Jewish faith, and was its higher development, just as the boughs and branches of a tree grow out of its stem and roots. God saw fit to withhold the revelation of the Gospel until the ground had first been prepared for it by the Law; and when He actually gave it, He did so where the preparing process had been going on, namely, among the people of Israel. This seems to deserve special notice for though we are unable fully to scan the works of God, yet we reverently discern in this fact a reasonableness that can hardly fail to approve itself to sound judgement. It is what every one would reasonably expect, that the fullest divine revelation should be made among the people where preceding revelations had already prepared men's minds for it. Accordingly, we are not only informed in the Gospel that Christ was born in Bethlehem, the city of David (see Matt. ii. 1; Luke ii. 1-7), and grew up in Nazareth, a city of Galilee (Luke ii. 39, 51); but also, that during His public ministry He expressly declared that the offer of His salvation was first of all to be freely made to the Jewish nation. So we read, e.g. in Matt. x. 5, 6, that when He first sent forth the twelve apostles to preach and to heal, He charged them in the following words: 'Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' And on another occasion, when His disciples asked Him to heal the daughter of a

Phoenician woman, he replied, 'I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Matt. xv. 24). It was only after a number of disciples had been gathered among Israel, and they were qualified by the descent of the Holy Ghost to become preachers of the gospel to other nations, that Jesus Christ ordained His religion to be carried beyond the bounds of Judea and to the ends of the earth (see Acts i. 3-8). The subsequent history of Christianity plainly shows, that although the bulk of the Jewish nation proved unbelieving, yet its Author had perfectly succeeded in laying among the true Israelites a strong and solid foundation of His Church on which might be securely built the vast and massive superstructure of the future.

IV

CHRIST'S DIVINE MISSION THE BEGINNING OF A NEW DISPENSATION, GLORIOUSLY ESTABLISHED BY THE PROOF OF MIRACLES

THE many miracles which Christ did, and which no one had done before Him, were calculated to prove to the thoughtful Jews, that, by embracing the spiritual religion which He preached, they would only act in accordance with the will of God. We read in the beginning of the book of Exodus, that when God called Moses to be a prophet and deliverer to Israel, He gave him power to work a number of miracles, both before Israel and before the people