cannot be sustained as an excuse for those sins to which they naturally lead. These Jews most assuredly incurred deep guilt in the charge they brought against Jesus, and in the murderous design they formed against him. If they did not know, they ought to have known; if they did not believe, they ought to have believed.

Let us take care that we distinctly apprehend the truth respecting the person of our Lord Jesus. Mistakes here must be dangerous, may be fatal; and if, on this point, we, like the Jews, embrace false views, and follow them out like them, to their fair practical consequences, we shall have much less to say for ourselves than even they had, and shall not be found guiltless in the great day of account. It is fearful to think of the amount of guilt which must be contracted, under the completed revelation of the Divine will, by the men who, like the Jews, would accuse Jesus of blasphemy, if, like the Jews, they believedwhat it is wonderful that anybody should doubt that he, "being a man, made himself equal with God."

Our Lord's reply to this charge of blasphemy, deserves our most considerate attention. "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him 162

52 John x. 34-38.

And here let us notice how very different this answer is from what it must have been, had Jesus been, what some of his professed followers insist he was,-a mere man. On this supposition, it is difficult, indeed impossible, satisfactorily to account for our Lord using language with respect to himself which, to say the least, very naturally suggested the idea, that he claimed equality with God; which, to say the truth, cannot be fairly interpreted without bringing out that idea,-language which none of the prophets ever used anything like,-language not at all necessary to express anything about the origin or design of his mission, but what might have been easily expressed in words incapable of being misunderstood,-language which one, whose great object was to bring the world, sunk in idolatry, back to the knowledge and worship of the only living and true God, would with peculiar care have avoided. But supposing our Lord, being a mere man, had unaccountably used such language, what might we count on his certainly doing, if he, a holy man and a divine messenger, found that his language had been misunderstood, and that he was considered as claiming equality with God-making himself God? Would not he, who sought not his own glory, but the glory of Him who sent him, have disclaimed in the strongest possible terms, such an interpretation of his words, and prevented the possibility of that happening in a single instance, which has happened in the case of the vast majority of his fol lowers in every country and age-the considering him as, by his own distinct declaration, an incarnation of the Divinity,-God manifest in the flesh? There is, however, no such disclaimer. There is not, indeed, a distinct assertion, in so many words, of equality with God. There were obvious reasons why this, in the circumstances in which our Lord was placed, should not be made; but there is what is completely equivalent to it.

Our Lord's reply consists of two parts. In the first, he shows that the charge of blasphemy, which they founded on his calling himself the Son of God, was a rash one, even although nothing more could have been said of him, than that he had been "sanc tified and sent by the Father;" and secondly, that his miracles were of such a kind, as that they rendered whatever he declared of himself, as to his intimate connection with the Father, however extraordinary, worthy of credit.

Our Lord's argument in the first part of this answer, is found ed on a passage in the eighty-second Psalm, verse 6; "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." These words are plainly addressed to the Jewish magistrates, commissioned by Jehovah to act as his vicegerents in administer ing justice to his people; who judged for God-in the room of God; whose sentences, when they agreed with the law, were God's sentences; whose judgment, was God's judgment; and rebels against whom, were rebels against God. The words require a few expository remarks. "It is written in your law." The words are not in the Pentateuch, which is often termed 'the