the Trinitarian exposition of the rest of the paragraph. According to that system, the second verse makes him. the Creator of the world only in an instrumental sense, "by whom God made the world." Now Christ could not have been the Creator of the world in an absolute and an instrumental sense both. Taken in connection with the rest of the passage, if it is an address of the same person to the same, with the words, "therefore, God, even thy God, hath anointed thee," it would prove that the Creator of the world is not the supreme God, and, of course, that the supreme God has nothing to do with us. Then the next verse: "But unto which of the angels at any time said he, Sit at my right hand, till I make thy enemies thy footstool." He, who created the universe, could not want power to subdue his enemies. The Creator of the world cannot be made subordinate to any other Deity without confounding all theism, not to say the theology of the Bible. To apply it to Christ, entirely perverts its original meaning. It is a quotation from the latter part of the one hundred and second Psalm, which is a prayer to Jehovah of a person in trouble, and probably in sickness, apprehending himself to be drawing near his end: "I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days; thy years are throughout all generations. Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old as doth a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." Here is no refer

ence to the Messiah, as far as I can perceive, of the slightest kind. The only application then that it can have to the subject of the introduction to the Epistle of the Hebrews, is, that the Messiah's throne is to be eternal, because God is, who has exalted him to it; while the heavens, the very habitation of the angels, where the lightnings, which he makes his angels, play, and the earth, where the winds, which he makes his messengers, blow, shall pass away.

Such, then, I conceive to be the meaning of this celebrated passage. I have adopted it after frequent examination and revision, from time to time, for twenty years. On the whole, it seems the most consistent with itself, and the rest of the Scriptures. Whatever it may, or may not teach, one thing is certain, that it is altogether adverse to the common hypothesis of the Trinity, three equal Persons in one God. The Son, whoever he may be, is a derived, dependent, subordinate being. He is not the Supreme, but the Supreme is his God. And, whatever dignity or exaltation he has, all is derived from God, not as a Person of a Trinity, but from the whole Deity, without distinction of persons.

This view is corroborated by the rest of the Epistle. For instance: "We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he might taste of death for every man." The glory here ascribed to Christ, is not a glory of nature, or of original dignity, but of extensive relation, that of tasting death for every man, that of benefitting mankind by his death.

This

certainly is not a glory, which can be predicated of a Person of the Trinity, who is incapable of dying. Is it objected, that he was in a state of humiliation, and that this is indicated by the terms, "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," by becoming incarnate? It may be answered, that the same word and the same phrase is used of man in general. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels." If made means become incarnate in one case, it must in the other, and all mankind will be proved to have existed in a state of preëxistent glory. "Wherefore, in all points, it behooved him to be made like his brethren, that he might be a compassionate and faithful high priest in the things which pertain to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." Participation in supreme Deity is certainly a great point, an infinite point of

difference.

Finally, the way in which the Epistle winds up is sufficient, if there were nothing else, to establish the relations which subsist between God and Christ. "Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ. To him, that is God, be glory forever and ever. Amen."

The attempt has been made, by bringing together two passages of this Epistle, to prove that Christ was the medium of communication with Moses and the

patriarchs in the Old Testament. It has been maintained, with great confidence, that he was the angel who appeared to Abraham, and to Moses in the bush, and led the Israelites out of Egypt. One of the passages by which this doctrine is supported from the Epistle to the Hebrews, is from the eleventh chapter. "By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." It is thought, that by "the reproach of Christ," is meant the reproach of being the leader of the Israelites under Christ. But there are two sufficient objections to this meaning. One of which is, that it does not appear that Moses, when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, had any idea of becoming the leader of Israel out of the land of bondage. The choice he then made, was to refuse to be reckoned or adopted into the royal family of Egypt, a great worldly sacrifice, and be considered as belonging to a nation of oppressed slaves. In so doing he subjected himself to disgrace and reproach, and shared it with the people of God. That disgrace was similar to that which was suffered by Christ and Christians. He was despised, and so were they. Jews and Gentiles looked upon him and them with contempt, and thought them a degraded class. It is probable, therefore, that the Apostle had in his mind this similarity of condition, and called the reproach of claiming kindred with the Jews, the reproach of Christ, because it was of a like nature.

The other objection to this meaning, is, that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, has, by the use of

similar language in another would be taken in this case.

place, shown us how he "Wherefore, Jesus also, people with his own blood,

that he might sanctify the suffered without the gate. Let us, therefore, go forth unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” Not his individual reproach, but a reproach like his ; going out of the camp, because we are unclean, as he became, by being crucified as a criminal.

The other passage is in the twelfth chapter. "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more; for they could not endure that which was commanded ; and if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart, and so terrible was the sight, that Moses said; I exceedingly fear and quake. But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if they escaped not, who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall we not escape, if we turn away from

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