y should
not the way for it have been prepared by miraculous revelations as well
as by providential movements? The natural sun does not emerge suddenly
from the darkness of night: his approach is preceded by the day-star and
the dawn. So were the revelations which God made to men from Adam to
Malachi, with the mighty movements of his providence that accompanied
them, the day-star and the dawn that ushered in upon the world the
glorious sun of righteousness.

2. We have the great fact that the Jewish people, among whom our Lord
appeared, and from among whom he chose the primitive preachers of the
gospel, possessed a firm and deeply-rooted belief in the unity of God
and his infinite perfections. That such a belief was a necessary
foundation for the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, all of which are
underlaid by that of trinity in unity, is self-evident. Now, this belief
was peculiar to the Jews, as contrasted with other nations; and it was
held, moreover, not simply by a few philosophers and learned men among
them, but by the mass of the people. No other example of a whole nation
receiving and holding firmly this fundamental doctrine of religion
existed then, or had ever existed; and no adequate explanation of this
great fact has ever been given, except that contained in the revelation
of God to this people recorded in the Old Testament. It was not by
chance, but in accordance with the eternal plan of redemption, that the
Messiah appeared where as well as when he did; not in Egypt in the days
of Pharaoh, nor in Nineveh, or Babylon, or Greece, or Rome; but among
the Jewish people, when now "the fulness of time was come."

3. The impossibility of any attempt to dissever the revelations of the
Old Testament from those of the New appears most clearly when we
consider the _explicit declarations_ of our Saviour, and after him the
apostles, on this point. If we know any thing whatever concerning the
doctrines of our Lord Jesus, we know that he constantly taught his
disciples that he had come in accordance with the prophecies of the Old
Testament. If there were found in his discourses only one or two remote
allusions to these prophecies, there would be more show of reason in the
favorite hypothesis of rationalists, that the disciples misapprehended
their Lord's meaning. But his teachings are so numerous and explicit on
this point that, even aside from the inspiration of the writers, such an
explanation is not to be thought of