exercises of which were so calm and unexciting. That the false Christs of a period subsequent to that of our Lord met with adherents, is not wonderful, since they were usually martial impostors, and could scarcely fail to attract the enthusiastic and sanguine. But the religion of Jesus, on the contrary, had now been developed in the quietness of its carriage, the amplitude of its beneficence, the softness of its forbearance, and the subdued style of its suffering. Qualities of this order could never have succeeded in winning the adherence of a Hebrew, had it not been for a strong and established assurance that its author was the Christ of God.

But the Deity of Jesus, in all ages essential to saving faith, required in the creed of the Jewish Christian unusual prominence. A Greek might abandon his philosophy, upon the announcement of a theological system from a divinely commissioned though only human Prophet, since this would be the exchange of uncertain speculation for truth substantially accredited. But the Jew had before his eyes a religion confessedly divine. He had in Moses a Prophet of the most illustrious character; one whom God had honoured beyond the sons of men. He had a ritual originated, and from the most venerable antiquity sanctioned, by Jehovah. Supposing him to have admitted the Christly dignity of our Lord, his preferences of Christianity on that ground alone could not be so strong but that they would be perpetually liable to successful attack. In his case, the alternative might well demand serious reflection, and even hesitation; and after having made a profession of Christianity, should he lapse to Judaism, still he assumed a religion instituted and honoured of God, and which for ages had been the central, if not the exclusive, spiritual light of a darkened world.

Under such circumstances, there was but one doctrine

which no reasoning could resist. Let it be allowed and maintained that Christ was God, and controversy was at an end. Jehovah could have no competitor nor rival. His demands upon the faith of the hesitating professor were absolute and supreme. Before such a revelation

of the Messiah, every thing else fell into shadow and insignificancy. All glory was lost before Him whose glory was infinite. All prescription failed before Him whose "goings forth were from eternity." All prophetic vision was as nothing in the presence of Him who dwelt in light inaccessible. Priests, and Prophets, and Kings, and sages, were not to be seen in the resplendent manifestation of the Creator; and the man who before might have hesitated or wavered, upon the full and immovable conviction of the proper Divinity of Jesus became steadfast in the faith, and prepared to resist even unto blood.

This then, in general, is the argument of the Apostle. It assumes several forms, according to the peculiar claims of Judaism to which he has to reply. The divinity both of the Jewish and the Christian faith is taken for granted, and that our Lord was the Messiah is not treated as a disputable subject. But it was alleged that former revelations had been administered, not only by the most illustrious Prophets, but even by angelic intelligences. This latter was no Jewish figment, as some modern critics have rashly supposed. The fact is referred to in the sixty-eighth Psalm, and is admitted by St. Paul himself.* It was his business, therefore, in the present case, to demonstrate the superiority of our Lord to angels, which supplies the subject of the first and second chapters of his Epistle.

In contrasting Christ and Moses, which is the second

* Psalm lxviii. 17; Gal. iii. 19.

branch of the Apostle's discourse, the same argument would, of course, be appropriate and conclusive.

And as from the Deity of our Lord was to be inferred the dignity of his commission as the medium of communication from God to man, so was it equally demonstrative of his glory as the medium of communication from man to God. To regard his priesthood as an arbitrary appointment of the divine Sovereign, cannot consist with a due appreciation of its value; but considering him as sanctified to that service in his complex character, on account of and in dependence upon his preexistent Divinity, there is an immediate impression of its immeasurable superiority, and of the infinite value of its oblation. Hence is derived the assurance of its unfailing prevalence, glory, and perpetuity.

Finally, from the Deity of the Messiah alone was inferrible the heinousness of apostacy from the Christian faith. No other consideration could have wrought the necessary steadfastness and caution in the minds of the Hebrew converts. But bearing this in mind, a relapse to Judaism, which otherwise might have been deemed a venial error, became confessedly a crime of the most fearful enormity.

To a brief consideration of these several aspects of the Apostle's argument, the four sections following will be

devoted.

SECTION II.

THE SUPERIORITY OF CHRIST TO ANGELS.

ASSUMING the views of the foregoing section to be correct, it was necessary that our Apostle, in proposing his subject, should be peculiarly careful in his selection of terms; and especially in his choice of that designation of our Lord upon which his discourse was to be founded. The individuals addressed, whether regarded as Jews or as Christians, were not strangers to scriptural phraseology, who might be supposed likely to gather the sense of a writer rather from the general scope of his reasoning than from any settled signification of the terms employed. To them the evangelic, and especially the Messianic nomenclature was sufficiently clear and definite; and in their case, therefore, selectness was peculiarly necessary; since, by the employment of a designation either inaccurate in itself or intimately associated with erroneous preconceptions, the purpose of the entire treatise might be defeated, and an obscurity and uncertainty cast over every part. With these circumstances before him, to the force of which he could not be insensible, and with an unrestricted choice from the whole of the appellations of the Messiah, the Apostle selects, and without reserve or hesitation employs, the unqualified title SON.*

* In the first example of the use of this title (Heb. i. 2) it occurs without the article; a circumstance, I believe, except where grammatical reasons interfere, without parallel in the New Testament epistles; and a circumstance the more remarkable because it detracts from the harmony of the passage. In the former part, the Apostle says that God spake by the Prophets; (ἐν τοῖς προφήταις;) in the latter, that now he has spoken by the Son. (¿v viņš.) Such

Unless, therefore, our exposition of his design is essentially incorrect, this title is expressive of sovereign Divinity. And this will be the more evident if we recollect that, beyond all other persons, to the Christians of Jerusalem it was pregnant with indelible historic association. Some of them had been contemporary with, and perhaps spectators of, the last agony of Jesus; and who shall say that there were not among them those in whom his dying prayer had been answered, and who, like their illustrious instructer, had been persecutors before they became believers? Be that as it may, to the church at Jerusalem it must have been an unerasable recollection, that our Lord was condemned by their countrymen and rulers, "because he made himself THE SON OF GOD."* The lofty sense in which he employed the title, and in which it was interpreted by his judges, must to them have been as familiar as household words. The affirmation of the divine filiation could not fail to recal, with affecting vividness, the sad yet glorious scenes with which it was originally associated, and the triumphant vindication of the Deity of Jesus, developed through every subsequent period.

a variation cannot be referred to inadvertence or caprice; and the expression is therefore to be regarded as a Jewish use of the title, in which it partakes of the nature of a proper name. Hence by the Hebrews it would be understood as intended to direct their attention, in the first place, exclusively to the Divinity of our Lord. This purpose being accomplished, the Apostle resumes the ordinary evangelical employment of the term.

Professor Stuart, from the omission of the article, argues, not quite fairly, against the correctness and value of theories upon the subject. He adds, however, the following remark, which is sufficient at least to show the inappropriateness of his previous reasoning. "Perhaps vi, in this case, may be employed as a kind of proper name, (just as we now use it,) and on this account it omits the article by a license usual in proper names."

John xix. 7.