January 1, 1865. to that joy, and anticipating its fulness; or, to quote apostolic words, having offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, and sat down on the right hand of God, He is "henceforth expecting," or waiting, "till His enemies be made His footstool." Clearly, then, the session at the right hand of the Father, is not itself the joy set before Christ; but it is its guarantee, the pledge of the fall and glorious reward, when He shall see the fruit of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied. We are anxious to call attention to this surpassingly important matter, because to make the session at the right hand of God the prospective joy which sustained Jesus amidst His unparalleled humiliations, sufferings, and ignominy, is to circumscribe the magnificent eternal purpose, and to attribute to our Redeemer a mere personal consideration of which He is, and was, and ever will be utterly incapable. It is this untenable view which has led to the most unsatisfactory and unscriptural notion, so widely diffused, that the Christian economy is an end, and the present dispensation the world's final one. The two great misbeliefs of Christendom are, that Jesus remains in heaven until He comes to blot the world out of the map of the universe, and that the human race is to be converted to Christianity by the labours of the Church. These unsuspected fundamental errors which Christian men carry with them to every Christian work—when they read the Bible, when they preach, when they hear, when they pray, when they attend meetings, either as speakers or audience, for the promotion of the Gospel, and when they give money for that very blessed object ―are the dense, chilly fog which creeps over all, and cruelly hides from view the splendid landscape of positive revelation. Time was when the thought of Christ's return from heaven was a joy and a blessed hope, and the era of that return was synonymous with refreshing from the presence of the Lord, the manifestation of the sons of God, and the deliverance of creation from its groanings; but now, in consequence of the misbeliefs alluded to, the thought of His return is associated, even in the minds of His friends, with all that is awful, terrible, and destructive. They cannot bear the dismal idea. It appals and overwhelms them. What! the day of judgment, and the end of the world, whilst as yet only a miserable handful of the race have been converted? Interrupt the labours of the Church in her divine mission for the subjugation of humanity to the cross, by the fires of the last day, and the destruction of all mundane things! The idea is not to be admitted for a moment, and those who entertain and teach it are blind to the Gospel of salvation, and know nothing of the genius of truth! Thus the errors in question have generated a theological system which unsystemizes the perfect plan of heaven, and makes the apostolic January 1, 1865. doctrine, which yielded such unspeakable joy to the first believers, an unbearable terror to their modern successors. We appeal to the consciousness of living men when this old faith is mentioned in their hearing, and to the pages of the New Testament, which describe its effect on the minds of the first believers, if it be not so. Whence this most remarkable contrast? How comes the faith which was laden with such fruits of joy and glory to apostles and their contemporaries, to clothe itself in gloom to Christians of the nineteenth century? Surely these questions are full of meaning, and deserve calm examination on the part of all who wish to understand the revealed will of God; for whilst the broad fact remains that a certain doctrine which gladdened then saddens now, either there was something wrong in the faith of the ancients or there is something wrong in that of the moderns. Take which side of the alternative you please; but one of them must be adopted, for the truth of God is one in all ages. Let us now look at a few Scriptures, that we may find what that truth is, in relation to "the joy set before" the Man of Sorrows. It will be remembered that Jesus knew all that was predicted regarding the mighty work assigned to Him, and its far-reaching consequences, both in time and eternity. We do not say this inferentially from His divine omniscience, by which He knew all things, or from the fact that it was His Spirit that spake in the prophets-for it was the Spirit of Christ in the prophets which testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, and the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus-although the argument would be quite con clusive; but because He Himself has given us the fact as an historical statement. Thus, after the resurrection we read, "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." And again, "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." Here, then, we get two facts of the very highest importance in relation to the question before us. Jesus was intimately acquainted with the whole then existing Bible-the Old Testament-and He knew that all the prophecies "concerned Himself." Manifestly, then, without going a step further, we are bound to conclude that the joy set before Him embraced the FULFILMENT of the entire series of prophecies, hundreds of which remain unfulfilled to this hour. We are now, therefore, in a position to look at a few of them in the light of these two momentous facts, and to see how it will bear upon their interpretation. Take the sixteenth Psalm, which opens with a Messianic prayer for divine preservation, and closes with a prediction of Messiah's resurrection, which fills his heart with joy and gladness. "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell-Sheolneither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." The apostle Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost, is our authority for applying these words to Jesus. This was part of the joy set before Jesus-the resurrection :-"Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance." (Acts ii. 28.) But let it ever be borne in mind with profoundest adoration and gratitude, that Jesus saw in the prediction of His resurrection a sure prophecy and proof of the resurrection of His body the Church. He is the Head, by whose resurrection we are begotten to a lively hope. Ho is the firstfruits, and at His coming they that are His will rise too. The joy of resurrection, then, set before our Lord in the dark day of the cross and the shame, has its ecstatic