visitant.

Verse 31. Call his name Jesus.- See note on Matt. i. 21.

Verse 32. He shall be great, &c.— Great in power and authority, in glory and fame, in office and administration; yet not in a civil or worldly sense, as the event proved. All this is accomplished, however, more gloriously in his spiritual and mediatorial dominion. Or, more particularly, our Lord was in a special and peculiar sense great, in his PERSON, as God and man united; and hence Isaiah, after he has said, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,” adds, "and his name shall be called the mighty God, the everlasting Father: " great in his PROPHETIC OFFICE, in his doctrine and miracles, "mighty in word and deed in his PRIESTHOOD, as offering the universal sacrifice for the sin of the whole world not to be repeated, and establishing upon its merit a constant, ever-prevalent, and universal intercession: and great, as the KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS, to whom "all power is given in heaven and earth," and "of whose kingdom there is no end."

Shall be called the Son of the Highest.He shall be distinguished from all others by this designation. And so it has been. Jesus was condemned for professing to be the Son of God; this was the blasphemy imputed to him by the Jewish council, and for which they judged him "worthy of death:" but he was demonstrated to be "the Son of God with power," by his resurrection, which established the claim to this title he had asserted before the sanhedrim; and by this he has been known, venerated, and worshipped, in his church, THE SON OF GOD, in a sense in which no creature can be,-the Son of God in his

Light of Light, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father." This is the sense in which he has been called the Son of God, in his church, in all ages; and it is supported by his own infallible testimony at his trial, and by the constant testimony of his inspired apostles.

To be called often means simply to be; but not here, or it would have been found in the preceding clause, which is, and he shall be great, not, "he shall be called great." It appears to relate to his public and glorious designation in all ages of the church, in time and through eternity,-"The Son of the living God." The Highest, Tysos, is sometimes joined with eos, but often stands alone as a title of God. It is used by the LXX for the Hebrew by, the High One, or Most

High.

The throne of his father David.-David was a typical character; and the dominion he acquired, which was to the full extent of the original grant of Canaan made to Abraham, and is expressed by the terms, "from sea to sea, and from the river,” Euphrates, "to the ends of the earth," was a type of the universal dominion of Messiah, when "all kings shall serve him, and all nations shall call him blessed." The application of the characters of David's kingdom, in an enlarged meaning, to that of the Messiah, by the prophets, shows, that the one was regarded as the emblem or type of the other. But there was another reason why the Messiah was represented as the successor to David's throne. It was a part of the covenant made with David, that he should not want a man to sit upon his throne: "His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me; it shall be established for ever, and as a faithful witness in hea

d

ven." But a higher throne than the national throne of Israel was intended; even the throne of all nations, to which our Lord has acceded. For the kingdom of Christ is two-fold. It is that spiritual dominion exercised over the wills and affections of men, by moral influence, by which they subject themselves to his laws and authority; and it is that exercise of external government over the world, vested in our Lord, as Mediator, by which, both by mercies and judgments, by the ordering of its changes, the succession of its empires, the distribution of human power, the punishment of persecutors, the destruction of enemies, the determination of the times, places, and influence of knowledge and inventions, of arts, commerce, and the intercourse of the different parts of the world, his great designs as to the moral recovery of all nations, and the universal establishment of the empire of his truth in all its righteous and peaceful influences, shall be effected. In this respect he is the King of the Jews, as well as other nations; for though that people are dispersed and denationalized, it is by an act of his severity, and can continue no longer than he wills; and to this power, as the divine Sovereign of Israel, is added, "all power in heaven and carth." That a descendant of David should enter upon this universal sovereignty, and wield its sceptre for ever, was indeed the most signal honour which could be conferred upon his "house," and most amply fulfilled the terms of the promise. As to POWER, the dominion of Christ is now universal; and

as to GRACE, the type shall be realized

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ultimately; and in the visible administra tion of his gospel, purifying and softening all the institutions of society, Christ shall reign, the universal Lord, "from the river to the ends of the earth." Then shall be accomplished the words of Zechariah, The Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one:" then the theocracy shall be universally acknow ledged; all earthly rulers confessing themselves to be but vice-kings and servants of him who is King of kings, and Lord of lords.

Verse 35. The Holy Ghost shall, &c.— That the power of the Highest, in the second clause, means the same as the Holy Ghost in the first, has often been taken for granted; but on insufficient grounds. It is true, we ought not too curiously to inquire into these great mysteries; but into the clearest and most satisfactory meaning of the terms in which they are expressed we are bound, though with modesty, to examine. Now, if the meaning of these two clauses be the same, the latter must be considered as illustrative of the former, or as a mere repetition of the same idea in different terms. That the latter clause cannot be considered as explanatory of the former, is sufficiently proved, from its being a more general and obscure mode of speaking; so that, in fact, it does not explain it. That it is a repetition of the same thing in another form, under the in fluence of that mode of speaking in parallelisms which was im pressed upon the style of the Hebrews from their sacred poetry, can scarcely be admitted; because these parallels are used

