"And God spake to Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. And I appeared unto Abraham, and unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." Then, as to the Deity of the Messiah being a doctrine of Moses, let us read the following prophecy, which foretells him, if anything in his writings does predict him. "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken." Now, certainly no Jew could ever have deduced from this, that the Messiah should participate in the Divine Nature, since God was to raise him up from his brethren like unto Moses. Besides all these express declarations, how often is the personal unity of God asserted, by implication, in the Old Testament, and of course his personal plurality denied! In how many hundreds and hundreds of instances is Jehovah introduced as saying "I," "my," 66 me." These are all personal pronouns, and applicable to only one person. How many addresses are there in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms, to God in the singular number, with the pronouns "thee" and "thou"? Every one of these is an argument for the personal Unity of God, and goes to show, that any other doctrine was not so much as known or thought of. And yet we hear, at the present day, as Scriptural and legitimate, such ascriptions as this "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end." In the beginning! : When did it begin? There is nothing like this in the Old Testament, so there are near four thousand years taken at once from the beginning, which makes the beginning very late in the history of the world, according to my estimation. Then there was no glory ascribed to the Holy Ghost for nearly four hundred years after Christ, so that there are four hundred years taken from the beginning of Christianity, before this mode of worship came into practice in the Church. All we can say of the tripersonal nature of God, as an article of faith with the Jewish nation, is, that there is no trace of any such belief in the Old Testament, and that the general representation there is of one Person, and of one only. But the passage we are examining this evening, is considered as a prophecy of the incarnation of the second Person of a Trinity in Jesus of Nazareth. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." This is thought to prove, that Jesus of Nazareth had two natures, one human and the other divine. I shall now state my reasons for not acquiescing in such a conclusion. And my first reason is, that there is nothing in the passage which touches the nature of the child at all, or intimates that its nature has anything peculiar in it. It only gives its name. It will be recollected, that this prophecy is nowhere applied to Jesus, nor claimed for him, by any writer in the New Testament. "Unto us a child is born, unto The question instantly occurs, us a son is given." for their good. there shall be no Who gave it? The answer is, God. And for what purpose? "The government shall be upon his shoulder." He is to be a king, and rule over his people "Of the increase of his government end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it and establish it, with judgment and justice, from henceforth, even forever." Jehovah born, and seated upon the throne of David! Impossible. And is the prince, who is to be thus exalted, to do all this by his own power? By no means. "The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." The only thing, which has any appearance of intimating any superiority of nature in this child that is to be born, is, that he will order and establish his throne forever." But we find that this proves nothing, for the very same language is used by God to David concerning Solomon. "And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired, that thou must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son; and I will not take my mercy away from him, as I took it from him that was before thee; but I will settle him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forevermore.' If the words "forever," and "evermore," prove a divine nature in the child spoken of by Isaiah, so they must likewise prove a divine nature in Solomon; and if they do not in Solomon, neither do they in the son that is to be born, and the child that is given. It may be as well to remark, as we pass, the use of the terms "son of God," and "Father," as applied to God in correspondence with it. A pretty strong case might be made out from this passage for the divinity of Solomon. “I will be his Father, and he shall be my son, and I will establish his throne forever." Such passages ought to convince us how slow we ought to be in conforming the nature of things to the strong figures of the Bible. My second objection is, that the epithet "mighty God," is so far from proving anything as to the nature of the child to which it is prophetically given, that it is applied to Nebuchadnezzar, to departed spirits, and to brave men. It is perhaps material to say, that the particle "the," prefixed to mighty God, has no countenance in the original. The word el is not the especial name of Jehovah. It is from a root, It is from a root, which signifies strength and power, such as is usually possessed by the heroes of the early history of every country. It was therefore applied not only to God, but to heroes and to kings. It is applied to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The prophet is describing the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, and predicting that he would subdue Egypt. Ezekiel upbraids Pharaoh for his pride, and tells him that he shall be given into the hand of the mighty conqueror of the nations. "I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one," literally, mighty God, "of the nations, and he shall deal with him." If mighty god, proved a divine nature in the person to whom it was applied, then Nebuchadnezzar had a divine nature. In the next chapter it is applied by the prophet to the shades of departed kings and heroes, in the deep and dark abodes of the dead. Pharaoh is represented as going down to the place of the dead, a vast world under the earth, corresponding in extent with the space above the earth, and there he is met by the great and powerful who had gone before him. "The strong among the mighty shall speak to thee out of the midst of hell;" literally, "the mighty gods shall speak to thee out of the midst of hell." Now it is in vain to speak of mighty gods being in hell, but yet it must be so, if el gebor is made to mean God, in the ninth chapter of Isaiah. Another instance of the use of this word for human beings, when no divinity can possibly be intended, is found in the forty-first chapter of Job. Speaking of the Behemoth, he says: "When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid; " literally, "the mighty gods are afraid." Now, no one would think of interpreting this to mean persons possessing a divine nature. It merely means the most courageous of mankind, the mightiest heroes, are afraid to encounter Behemoth when he is roused up. Now it is the same term precisely, which is applied to the child who is to be born, and to exercise the kingly function, and it designates one of the qualities which is to fit him for the office, that he is to be a hero, to lead in difficulty and danger. A third objection is found in the epithet, Everlasting Father. This proves too much for Trinitarianism itself. That theory affirms the incarnation of the second Per |