written in the book of life, and that confession which Christ shall make of and IN his hidden and oppressed ones, before his Father and the angels (Matt. x. 32, Luke xii. 8), when he shall be revealed in the Father's glory, and his glory shall be revealed in us (Matt. xvi. 27, Eph. i. 18), and when he shall present us faultless in glory (Jude 24, 2 Cor. iv. 14).

The name written in the pebble evidently means the reason, principle, or argument of the glory and favour to be voted or adjudged to us by Christ before the Father. The novelty of the name immediately refers us to the time at which the bare word of Him that sitteth upon the throne shall make all things new (Rev. xxi. 5); when the new heavens and new earth, for which, according to the pledge of God, we look earnestly at the day of the Lord, because righteousness inhabiteth them, shall be revealed from heaven (2 Pet. iii. 12; Is. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22; Rev. xxi. 1, 27); when shall be sung the new song of resurrection (Rev. v. 9, xiv. 3; Ps. xxxiii. 3, lxix. 30, xcvi. 1, xcviii. 1, cxxxvii. 4, cxlix. 1; Is. xlii. 10; Exod. xv. 1); when shall be drunk the new wine of the kingdom (Matt. xxvi. 29); when gathered Israel shall have a new spirit (Ezek. xi. 19); and when the saints, being clothed upon with their house from heaven (2 Cor. v. 2), shall forget all the former things (Is. xliii. 18, Rev. xxi. 4.)

What this new name is, if indeed it be at all revealed, is a question not easily to be answered. It is evidently connected, or to be identified with, the new name of Christ, which we know shall be written on them that overcome (Rev. iii. 12). This new name is neither Jesus nor Immanuel, for these he has already received (Matt. i. 21, Is. vii. 14, Matt. i. 23); and Immanuel, by reason of its Hebrew etymology, has a peculiar reference to the act of incarnation, by which the Word became one of us, and took part with us in the flesh and blood of those whom he came to redeem by sacrifice. Neither is it the name yet to appear on his garment and his thigh, "King of kings and Lord of lords" (Rev. xvii. 14, xix. 16), because he is so now in the heavens, and because the purpose of that appearance is temporary-namely, till he assert his many crowns (diadnuara) by winning the garland of victory (sepavov). Neither is it "the Word of God" (Rev. xix. 13), for that is not a new name: but it may be "Lord;" for, although Jesus was made Lord and Christ at his resurrection, he has never yet been named or declared Lord (Acts ii. 36). If the new name be yet revealed at all, it is most probably, "The Lord our Righteousness." This name, indicating our presentation in the righteousness of Christ, beautifully harmonizes with the gift of the white stone, and no less so with the inscription of our names in the book of life (Rev. iii. 5). This is the new name by which Jerusalem shall be called by the mouth of the Lord, when she shall dwell safely under the promised Branch of David on his

throne (Is. lxii. 2, Jer. xxxiii. 14): and it is intimately associated with the name "The Lord is there," given to the city of Ezekiel, (Rev. xxi. 3, Ezek. xlviii. 35), as the city of the God of the whole earth (Is. liv. 5); and hardly less so with that "Name above every name" given unto Jesus at resurrection, at which in the age to come every knee shall bow and every tongue confess (Phil. ii. 9). But it is possible that the following may go to constitute an additional constituent of this new name. Christ became the Lord our Righteousness by resurrection; for, having been delivered for our offences, he was raised for our justification-i.e. for the work of thenceforth making us just by faith in God, who raised him (Rom. iv. 22). But we know that Christ was at his resurrection declared the Son of God with power (Rom. i. 3), and saluted of the Father with these words, "Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten thee" (Heb. i. 5); as the First-begotten from the grave, the First-born of many brethren. And we also know, that when Christ was so saluted he was also saluted with the title "God," and anointed God by his God (Heb. i. 8, 9). These, then, constituted the name more excellent than those of angels which he then obtained. And the name so constituted was a new name; not because the Son was not always the Son, and always God, but because till then the Christ, the God-man, had not been manifested in any but his character as the Son of Man, the Servant of the Father, the Man of sorrows. At his resurrection, his heirship of all things, not as God merely, but as God manifest in flesh, was demonstrated by His acceptance as the Son begotten in a new life from the grave; and his power was demonstrated by the declaration of his Godhead; not merely of his own essential Divinity, but of the investment of the Man Jesus with the glory and dominion of God the Father. Therefore we see the propriety of this new name being promised to us at resurrection; because, at the coming of Christ, who is now the first-fruits, we shall be manifested in that sonship which in him we now secretly possess; in that participation of the Divine nature which in him we now secretly enjoy, as the hidden ones, whose life is hid with Christ, and who, in the likeness of his resurrection, shall be in the fellowship of his resurrection name.

