dead, and sending him to bless you, by turning away every one
of you from your iniquities. For there can be no deliverance from misery
and destruction but by means of delivery from sin and Satan.

It is quite in agreement with the manner of our deliverance from any of
the evils of our fallen condition, that our deliverance from the power
of sin and Satan be effected by the agency of a deliverer. Our
ignorance is removed by the knowledge of a teacher, our sickness by the
skill of a physician, the oppressed nation hails the advent of a
patriotic leader, and oppressed humanity acknowledges the fitness and
need of a divine Deliverer, even by the ready welcome it has given to
pretenders to this character, and by the longing desire of the wisest
and best of men for a divinely commissioned Savior; a desire implanted
by the great prophecy, which stands at the portal of hope for mankind,
in the very earliest period of our history, that "_the seed of the woman
should bruise the serpent's head_," and so leave man triumphant over the
great destroyer.

The prophecies regarding the Messiah are so numerous, pointed, various,
and improbable, as to set human sagacity utterly at defiance; while they
are also connected so as to form a scheme of prophecy, which gradually
unrolls before us the advent, the ministry, the death, resurrection, and
ascension of the Lord, the progress of his gospel over all the world,
and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and
nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer
the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his
inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of
life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to
take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I
have in the previous chapters abundantly proved the veracity of the New
Testament history, I shall now with all confidence refer to its account
of the birth, life, and death of Jesus, as illustrating the prophecies.

The time, the place, the manner of his birth, his parentage and
reception, were plainly declared, hundreds of years before he appeared.

When Herod had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born, and they said
unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the
prophet: _And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not t