SERMON LII.

THE INDEX SURE.-No. II.

Genesis xlix. 10.

The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.

We can conceive of few things in the creation in which there is more of the sublime, than in a prediction like this, given several thousand years since, and recorded for the successive generations to read, while they witness its fulfilment. There is seen in such an object, concentrated all that wisdom and power that built the universe. He who can predict what shall be, must know, as is said of God "the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not." And to foretell with certainty he must have power to bring to pass. It involves, too, a divine purpose, by which all the events that are future are made certain. Under a government where things were left to the control of chance, or accident, there could be no such certainty, even if we suppose the existence of a mind that, can foresee the most distant tracts of time. Hence, to contemplate a subject like this, gives to the mind a sublimity of elevation, and tends to fill it with adoring thoughts of the Creator. And still it feels its own littleness; for where there is so much of God, all beside is insignificant and worthless. And there are no contemplations more calculated to soothe and comfort the believing mind. He who can know and

predict all the events that will happen, can provide for his people in all the emergencies into which they may be brought.

In illustrating the text, in the former discourse, it was my design, first, to explain the terms; secondly, to show that there did continue a sceptre and a law-giver in the tribe of Judah down to the advent of the Redeemer; thirdly, to show that from and after that time there did cease all authority and power in that branch of the house of Israel; and, finally, that to the Lord Jesus the people have been gathered, as it was predicted they should be, to the promised Shiloh. What remains now is, that we make some practical use of the whole. I would then

REMARK,

1. The subject will lead us to admire the divine conduct. Where he requires faith, there he accumulates evidence in such profusion, that every mind not decided. ly hostile to truth, must yield its assent. He had promised the world that he would send them a Redeemer ; hence, when that Redeemer should come, he would require all to receive him, and that their faith might not want for evidence, he poured in upon the man Christ Jesus, the concentrated light of a thousand ages. And it ought to cover the unbeliever with shame, to know that such was the precision with which he was designated, that even devils know him. The first promise was, that he should be the seed of the woman. And at that time it would have been of no use to have made the promise more definite. At the time of the deluge it was rendered certain, without any specific promise, that the Saviour must be of the family of Noah. But his family soon became so numerous, that the believer could not know where to look for the promised seed. He might

be born near the spot where the ark rested, or in some far-distant isle of the ocean. Hence, God made choice of Abraham, and gave him the promise that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed; and directed him to go to that land, where he would still farther limit the line of descent, and where the Saviour should himself be born. When Ishmael was born, Abraham doubtless supposed that he was the promised heir, and he and the world might have looked for the Saviour in his family, had not God given him another son, and promised that in Isaac should his seed be called. In his family again the promise was confirmed to Jacob, and in his to Judah, and in his to David. This was the last limitation as to the line of descent, and the time of the promise was now so nigh that no farther designation was necessary. Here, then, we see pointed out very distinctly the family in which the Messiah should be

born.

As to the time, it was to be, according to the prediction recorded in Daniel, four hundred and ninety years from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem. It was to be while yet there was a sceptre and a law-giver in Judah.*

As to the land of his nativity, this was marked out

* The time of his coming was still farther designated by the appearance of John the Baptist: "Behold," said the last but one of the prophets, in the very last words he uttered, "Behold, I send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." And God himself assures us, that this promise of Elias met its fulfilment in John. Thus, lest the precise time should not be recollected, one was sent before him, crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make his paths straight." From the multitudes that came to hear him, it becomes certain that John must have given a very extended notice that the Messiah was at hand.

and consecrated to the Lord ages beforehand, in the communications made to Abraham. But lest the extent of Canaan should still cast a cloud upon the promise, the very town was named in which he should be born:"Thou Bethlehem, Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto us that is to rule in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."

That still there might be no room for mistake, the angels came from heaven to tell the shepherds that he was born, and to guide them to his humble lodgement. To the wise men of the east there appeared a star that moved before them, and came and stood over the place where the young child lay. Even the Roman emperor must be induced at that juncture to make a decree that all the world should be taxed, that that decree might operate to bring the blessed Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, previously to the birth of the Saviour. Thus wonderfully minute were the pointings of heaven to the infant Redeemer.

And those who had not opportunity to visit his manger, might open the pages of prophecy and read there his character and his history, and rest assured that he who was reported to have been born in Bethlehem was indeed the promised Shiloh. He was to be peculiarly a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: despised and rejected of men. He was to bear our griefs, and carry our sorrows; was to be wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities. When oppressed and afflicted he was not to open his mouth. Men were to cast lots for his vesture. He was to hang on a tree, but not a bone of him was to be broken. He was to make his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. It was even predicted, that men should buy

the potter's field with the thirty pieces of silver, the price at which he was valued. After all this minuteness of prediction, how impossible does it seem that any one should doubt whether he were the promised Messiah. And how must we admire the divine conduct and goodness in thus giving us many signs, when, if he had given us but one, he might have condemned us if we had not believed. It would seem that it must have been the purpose of God, that no nation or individual then or since, should be able to resist the flood of light that then poured in upon the Saviour of the world, in every inch of his way from the manger to the tomb. Had his name been written the instant he appeared, on the disk of every star; had the finger of a man's hand appeared instantly in every quarter of the heavens, pointing to the immortalized manger; or had a voice said in every ear all that was told the watchful shepherds, the evidence of the ingress of the Son of God would hardly have been more complete.

It must not be forgotten that all these intimations respecting the coming Re 'eemer, had been written in a book, and lodged in the temple of God, and read in the synagogues throughout all the holy land, every Sabbath day for many hundred years; and we can hardly believe that the report had not penetrated into every section of the globe, where there was a sinner to need an interest in the Redeemer's blood.

2. How provoking must it be to God, when, after all this, men reject his Son. To all who lived in Palestine, all will agree that the sin of unbelief was enormous. They were in the very spot where all this light concentrated. They had read the prophecies-had seen the signs-had beheld the events of Providence shaping themselves to his approach, and probably found it im