This indissoluble association, nay, identity of the new name of Christ with the new name of his saints, is further illustrated by the addition "which no man knoweth unless he that receiveth." At his second coming, Christ is to have a written name which no one but himself knoweth (Rev. xix. 12). Therefore that is the name which shall appear on the white stone; and its unintelligibility to any but Christ (in whom is all the completion of knowledge) and his saints, just expresses the great truth of Scripture, that none knoweth who the Son is but the Father, or

who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him (Matt. xi. 27, Luke x. 22); that the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, who alone proceedeth, alone knoweth communicably the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10); that, except by the Spirit we dwell in God and God in us, we have in us no knowledge and no truth; that the spiritual man discerneth all things, but is himself discerned of no one (1 Cor. ii. 15); that the world knoweth neither Christ, nor his Spirit, nor the Father (whom, being one God, the saints know now by faith and shall know by sight, John viii. 19, xiv. 17); and that, even as the Spirit bloweth where he listeth, and the world hear his voice but know not whence he cometh and whither he goeth, SO (UNKNOWN) is every one who is born of the Spirit (John iii. 8). The application of this second branch of the promise to the church of Pergamos lies in this, That the Papacy has anticipated the new name in this state, wherein we fill up the sufferings of Christ and merely expect his glory; and that it would make visible the invisible election of God; and suppose the world, who know not God, to know the name of Christ, by dint of the devices, deceits, and persuasions of the devil enthroned in the Roman earth.

(To be continued.)

FIDUS.

INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD-TESTAMENT PROPHECIES QUOTED IN THE NEW.

(By the Rev. E. IRVING-Continued from Vol. ii. p. 804.)

INTERPRETATION IX.

Messiah's Birth-place.

Micah v. 2; referred to Matt. ii. 6, John vii. 42.

WE come now to another aspect of those sufferings of the daughter of Zion, already represented by the figures of travail and of captivity, wherein is described the gathering of the nations against her as the chosen one of God, to defile her purity and to profane her sacredness; which endeth in their utter destruction at her hand by Him that was born in Bethlehem, whose goings forth are from everlasting. The prophecy was uttered before any army of Gentiles had gathered themselves together against Zion, which God had chosen for his eternal habitation, and as such had saluted in a hundred strains of Divine prophecy. This Divine separation of Zion for his eternal habitation upon the earth, with all the circumstances of power and glory, of sovereignty and supremacy, with which it is expressed, had been pronounced with such solemnity, and written

