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Now to Jewish ears there could not be a more unwelcome doctrine than that of a suffering Messiah, though it was plainly taught in their own Scriptures. Accustomed to associate in their minds the Messiah's advent with ideas of magnificence and worldly glory, the carnality of their hearts led them to secularize all the grand things that the prophets had written on this interesting subject; so that instead of looking for the "man of sorrows," and one whose companion was grief, the nation in general were fondly dreaming of a Messiah who should head their armies and deliver them from the Roman yoke; and, not finding in Jesus of Nazareth any thing that corresponded to this prejudice or preconception, they rejected all his claims to the Messiahship, and put him to death as an impostor. It is to this state of things that the apostle refers when he says that "Christ crucified is to the Jews a stumbling block," and this was one grand obstacle which he had to surmount in propagating Christianity among them at the beginning. Let us now examine how he proceeded at Thessalonica in removing this obstacle: the subject is interesting and will recompense the time and attention we bestow upon it.

First, we see that he lays it down as a fact, which could be proved from their own scriptures, that the Messiah, whoever he was and whenever he should make his appearance, must of necessity be a suffering person--that his sufferings should terminate in his death---and his death be followed by his resurrection, ver. 3. In proof of this fact, he refers them to the writings of Moses and the prophets, the meaning of which he explained or opened up, reasoning with them out of those inspired documents, and alleging from them that such must necessarily be the case. Jesus himself before he left the world adopted the very same plan with the two disciples that were on their way to Emmaus, as you have it in Luke xxiv. 25---27. "O fools, and slow of heart," said he, "to believe all that the prophets have written! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And then, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." And a little afterwards we find him thus addressing them :-"These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which

were written in the law of

Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day," ver. 44, 46.

But the question may possibly be started, by some, is it a fact that the Messiah is held forth as a suffering person in the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms? The enquiry is unquestionably a very proper one; let us see what answer can be returned to it. Jesus refers his disciples in the first place to the law of Moses, and he affirms that this law bore witness to his sufferings, death, and resurrection; and how truly that was the case you have ample proof in Paul's epistle to the Hebrews. We are there taught that "the law was a shadow of good things to come, the body or substance of which was only found in Christ." Examine its various rites and ceremonial appointments; its institutions were all typical---the temple, the altar, the priests, the sacrifices and oblations, all pointed to Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. The whole was designed by infinite wisdom to adumbrate the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Divested of its typical relation to HIM, the whole Levitical economy dwindles into insignificance: but admit the apostolic interpretation of the matter, as given in the epistle to the Hebrews, and you see a magnificence and grandeur reigning throughout the whole, which render it worthy of God from whom it emanated, at the same time that it is calculated to confirm our faith in the Gospel and elevate the believer's hopes of the eternal inheritance.

And now from the law of Moses let us turn our attention to the writings of the prophets, which are also said to exhibit the promised Messiah as a suffering person. Look at the whole fifty-third chapter of Isaiah:--" He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep,

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have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth : he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgressions of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth," ver. 3-9. Turn next to Daniel, ix. 24--26:"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.”

Hear once more the prophet Zechariah :---" Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts. Smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones," ch. xiii. 7. These passages furnish a sufficient specimen of the testimony given by the prophets to the character of the Messiah as a suffering person: let us now glance at the book of Psalms.

The twenty-second Psalm comprises one clear and entire prophecy of the sufferings of the Messiah. The manner and circumstances of his death, the insults and mockery of his enemies, and the very words which Jesus uttered upon the cross, are in this psalm particularly foretold. It exhibits him as offering up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death. "I am poured out like water," says the holy sufferer, " and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is melted like wax in the midst of my bowels; my strength is dried up like a potsherd; my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death," ver. 14, 15. Much to the same effect is the sixty-ninth

Psalm, which we know is also a prophecy of the Messiah: “ Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul; I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me: I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried, mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.---Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters but I found none," ver. 1-3, 19, 20.

It would be perfectly easy to multiply quotations from both the prophets and the book of Psalms, in proof of the doctrine under consideration, and to justify the fact that, in all these writings, the Messiah is uniformly held forth as a suffering person, and equally so that his sufferings were to issue in his death, and his death to be followed by his resurrection. But on the prophecies which respect his death and resurrection, though numerous, I must content myself with one or two instances.

The sixteenth Psalm, which Christians must admit to be a prophecy of the Messiah from the application which the apostle Peter has made of it in Acts ii., thus represents the Messiah as addressing his heavenly Father in the immediate prospect of his death: "My flesh shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore," ver. 9-11. So also the prophet Isaiah, ch. liii. 11: "It pleased the Lord to bruise him and put him to grief—when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands-he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. I will 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," &c. Now with such abundant evidence contained in their own Scriptures, respecting the suffering character of the Messiah, is it not strange, passing strange, that the descendants of Abraham should allow their prejudices against Jesus of Nazareth to prevail, to the fatal extent to which they have done in every age, resisting the light which beams forth from the holiness of his character-the sublime and heavenly doctrines which he delivered in his public

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ministry-the miracles by which those doctrines were attestedand especially the exact fulfilment of a train of prophecies-and, let me add, his resurrection from the dead upon the third day, with his exaltation to the throne of his glory in the heavens, whence he, on the day of Pentecost, poured out his Holy Spirit on his apostles, enabling them to work miracles also, to speak with tongues, and set up his kingdom in the world, agreeably to numerous prophecies, some of which are fulfilling even in our day. But we shall now return to the apostle Paul, in the synagogue of Thessalonica, and take a fresh view of his manner of propagating Christianity in that city.

The remarks which have been offered may enable you to enter into his method of “reasoning with the Jews out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus, whom he preached unto them, is Christ, or the Messiah." In doing this, we may readily conceive how the apostle would press home upon them that the seventy weeks, which the prophet Daniel had fixed for the Messiah's appearance, were now completed that the promised seed must have actually come, or their own Scriptures were false,-and that this Jesus whom he preached was the very Christ. And, now that we have the subject before us, let us briefly collect into one view some of the chief incidents which are upon record in the prophetical writings concerning the Messiah. It is evident that he was to be of the seed of Abraham-of the tribe of Judah-and of the family of David.* All which was true of Jesus of Nazareth. The place of his birth was pointed out; viz. Bethlehem Ephratah: he was to be born of a virgin, and to be preceded by a forerunner, in the spirit and power of Elias, which was fulfilled in the mission and ministry of John the Baptist. + The Messiah was to preach the glad tidings of salvation, and confirm his mission and doctrine by working miracles, an evidence of the Messiahship of Jesus which his enemies were compelled to admit. He was to be rejected of his own countrymen, according to many prophetic

* Gen. xxii. 18, ch. xlix. 10; 2 Sam. vii. 12-16; Isa. xi. 1. † Mic. v. 2; Isa. vii. 14, ch. xi. 3, 4; Mal. iii. 1, and ch. iv. 5. ‡ Isa. lxi. 1, 2, ch. xxxv. 3-6.