Elijah's advent in john baptist.
Matt. xvii. 10 — 13. And his Disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the Scribes that Elias must first come ? And Jesus ansioered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him 7iot, hut have done unto him. whatsoever they listed. Likeioise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the Disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.
IT is desirable that the evidences of our holy religion should be candidly examined, and clearly understood. The three favoured Disciples, Peter, James, and John, had just been admitted to behold a most extraordinary vision of their Lord in a state of transcendent glory, and had received from heaven this direct and audible testimony to his Messiahship, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased : hear ye him." They had seen, also, Moses and Ehas on the holy mount with him, both of them in their embodied state, sent from heaven to converse with him on the subject of his future sufferings and glory ^ Now, it had been foretold that Elias, i. e. Elijah, should come as the forerunner of the Messiah^; and an expectation of his arrival at that time very generally prevailed among the Jewish people. Yet the Disciples were
a Luke ix. 30, 31. ^ Mai. iv. .5.
forbidden by their Lord to report what they had seen and heard, till all the other things which had been predicted respecting his death and resurrection should have been accomplished. The reasons of this prohibi- tion the disciples could not comprehend; since, in effect, it prevented them from giving to the Jews a very strong testimony to the truth of their Master's divine mission. Hence they asked of their Lord an explanation of this matter: " Why, then, say the Scribes that Elias must first come," when we are not at liberty to attest his advent ? Here was a real difficulty ; and it is felt no less by the Jews at this day than it was at that time ; it being with them a very principal objection against the Messiahship of Jesus, that Elias, who was fore- told as his harbinger, has never yet arrived. Let us then consider,
L The difficulty proposed —
Nothing can be more clear than that, if Christ be the Messiah, every prophecy concerning him must be fulfilled—
[St. Peter, affirming that " he and his fellow- Apostles had not followed cunningly-devised fables," appeals to this very evidence which he and they had been favoured with, when, on Mount Tabor, they were made " eye-witnesses of Christ's Majesty, and heard from the excellent glory the voice which bare witness to him." But, aware that they might be suspected of having conspired together to propagate and maintain a false- hood in confirmation of some favourite system of their own, he appeals further to the " more sure word of prophecy," which never did, nor could, issue from men, (since it was delivered at such distant periods and places as to preclude a possibility of a conspiracy between the persons delivering the predictions,) but which proceeded entirely from the Holy Spirit of God, who, at many distant ages, stirred up and inspired holy men to speak the things which should afterwards, in due season, be brought to pass*^. And doubtless prophecy, taken in this view, is the strongest of all evidences, that the religion established by it, proceeds from God. On the other hand, if there were so much as a single prophecy unfulfilled, that one failure would be sufficient to subvert all the fabric that was built on ten thousand prophecies ; since God cannot but fulfil his own word, " nor can so much as a jot or tittle of it ever fail" of its accom-
c 2 Pet. i. 16 — 21. This I judge to be the true scope and mean- ing of this difficult passage.