JESUS THE TRUE MESSIAH.

SERMON X.

Delivered in the Jew's Chapel, Church Street Spitalfields, Nov. 19, 1809.]

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PSALM xl. 6-8.

Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire: mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me: I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

THOUGH I have preached the gospel between thirty and forty years, yet I do not recollect to have ever entered a pulpit with such feelings as at present. In respect of the subject, I feel it an honour to plead the cause of my Lord and Saviour; but I am not without apprehensions, lest it should suffer through my manner of pleading it. I must, therefore, intreat, that if any thing which may be delivered should be found to be improper, you would impute it, not to the cause, but to the imperfection of the advocate. I have also some peculiar feelings on account of the audience, part of which, I am given to understand, are of the house of Israel. I cannot help recalling to mind the debt we owe to that distinguished people. They have been treated with both cruelty and contempt by men professing Christianity; but surely not by Christians! To VOL. VIL

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them, under God, we are indebted for a Bible, for a Saviour, and for all that we know of the one living and true God. Who, then, will not join me in the language of the Apostle? Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they may saved.

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The passage on which I shall found what I have to offer, is in the 40th Psalm, the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses.

Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire: mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me: I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.

No Christian can doubt whether the passage relates to the Messiah, seeing it is expressly applied to him in the New-Testament; and if a Jew should raise an objection, he will find it difficult, if not impossible, to give a fair exposition of it on any other principle. Who else, with propriety, could use the language here used? Certainly, David could not. Whether the Messiah, therefore, be already come, as we believe, or be yet to come, as the body of the Jewish nation believes, it must be of his coming that the prophet speaks. The question at issue between them and us is, not whether the scriptures predict and characterize the Messiah; but, whether these predictions and characters be fulfilled in Jesus?

That we may be able to judge of this question, let it be observed, that there are three characters held up in the passage I have read, as distinguishing the Messiah's coming: viz. That the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Mosaic law would, from thence, be superceded; that the great body of scripture prophecy would be accomplished; and, that the will of God would be perfectly fulfilled.

Let us calmly and candidly try the question at issue by these characters.

I. It is intimated, that, whenever the Messiah should come, THE SACRIFICES AND CEREMONIES OF THE MOSAIC LAW WERE TO BE SUPERCEDED BY HIM. Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire:then said I, Lo, I come. I am aware that modern Jewish wri

ters contend for the perpetuity of the ceremonial, as well as of the moral law; but in this they are opposed both by scripture and by fact.

As to scripture, it is not confined to the passage I have read, nor to a few others: it is common for the sacred writers of the Old Testament to speak of sacrifices and ceremonies in a depreciating strain; such as would not, I presume, have been used, had they been regarded for their own sake, or designed to continue always. Such is the language of the following passages: Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.—Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burntofferings: they have been continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds; for every beast of the field is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains; and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High: and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.-Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it: thou delightest not in burntoffering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.-To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?—Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, ye heap up your burnt-offerings with your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. But when I brought your fathers out of Egypt, I spake not unto them of burnt-offerings and sacrifices; but this I commanded them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people.-And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.

Such, O! ye children of Israel, is the language of your own scriptures. The covenant that was made with your fathers at Mount Sinai was never designed to be perpetual, bút to be abolished at the coming of Messiah, as is manifested from the words of the prophet: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a NEW covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; (which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord ;) but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord; for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquities, and will remember their sins no

more.

From this passage, a New Testament writer argues, (and do you answer it if you can,) In that he saith a NEW covenant, he hath made the first old. Now, that which decayeth and waxeth old, is ready to vanish away. And respecting their sins and iniquities being remembered no more, where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

Is it not, then, in perfect harmony with the tenor of your scriptures, that Messiah when described as coming into the world, should say, Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire: mine ears hast thou opened: burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required: then said I, Lo, I come: plainly intimating that he would come to accomplish that which could not be accomplished by sacrifices and offerings; and that, as these were but the scaffolding of his temple, when that should be reared, these should of course be taken down.

But I have asserted that, in maintaining the perpetuity of the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Mosaic law, your writers are not only opposed by scripture, but by fact. Whether Messiah the prince be come, or not, sacrifice and oblation have ceased.

We

believe they virtually ceased when Jesus offered himself a sacrifice, and in a few years after they actually ceased. Those of your nation who believed in Jesus, voluntarily, though gradually ceased to offer them; and those who did not believe in him were compelled to desist, by the destruction of their city and temple. You may adhere to a few of your ancient ceremonies; but it can only be like gathering round the ashes of the system the substance of it is consumed. "The sacrifices of the holy temple," as one of your writers acknowledges, "have ceased."

The amount is, Whether Jesus be the Messiah, or not, his appearance in the world had this character pertaining to it, that it was the period in which the sacrifice and the oblation actually ceased. And it is worthy of your serious inquiry, whether these things can be accomplished in any other than Jesus. Should Messiah the prince come at some future period, as your nation expects, how are the sacrifice and the oblation to cease on his appearance, when they have already ceased nearly eighteen hundred years? If, therefore, he be not come, he can never come so as to answer this part of the scripture account of him.

II. It is suggested, that whenever Messiah should come, THE GREAT BODY OF SCRIPTURE PROPHECY SHOULD BE ACCOMPLISH

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ED IN HIM: In the volume of the book it is written of me. That the prophetic writings abound in predictions of the Messiah, no Jew will deny the only question is, are they fulfilled in Jesus? You know (I speak to them who read the bible) that the seed of the woman was to bruise the head of the serpent. You know that God promised Abraham, saying, in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. You know that Jacob, when blessing the tribe of Judah, predicted the coming of Shiloh, unto whom the gathering of the people should be. You know that Moses spake of a prophet that the Lord your God should raise up from the midst of ~~you, like unto him, to whom you were to hearken, on pain of incuring the divine displeasure. You know that the Messiah is prophetically described in the Psalms, and the prophets, under a great variety of forms particularly as the anointed of the Lord-the Kingthe Lord of David, to whom Jehovah spake-the child born, whose name should be called the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the