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16 through whom all God's promises are fulfilled. In this sense the name is a symbol of the continuity of the work of God, and a guarantee of its accomplishment. This is the historical importance of it. 'To Him bear all the prophets witness' (Acts l043). All prophecy is in essence Messianic. All the hopes which God has inspired in the hearts of men, whether by articulate voices in the Old Testament, or by the providential guidance of the race, or by the very constitution of human nature, must look to Him to be made good. To borrow the language of Paul, 'How many soever are the promises of God, in him is the Yea' (2 Cor.120). They must be fulfilled in Him, or not at all; or rather we should say. They have been fulfilled in Him, and in no other.

The exclusive place which is thus given to Jesus as the Christ is insisted upon from the first. Whether we regard Him as the King to whom all must do homage, or as the central and supreme figure in history, through whom God's final purpose is to be achieved. He stands alone. There cannot be another, who shares as He does the throne of God; there cannot be another to whom all the prophets bear witness, and on whom all the hopes of humanity depend. This is not only implied in the place taken by Jesus in the faith of the apostle; it has come to clear consciousness in the apostle's mind, and is explicitly asserted in his preaching. 'In none other is there salvation; for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved' (Acts 412). If we can rely upon these words as representing the mind of Peter — and the writer can see no reason to question them — it is clear that Jesus had in the earliest preaching and the earliest faith of Christians that solitary and incommunicable place which the Church assigns Him still.

It is worth while, however, to bring out more distinctly