Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/292

 be no doubt, for he is described as "the righteous branch" of David, and thus all the commentators explain it. In these three passages, then, of the Word of God, sinners are pointed to the Messiah as their hope and their righteousness. He is God's righteous servant, and his sufferings and his merits are all-sufficient to do that which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob cannot do. The great mistake of the oral law is to point to wrong persons, who have no righteousness, and almost totally to pass by Him whom God hath set forth as the hope of sinners. But it may here be asked, if Messiah be a man, how can he have merits more than Abraham, or any other of the children of Adam? The answer is, that though very man, he is not a sinful man as we are, neither is he a mere man. If he were a man like us, he could have no merits, and therefore could not justify us any more than we could justify him. The declaration, therefore, that he is the Lord's righteous servant, and that he is appointed for the justification of sinners, necessarily implies that he is more than a man, and the title given him by the Prophet Jeremiah puts this beyond doubt. Jeremiah calls him by the incommunicable name of God concerning which God himself says:—

"I am the : that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another." (Isa. xlii. 8.) If then be the name of God, then that Being who is called by that holy name must be God. Some of the modern rabbies reply, that this holy name is also given to the city of Jerusalem, both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But even if we admit this, still this is no answer to our argument. There is no fear that a city which, however great or noble, is only a mass of stones and mortar, should be mistaken for the living God, the Creator of the Universe. When, therefore, the name of God is attributed to the city, God's honour is not given to it. But when we are told of the Messiah, first that he is righteous, secondly that his righteousness is so great as to justify the guilty, and lastly that his name is, " our Righteousness;" that is when we see that the attributes and the name of God are attributed to him, then we must conclude either that he is God, or that God has done what he has declared that he would not do, and given his honour to another. Righteousness is the attribute of God alone, and so Daniel says:—

"O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day." (Dan. ix. 7.) But, in the above passages, righteousness is said to belong to the Messiah, and that in such an immeasurable degree as to be sufficient to