the Son of God make the great expiation for sin, one offering for all, so well as at the centre of all the nations and the centre of all the ages?

It has been often remarked, that the time of the Advent, was the best that could have been chosen in the annals of history. It was the very ripeness of antiquity. There was not one preparation wanting. All ancient things had come to the full, had borne their largest harvests, had culminated to their highest glory-and were ready to pass away. Philosophy had done her best. Genius had done its best. Arts, arms, and empire had done their best. The bard had sung his loftiest song. The conqueror had fought all his greatest battles and grasped his mightiest sceptre. Man had gone the whole length of his line-a line of four thousand years-and could no further go. Then it was, that God appeared. As the old world expired before him, a new stood ready to begin—and to begin at the cross. All ancient systems-the whole history of four thousand years, went down, as it were, with Jesus into the grave. With his dying breath he looked back over all the past, and cried, "It is finished." But in his resurrection a new world sprung to life, to die no more. And in the freshness of immortal youth, he looked forward over all the future and said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature"-"beginning at Jerusalem." Two thousand years have not yet passed; but for aught we know there may be as many more to come. For aught we know the cross may be found at last, to have stood in the very centre of human annals, midway between man's creation and his judgment.

We have not seen it so distinctly noticed, though it is a point worthy of note, that the place for this grand event was as fittingly chosen as the time. The spot of all the earth's

surface, where the Incarnate One should suffer and die for sinners, seems to have been designated of God as early as the days of Abraham. And from that time onward, for nearly two thousand years, Providence was but hallowing and preparing it, for the great immolation, prefigured by that of Isaac. There was not another spot of earth so fit, in itself and in all its associations, as Jerusalem, for such a sacrifice, and for the inauguration thereon of that kingdom of heaven which should one day fill the world with glory. Geographically and historically, socially, and politically, it stood in the very centre of the ancient world; and yet stood as a city apart, a holy, consecrated spot; in the world but not of it. It was small in itself, as compared with the great capitals and kingdoms that environed it on every side. But it was a city set on a hill that could not be hid. Its lofty seat among the mountains, twenty-five hundred feet above the Mediterranean, was but emblematic of that spiritual elevation it was destined to hold among the nations. "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great king. God is known in her palaces for a refuge. Out of Zion the perfection of beauty God hath shined."

If you look at any map of the world as known to the ancients, you cannot fail to be struck with the central position of Jerusalem. Even now when the map of the world is so greatly changed, when the balance of power and civilization has passed away to the hands of the great Western nations, Jerusalem is still central to the earth's populations. And if Immanuel should come again, as some imagine, to establish a universal kingdom amongst men, it would be hard to find a fitter spot for such a throne than that on which he died. But in all the ancient world there was no other great city that

occupied a position so central to the nations-neither Babylon, nor Alexandria, nor Athens, nor Rome, nor Constantinople in later times. Standing at the point where the three great Continents of the Eastern Hemisphere come nearest together, standing too at the head of that great middle sea which carries the world of waters into the heart of that hemisphere, giving to those continents at once, intercourse with each other and outlet to all the world beyond, Jerusalem was and still is the natural centre of the Old World. All the great empires of antiquity, Egypt, Assyria, Media, Persia, Syria, Macedonia, Grecia, and Rome, rose, flourished, and, in turn, struggled for the mastery around her. Her seat was at the gate of all the nations, or where all the great highways of the world met and crossed each other. She became ere long the arena of the world's fiercest conflicts--the chosen battle ground where the nations met to wage their deadliest wars. She became the very heart of the world's population, and the life blood of nations from the circumference to the centre, could not flow at all without flowing through her.

It is all a mistake then to suppose, that, because she had lost the sceptre of political power, and was despised by her haughty Roman conqueror, Jerusalem held an insignificant place among the nations at the advent of Christ. She stood in the blazing focus of the world's light-its wealth, its learning, its commerce, its refinement. She stood like the bush which Moses saw at Horeb, ever burning and yet not consumed. She stood like the angel of the Apocalypse that St. John saw standing in the sun. She stood where the church of God, of which she was the type, and where Christianity which she gave birth to, have ever since had to stand-under the full scrutinizing gaze of the Universe. The things done in her were not

done in a corner.

If the Son of God had come to our world for the purpose of setting up a temporal and universal empire amongst men, no place was so fit for such a purpose as Jerusalem.

It was not less suitable for that, which he came to accomplish. He came not to reign over nations, but to die for sinners; to die in the full noonday of human history and in the public gaze of the universe; and dying to rise again and found a kingdom in the hearts of men, which should conquer all the world, and last when the world shall be no more. The result proves that the time and the place were well chosen and worthy of the grand inauguration. The result proves that no mistake was made in the history of redemption. "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." The Lord hath done all things well. The cross of the Son of God is the central object of human thought. All things rise in proof around the cross. The facts of the gospel well befit its theory; while the theory in turn explains and vindicates the facts. All things connected with it from the greatest to the most minute, are precisely what they ought to have been, and must have been, on the assumption, that it is the truth of God. Admit the facts, and we will demonstrate the truth of the theory; or admit the theory and we will demonstrate the necessity of the facts, precisely as they are alleged to have been. Admit that the Son of God lived on earth, died and rose again for the salvation of sinners, and then all other things-the most stupendous miracles, the most inscrutable doctrines, the profoundest mysteries of the Bible, become the most natural and reasonable things in the world.

INCIDENTAL CHARACTERS OF BIBLE HISTORY. 361

CHAPTER VI.

INCIDENTAL CHARACTERS, OR THE LESSER LIGHTS OF BIBLE BIOGRAPHY.

HAVING now taken a rapid survey of what may be called the more prominent characters of the Bible or its greater lights, we pass to the contemplation of another interesting class, that seem to hold a subordinate position in the history, and may therefore be called its incidental or minor characters. They do not make up any distinct and separate group like those which we have already portrayed, but are scattered along at irregular intervals from the beginning to the end of Bible story, often forming the most beautiful episodes in the general current of the narrative. And it serves to illustrate the exceeding wealth of the Scriptures, that of all these isolated and greatly diversified characters which we are now about to introduce, not one is essential to the grand purpose for which all Scripture was written the unfolding of the scheme of redemption. On the contrary, most of them might be left out without at all breaking the grand movement of Divine revelation, or diminishing one jot or tittle of the doctrines and duties enjoined in the Bible.

And yet we should be far from the truth, if we supposed that these minor characters were either uninteresting or useless, because they are introduced incidentally in the Bible history,