blessings through the Gentile world?

It is

obvious too, that, if so far successful among the Jews, it would only have protracted the actual event; for by degrees the offensive truths must have been declared, and the offensive censures must at least have been implied, and a violent death, hastened by success, would at last have been the consequence. Or, if he had finally escaped a public and violent death, the invaluable advantages of his resurrection would have been totally destroyed, or their efficacy most essentially lessened.†

Thirdly, Jesus might have avoided death by privately withdrawing himself to some place of security. In this case the important instructions which he had communicated, would probably

* It is clear that, except by a total change of circumstances, or by a great accession of miraculous interference, the Gentiles could have been christianized only through the medium of Jews or Jewish proselytes, or those who had gained from Judaism some correct notions of the attributes and dispensations of God.

The resurrection of Jesus, if we follow the scriptural representations, answered at least three important purposes: it presented a most striking demonstration that he acted under divine authority in declaring the purposes of God, it afforded a pattern and a pledge of our resurrection,—and it gave men an assurance of a future state of righteous retribution. Now the extensive diffusion of a thorough conviction of this fact required that his death should take place at such a time, and in such a manner, that it should not be a doubtful point, among distant Jews or proselytes to Judaism, whether Jesus really died: and it is impossible that there should have been any time more suitable to give publicity to the event, than the passover, when at least 1,200,000 persons attached to the law of Moses were on the spot, of whom a large proportion did not usually reside in Jerusalem, and numbers came from other countries; or any cireumstances better calculated to give them the conviction that he really died, than those which actually occurred. Indeed we have no reason to believe that any denied the reality of our Lord's death, till some false or mistaken friends of the Gospel advanced this absurd and dangerous opinion, which the Apostle John, an eye-witness of the fact, severely but most justly reprehends.

by God that he was sent, and to declare truths of the greatest importance to the welfare of mankind, calculated, if received, to communicate the greatest blessings, but depending for their efficacy upon the reception of them;-a testimony which was to his disciples peculiarly impressive, because they knew that he was fully acquainted before-hand with his dangers and sufferings, and that he could at any period have escaped from them, and which was peculiarly important, on account of the vast numbers of persons who, at the great festival of the passover, crowded to Jerusalem from all parts of the then known world. And by such miraculous interference, that last signal instance of divine approbation would either have been prevented, or its efficacy greatly lessened if not destroyed,—that striking display of the power of God, by which the divine authority of Jesus was established be. yond all doubt, and his declarations sanctioned as the words of God:-if he had not died in the most public and indisputable manner, the convictions of his followers in his resurrection could not have possessed that firmness, by which they were led to sacrifice every temporal good, without

authority from God, that he was the Son of God, that he had received from God his life-giving doctrines. The testimony of the witnesses of his resurrection borne by their death, was of high importance to give credibility to that fact, which of itself proves that Jesus is the Son of God; but such attestation was only corroborative, and in no individual instance necessary: the testimony thus borne by Jesus was indispensable, yet might have been avoided without the assertion of any falsehood, or the evasion of any truth; and it could only be prompted by the firmest confidence in God, and the most exalted benevolence to mankind.

the prospect of any temporal good, to promulgate doctrines in part founded on that fact, and at any rate deriving their chief authority from it; nor could the Apostles have succeeded in disseminating that lively faith in the divine authority of Jesus and his doctrines, by which such numbers were brought over from sin and ignorance to knowledge and holiness.

I have before observed, (see p. 8,) that it is impossible for us to say, that no other means of communicating gospel blessings could have been appointed by the Supreme Being;-they might have been kept separate from the Jewish prejudices respecting the Messiah; they might from the first have been made unconnected with Judaism; they might have been received without opposition, without suffering on the part of the appointed agent; and some other agent might have been appointed :-but the more we examine all the known circumstances under which they were actually communicated, the more we shall perceive that these were peculiarly fitted to make the reception of them cordial, extensive, permanent, and efficacious. And it ought always to be borne in mind, as an obvious principle of the divine government, and one which is requisite in order to bring into due exercise some of our highest powers, that miraculous agency is never employed where the effect can be equally well produced by the usual operation of moral causes.

When we thus consider the death of Christ, as on the one hand perfectly voluntary, and on the

other essentially requisite to an efficacious, extensive, and permanent diffusion of gospel blessings, and consider also the nature and value of those blessings, can we hesitate, with all our intellectual correctness, our refinedness of phraseology, and our customary rejection of the bold language of eastern metaphor, to speak of that event as a most important sacrifice for the best interests of mankind, as our ransom from spiritual bondage, as the means of pardon and everlasting life, and to say that Jesus died for our sins, that he died that we might live, &c.? And when in addition to these things we take into account, that the sufferings and death of the Messiah were objects of such amazement to the Jews, yet necessary to accomplish the prophecies concerning him,-that the idea of a suffering Messiah excited the disgust of the prejudiced Jew, and that the doctrines of one who had been disgraced by the punishment of slaves and the vilest malefactors, were treated with ridicule and contempt by the philosophic Gentiles, yet that the sufferings and death of Jesus really presented the best proof of his disinterested love to men, and of his profound obedience to the will of God, -that the sufferings and death of Jesus were caused by the wickedness of his own nation,— that the Apostles had a very intimate acquaintance with all the painful and aggravating circumstances of those sufferings,-that they were witnesses of the most beneficial and strikingly rapid changes taking place, in the spiritual

condition of men, in consequence of his endurance unto death,—that the Easterns were accustomed to employ metaphors and allusions calculated to give quick and vigorous conceptions of truths or facts, and to dwell, as all persons of lively imagination do, on the most striking of a train of causes as what produced important effects in contemplation,-and lastly, that the Mosaic ritual and scriptural phraseology were a fertile source of metaphors and allusions which were well suited to soften down the prepossessions of the Jews against the gospel dispensation, to heighten the convictions of the believer, and to give impressive views of the importance of its blessings, and of the means by which they were communicated and assured ;-when, I say, we take all these things into account, in addition to the voluntary nature, yet necessity, of the death of Jesus, can we wonder that the Apostles sometimes referred to this event all the blessings of the Gospel, and represented it under those figures with which their religious and national peculiarities so abundantly supplied them? And may we not justly wonder that any persons submitting their faith to the Scriptures, should make the literal (and then inconsistent and even false) interpretation of such expressions, the foundation of their doctrines, without any adequate regard to the plain declarations of the Scriptures fully according with our best and most exalted ideas of the divine perfections and government?

While meditating upon the lengths to which