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legal marriage or espousals, harmonises with the spiritual character of the Messiah which the historical details of the genealogy indicate. It was fitting and agreeable to those ideas of the divine government inculcated by the prophets, under a system of worship which in its standing rites of purification bore witness to the defilement of natural birth, at the same time that by its bloody sacrifices it pointed to that spotless victim whose blood should avail to purge away and expiate sin, that the restorer of Israel should be exempt from the stain of original sin inherited by natural generation, in order that he might be competent to reverse the sentence pronounced and inflicted upon the natural seed. In immediate connection, therefore, with the angelic communication, in a dream to Joseph, of the miraculous conception-accompanied by the divine sanction and approval of that providential relationship of Joseph to the Virgin and her Child respectively as a legal husband and father, which was for obvious reasons necessary in order that the Virgin Mother might find in Joseph a fitting guardian of herself and Child against suspicion and violence, and that the name of Jesus, to which the latter was predestined, might be regularly conferred—we observe, by the angel's direction, the appropriation to Messiah of the Hebrew name of the successor of Moses, the destroyer of the Canaanites and the apportioner of the land of their inheritance to the tribes by lot, who, according to his name,' says the Son of Sirach, was made great for the saving of the elect of God, a name the expressed import, as well as the historical associations of which, harmonise with the idea of the spiritual work of Messiah, to which it is accordingly referred : αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν, the accumulated sins of seven times six generations, for which the law of Moses, ordained by angels in the land of a Mediator,' pronounced the penalty of the curse. Touto de öλov véyover, continues the Evangelist (after narrating in order, as introductory to the nativity, the miraculous conception, and the consequent angelic communication to Joseph in connection with it, a narration accompanied throughout by the recognition of Joseph as the legal father), ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου, λέγοντος· Ἰδου ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται ὑιὸν καὶ καλέσουσι τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ ὅ ἐστι μεθερμηνευόμενον, μεθ ̓ ἡμῶν ὁ Θεός. Accordingly the next two verses represent the completion, in the fact of the nativity, of the historical development of the idea of the incarnation, indicated (1) by the absence of human paternity, and (2) by the legal appro

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Accordingly St. Paul speaks of Christ as yevóμevov ůñò vóμov (Gal. iv. 4).

o Ecclus. xlvi. 1.

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PWell hath the Evangelist,' says Bishop Pearson, conjoined the prophet and the angel, the angelical God the Saviour being in the highest propriety the prophetical God with us.'

priation to Messiah as the antitype of Joshua, and therefore, in all its fulness of import, of the sacred name implying the union in his one Person of the two natures of God and Man.

We have (3) to connect with the above view of the historical development of the spiritual character of the Messiah, which the narrative was adapted to unfold to the minds of those conversant with the ancient Scriptures, and which finds its realization in the fact of Christ's nativity, the collateral narration of Messiah's manifestation to the Gentiles, which the Church regards as having received its first historical exemplification in the miraculous guidance of Gentile magi from the East to Jerusalem, and subsequently to Bethlehem. It is in connection with this event that we are struck with the first mention of the birthplace of the son of David; which appears to have been hitherto deferred as not bearing upon the congruity, with his spiritual character and office indicated in the manner already considered, of his asserted conception of the Holy Ghost, and the divinely ordered legal appropriation to him of the sacred name. Now it is observable that the names of the two Gentile ancestresses of the Messiah are alone associated by the genealogy with Bethlehem, the seat of David's family, of which Salmon, the husband of Rahab, was the first lord,a and Boaz, the husband of Ruth, the lineal heir. Accordingly the circumstance is now introduced (chap. ii. ver. 1, &c.) in a form which presents the birth of Christ at Bethlehem in juxtaposition with the coming of Gentile magi from the East to Jerusalem, a form well calculated to suggest the fulfilment herein of the prophecies which connected, with the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, the contemporaneous coming of the Gentiles to His light-a rising of which the meteor in the east' was an appropriate and significant herald, associated as it would be with Balaam's prophetic symbol of the Messiah, and well calculated therefore to unfold the true import of those passages in the Psalms and Prophets which, under various imagery, embody the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, whose representatives here attend as willing tributaries of the new-born King, recognising, by their threefold symbolic offerings, the mysterious union, in his person and office, of sovereignty, divinity, and sufferings. The starlike apparition (vouchsafed, it has been observed, to an order whose study of the powers and principles of nature was fitted to attain the best knowledge of God within the reach of the Gentiles of old,' and' in whom the errors of their system were latent and undeveloped, while the good that God imparted to them

