Jews looked forward to the universality of their religion, their expectations relating to their Messiah were exceedingly erroneous. The only way then known or conceived of among men of extending the influence of one nation over another was by conquest. And hence the Jews supposed that their Messiah was to be a temporal king, and by arms and warfare was to extend his dominion over the earth. Their Messiah was to be a Messiah of conquest. This, of course, from the nature of things, was impossible. True religion cannot be propagated by conquest. Invasion and violence are the last things to produce conviction. True religion can be propagated only by conversion, by moral means, by testimony, by example. The only Messiah that was possible was a Messiah of conversion. The only way in which the true religion, which was that of the Jews, could be spread over the earth, was by divesting it of its Jewish rites and ceremonies, and commending it to the acceptance of the nations by arguments addressed to their intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature.

To accomplish this high purpose, for which the world had been preparing from the beginning, nothing can be conceived more precisely calculated than the mission, the character, the life, the teaching, the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. His life was perfect, his credentials sure, his doctrines effectually extracted the pure essence of true religion from the rites and ceremonies, the narrowness and prejudices, of Judaism, and cast it in such a form, and connected it with such a simple ritual, that it might become the religion of the world. It

was in this sense that he came, "not to destroy the Law and the prophets, but to fulfil." The words then of Paul and of Christ may be reconciled. The prophecies of the Messiah and his kingdom had existed since Abraham, but had not been understood. Paul had been ignorant of their true meaning, because he had adopted the expectations of his countrymen of a conquering Messiah. His own conversion, and his mission to the Gentiles as a preacher, and not as a military commander, revealed the whole, and his life was consumed in the endeavor to carry out the great purpose of Providence, and his mind was filled with wonder, and his lips with praise, at the contemplation of the grand design.

This, then, was probably the nature of Christ's conversations with his disciples after his resurrection, the explanation of those prophecies, which they as Jews had misunderstood, — that it was necessary, not only according to Scripture, but the nature of things, that the Messiah, instead of conquering the world, must die to the earthly hope of his countrymen, and, by rising from the dead, bring life and immortality to light, and thus become the Messiah of the world.

DISCOURSE XVI.

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION.

I HAVE YET MANY THINGS TO SAY UNTO YOU, BUT YE CANNOT BEAR THEM NOW. - John xvi. 12.

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CHRIST here states a principle of wide application to divine revelation, that it is imparted, not fully and all at once, but gradually, in measures suited to the present enlightenment of the human understanding. This is a very important principle in the interpretation of Scripture, and becomes more and more important with the increasing light of science and general intelligence. It is the object of revelation to give mankind a knowledge of theology and religion which they could not have obtained by the unaided use of their natural powers. It was important to human welfare that such aid should have been given to man in the earlier ages of the world. But it was not the purpose of revelation to give to mankind supernatural knowledge of physical science. That was left to the natural progress of the human mind, to the gradual developments of experiment and investigation.

This fact, however, gives rise to no little embarrass

ment in the interpretation of the Bible. Religion cannot stand alone. It has innumerable relations to physical science. A book treating of religion must often mention matters relating to the natural universe. In the absence of true knowledge, there must of course be extant a variety of floating opinions upon scientific subjects, some true and some false. In teaching the truths of religion, the prophet has before him two ways of proceeding: either to use the common modes of speech on scientific subjects, without affirming them to be either true or erroneous, or he must set men right on scientific subjects before he can begin to teach them on religion. If he were to teach them true science first, he would exhaust his time and strength before he could begin to enlighten them on his real mission. And such is the strength of human prejudice on merely scientific subjects, that a prophet who taught true philosophy would be almost as likely to die a martyr's death, as the inspired teacher who should attempt to promulgate a better knowledge of God and the nature and destiny of the soul. At any rate, the union of scientific and religious prejudices would be sufficient to crush any revelation of religious truth not upheld by perpetual miracle.

Accordingly, the prophets who have been commissioned by Almighty God to enlighten the human mind upon the subject of religion, have left human science untouched; they used the common language, and even conformed their teaching to the common apprehension; they have been contented to teach true religion, and leave science to the care of human and uninspired intelligenee.

Accordingly, when we open the Bible, we find the

sublimest and truest ideas of God in connection with the crudest and most erroneous conceptions of geology, astronomy, and even geography. The science of the first chapters of Genesis is that of the earliest infancy of mankind; but its ethical and theological doctrines are most profound,―infinitely superior to the best conceptions of the wisest of the heathen sages. We have the doctrines of one spiritual God, the almighty, all-wise, and immutable Creator and Governor of the world, the spirituality, the freedom, the accountability of the soul, taught in connection with the representation of the sun and moon as lamps, fixed in the ceiling of the sky, at no very great distance from the earth, instead of being, as they are, vast bodies, almost inconceivably remote; and heaven itself is called a solid partition, dividing the waters of the earth from the waters which are above the earth, and which sometimes descend in rain.

Just so it is when we open the New Testament. We find the same accommodation to the scientific ideas of the time. We find a higher and more perfect revelation of religious truth, many express improvements and amendments of the old doctrines, but connected with language implying the truth of opinions on the nature of diseases, the physical structure of the world, and the interpretation of the language of the Old Testament, which the light of modern science rejects and places among the opinions of the time, and which Divine Providence did not see fit to correct, but left to the gradual amendment of human investigation.

It was the universal opinion in the time of Christ,