until this day remaineth untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, so that they cannot look upon him, whom their fathers pierced, as their Redeemer and their King; for it may be seen, that with the very passages which speak of his sufferings and death, are interwoven predictions of what they profess to expect, namely the Messiah's future triumphs and glories-" He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death." The veil then, we may hope, will at length be taken away, and Israel shall turn unto the Lord. Reflecting on their former unbelief, they will probably say O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?"

"They testified," says the apostle Peter, the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow;" whence we are led to understand, that a principal part at least of this glory, is the universal prevalence of his religion, and the bringing of all nations to the obedience of faith. These things werc the subjects of such earnest and diligent inquiry, and are described in such sublime and rapturous terms in the prophetic writings, that it is the less to be wondered at, that the introductory facts of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, are not more distinctly brought into view. We find nothing more immediately to this purpose than what is quoted by Peter and Paul from the 16th Psalm, where it is

said "Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave, nor suffer thy holy one to see corruption." And by Peter, from Psalm cx. "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." But if the testimony a priori to these great events be not so full and explicit as to some others, blessed be God, there is no deficiency of evidence as to their having really taken place-this is as ample as the warmest friend to the Christian cause can wish. I therefore pass on to the third particular, which was,

III. To propose the things, contained in the prophecies which are yet uncompleted, as the grounds of a consistent faith in the power and truth of the Almighty.

And here is a range for our benevolent feelings, our hopes, and wishes, and prayers, which needs not to be confined within any narrower limits, than those of the world itself, and its utmost duration. It did indeed comport with the divine economy and promises, that the Messiah should first be sent to the ⚫ house of Israel; and the intimations which Jesus gave to his apostles of a more extensive plan of salvation, were but few and distant. From tenderness to their prejudices, he forbore to press upon their attention a thing so foreign from all their ideas as the incorporation of the Gentiles with the ancient people of God; and when they learned, that even to these aliens from the commonwealth of Israel the gifts of the holy Spirit were communicated, they exclaimed with surprise-Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life!" Till then, they seem either to have overlooked, or too narrowly interpreted, the prophecies which spoke of these things; but we find them afterwards, on several occasions,

applying them in their proper sense, and acting in conformity. Since, therefore, the wall of partition was thus broken down, and we need no other testimony than our own experience, to the actual extension of gospel blessings to the nations of the earth at large, let us, for a few moments, attend to what the scriptures declare concerning their universality— their duration and their effects.

The universality of the gospel call was thus proclaimed by its appointed herald (Isa. xl. 3, 4, 5.): "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness— Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert an highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." (ch, xlix. 6. & seq.) "It is a light thing that thon shouldst be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." "Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth-in an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee, and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages." (ch. lii. 10, &c.) "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Behold my servant shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very

high-he shall sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him, for that which had not been told them shall they see, and that which they had not heard shall they consider." (ch. lv. 4, 5.) "Behold I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee." (ch. lxvi. 18.) "It shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory." (ch. Įxi. 11.) “ As the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations."

The duration, as well as the universality, of the Messiah's reign, is thus particularly specified by the prophet Daniel, ch. vii. 13, 14. "I saw in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him-his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." And to this agree those words of Isaiah, ch. ix. 7. which describe him as the "Father of an everlasting age, of the increase of whose government there should be no end to order and establish the throne and kingdom of David, with judgment and justice, from thenceforth, even for ever." The concluding clause de

clares, that the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this"-but the subordinate agent, upon whose shoulder the government should be laid, was a child to be born, a son to be given, and therefore could not be the everlasting father," in the sense in which those words are generally, but erroneously, understood. To this may be added what is said in Ps. lxxii. 17. of Solomon the son of David, but prospectively and more appropriately of David's greater son, "His name shall endure for ever his name shall be continued as long as the sun-and men shall be blessed in him—all nations shall call him blessed.”

Among the glorious effects of the Messiah's reign, we are taught by the same authority to believe, shall be the establishment of the worship of the One only living and true God, and of universal peace. The unity of Jehovah, and his exclusive title to the religious homage and adoration of all his rational offspring, are set forth, by Isaiah in particular, in the sublimest terms that the language of mortals is capable of supplying-Nor can our faith be exercised with greater reason and stronger assurance upon any subject, than that these grand and fundamental principles of all true religion shall finally take place of that gross idolatry into which many of the nations of the world are sunk, and that lamentable departure from them which prevails through the greater part of the professors of Christianity. While therefore, upon this ground, as Unitarians, we take our firm and decided stand, let us derive encouragement and support from such declarations as the following (Isa. xlv. 22, 23.) “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone