In explaining this prophecy, I shall call your at- tention to,
I. The person here predicted —
[It was the Lord Jesus Christ ; who was in a peculiar way " the seed of the woman .•" for he was formed in the worn!) simply by the agency of the Holy Ghost, and was horn of a pure virgin altogether without the intervention of man. And this was necessary : for, had he been born like other men, he would have been in the loins of Adam, like other men ; and therefore would, like them, have been partaker of his guilt and corruption. But, being the sole and immediate work- manship of God, he was absolutely perfect, and therefore capable of sustaining the office of a Saviour for fallen man : whereas, if he had been otherwise formed, he would have needed a Saviour for himself, and been incapable of effecting salvation for others. Thus you see, that when it was impos- sible for man to restore himself to God, God " laid help for him upon One that was Mighty ;" on one who, being God and man in one person, was able to effect for men all that their necessities required. As man, he could atone for sin ; and as God, he could render that atonement available for all who should trust in him.]
At the same time that this prophecy announced the Messiah's advent, it declared,
II. The conflicts he should sustain —
[Between Satan and him, God put an irreconcilable enmity; which, without a moment's intermission, has raged from that very time even to the present hour. Satan, having thus introduced sin into the world, instigated every child of Adam to the commission of it. And how far he prevailed, may be seen in this, that he induced the very first-born of man to murder his own righteous brother, for no other reason than because he was more righteous than himself. At times he had so entirely reduced the whole race of man to his dominion, that scarcely a righteous man existed upon earth. And, when God sent prophets to reclaim the world, Satan stirred up the people of every age and place to destroy them. At last, when the promised Seed himself came, Satan only exerted himself the more violently against him, if by any means he might prevail to destroy the Saviour himself. No sooner was Jesus born into the world, than Satan stimulated Herod to destroy all the males around Bethlehem from two years old and under, that so it might be impossible for Jesus to escape. And, when Jesus was entering upon his ministry, he urged him to cast himself down from a pinnacle of the