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4 See note i, p. 70.

r Isa. lx. 3, &c.

* Num. xxiv. 17-19. Dr. Mills observes, that'the general consent of the ancient Church connects the prophecy of Balaam with the Magi's star.'

See note, p. 67.

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was cultivated and willingly followed'") does not guide them directly to the Saviour, but first of all to Jerusalem, the local seat and centre of the visible Church of God, to whose official representatives-the body of the chief priests and scribes of the people,' whom Herod convened—the oracles of God' were committed.' It was through the medium of the external testimony thus educed from those to whom were intrusted the lively oracles of God,' by means of the interference of a worldly potentate whose counsels and designs against the Lord and against his anointed were overruled to the accomplishment of the divine purposes, that the end and object of the devout Gentiles' search after the highest good, even though divinely directed, could alone, according to the analogy of the divine dispensations, be finally attained; for 'salvation is of the Jews.' It was only through the light of revelation, of which these were the original recipients and dispensers, that the subjects of natural religion, whose duty it was to seek after the LORD, if haply they might feel after him and find him, could attain to the discovery of the great objective reality which is the ultimate desire of all nations. When, therefore, the star had guided the Gentiles to the depositories of the Word, its course is changed; the lights of natural and revealed religion combine towards the full manifestation of Christ to the faithful worshippers whose pursuit of the object of their search proceeded throughout upon the belief that God is, and that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.' 'The star which they saw in the east

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"Mills' Christian Advocate publication, 1844, p. 366. These Magi were not of such as were commonly known by that term among the Greeks, professors of magical arts, whose Oriental designation had a different origin, but of those whose distinctive and proper appellation before Hystaspes and Zoroaster was that of Magh, viz., the sacerdotal caste of the Medes and Persians; and who at the period now in question were dispersed in various parts of the East, throughout which, says Suetonius, 'percrebuerat vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis ut eo tempore Judæâ profecti rerum potirentur.' Their proper country (whatever may have been the particular region from which these individual Magi came) was Persia; and from the testimony of Greek and Latin authors (Mills, p. 377, note), it may be inferred that the comparative purity of the religion of that nation, and their general abhorrence of idolatry in its grosser aspects, are to be ascribed mainly to the influence of the Magian order, whose worshipful invocation of fire, air, &c., ever carefully distinguished those elementary powers from the Supreme Deity; and whose error respecting the origination of evil from Ahriman, and his share with Ormuzd in the formation of the world, was unaccompanied, in their most ancient authorised books, with any of that ascription of independence to the evil principle which imparts the chief malignity to that error; it being reserved for after times, when the great light had been fully promulgated, to draw out the falsehoods of their system into that actual enmity to the truth, which made the Magi, under the Sassanide sovereigns, the most virulent persecutors of the faith of Christ.'

x Acts xvii. 27.

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Dr. Mills refers to one of the Magian books, where it is strongly laid down, as in the true faith, that there is One necessarily existent, in whom all contingent essences have their subsistence; and that there cannot be two self-existent principles; the false doctrine of a principle and creator of evil being kept out of sight. Cf. Rom. i. 20.

