bodily;" Col. ii. 9.-that "with his own blood he might purchase the Church of God;" Acts xx. 28.-" Having by his own blood obtained eternal redemption for us." Heb. ix. 12. Thus, in allusion to the redemption from Egypt, Jesus Christ is called by the Apostle, "Our Passover ;" whilst the bloed, shed by him for that purpose, on account of the mysterious connection subsisting in his Divine Person, is called the blood of God.

Hence, our Saviour, speaking of his body, called it a temple, John ii. 19. because it was the residence of his Godhead; in allusion to the Temple at Jerusalem, which was considered to be the dwellingplace of the Deity on Earth. "I have` built, said Solomon, when he had finished the Temple, a place for thy dwelling for ever." 2 Chron. vi. 2. And hence the Evangelist St. John, in his description of the incarnation of the WORD, refers to the tabernacle under the Law, which was erected in the wilderness for the same purpose that the temple was afterwards built in Jerusalem; and was in like manner a type of our Saviour's body. "Let them make

make me (said Jehovah to Moses, Exod. xxv. 8.) a sanctuary that I may dwell (or tabernacle) among them." "The WORD (says St. John) who was in the beginning with God, and was God, was made flesh, * and dwelt

* The Greek word wσ, i. e. tabernacled, here translated dwelt, is derived from the Hebrew word which imports to dwell or inhabit: and which with the single Hebrew letter mem prefixed, is used to denote the tabernacle erected by Moses. Hence, commentators have collected, and are generally agreed, that St. John in the word made use of on this occasion, meant to allude to the residence of the Second Person in the Mosaic tabernacle, as the earnest of his future dwelling among men in a human body, his tabernacle of flesh. That such was the light in which this interesting subject, as bearing decided testimony to our Saviour's Divinity, was seen by the Primitive Church, the writings of Eusebius furnish the most convincing proof; who in his Demon. Evangel. has thus paraphrased the fifth verse of the cxxxiid Psalm. "Until he find out a place for the Lord, and a tabernacle for the God of Jacob:-i. e. till he should learn from the Lord himself, where Christ should be born. He is therefore heard, and the oracle returns for answer, that Bethlehem was appointed for that place of the Lord, and the tabernacle of the God of Jacob. The holy spirit having proclaimed this by himself, makes answer to himself: Behold we heard of it at Ephratha-Now Ephratha is the same as Bethlehem; as appears from Genesis, where it is said of Rachael;

And

dwelt among us,"

among us."

us," (or as it may be more

literally rendered) "pitched his tabernacle In conformity with which idea, and to prove to the Jews what St. John

And they buried her in the way to Ephratha, i. e. Bethlehem: and in the prophecy above; and Thou Bethlehem, the house of Ephratha. Behold, says he, we have heard it. But it is certain that by it we are to understand the Birth of Christ; and the habitation of the God of Jacob: and what was the habitation of the God of Jacob, but the body of Christ himself, which was born at Bethlehem, in which, as in the tabernacle of the only Son, the Divinity dwelt? But, further, it is not barely said to be the Tabernacle of God, but with the addition of the God of Jacob, because what dwelt in it, was no other than that God who appeared to Jacob in the form and shape of a man." With the view of impressing the idea of our Lord's divinity still more strongly on the Jews, St. John proceeds to say, that he had seen his glory; alluding to the transaction on the mount when Jesus being transfigured, "his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light; and a voice out of the cloud proclaimed him to be the beloved Son of God." Matt, xvii.-On this memorable occasion, Moses and Aaron appeared talking with Jesus; probably for the purpose of bearing testimony to the identity of our Saviour's character, and thereby convincing the attendant Apostles, that he was of a truth that divine Being, who had appeared in the same glorious form under the old Dispensation. In saying therefore, as St. John did

to

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John had before attempted, that the same Divine Being which heretofore dwelt with the Israelites in the typical tabernacle in the wilderness, had come to dwell among them in the real tabernacle of his flesh; St. Paul, speaking of Christ, Heb. viii. 2. calls him " a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle;" not of that typical one heretofore set up by man under the divine direction, but of that true tabernacle “which the Lord pitched;" that tabernacle which was built by the imme diate interposition of Jehovah ;-" when the Holy Ghost came upon the Virgin Mary, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her."-Luke i. 35.

“This one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all," 1 Tim. ii. 5. according to the faith delivered to the saint,

to the Jews, in his relation of the incarnation of The Word, that he had beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father; "he gave them to understand, that The Word was that Jehovah, whose glory had heretofore possessed both the tabernacle and the temple; and consequently that in Him dwelt all the fulness of grace and truth.

and

and retained in our Church, was therefore 66 very God as well as very man." Art. ii.

"The WORD was made flesh."-The divine and human nature having been necessarily united in the Person of Christ, for the purpose of his being competent to the completion of the great work of Redemption, by becoming a proper and adequate atonement for the sins of mankind.

Such is the conclusion to which the foregoing Discourses were designed to lead, by bringing together the evidence borne by different parts of Scripture to the character and office of Jesus Christ; a conclusion, it is presumed, which will be considered decisive on these subjects, so long as the Bible shall be admitted to constitute the standard of Christian faith; no proposition carrying with it more irresistible evidence than this, that what God has af. firmed, however incomprehensible to the human mind in its present state, must infallibly be true.

By comparing spiritual things with spiritual, with the view of making Scripture speak for itself; (on the supposition that we have made a faithful report of the evidence contained