fulness in the rising again from the dead of all who sleep in Him. That sublime and wondrously glorious event is yet future-blessed be God! it may not be very distant now-and Jesus is expecting it, waiting for it. But even this interpretation, which connects the fulness of the resurrection joy set before Christ with His second advent, which is the time appointed for the rising of them that sleep in Him, does not exhaust Peter's inspired commentary on the subject; for He immediately proceeds to speak of the oath of God to David respecting a royal successor, in consequence of which he "raised up Christ to sit on His throne." Of course this, with all the wonderful blessings to the literal Israel, and through them to the Gentiles, which it involves, is still future; and from the happiness which the glorious King will then scatter, with royal liberality, over a globe rescued from the usurper, He gathers a vast revenue of joy; it is "joy set before Him." Philanthropy gathers its bliss from doing good, and our Lord is the Prince of philanthropists. His future joy is the irrepressible song of happiness which will burst from countless millions of hearts in heaven and earth, when He shall have filled up the outline of His most magnificent purpose of love. It is needless to bring forward argument in support of the affirmation that the twenty-second Psalm belongs to Christ; for that has never been denied by either Jewish or Christian interpreter whose judgment was worth a moment's consideration; and indeed it cannot be denied so long as Matthew's account of the crucifixion remains a part of the January 1, 1865. THE JOY SET BEFORE JESUS. New Testament. This psalm consists of two parts-Messiah's prayer and thanksgiving. The first part continues down to the middle of the 21st verse, where the praise begins : "Thou hast answered me. I will declare thy name unto my brethren: In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. Glorify Him, all ye seed of Jacob; And stand in awe before Him, all ye seed of Israel. For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted One, And He hath not hidden His face from him; But when he cried unto Him He hearkened. Of thee shall be my praise in the great congregation; All this was "joy set before him.” But it was not only the vision of Israel and Judah restored to loyalty, and happiness, and God, and that of the swelling psalm of thanksgiving in countless Christian congregations rescued from idolatry, and worshipping the Father through the Son; but his view expanded until he took in the time when all the ends of the earth should turn to the Lord, and the kingdom of Jehovah be firmly established in the world; for thus he proceeds in describing his joy : "The meek shall eat and be full fed : They shall praise Jehovah who seek after Him; All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to Jehovah, And all families of the Gentiles shall bow themselves down before Him. For the kingdom is Jehovah's, And He ruleth over the Gentiles. All whom earth sustains shall eat and bow themselves down : Before Him shall kneel all that sink into dust; And my soul shall live to Him. My seed shall serve Him, and shall be registered the people of Jehovah. Unto a people that shall be born, for He hath done it." It was the restoration, the restitution of all things that gladdened the soul of our blessed Saviour, as He looked forward through the thick darkness of a dismal night to the unsetting splendours of an eternal day. It was the success of His wonderful mission, rather than the reward-only that the success and the reward are inseparable -hat filled His heart with unutterable joy. The glory of the Father from the complete victory over His implacable enemies, and the evergrowing bliss of the redeemed, was the very polar star of Christ's being. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish January 1, 1865. He beheld His work." "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." Satan as lightning falling from heaven, and He rejoiced. event before Him, and it is before Him still, for the usurper is still the prince of the power of the air, but he will shortly be cast out as the result of Messiah's victory. And IIe rejoiced in the contemplation of a vast multitude happy in the faith of His gospel on earth, and rejoicing in the fulness of His salvation for ever and ever. Let that which was and is joy to Him be also joy to us, and then in full sympathy with the destined issues of His work we shall earnestly and intelligently pray, "THY KINGDOM COME! "SPIRITUALISM" PROPHETICALLY CONSIDERED. BY W. MAUDE, Esq., BIRKENHEAD. In continuing our remarks in the September number, on the subject of "Spiritualism," we desire briefly to draw the reader's attention to certain admissions made by its advocates, and to certain inferences which may be legitimately drawn from its declared character, in so far as these tend to throw light upon its prophetic aspect. The great and increasing interest felt in the subject generally, may be inferred from the fact that in his inaugural address to the" Social Science Congress recently held at York, Lord Brougham deemed it of sufficient importance to call for the following weighty remarks. Having alluded to the wide-spread infidelity of the day, and the restless efforts of its propagators, his lordship observed:-"It is strange to find that while a body directing these are actually distributing tracts, conducting a periodical work, and holding meetings for debate, both in the southern counties, and even as far north as Edinburgh, there should be found at the same time propagators of spiritual visions, in which, as extremes oftentimes meet, those are prone to believe who have faith in nothing else. Although some of the most zealous of those subject to these delusions fancy that true religion gains by them as affording proofs of another world's existence, it is certain that the bulk of those who believe in spiritualism, in communications from remote regions of the earth, and even from beyond the grave, are utter disbelievers in all religion natural and revealed, unhappy persons in whom the works of the Creator which surround them fail to raise a thought of the Almighty power, wisdom and goodness, and to whom the revealed will of God is addressed in vain." "To whom the revealed will of God is addressed in vain." Let us mark these words, for they are, we think, as important as they are true. The common line of argument-we might say the only one-adopted |