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went before them,' southwards from Jerusalem, till it came and stood over where the young child was; and when they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy,'-the earnest of that joy of the whole Church which will be consummated in the fruition of the glorious Godhead of the eternal Father, through the manifestation of his only begotten Son. The history of the Epiphany is completed by the adoration of the Magi, accompanied with the tributary offerings of the threefold symbolic gifts indicating the divinity of his person and the mystical character of his mediatorial office; the freedom of the Gentile subjects of the new-born King being perhaps indicated by their divinely ordered return to their own country' by another way' than that through Jerusalem, by which they came."

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Such then is the historical development of the idea of revelation which St. Matthew's record of the genealogy and nativity exhibits, viewed in its adaptation to the mind of one conversant, in the first instance, with the Scriptures of the Old Testament, in the sense in which they were received generally amongst the Jews, and also with the divine purposes as there revealed, and who is at the same time morally prepared to embrace the truth when sufficiently proposed to him. A mind thus informed and disciplined would, if already Christianised by oral teaching, be established in the faith by a narrative which gathered round an object all the associations of early education, and so enabled it to view in its true relation to that central object, God manifest in the flesh,' the subordinate and preparatory teaching of the old dispensation; whilst one to whom the substance of Christianity had not been orally proposed, would, with corresponding preparation of heart and mind, meet with the object of his implicit faith in a form adapted (so far as we are competent to judge, and therefore we may presume perfectly adapted) to promote his salutary reception of it.

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We must now conclude. The adaptation of the history to other classes of mind might be pointed out, in connection with the consideration of the objections which have been urged to the inspired character of the record. To these topics we may probably recur at no distant period.

Magdalene College, Cambridge.

G. C., M.A.

7 The Magi might have been under an obligation to return to Herod, who had sent them to Bethlehem, and through whom the knowledge of Christ's birthplace had been elicited from the proper authorities, had not a higher authority (as Xpnuaτiolévτes indicates) cancelled that obligation, thereby conferring on the Magi the privilege of the vision of Christ, which was hidden from the heads of the church and nation of which He came. Augustine, Ambrose, and others, recognise a mystical meaning in the circumstance.

ON CLERICAL EDUCATION,

IN RELATION TO SACRED LITERATURE.a

WHATEVER difficulties may surround the subject indicated by the title of this paper, its importance will be universally acknowledged; it cannot indeed be well overrated when it is remembered that the work of the Holy Ministry concerns the honour of God and the immortal interests of man.

It might appear, at first sight, that a clergy thoroughly furnished with all that constitutes ripe biblical scholars, would be recognized by all Christians as a prime necessity of the Church. Our religion, dogmatically, resides in documents; those records are antique, various, and in many particulars intricate in their character; and the clergy have to understand them, act upon them, and explain them to others. One word should not be wanted to gain assent to the proposition that the Holy Scriptures ought, in every practicable way, to be fully understood by Christian Ministers. Nor perhaps is this doctrine, theoretically enunciated, questioned by many, while by most persons it is fully admitted. But, as in many departments of ethics, in this matter our doctrine and practice do not agree our theories do not square and harmonize with our conduct.

In all affection, and from a desire faithfully to discharge a duty we feel incumbent upon us, to employ our mental energies in the service of Christ's Church, we ask, How many of the clergy of this country are able to draw water from those wells of salvation, the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments -how many do daily drink at those living fountains-how many habitually quench their thirst at those ancient springs which revolving ages and a changing world have yet left undefiled? That the number of those who can thus refer to the fountain-head of truth is actually large we gladly admit; but when we affirm that they are relatively rare when the great extent of the body is considered, we neither act uncharitably nor censoriously, for, who claims for the great bulk of Christian Ministers this intimate knowledge of the original Scriptures? It will be well to dwell on this statement a little, and to establish what we believe can scarcely

a As this paper was written by a member of the Church of England it refers necessarily to its clergy. But the whole of the subject applies equally to ministers of any society of Christians.-Ed. J. S. L.

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