marked with such a variety of evidence as this. First, it was enrolled in the public records of Bethlehem, in consequence of Caesar's edict. Next, it was attested by an angel announcing it to the shepherds as they were guarding their flocks by night. Next, this testimony was confirmed by a host of angels, who celebrated it aloud in the hearing of the shepherds. Next, it was marked by a star in the east, which conducted the Magi from a distant country to the very spot, and caused those wise men to carry the report of it back to their own land. Next, it was ascertained by the inquiries of Herod, and the united testimony of all the chief priests and scribes, that Bethlehem was of necessity to be the place. And lastly, it was marked by that most extraordinary act of cruelty, the slaughter of all the infants in and around Bethlehem, " from two years old and under ;" which measure king Herod adopted, in order to ensure the destruction of Jesus, whom he dreaded as a future rival.
What a confirmation all this is of the Messiahship of Jesus, it is needless to observe.]
2. The character in which he should appear —
[He was to be " Ruler in Israel." If we look only at the external circumstances of his birth, we confess, he had not much the appearance of a " Ruler," seeing that his parents were in so low circumstances as to be able to get no better place for their accommodation than a stable, (though one would have thought that a person in Mary's situation would have found a thousand females ready to receive her into their houses ;) nor any better receptacle for the new-born infant than a man- ger. Nor in his subsequent life did there appear what we should have expected in a " Ruler." To the age of thirty he wrought at the trade of a carpenter : and during the three years of his ministry, he went about as a poor man who " had not where to lay his head." Least of all, in his last hours, did he look like a " Ruler ;" since he was treated with nothing but scorn, and put to death as the vilest of malefactors.
Yet even at all these periods, if we look more narrowly, we shall find circumstances that sufficiently declared his dignity. The songs of the heavenly choir at his birth, the miracles he wrought in his life, and the testimony borne to him by uni- versal nature at his death, all proclaimed, that, under the veil of his humiliation, there was a character more than human, and that he was not only a " Ruler," but " King of kings, and Lord of lords."
The Jews, fixing their eyes only on his external appearance, deny that this prophecy was fulfilled in him. But we answer, that " his kingdom was never intended to be of this world:" it is a spiritual dominion that he was sent to exercise ; and such