, to insult, outrage, and persecution. How such a story should be
false, or, if false, how under such circumstances it should make its
way, I think impossible to be explained; yet such the Christian story
was, such were the circumstances under which it came forth, and in
opposition to such difficulties did it prevail.

An event so connected with the religion, and with the fortunes, of the
Jewish people, as one of their race, one born amongst them, establishing
his authority and his law throughout a great portion of the civilised
world, it was perhaps to be expected should be noticed in the prophetic
writings of that nation; especially when this Person, together with his
own mission, caused also to be acknowledged the Divine original of their
institution, and by those who before had altogether rejected it.
Accordingly, we perceive in these writings various intimations
concurring in the person and history of Jesus, in a manner and in a
degree in which passages taken from these books could not be made to
concur in any person arbitrarily assumed, or in any person except him
who has been the author of great changes in the affairs and opinions of
mankind. Of some of these predictions the weight depends a good deal
upon the concurrence. Others possess great separate strength: one in
particular does this in an eminent degree. It is an entire description,
manifestly directed to one character and to one scene of things; it is
extant in a writing, or collection of writings, declaredly prophetic;
and it applies to Christ's character, and to the circumstances of his
life and death, with considerable precision, and in a way which no
diversity of interpretation hath, in my opinion, been able to confound.
That the advent of Christ, and the consequences of it, should not have
been more distinctly revealed in the Jewish sacred books, is I think in
some measure accounted for by the consideration, that for the Jews to
have foreseen the fall of their institution, and that it was to merge at
length into a more perfect and comprehensive dispensation, would have
cooled too much, and relaxed, their zeal for it, and their adherence to
it, upon which zeal and adherence the preservation in the world of any
remains, for many ages, of religious truth might in a great measure
depend.

Of what a revelation discloses to mankind, one, and only one, question
can properly be asked--Was it of importance to mankind to know, or to be
better assured of? In t