enemies, in the conviction of their incapacity to reply to it, vented their indignation against him, as angry disputants usually do when defeated in argument, in bitter terms of scurrility and abuse. "The Jews therefore answered and said to him, Do we not say well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?" But mark the calm and dignified answer returned by Jesus to this ebullition of impotent passion. Having disavowed, explicitly, all intercourse with the prince of darkness, he adduced his well-known piety to God, whom he did not hesitate to call his Father, as a decisive proof of his opposition to that irreconcileable enemy, both of God and man; and thus made it to appear, that they, and not he, had acted in reality like agents of Satan, by the dishonor which they had endeavoured to cast upon him. "Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honor my father, and you have dishonored me." Lest, however, it might be suspected that the rebuke which he had just uttered, was the effect of resentment, proceeding from the feelings of wounded honor, he assured them that the vindication of his personal character was not to him an object of concern, that he abandoned that in perfect security to the care of his heavenly Father, who, he well knew, would not neglect it, but would revenge the insults which might be offered to it with merited severity. "But I," said he, "seek not my own glory, there is one that seeketh and judgeth." No. The object, he observed, which he had in view, was not

the establishment of his own fame, but the advancement of the everlasting interests of man, which he indefatigably laboured to promote, by exhorting them to comply with his divine instructions. "Amen, amen, I say to you, if any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever." This promise of a blissful immortality beyond the grave, which Jesus held forth to his faithful disciples, the Jews, yielding to the erroneous suggestions of their carnal conceptions, construed into an assurance of an eternal duration of existence upon earth; and hence they persuaded themselves, that they were now furnished from his own mouth with an incontrovertible proof of his being an impostor, since he pretended to confer a privilege on his obedient followers, which not even Abraham, the revered father of their race, nor any among their greatest prophets, was permitted to enjoy. "The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and thou sayest, if any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever." This, they added, was a degree of presumption not to be endured. What? The carpenter's son, the low-born offspring of Mary and Joseph, the man of Nazareth, out of which, proverbially, no good cometh, arrogate to himself a superiority above the most renowned and exalted personages, whose names alone are the brightest ornaments of the national annals! What intolerable pride and audacity is this? To what pitch of elevation would this ex

VOL. I.

"Art

travagant boaster carry his pretensions? thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself?" To this violent eruption of Jewish rage, Jesus meekly replied, that were the lofty pretensions which he assumed, founded only on his own assertion, they would not be entitled to any regard; but, that supported and confirmed, as they evidently were, by the unexceptionable testimony of his heavenly Father, whom they themselves acknowledged to be their God, they could not, with consistency, refuse to admit them. "Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say, that he is your God." But, although, he continued, they confessed him to be their God, yet to them, he maintained that he was an unknown God. For if that were not the case, they would surely, he observed, have recognized the features of his divinity in the transcendent perfections which distinguished his Son; in whom, however, with an absurdity surpassed only by their impiety, they pretended to discover the lineaments of Satan, in the infernal influences to which they imputed his actions. That with respect to himself, he knew him, he said, well. That not only did he profess to know him, but that he proved, moreover, the truth of his professions, by the best of all possible arguments, a practical observance of his divine commands, which is the necessary consequence of the knowlege of a Being,

whom to know is to love, and whom to love is to obey. And you have not known him, but I

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know him. And if I should say that I know him not, I should be like to you, a liar. But I know him, and keep his word." As to Abraham, whose character they were so anxious to defend against every claim to superior excellence, he assured them that that great and venerable patriarch did not participate in the sentiments which they had manifested. That he wished, on the contrary, most ardently to behold that promised descendant from his loins, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. That he actually did behold him, and that he hailed him with transports of heartfelt exultation. Abraham, your father, rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad." This distant and joyful prospect of the future Messiah, with which Abraham was gratified, through the medium of faith, to which our blessed Saviour here alluded, the Jews construed into an affirmation of his own earthly existence in the time of that great man. And being unable to comprehend how a person, whose age had not yet, as they observed, reached half a century, should have been contemporary with him who had died many centuries before, they might well exclaim, as we read they did: "The Jews then said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ?" Dignified as had been thus far the language of our blessed Saviour, throughout the whole of the conference which he

held with the Jews on the present occasion, it now rose to a degree of sublimity beyond which it is not possible for human language to soar. For not only did he declare himself to have existed during the life, and even before the birth of the patriarch Abraham, but assuming that characteristic attribute of Divinity, expressed by the verb I am, "I am who am," by which the great Jehovah commissioned Moses to designate him by whom he was sent to the children of Israel,-he unequivocally claimed to himself the nature of the Godhead. "Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." Exasperated beyond measure at so confident an assumption of the nature of the Divinity, the Jews were preparing to stone him as a blasphemer, when, by an exertion of his divine power, he rendered himself invisible, and effected his retreat. "Then they took up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid him-self, and went out of the temple."

When we seriously consider the stupendous prodigies performed by our blessed Saviour in the midst of the Jewish people, all bearing such evident testimony to the divinity of his mission, when we contemplate in him the complete accomplishment of the predictions of preceding prophets, who, through a long succession of ages, had previously announced to them his arrival, and delineated his character, when we reflect on the sublimity and sanctity of his doctrine, and on the unblemished manners which distinguished his life,