terrestrial witnesses, whose testimony is so efficacious; in St. John's judgment, for the confirmation of our faith.

But how do this water and this blood bear witness that the crucified Jesus was the Christ? Water and blood were the indispensable instruments of cleansing and expiation in all the cleansings and expiations of the law. "Almost all things," saith St. Paul," are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission." But the purgation was not by blood only, but by blood and water; for the same apostle says, "When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and sprinkled both the book and all the people." All the cleansings and expiations of the law, by water and animal blood, were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and of the expiation of real guilt by the blood of Christ shed upon the cross, and virtually taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's supper. The flowing, therefore, of this water and this blood, immediately upon our Lord's death, from the wound opened in his side, was a notification to the surrounding multitudes, though at the time understood by few, that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing fount set open. O wonderful exhibition of the goodness and severity of God! It is the ninth hour, and Jesus, strong to the last in suffering, commending his spirit to the Father, exclaims with a loud voice, that "it is finished," bows his anointed head, and renders up the ghost. Nature is convulsed! Earth trembles! The sanctuary, that type of the heaven of heavens, is suddenly and forcibly thrown open! The tombs are burst! Jesus hangs upon the cross a corpse! And lo the fountain, which, according to the prophet, was this day to be set open for sin and for pollution, is seen suddenly springing from his

wound!-Who, contemplating only in imagination the mysterious awful scene, exclaims not with the centurion, "Truly this was the Son of God!"-truly he was the Christ.

Thus I have endeavoured to explain how the water and the blood, together with the spirit, are witnesses upon earth, to establish the faith which overcometh the world. Much remains untouched; but the time forbids me to proceed. One thing only I must add,-that the faith which overcometh the world consists not in the involuntary assent of the mind to historical evidence, nor in its assent, perhaps still more involuntary, to the conclusions of argument from facts proved and admitted. All this knowledge and all this understanding the devils possess, yet have not faith; and, believing without faith, they tremble. Faith is not merely a speculative, but a practical acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ,—an effort and motion of the mind toward God, when the sinner, convinced of sin, accepts with thankfulness the proffered terms of pardon, and, in humble confidence, applying individually to self the benefit of the general atonement, in the elevated language of a venerable father of the church, drinks of the stream which flows from the Redeemer's wounded side. The effect is, that, in a little, he is filled with that perfect love of God which casteth out fear,-he cleaves to God with the entire affection of the soul. And from this active lively faith, overcoming the world, subduing carnal self, all these good works do necessarily spring, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

SERMON IX.

LUKE iv. 18, 19.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,-to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."*

IT

was, as it should seem, upon our Saviour's first appearance in the synagogue at Nazareth, the residence of his family, in the character of a public teacher, that to the astonishment of that assembly, where he was known only as the carpenter's son, he applied to himself that remarkable passage of Isaiah which the evangelist recites in the words of my text. "This day," said our Lord," is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." The phrase this day," is not, I think, to be understood of that particular Sabbath-day upon which he undertook to expound this prophetic text to the men of Nazareth; nor your ears," of the ears of the individual congregation assembled at the time within the walls of that particular synagogue. The expressions are to be taken according to the usual latitude of common speech,"this day," for the whole time of our Lord's appearance in the flesh, or at least for the whole season of his

* Preached before the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, June 1, 1795.

public ministry; and " your ears," for the ears of all you inhabitants of Judea and Galilee, who now hear my doctrine and see my miracles. Our Lord affirms that in his works, and in his daily preaching, his countrymen might discern the full completion of this prophetic text, inasmuch as he was the person upon whom the Spirit of Jehovah was-whom Jehovah had anointed "to preach the gospel to the poor"-whom Jehovah had sent heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind,—to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

to

None but an inattentive reader of the Bible can suppose that these words were spoken by the prophet Isaiah of himself. Isaiah had a portion, without doubt, but a portion only, of the Divine Spirit. In any sense in which the Spirit of Jehovah was upon the prophet, it was more eminently upon him who received it not by measure. The prophet Isaiah restored not, that we know, any blind man to his sight,-he delivered no captive from his chain. He predicted indeed the restoration of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity,—their final restoration from their present dispersion, and the restoration of man from the worse captivity of sin: but he never took upon him to proclaim the actual commencement of the season of liberation, which is the thing properly implied in the phrase of "preaching deliverance to the captives." To the broken-hearted he administered no other balm than the distant hope of one who in future times should bear their sorrows; nor were the poor of his own time particularly interested in his preaching. The characters, therefore, which the speaker seems to assume in this prophetic text, are of two kinds, -such as are in no sense answered by any known cireumstance in the life and character of Isaiah, or of any other personage of the ancient Jewish history, but in

every sense, literal and figurative, of which the terms are capable, apply to Christ; and such as might in some degree be answered in the prophet's character, but not otherwise than as his office bore a subordinate relation to Christ's office, and his predictions to Christ's preaching. It is a thing well known to all who have been conversant in Isaiah's writings, that many of his prophecies are conceived in the form of dramatic dialogues, in which the usual persons of the sacred piece are God the Father, the Messiah, the prophet himself, and a chorus of the faithful: but it is left to the reader to discover, by the matter spoken, how many of these speakers are introduced, and to which speaker each part of the discourse belongs. It had been reasonable therefore to suppose, that this, like many other passages, is delivered in the person of the Messiah, had our Lord's authority been wanting for the application of the prophecy to himself. Following the express authority of our Lord, in the application of this prophecy to him, we might have spared the use of any other argument, were it not that a new form of infidelity of late hath reared its hideous head, which, carrying on an impious opposition to the genuine faith, under the pretence of reformation, in its affected zeal to purge the Christian doctrine of I know not what corruptions, and to restore our creed to what it holds forth as the primitive standard, -under that infatuation, which by the just judgment of God ever clings to self-sufficient folly, pretends to have discovered inaccuracies in our Lord's own doctrine, and scruples not to pronounce him, not merely a man, but a man peccable and fallible in that degree as to have misquoted and misapplied the prophecies of the Old Testament. In this instance our great Lord and master defies the profane censures of the doctors of that impious school. This text, referred to its original place in the book of Isaiah, is evidently the opening of a prophetic