in connection with the individuals mentioned in this passage, Christ spoke and acted, it is written, "by which also He went and preached." Not to enlarge, at present, upon Christ "going and preaching"-here two Divine Persons are brought before us; the one the Principal, as it were, and the other the Subordinate. Neither of them is named in the clause before us; but, who they respectively are cannot be disputed. For, in the preceding Verse, the Principal Person is not merely Messianically designated" Christ," but Officially described as suffering, He, the Righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God." Thus, the Chief Subject of the passage-the "He" intended -is still Jesus in His Mediatorial capacity. Undeniable as this is, it is not the less true, that, what Christ is here represented as having done, He did, not directly but indirectly; not immediately but mediately; not personally but_impersonally; not by Himself but by another. For, the words before us unequivocally are, not "He went," but by which He went." Still, as what a Master or a King does by His servant or ambassador, when that servant or ambassador acts by authority, is legally considered as having been done by the Master or King himself, so, upon this principle, Jesus Christ must, in the case before us, be regarded as the Principal Person here meant.

The Subordinate Person referred to in this clause subordinate not in Himself but in the economy of redemption-is also expressly named in the preceding Verse. In order, therefore, to ascertain who it was by whom Christ went and acted, as He is here said to have done, we have only to glance at that Verse. There we learn it was "the Spirit;"-that term being, what is called, the antecedent to the relative" which," in the clause now before us. This "Spirit," likewise,

we have already briefly shewn to be the Holy Spirit.

The clause, therefore, now under consideration, may be thus explained-" by which Spirit, namely, the Holy Spirit, one of the Persons of the Godhead, Christ went," and otherwise acted as here described. And being, as the Holy Spirit is, as styled in Scripture," the Spirit of Christ," no less than the Spirit of the Father; being, also, as He is, given to Christ by way of reward for having finished the work of redemption, and by way of proof that His sacrifice of Himself, in the place of sinners, was accepted by the Father as a perfect atonement; especially, being, as He is, represented in the scheme of redemption as the Servant of Christ, as well as of the Father, in order to transform rebels into loyal subjects, most fittingly is He here held forth as the primary and principal Agent through whom Christ speaks and acts with a view to the accomplishment of the purposes of Divine grace. So much the rather may all this be asserted, as we are expressly assured that the "mighty power which God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, "wrought in Christ when He raised Him" bodily "from the dead," is also now exerted spiritually in all who believe, and who, although "dead in sins," are thereby spiritually "quickened together with Christ."

Such is "the Spirit" by which Christ is here represented as speaking and acting. At the same time, because between Him and Christ, there subsists essentially the closest relation, as well as because He is redemptively sent by the Father in Christ's name, and makes over to sinners all the blessings of the great salvation, justly may all that He does, for this high and holy end, be regarded as being performed by Christ Himself.

3.-Christ, the Messiah, represented as going and preaching by the Holy Spirit.

To pass from the Holy Spirit, as the Divine Agent, to what Christ is represented as having done by Him-it is recorded in the clause before us, that "He went and preached." These words, when thus isolated, or looked at by themselves, as they have too often virtually been, completely contradict all that has now been advanced. However, they must be viewed not separated from, but connected with, what immediately precedes. For, it is not simply asserted that Christ "went and preached;" but that He did this "by the Spirit," the other Divine Person here referred to. Accordingly, by overlooking this fact-the undeniable fact that Christ is here spoken of as so acting not personally but impersonally-the "wildest confusion" of thought and the greatest contradiction of Scripture; the grossest error and the highest absurdity have been uttered in remote as well as in more recent times, as we shall immediately shew. All this may be safely asserted, if the Divine Word is to be explained consistently with itself in collateral passages, and according to the recognised rules of Biblical interpretation.

It is no doubt true, even when it is predicated of Christ, that "by the Spirit He went and preached," the mode of expression is peculiar; so peculiar that His direct personality might almost still be supposed to be implied. However, the terms"by which He went and preached"-absolutely forbid the idea of His personality; and the want of Divine authority elsewhere to that effect, imperatively excludes such an idea-whether the clause be explained as referring to the times of the antediluvians, to the times of Peter, or to any other times, past, present, or future.

Peculiar, however, as the language is, when Christ, not directly by Himself, but indirectly through the Spirit, is here represented as "going and preaching," it is not altogether uncommon in Sacred Writ. For, long after Christ had, in His glorified humanity, ascended to heaven, and therefore was not bodily upon earth, we find it written in the Epistle to the Ephesians that He "came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to them that were nigh." Somewhat, also, in this sense, we read of Him, during His public ministry saying, "Go and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice."* In short, verbs of "gesture or motion," such as to go or walk, when coupled with other verbs, are often used pleonastically, or redundantly. Accordingly, here the expression, "He went and preached" is unquestionably a pleonasm for "He preached;" and it might easily be shewn that such a figure of speech is highly Classical. Just, therefore, as when Christ is said to have "come and preached peace" to the Ephesians and other Gentiles, and yet did so, not in His own person, but through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and through the instrumentality of Paul and other Ambassadors of the Cross, so, in like manner, when He is here spoken of as "going and preaching," He must, as we have already shewn, be regarded as acting thus, not personally but impersonally; not by Himself, but, as we are explicitly informed, by the Holy Spirit-not to allude, at present, to any other.

Here we must, also, add, that when Christ is said to have so preached, the message which He proclaimed must have been the message of mercy or of peace; the message of reconciliation or of the Gospel. For, the term employed, in this case, in the Original, although not that which literally signi* Eph. ii. 17. Matt. ix. 13.

fies, to "preach the Gospel," is that which is occasionally applied to Christ Himself, to John the Baptist, and to others in the New Testament as the Commissioned Heralds of Heaven; the burden of whose proclamation ever was, in one form or another, the Gospel; "the glad tidings of great joy, and the good tidings of good things." At the same time, "the wrath to come" ever occupied a place in the Divine and Royal proclamation, which, from time to time, each of these Heavenly Heralds enunciated. Such, likewise, in spirit, even from the remotest ages of the world, was the two-fold nature of the proclamation which every such Herald announced; whether he belonged to the antediluvian or postdiluvian era. Through every such one, even in the most ancient times, as a Herald, not of man's but of God's making, and not of man's but of God's sending, and therefore of the number of the "holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit," Jesus Christ preached more or less clearly, as well as successfully, until He Himself, the Promised Messiah, was, in the fulness of time, "anointed with the Spirit," and preached His own glorious Gospel.

4.—Who "the spirits" were to which Christ preached, not by Himself, but by the Spirit.

The persons-if we may say so at present-to whom Christ, by the Holy Spirit, went and preached," are in the passage before us designated 'spirits.' The question, then, now to be considered is, who were these 'spirits?" Were they in a disembodied, or in an embodied state?

We have already had occasion to observe, that the term "spirit" is employed in Scripture in a great variety of applications, as well as shades of