APPENDIX I.

In order to illustrate the view of the interpretation of Scripture prophecies offered in the foregoing Sermons, I have taken some of the most remarkable of those which are quoted in the New Testament as referring to our Lord, or to his Kingdom; and have endeavoured to see how their application can be explained on the principles above laid down; so that the reader will thus be enabled to judge for himself of the soundness of the system which I have followed.

For this purpose I have selected those prophecies or those parts of the Old Testament, which have been applied to the times of the Messiah by our Lord himself.

Of these passages, three, in all probability, Isaiah vi. 9, 10. xxix. 13. and Psalm viii. 2. may be regarded as

merely describing similar feelings to those which our Lord saw in the men of his own generation. Isaiah was told to say to the Jews of his time, "Hear ye indeed, but understand not," &c. and this might be addressed with equal truth to the Jews in the time of our Lord. These passages then do not seem to be referred to as being strictly speaking prophetical.

Psalm xxxv. 19, requires, however, to be noticed more particularly. The Psalmist says, "Let not them that are mine enemies wrongfully rejoice over me, neither let them wink with the eye that hate me without a cause." Our Lord's words are, "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause." That is to say, "I have dealt with this people as the prophets my forerunners, and in a certain degree my representatives, dealt with them formerly. As they offered good and received in return evil, so that the hatred shown to them was without a cause, thus, but much more perfectly, was it to be with me. I was to fulfil that example which the prophets set in old times, and therefore I spake as never man spake, and did works such as no other man did, that I too might be hated without a cause as they were." With equal propriety our Lord might, I conceive, have referred, if he had so chosen, to the hundred and twentieth Psalm, where there is a similar sentiment, "I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war;" or to any other passages in which the prophets expressed a similar language. And our Lord's meaning in saying, " This cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law," is merely this, that as he was to fulfil all righteousness, so

in whatever respects the prophets had duly performed their work, in these they were but types of him, and he also was to do as they had done.

A somewhat similar explanation may be given of the reference to Psalm xli. 9. "I know whom I have chosen," said our Lord, "but I did it that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me." That is, "in choosing such a man as Judas to be my disciple, it is not that I did not know what he was and would be; but that in this respect also I might be as the prophets were who went before me ; that with me as with them, my foes should be they of mine own household." One of the bitterest of innocent sufferings is to be betrayed by those to whom we have shown kindness and confidence; and as this was the portion of God's imperfect servants the prophets, so also Christ was pleased that it should be his portion also. And as our Lord referred to the forty-first Psalm, so might he equally I believe have referred to the fifty-fifth Psalm, ver. 12, 13, 14, where the Psalmist again speaks of the peculiar misery of being persecuted and injured by those whom he had regarded as his friends.

But having noticed one passage of the Psalms which has been applied to Judas in the New Testament, I may perhaps here anticipate the mention of two others, which are applied also to him by St. Peter, Acts i. 20. These are, Psalm lxix. 25, and cix. 8. They are both taken from Psalms which contain the strongest denunciations of evil against the enemies or persecutors of the Psalmist; denunciations so strong, that many persons, as is well known, shrink from repeating them, when they occur in the Service of the Church. And if we regard merely the mind of the human writer of these Psalms, it is probable that his feelings did partake of those of the men of old

time, who said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy." But that vehemence of denunciation, or of imprecation as we may truly call it, which God's servants in a more perfect dispensation could not have repeated in their own persons without sin, expresses in no hyperbolical language what is the extremity of judgment reserved for the enemies of God. For the human enemies of the imperfect servants of God there were probably circumstances of extenuation which made the curses, as applied to them historically, only applicable partially and with abatements. But for those who are the enemies of God's perfect servant, and whom his unerring judgment shall declare to have been so, the fearful language of these Psalms is not exaggerated; and Judas had been so marked out by Christ's own sentence as being a son of perdition, that St. Peter considered the curses of Scripture to belong to him, no less than its blessings belonged to those who through Christ were become the sons of God,

The passages from Malachi, which our Lord applies to John the Baptist, offer I think a remarkable contrast to most of the other prophecies referred to in the New Testament. Generally speaking, the prophecies are applied in their highest sense, distinct from the first and lower meaning, which may be supposed to have been more immediately present to the mind of their human author. But the passages in Malachi appear to have been fulfilled in John the Baptist in their first and immediate sense: and therefore, according to the general analogy of Scripture, there would be an higher sense in which John was not their fulfilment, but in which they will be fulfilled hereafter. For to Malachi, writing after Israel had been restored from Babylon, and closing as he did the volume of ancient prophecy, the immediate

object of hope was the coming of our Lord in the flesh; there was no temporal deliverance intervening, as with those who prophesied during the Captivity, which might in the first instance awaken hope, although it was unable to satisfy it. The day of the Lord was first of all Christ's coming in the flesh, and the messenger, who in this sense prepared the way before him, was John the Baptist. But as there is yet to come a day of the Lord in a yet higher sense, a great day and a dreadful, when Christ shall come again and shall finally establish his kingdom, so it is to be expected that Elijah the prophet will again prepare his way before him; that preachers of repentance, whether one or more, in the spirit and power of Elijah, shall arouse men to a livelier sense of the depth and breadth of the Christian law, lest Christ come and smite the earth with a curse.

Five passages in the Prophets are applied by our Lord to himself. One of these is Isaiah lxi. 1, in which the prophet declares himself to be anointed and commissioned to proclaim a period of deliverance and of blessing. Now allowing that here, as in other similar prophecies, the prophet did not know distinctly "what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in him did signify," so that he connected the period of highest blessings with that of the return of Israel from Babylon; yet the language is so magnificent, so applicable in its full meaning to the one perfect Saviour and to Him only, that we can well understand how justly our Lord might say after reading these words in the synagogue at Nazareth," This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears."

A second passage is Psalm cx. 1. This our Lord quotes as being understood by the Jews generally to refer to the Messiah. It is the fashion, I believe, with the modern Jews to suppose it to be addressed by the Psalmist, whom

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