From regarding the crucifixion as the saddest outrage of justice, the most heinous insult to God, the most lamentable example of the desperation of human depravity which the world had ever witnessed, and the extremest wrong to the most illustrious individual who had ever appeared in human form; he came to proclaim it an act the most righteous, a penal visitation the most justly merited, an avengement of the insulted majesty of heaven the most worthy of applause and imitation. Apart from all religious restraints, such a change could not occur except in defiance of the motives by which men are ordinarily bound to perseverance and constancy. Obstinacy, the fear of shame, the sense of consistency, the associations of friendship, in the absence of higher impulses, might have operated to prevent such a defection. It must, therefore, have taken place in spite of all earthly considerations, of all that the meditations on a future world could suggest, of all that God or man could present to obstruct a depravity and ingratitude so headlong and remorseless.

But the great palliation of the sin of the Jewish rulers was their ignorance; a plea alleged in their behalf by St. Peter, and by our Lord himself; and offered by St. Paul, subsequently to his conversion, to extenuate his own crime in the persecutions of Christ and his church.* On the other hand, it was the special aggravation of the apostate's guilt, that he repeated the sin deliberately, with the most ample information on the subject, and in the broadest light of evidence which heaven or earth could supply. Nor was it a despite merely of the arguments addressed to the understanding of which he was guilty. His affections and his heart had been convinced and won by those delightful

* Luke xxiii. 34; Acts iii. 17; 1 Cor. ii. 8; Comp. Acts xxvi. 9; 1 Tim. i. 13.

evidences which the secret experience of Christianity alone can supply. He had known that Jesus was the Son of God from the actual participation of the blessings resulting from his accepted oblation and his glorious priesthood; the sanctifying blood, the operations of the gracious Spirit, the application of "the good word of God." And the fittest emblem of his wretched character and state was the ungrateful field, accursed of God and abhorred of man, which, with the utmost culture and the constant genial influences of heaven, is irreclaimably unproductive, or productive only of noxious weeds.

All that the mind can conceive of baseness or evil, was concurrent in his sin. Here was light rejected, experience slighted, and gifts dishonoured. The body of Christ was covered with sackcloth, and the enemies of Christ were filled with triumph. Here was the utmost treachery to the church, and the last impiety towards God. And, above all, and to place the crime beyond parallel and expiation, the honoured, vindicated, victorious, and exalted Son of God, was once more brought back to the cross; the shame, the spitting, the malignity of his foes were renewed; and He who sits on the right hand of the Majesty on high, was cast down from his sovereignty, and trampled under foot.

Such is the substance of the Apostle's admonitory reasoning; and here, as in all the other examples gathered from this epistle, the divine Sonship is the prominent topic. No doubt will be entertained that the sense of the title, "Son of God," is the same here as throughout the discourse; and its current meaning might fairly be inferred from the present reasoning alone. For, apart from all other considerations, what is it but the proper Deity of our Lord which, in all cases, gives the peculiar aggravation to a despite of the dispensation of which he was personally the author? Is any other consideration

comparable to this, even in ordinary examples, to enhance the sin of a rejection of the Gospel? Nor upon any other acceptation of the term, "Son," than as conveying an allusion to the original Jewish controversy, is the transcendent and inexpiable guilt of the Hebrew apostate susceptible of explanation.

SECTION VI.

RECAPITULATION.

BEFORE We dismiss the subject of this chapter, it may be proper, with all possible brevity, to ascertain the amount, and to illustrate the value, of the evidence which it supplies. The Apostle, in treating of the dignity of our Lord's person, styles him throughout, "the Son of God;" and under no other circumstances does the title occur. From these facts, several inferences are fairly deducible.

In the first place, we may conclude that the term is sufficiently precise and discriminating; and whatever may be its signification, its expressiveness is not to be questioned. For the sake of variety, a writer may occasionally select phrases not equally apposite with those which he currently adopts: but no one would regularly prefer modes of expression ambiguous and equivocal; and in a great and weighty piece of reasoning, especially, much care is usually evinced in the selection of the characteristic terms. Upon few discourses of the New Testament did more serious consequences depend than upon that before us; and it is therefore utterly incredible that, in its conduct, the most acute and cogent reasoner that ever came under plenary inspiration would be careless of his diction; or, above all, that he would risk the success of his entire argument by giving prominence to a title of dubious import.

A second and kindred conclusion is, that the term in question is not only precise in its signification, but that, on the whole, it is the most appropriate to the design of the writer. Upon no other principle can we account

for its frequent recurrence in particular parts of the discourse, and its entire absence from all others. This circumstance removes all suspicion of inadvertence, or of mere rhetorical variety. It cannot, therefore, be a synonyme only, or it would throughout have alternated with terms of equivalent import. Its meaning, whatever that may be, must be exclusively its own. Least of all can it be synonymous with a more precise and a universally intelligible appellation, such, for example, as the Messiah, or the Christ. This, on every ground, is altogether inconceivable.

The nature and purpose of the argument, as we have before shown, peremptorily demanded that our Redeemer should be set forth in his loftiest and unapproachable dignity; and hence, in the three most important branches of the discourse, he is brought into direct comparison with the beings of all others most highly venerated by the Hebrews. Here it was essential to success that the phraseology should be arranged with the utmost caution; that thus every sort of opposition which the prejudices and cherished pride of the reader would present, might be overwhelmed. To one doctrine alone could no resistance be offered,—that of our Lord's Deity. By one term only is this doctrine currently expressed, the Son of God. The conclusion is unavoidable; not only that "Son of God" is a divine title, but that of all the appellations by which the Divinity of Christ is described, it is the most choice, peculiar, intelligible, and emphatic.

It may be necessary here to recall to the reader's attention the specific object of this part of our inquiry. It was shown in the outset, that "Son of God" in Jewish phraseology, as distinguished from the Messiah, indicated exclusively a divine Subsistence. It remained for us to examine how far this exposition was sanctioned by the general usage of the New Testament. To this