tors and the actors, the eternal Godhead, the incarnate Son, the Church militant on Earth, the Church triumphant in Heaven, and Angels, the ministers of his will, who wait to do his bidding. Of this sacred and unambiguous style, the second, the forty-fifth, parts of the twentyfourth and sixty-eighth Psalms, and the Psalm before us, are splendid specimens; unequalled, perhaps, but by the strains of the evangelical Isaiah, or the sublimer visions of the Apocalyptic prophecy. Among the more involved examples of direct prediction, other parts of the twenty-fourth and sixty-eighth Psalms may be enumerated, which in addition to the difficulties inherent in the nature of prophecy, present others, from the guise in which the Holy Spirit has been pleased to clothe its visions; seizing on the occurrences of a great religious solemnity, and rendering it not easy to mark the boundary between the scene present to the Prophet's eye, and that which was but impressed upon his enraptured fancy. It may, indeed, be said in general, that the prophetic is in its nature more obscure than the historical Psalm, as resulting from immediate inspiration, which presents to the eye of the Prophet, shifting and varying visions, whose change is not always perceptible, or succession always to be traced; but it may be re

marked that this difficulty is diminished, and the unity of these sacred songs, their connexion and coherence then best observed and made apparent, when the reader or the commentator seeks in them for the development of the Divine attributes in the dealings of God with his people, and sees in the intellectual and moral creation, Jesus Christ "who filleth all in all."

The Psalm to which I would now call your attention, has long been the source of joy and edifying to the Christian world.-Consecrated by the Church to the solemn service of the Nativity, by it have the pious for ages solemnized their devotions, and addressed as their God the Lord of David-none of the sacred collection seems to have been so frequently quoted by the inspired writers of the New Testament; by its well-known application to the Messiah, were the Pharisees confounded by our Lord; by it were the fears awakened and the faith confirmed, of the multitude to whom Peter preached on the day. of Pentecost, and from it did the Apostle to the Hebrews draw his decisive proof, that the Messiah was far exalted above the Angelic host, for "to which of the Angels said he at any time, sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?" That the

Psalm then alludes to the Messiah, we professing Christians can have no doubt, or that the Author of it is the son of Jesse-and although the modern Jews, seeing the advantage gained to the Christian cause by this application of prophecy, have endeavoured to pervert its meaning, we have the Ancient Jewish Church symbolizing on our side, and the ancient commentators, with but few exceptions, unanimous in declaring the "Adon" of David to be the Messiah. That such was the prevailing opinion at the time of our Lord, is manifest from the reception which his question met with-had a different application prevailed or even been suggested, how eagerly would the Pharisees have availed themselves of its shelter to evade the force of our Lord's reasoning; or could they have used the refuge of modern commentators, that of making David its primary object, they might have denied its secondary meaning. Many modern Jews, indeed, compelled by the language of the Prophet, confess its meaning to be fulfilled in the Messiah, though they deny the Messiahship to Jesus of Nazareth; but others make Eleazar the Steward of Abraham, author of the Psalm, and suppose it addressed to that Patriarchwhile some suppose David, others Solomon, Hezekiah, or Zerubbabel to be its object. The

wildness of these conjectures effectually disprove them to which of these personages did the regal, prophetic, and sacerdotal characters so peculiarly belong? Which of them in conjunction with unbounded rule could be denominated a priest for ever? Which, as St. Peter argues, could without blasphemy, he said to sit down at the right hand of God? We have in the Psalm, the accession of some great potentate to his throne-we have unlimited rule promised, an everlasting priesthood conferred, and the utter destruction of his enemies denounced; the number of his people compared to the dew drops, which from the womb of the morning spangled and brightened the early grass,-the downfall of his enemies declared, and blessings and elevation promised to his followers; and round all this, by the magnificence of the subject, the severe sublimity of the expressions, and the awful grandeur of the dialogue, there is a superhuman halo thrown, which would make it profanation to apply it to a lower than the Messiah. Who but he was David's Lord, and in such strict communion with Jehovah, as is described by "sitting at his right hand?" who but he, a conqueror reigning at Jerusalem, King to all eternity, having an everlasting priesthood, Judge of all

nations, triumphing over all opposition, and ruling with his people "made willing" in "the beauties of holiness?"-The commentator who would apply those elevated declarations to any other than to Christ the expected Messiah, must either degrade the sublime expressions of the Prophet, or must discover in the rolls of history, sacred or profane, some other personage to whom the three-fold character belongs, who not only “sits and bears rule" for ever "on his throne," but is also "a priest upon that throne," and between whom and the most high God, is the eternal "counsel of peace."

There is, indeed, another view of the subject taken by a late valuable commentator, to whose work on the Psalms has been, perhaps hyperbolically, applied, the expression used by David of the sword of Goliath, "there is none like it.” The learned Venema, to whom I have alluded, while he treats with contempt the absurd conjectures of the modern Jews, and applies to the Messiah in their full and exclusive meaning the first four verses of the Psalm, thinks that from that passage the discourse is addressed to David, and that protection is promised to him from his numerous enemies, and permanence to his infant kingdom. He would thus divide the