to heighten the idea, or place it in some new light, and not unfrequently join another thought to the original one; none of which takes place here. But, as in fact there were two acts to be performed in this "preparation of the body" of our Lord,—one the miraculous production of a human being, and the other the joining of the divine nature with it in personal union, so that the Christ might be "Immanuel, God with us,"—it is reasonable to conclude that, in this so particular an explanation of the case to Mary, both should be referred to. Still further, the production of the human nature of our Lord, in the womb of the virgin, is uniformly ascribed to the exclusive agency of the Holy Spirit, as much so as the agency of one of the divine persons can be exclusive of the other; but the second act, the impersonating of the divine WORD with the nature so produced, could only be the personal act of that WORD himself, in concurrence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This act would therefore be naturally expressed in the general terms, the power of the Highest, that is, the power of the most high God, shall overshadow, shall exert its influence upon or in, thee. This view will lead us through some difficulties, with which the text will be found environed if we take the miraculous conception of the human nature of our Lord, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to be the only particular mentioned in it. It would then follow that this miraculous conception is the reason given by the angel why Christ should be, and be called, the Son of God; but in opposition to this stand the facts that his title Son of God is, throughout the remainder of the New Testament, put upon higher and distinct ground, especially as necessarily implying divinity, or being of one nature with the Father; and also that he is never throughout the

New Testament, either by himself or others, called the Son of God with reference to his conception. Nathanael so entitles him, because he had had a proof of his PRESCIENCE, and when he certainly knew nothing of the miraculous conception. He himself called God his PROPER FATHER, and himself the SON OF GOD, in a sense which implied EQUALITY with God, and allowed the Jews so to understand him; whereas no such equality was implied in the mere miraculous conception; so that he could have no reference to that as the ground of these lofty assumptions of divinity itself. The same may be said of his suffering himself to be condemned for blasphemy, without defence; by which he allowed that his claiming to be the Son of God was with reference to his divine, not his human nature, or he would have been accessary to his own murder. St. Paul also uses the title, Son of God, as OPPOSED to what Christ was "according to the flesh," the descendant and son of David: whilst the term ' only begotten" entirely shuts out the notion that he became the Son of God by his miraculous conception, which was but a mode of creation in the womb of the virgin; since in the sense of CREATION he is not the "only begotten," but shares that with all the angels, and with the first human being. No passages, indeed, in the New Testament can be adduced in which Christ is called the Son of God with reference to the production of his human nature; and in this view, therefore, the angel's words would be wholly unintelligible, because they indicate, if so interpreted, that this circumstance should be the open and public reason, if not indeed the exclusive one, why he should be invested with that title; and yet, when we look at the fact, it is never referred to as the ground and reason of it at all. If, however, we consider that Two ACTS are mentioned in the text, distinct acts, re

ferable to Two AGENTS, we have an easy and satisfactory interpretation which avoids this serious difficulty, and harmonizes the words of the angel both with the reason of the case and with the facts and the doctrine of the New Testament. First we have the act of the Holy Ghost, producing that HOLY THING which was to be born of the virgin; and we have the distinct act of the power of the Highest, (the title given to our Lord himself, see note on verse 76,) uniting himself the eternal Word to that which was so formed in the womb of the virgin. By this act it was that the "Word was made flesh," which he could no other wise be than by taking flesh into personal union with himself, a matter entirely distinct from the production of the body of Christ in any mode, and not in any sense necessarily involved in it. From these two acts all that the angel mentions followed. It followed that that should be a HOLY THING which should be born of Mary, as being produced immediately by the Holy Ghost; and it followed that this holy thing should be called THE SON OF GOD. That power of the Highest which overshadowed, exerted his influence upon, the virgin, took the holy thing into personal union with himself, who was in his divine nature the Son of God; and this became the appellation of the one undıvided Christ, but wholly by virtue of the hypostatical union. The mode of expression by which the concluding clause is introduced leads also to the same conclusion. The particle dio, "therefore," is consequential, and is not to be understood as though the angel were giving a reason why Christ should become the Son of God, but why he should be owned and acknowledged as such. We have also the addition of kat in the sense of " also:" Therefore ALSO that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God; it shall not merely be called holy, which would follow from its being the immediate production of the Holy Ghost, but more than that, it shall be called the Son of God, because of another and an additional circumstance, the union of the two natures. For since human nature

was united to the Son of God, it was to bear the same name as being in indissoluble union with him.

Could it indeed be inferred from this passage, that our Lord was called the Son of God because of the miraculous conception, it would make no difference in the argument by which he is proved to be the Son of God as to his divine nature, because that rests upon quite dis tinct and independent passages of scripture. It would only follow that, not on one only, but on two accounts, that distinguishing appellation was given to him; but this very text, which is the only one in the New Testament that favours this opinion, lies strongly against it, and cannot be so interpreted without establishing a variance between the words of the angel and the other parts of the New Testament. As for those who endeavour to evade the force of the argument drawn from the title Son of God, in favour of our Lord's divinity, by representing it to be a title of Messias, it is difficult to see what they gain by that evasion. The Messias is called "the Son of God;" no one doubts that; but still the inquiry remains, Why is he so called? The true answer to this must be, that he really was what he is called, and was not OFFICIALLY called what NATURALLY he was not; otherwise we have words without any meaning at all, or words adapted to convey an

erroneous one.

The unborn human nature of Christ is called a holy thing. Some have without reason suspected a mystery in the phrase; but the Greeks, when speaking of unborn children, used the neuter gender. On the miraculous conception it may be generally remarked, that it was essential to our Lord's sacrifice, that he should in no degree partake of the natural pollution of the fallen race, nor be included in the general condemnation of Adam's descendants, by being "born of the flesh." By this wonderful mystery of his incarnation, he was "made of a woman," not of man; he came not by natural generation; he was allied to the race, yet not of the race in the way of descent; "judgment " did not,