An Amicable Controversy with a Jewish Rabbi, on the Messiah's Coming

"The testimony of Jesus in the spirit of prophecy." Few, perhaps, of those who read the Scriptures are fully aware of the extent to which the language of them abounds in metaphor; yet is this knowledge indispensable to the right understanding of both the Old and the New Testament, and especially the prophetic parts of these books. If Christ be the Messiah, his kingdom is a spiritual one, and what relates to it must be spiritually understood. We marvel at the blindness which prevents the Jews from perceiving in prophecy the numerous intimations of a spiritual Messiah, all of which appear to us to have been distinctly fulfilled in the person of Christ; and yet that very blindness to their spirituality is what prevents ourselves from understanding other prophecies relating to the same subject. The happy state which the world may attain to, under the universal prevalence of true religion, it is more easy to imagine, than to describe; for a volume would hardly suffice to enumerate all the blessings it is calculated to afford. The cessation of foreign war, with all the miseries attending it; the end of all tyranny and oppression at home; of injustice and misrule, are the most distinctly announced, and their benefit perhaps the most obvious. But their influence on society is limited in comparison with the wide diffusion of happiness that would ensue from the improvement in private life, and the amelioration of individual character.