guage addressed to the sword as a figurative instrument of death, "Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts: smite the shepherd," &c. Isaiah, speaking of the office of Christ, graced with meekness and constancy, xlii. 8. has these remarkable sentences, "I am the Lord, that is my name and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." After which words, follows an exhortation to praise God for his gospel, the extent of which is shown by the multitudes of the Gentile inhabitants of the earth, sea, &c., to whom Jehovah very especially addresses himself as the designed recipients of his truth, grace, and glory, in the person of Jesus Christ.

We will now examine the meaning of the prophet, and what is intended by Jehovah not giving his glory to another, neither his praise to graven images. This language implies, that Israel had backslidden from the worship of the only true God, and were then in the practice of idolatry, for which the prophet reprehends them, and from which state of alarming estrangement, the Deity in his own time meant to

retrieve them

adoration and praise being the right of the Creator alone. The most prominent characters figuratively spoken of in this prophecy, are Christ and the Christian church; and here let me point out the hot displeasure and indignation of Jehovah, where false worship is found on earth among his chosen people of Israel, how much more violently and inconceivably incensed must we reasonably suppose him to be, could such a transaction occur in his own more immediate presence in heaven. Yet in heaven, and in the presence of that Father, Christ receives the particularly enjoined worship of all the angelic intelligencies, in right of his own and his Father's spiritual likeness; clearly showing us, that archangels and angels of every degree and order, offering unto Christ their humble and reverential worship, neither do glorify or give their praise to any other than Jehovah, by adoring, in the power of the Holy Ghost, his consubstantial Son: surely then, where eternity is at stake, freethinking philosophers might do well to consider, that at the last, or day of judgment, the fearful and solemn action of trial and

I

eternal decision, and also the spiritual government of the world in time, are committed by the Father to the Son; that therefore, those who would not acknowledge Christ's divinity, and refused his spiritual dominion in time, may be reminded of what the sacred text says of his eternal judgment: "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:

"That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father that sent him."

It would unavoidably exceed the purposed limits of this Work, more amply to portray and expatiate on the numerous instances of Christ's asserted co-equality with the Father, as exhibited in holy writ, with the plain and very obvious intention on the part of the Father to establish a parallel divinity in both. The last, and to man the most momentous, office of the Creator, is to administer judg-. ment and justice alike to the righteous and the wicked, by which their future condition will assuredly be eternally and irreversibly

ordained, and which nothing less than the omniscience of an all-wise God could possibly qualify Christ for executing. And in this particular the judicial decision of the Creator will in every peculiar instance be such, in virtue of his spiritual likeness with the Father, that error or misconception, to which man is almost perpetually liable, will not possibly find a place in the award of the Divine judgment; and which, without the least shade of deviation or difference in thought or purpose of the Deity, will infallibly fix and constitute the eternal condition of mankind, according to the universal and perpetual accordance of the mental infinitude of the Godhead in all things.

Having observed that man was made for the glory of God, the highest glory of man must consist in his conformity to the enjoined will of God, in humble and reverential adoration of his infinite and supreme divinity, and in the ascription of praise to his character as the Creator, Governor, and Judge of all men. For such we see is the employment in heaven of the angels, those unbodied and spiritual intelligencies, which maintained that original

and exalted state of perfect purity, in which the Sacred Scriptures assure us they were at first created.

Isaiah in the 45th chapter having predicted the birth of Cyrus for the church's sake, speaks of Israel and the church universal in the latter days, with this assurance of the everlasting mercy of Christ the Creator, taking especial care to include in the divinity of Christ the justification of man:

"But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded, world without end.

"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself, that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it: he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord, and there is none else.

"I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the Lord speak in righteousness, I declare things that are right.

"Assemble yourselves, and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up