with so much variety, in the Book of Psalms, by David the prophet of the Lord, that when the time came to give her up for a season to be trodden down of the Gentiles it was absolutely necessary, for the preservation of God's truth, that the cause and the end of this temporary spoliation should likewise be delivered with the same minuteness by the prophets of the Lord; otherwise, the event of Zion's long oppression would have seemed to falsify the prediction of her continual preservation by God for his own chosen abode. This is the manner of prophecy,-to state, in the first place, the purpose and decree of God with respect to any subject, as Mount Zion; then to introduce, as the occasion requireth, those minuter particulars which are to have effect before the purpose shall stand accomplished. The time was come, in the days of our prophet and his contemporaries, to introduce into the fates of Zion the mention of that dark cloud which for a season should come over her glory. The wickedness of her kings, and especially of Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, had made it necessary for the Lord's holiness to vindicate itself in the temporary overthrow of his own temple, and of the throne of David, which had been both established for ever, and which, no doubt, shall be set up again and abide for ever. This before us is one of those prophecies which respect the intermediate dispensation of Zion's dishonour in the sight of all nations. But God's name is still named upon that holy mountain: his word hath established it for ever as the resting-place of his glory; it shall emerge from all the waves of mighty empires which have broken themselves upon it, and shall be the throne of Messiah, God's eternal King: "Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion." If, indeed, prophecies such as that contained in these three verses, concerning the calamities of God's chosen seat, had concluded without any intimation of the transitoriness of these calamities, instead of always containing this as one of the most important and substantial parts of the revelation-even in this case, which is not real, but only supposed, we should have had no doubt in saying Zion shall nevertheless be restored, and the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt, and they shall abide for ever holiness unto the Lord; because this was the prophecy that went before upon them from the beginning; and God, who seeth the end from the beginning, hath no afterthoughts, hath no reversing sentences, in his word; cannot contradict himself, though he may reveal new particulars, according as the occasion demandeth. But, seeing that in every case the treading down of Jerusalem is declared to be only for a season, "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled;" and thereafter that her eternal consolation and glory and destiny, as written at the first, is to proceed; we may not doubt, we cannot doubt, we have no reason to doubt, we have every reason to believe, that

Zion and Jerusalem shall indeed emerge from all their troubles, and stand up in the perfection of beauty, and shine afar, as the dwelling-place of the glorified Son of Man.' Concerning the manner of this, and especially concerning the Person by whom it is to be accomplished, we now come to interpret.

III. The prophet, speaking of his days, when Sennacherib, the conqueror of "Gozan, and Haran, and Rezin, and the children of Edom which were in Telassar, and Hamath, and Arpad, and Sepharvaim, and Hena, and Ivah," and indeed of all the world in those parts-for Assyria was then the mistress of nations-saith, "Now also many nations are gathered against thee." And this saying refers not to that confederacy alone, but to all confederacies which have since been: as of Nebuchadnezzar, the head of Babylon; and of Titus, the head of the Roman nations; and of the Saracens, and of all other bands of destroyers which have been in times past; and likewise it hath respect to that confederacy of the nations under Gog, which Ezekiel hath foretold, chaps. xxxviii. and xxxix., shall come up against Jerusalem after the tribes are restored to their own land. That these words of our prophet have so large and inclusive a meaning we know from the command which is given to the daughter of Zion to arise and thresh them, and beat them in pieces, which, until this day, she hath not done; and likewise from the use which she is to make of their spoil and of their gain, consecrating them unto the Lord of the whole earth. That this confederacy of the nations hath especial reference to that which is made in the last times under Gog we know, first, from the exact correspondence between the fate of Sennacherib's armament and that of Gog, which are both overthrown without hand; and likewise from an important notice contained in the bosom of Ezekiel's prophecy concerning Gog, "Thus saith the Lord God, Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years, that I would bring thee against them?" (xxxviii. 17.) This intimation is God's own voucher that the last confederacy which shall be formed against the children of Israel had been spoken of in times which were old and ancient in the days of Ezekiel. it is so it may be laid down as a principle, that wherever, in the Psalms or in the Prophets, there is mention made of a confederacy of nations against Zion and Jerusalem, which issues in the eternal overthrow of the former, and eternal establishment of the latter, it is the last confederacy of Gog which is chiefly intended, and of which Sennacherib and his overthrow were only the type. I have no hesitation in saying, that the event prophesied of in our text is the ultimate destruction of the enemies of Zion in the days of Gog, although it had a typical accomplishment in the overthrow of Sennacherib.

And