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experience, and sagacity of the creature are of LECT. III. no avail. Ignorant of the full amount of our own guilt,-ignorant of the mighty interests pending on the question of our forgiveness, we are utterly incompetent to enter upon the inquiry. To the grace of God alone must we stand indebted for that intelligence which is to enlighten our ignorance, hush our anxieties, remove our fears, enkindle our hopes, and fill us with the happy assurance that man, though a sinner, may be just before God.

escape re

New Testa

ment.

Such intelligence it has pleased God to convey A way of to us in the gospel of his Son. By means of vealed in the that obedience unto death which he displayed whilst incarnate in human nature, he has offered such an atonement for sin as renders it honourable for God, because compatible with the claims of his government, to forgive the sinner. In the New Testament this "Gospel" is announced to us with undoubted clearness. The testimony of God concerning his Son is there presented to us as "a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation;" and the apostles, as the appointed ambassadors of Christ, beseech us, as in Christ's stead, to be reconciled unto God. But how was it with those who lived under the former dispensation? Did they possess any knowledge of this mode of justifying the ungodly which has been so fully revealed unto us? Were they, burdened with a sense of sin, and trembling in the prospect of futurity, relieved by any glimpses, however slight,

LECI. III of that "glorious Gospel" which diffuses over our minds "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding?" Or, were they left to wander in hopeless ignorance of God's designs of mercy to our race, and to sink into the tomb with no other consolation than that which a feeble hope of the possibility of salvation might supply?

our finding

the Old

Probability of In answer to these questions, every one must the same in feel that the preliminary probabilities are in favour of the position, that knowledge to a degree sufficient, at least, to ensure the salvation of all who believed it, was enjoyed by those who lived under the Patriarchal and Levitical dispensations. That the communication of such knowledge was possible, no one will venture to question; and when we reflect upon the grace and goodness of Jehovah, and the intimate relation into which he was pleased to enter with the pious in ancient times, we cannot but admit, that it is to the last degree unlikely that he would withhold it from them. Further, when we find the apostles plainly declaring that there is no other name under heaven given amongst men by which we must be saved but that of Jesus, and at the same time admitting that salvation was enjoyed by many who had lived before the birth of Jesus;-when we hear them asserting that the death of Christ had a retrospective as well as a present and prospective efficacy, (Rom. iii. 25;) and assuring us that the patriarchs were partakers of like precious faith with believers

under the Christian dispensation;—our reverence LECT. 111. for their authority forbids us to doubt that the truths, by the knowledge of which men are saved, were known from the earliest periods of human history. Nor do they leave us in any uncertainty as to the means by which the knowledge of these truths was preserved; for they inform us that in the Scriptures of the Old Testament are contained the words of eternal life, (John v. 39,) and that they "are able to make man wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus," (2 Tim. iii. 15;) and before that revelation was committed to writing, they assure us that such men as Enoch and Noah were preachers of righteousness unto those among whom they lived, (Heb. ii. 6, 7.) They further inform us that, at the time of our Lord's advent, there were persons among the Jews who had learned from their own Scriptures that a Saviour was to be expected, and who hailed the birth of Jesus as the rising upon them of the day-spring from on high, (Luke i. 76—79; ii. 25—37; John i. 41, 45, &c.)

Emboldened by these considerations, we may proceed to the examination of the Old Testament Scriptures, with the conviction that we shall certainly find in them, if our inquiry be wisely and honestly conducted, a full development of the truth concerning Him, in the light of whose salvation it is our inestimable privilege to walk.

LECTURE IV.

INTERNAL OR DOCTRINAL CONNEXION OF THE OLD AND NEW
TESTAMENTS. CRITERIA AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE

MESSIANIC PROPHECIES.

LECT. IV.

lation suited

tion of the

parties

REV. XIX. 10.

The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy.

WHILST there is every reason to conclude that Divine reve God would not leave mankind, even in those to the condi- ages of the world which preceded the birth of Christ, in total ignorance of that way of salvation receiving it. which he had provided, there exists no ground for supposing that this knowledge required to be conveyed to them in the same way in which it has been communicated to us. On the contrary, the very different position which they, as expectant of an event to which we look back as already accomplished, occupied from that which we sustain, would lead us to infer that, as a revelation upon this point has been given to us, suited to our peculiar position, the revelations conveyed to them would be no less suited to the circumstances in which they were placed.

Character of the earlier

The economies under which they lived were LECT. IV. promissory and preparative of that to which we belong. They had the shadow and the assurance economies. of good things to come, but not the exact and accurate representation of these things. Where we enjoy the picture upon the canvass, the saints under these dispensations saw only the imperfect reflection of that picture as from a mirror. To us the message of God has come to assure us that the price of our redemption has been paid; to them it came with the assurance that One had been provided, by whom, in the fulness of time, it should be paid. The revelation appropriate to our circumstances, consequently, is that of historical narrative; the revelation appropriate to theirs, that of prediction and promise.

In order, then, to ascertain what kind and degree of knowledge was possessed by the Old Testament saints respecting the gospel plan of salvation, we must go to the study of those preintimations and assurances which they received from Heaven upon this subject, and of which we have a record in the pages of the Jewish Scrip

tures.

through

received the

These may be divided into two great classes, Vehicles according to the nature of the signs employed as which they the media of communication. In our present Divine comstate, it is only by the intervention of outward munications. and sensible signs, that thought can be transmitted from one mind to another. The immediate intercourse of spirit with spirit is a matter

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