directed them in the composition of those writings which they left for the edification of succeeding ages. They pretend to have made discoveries of inconclusive reasoning in the epistles of doubtful facts in the gospels; and appealing from the testimony of the apostles to their own judgments, they have not scrupled to declare their opinion, that the miraculous conception of our Lord is a subject "with respect to which any person is at full liberty to think as the evidence shall appear to him, without any impeachment of his faith or character as a Christian:" And lest a simple avowal of this extraordinary opinion should not be sufficiently offensive, it is accompanied with certain obscure insinuations, the reserved meaning of which we are little anxious to divine, which seem intended to prepare the world not to be surprised if something still more extravagant (if more extravagant may be) should in a little time be declared. We are assembled this day to commemorate our Lord's nativity. It is not as the birth-day of a prophet that this day is sanctified; but as the anniversary of that great event which had been announced by the whole succession of prophets from the beginning of the world, and in which the predictions concerning the manner of the Messiah's advent received their complete and literal accomplishment. In the predictions, as well as in the corresponding event, the circumstance of the miraculous conception makes so principal a part, that we shall not easily find subjects of meditation more suited either to the season or to the times than these two points, the importance of this doctrine as an article of the Christian faith; and the sufficiency of the evidence by which the fact is supported. First, for the importance of the doctrine as an article of the faith. It is evidently the foundation of the whole distinction between the character of Christ in the condition of a man and that of any other prophet. Had the conception of Jesus been in the natural way had he been the fruit of Mary's marriage with her husband -his intercourse with the Deity could have been of no other kind than the nature of any other man might have equally admitted, — an intercourse of no higher kind than the prophets enjoyed, when their minds were enlightened by the extraordinary influence of the Holy Spirit. The information conveyed to Jesus might have been clearer and more extensive than any imparted to any former prophet; but the manner and the means of communication must have been the same. The holy Scriptures speak a very different language: They tell us, that the same God who "spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets hath in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son;" evidently establishing a distinction of Chris-tianity from preceding revelations, upon a distinction between the two characters of a prophet of God and of God's Son. Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, is described in the book of Deuteronomy as superior to all succeeding prophets, for the intimacy of his intercourse with God, for the variety of his miracles, and for the authority with which he was invested. "There arose not a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom Jehovah knew face to face,—in all the signs and wonders which Jehovah sent him -- to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and all his servants, and to all his land, and in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel." Yet this great prophet, raised up to be the leader and the legislator of God's people this greatest of the prophets, with whom Jehovah conversed face to face, as a man talketh with his friend — bore to Jesus, as we are told, the humble relation of a servant to a son. And lest the superiority on the side of the Son should be deemed a mere superiority of the office to which he was appointed, we are told that the Son is "higher than the angels; being the effulgence of God's glory, the express image of his person;" the God" whose throne is for ever and ever, the sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness:" And this high dignity of the Son is alleged as a motive for religious obedience to his commands, and for reliance on his promises. It is this indeed which gives such authority to his precepts, and such certainty to his whole doctrine, as render faith in him the first duty of religion. Had Christ been a mere prophet, to believe in Christ had been the same thing as to believe in John the Baptist. The messages, indeed, announced on the part of God by Christ, and by John the Baptist, might have been different, and the importance of the different messages unequal; but the principle of belief in either must have been the same. Hence it appears, that the intercourse which Christ as a man held with God was different in kind from that which the greatest of the prophets ever had enjoyed: And yet how it should differ, otherwise than in the degree of frequency and intimacy, it will not be very easy to explain, unless we adhere to the faith transmitted to us from the primitive ages, and believe that the Eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, so joined to himself the holy thing which was formed in Mary's womb, that the two natures, from the commencement of the virgin's conception, made one person. Between God and any living being having a distinct personality of his own separate from the Godhead, no other communion could obtain than what should consist in the action of the Di |