thoughts of all men. (Rom. ii. 16; John xii. 48; Matt. xxv. 31.) All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass: the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which is preached unto us.-It is this word which will judge us.

We shall now proceed to complete our proofs, by sketching under this point of view the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us follow him from the age of twelve years to his descent into the tomb, or rather to his ascent in the clouds; and in all the course of his incomparable career, let us see what the Scriptures were in the estimation of Him who "upholdeth all things by the word of his power."

In the first place, observe him when twelve years old. He has increased, like a child of humanity, in wisdom and stature; he is in the midst of the doctors, and his answers amaze all who hear him; for (said they) he knows the Scriptures without having studied them. (John vii. 15.)

Observe him at the time of entering upon his ministry. He is filled with the Holy Ghost; he is led into a wilderness, there to sustain, like the first Adam in Eden, a mysterious conflict with the powers of darkness. The unclean spirit ventures to approach, and seeks to overthrow him; but how does the Son of God, he who was come to destroy the works of the devil, resist him? With the Bible only. The sole weapon in his Divine hands during this threefold assault, was the sword of the Spirit, the Bible. Three times successively he quotes the book of Deuteronomy (Deut. viii. 3; vi. 16; vi. 13; x. 20; Matt. iv. 1-11): at each new temptation, He, the Word made flesh, defends himself by a sentence from the oracles of God, and even by a sentence whose whole force lies in the employment of one or two words: in the first place, of

these words, bread alone; afterwards of these, thou shalt not tempt the Lord; and finally of these words, thou shalt worship God.

What an example for us! His only answer, his only defence, is "It is written." "Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written;"-and as soon as this terrible and mysterious conflict ended, angels came and ministered unto him.

But let us further and particularly remark, that of such authority is each word in the Scriptures in the estimation of the Son of Man, that the unclean spirit himself (a being so mighty for evil, who knew the Saviour's estimate of the words of the Bible) could not devise a more secure way of operating upon his will, than by citing a verse of the ninety-first Psalm; and immediately Jesus, to confound him, contents himself with once more replying, "It is written."

Thus commenced his ministry-by the use of the Scriptures. And thus it was that, soon afterwards, he entered upon his prophetic ministry-by the use of the Scriptures.

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Let us further follow him when, engaged in his work, goes from place to place doing good; in poverty, always exercising his power for the relief of others, and never for himself. He speaks, and things have being; he casts out devils, stills the tempest, and raises the dead. But in the midst of all these marvels, observe how great is his regard for the Scriptures: The Word is always with him. He bears it about, not in his hands, (he knows it. entirely,) but in his memory. Observe him, when he speaks of it: when he unfolds the sacred volume, it is as if a door in heaven were opened, to enable us to hear the voice of Jehovah. With what reverence, with what subjection, does he set forth its contents, commenting upon, and quoting them word by word! This was now all his businessto heal, and to preach the Scriptures; as it was afterwards to die and accomplish them!

Observe him, "as his custom was," entering a synagogue on the sabbath-day; for (we are told) "he taught in their assemblies." (Luke iv. 15, 16.) He enters that of Nazareth. What does he there? He, "the eternal Wisdom, whom Jehovah possessed from everlasting, when there were no depths, before the mountains were settled, or the hills brought forth" (Prov. viii. 22-25): he rises from his seat, takes the Bible, opens at Isaiah, and reads a few sentences; he then closes the book, sits down, and while the eyes of all assembled were fixed on him he says, 'This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.' (Luke iv. 21.) Observe him traversing Galilee. What does he there? Still occupied with "the volume of the book," explaining it line after line, and word by word, and claiming our respect for its least expressions as much as he would for the Law of the "Ten Commandments" uttered upon Mount Sinai.

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Observe him again in Jerusalem at the pool of Bethesda. What does he call upon the people to do?— "Search the Scriptures." (John v. 39.)

Observe him in the holy place, in the midst of which he does not shrink from declaring, "that in this place there is One greater than the temple.” (Matt. xii. 6.) Follow him before the Pharisees and Sadducees while he alternately rebukes both, as he had done Satan, in these words, "It is written."

Hear him answering the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection of the body. How does he refute them? By ONE SINGLE WORD from an historical passage in the Bible; by a single verb in the present tense, instead of that same verb in the past. "Ye do greatly err, (said he to them,) BECAUSE YE KNOW NOT the Scriptures." "Have ye not read what God has declared unto you, in saying, I am the God of Abraham?" It is thus that he proves to them the doctrine of the resurrection. God, on Mount Sinai, 400 years after the death of Abraham, said to Moses, not "I was,"

but "I am the God of Abraham." (Matt. xxii. 31, 32.) I am so now. There is therefore a resurrection; for God is not the God of a few handfuls of dust, of the dead, of annihilated humanity: he is the God of the living. Those you speak of, therefore, live before Him.

Observe him afterwards among the Pharisees. It is still by the letter of the word that he confounds them.

Some few who had already followed him to the borders of Judæa beyond Jordan, came and inquired his doctrines respecting marriage and divorce. What did the Lord Jesus do? He might certainly have answered with authority, and given his own laws. Is he not

himself King of kings and Lord of lords? But not so: it is to the Bible he appeals in order to show the foundation of the doctrine, and this he does in a few simple words taken from a purely historical passage in the book of Genesis. (Gen. i. 27; ii. 24.) "HAVE YE NOT READ, that He who made them at the beginning, made them male and female; so that they are no longer two, but one flesh? What therefore God has joined, let not man sever." (Matt. xix. 4—6.)

But hear him, especially, when in the temple he desires to prove to other Pharisees, from the Scriptures, the Divinity of the expected Messiah. Here again, in order to demonstrate it, he lays stress upon the use of A SINGLE WORD, selected from the Book of Psalms. "If Messiah be the Son of David (he observes), how then doth David BY THE SPIRIT call him LORD, when (in Psalm cx.) he said, Jehovah said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand? If David call him Lord, how is he his Son?" (Matt. xxii. 43.)

How was it, that among the Pharisees there were none to answer him? What! would you insist upon a single word, and this too in a sentence taken from an eminently lyric composition, in which the royal poet might without risk indulge a fervid style, and use exaggerated expressions, and words which doubtless he had not theologically weighed in his mind ere he put

them into his psalmody? Would you pursue the method, at once fanatical and servile, of minutely interpreting each expression? Would you revere the Scriptures even to the very letter? Would you ground a doctrine upon a word?

Yes, answers the Saviour, I would-yes, I would rest on a word, because that word is from God, and with one word he created light. To cut short all your objections, I declare to you that it was BY THE SPIRIT that David wrote all the words of his Psalms; and I ask you, how, if the Messiah is his Son, David could BY THE SPIRIT call him Lord, when he said, "Jehovah said unto my Lord?"

Students of the Word of God, and you especially who are designed to be its ministers, and who, as a preparation for preaching it, desire, in the first place, to receive it into an honest and good heart, see what, in the estimation of your Master, was each utterance, each word of the book of God. Go therefore and do likewise!

But there is more. Let us further hear him, even on his cross. He there made his soul an offering for sin; all his bones were out of joint; he was poured out like water; his heart was like wax, melted in the midst of his bowels; his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; and he was about to render his spirit to his Father. (Ps. xxii. 16-18.) But what did he first do? He strove to rally his expiring energies to recite a Psalm which the church of Israel had sung at her festivals through a thousand years, and which records in succession all his sufferings and prayers, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me")? He did even more; and let us well remark it. There remained one little word of Scripture unaccomplished: vinegar was to be given him on that cross. The Holy Spirit had declared it, in Psalm lxix., a thousand years before. "After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scrip