The intermediate and transition stage (as I have already observed) between the first and the

residence was chiefly manifested by the symbol of light, the word glory expressed the light also.

"When Moses desired to have a manifestation of the Lord, his request was, 'I beseech thee, shew me thy glory,' (Exod. xxxiii. 18.) In like manner, it is said that the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle,' (Exod. xl. 34,) and 'the house of the Lord,' meaning the light from the cherubim.

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Accordingly, when Isaiah prophesied of the manifestation of God in Christ, he says, 'the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,' (Isaiah xl. 5.) And St. John, alluding to the prophet's vision, these things spake Esaias, when he saw His glory,' (John xii. 41;) and again, 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt (or tabernacled) amongst us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,' John i. 14.

"So, too, when Christ speaks of his Church, as the future residence of the Godhead in the person of the Holy Spirit, he expresses himself in allusions to this symbol: although that symbol was no longer to be given, to a people destined to ' walk by faith, and not by sight.' His Apostles continued to adopt the same language concerning the Church. St. Peter writes, The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you,' (1 Pet. iv. 14.) St. Paul speaks of Christ's glorious Church; and, in his comparison between the Mosaic and Christian dispensation, the Divine presence in each is expressed in the same figurative language. If the ministration of death written and engraven on stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the Spirit

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last of these dispensations,-the second Temple, which was the bodily person of our Lord Jesus Christ, may be said to have been dedicated, and its sanctity proclaimed, to the senses of the beholders, by an external sign, which, there can be no doubt, was the very same as in the other instances; viz. a supernatural sound, the voice from Heaven designating Him as the Son of God, and a supernatural flame descending and settling on Him. This last is, indeed, not mentioned in those very terms; but the narratives can leave no doubt on the mind of a reader well versed in the rest of Scripture, that the appearance was what I have stated, and that the sacred writers intended to be so understood. For we are told, you should recollect, that John the Baptist had not known (as he

be rather glorious?' And, so continuing and explaining the image, he at length proceeds to say that we, the Church of Christ, are not only, as were the Jews, spectators of the glory, but its abode and resting place, as it were. 'But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory,' [i. e. with a continued increase of glory,] 'even as by the Spirit of the Lord.' (2 Corinthians iii. 7-18.) "-Hinds's History, vol. i. pp. 331, 332, Note.

expressly declares,) the person whom he was baptizing to be the Christ, but had been forewarned of the sign that was to mark Him out. "I knew Him not:" but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit of God descending and abiding on Him, the same is He who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." Now the Spirit of God, we know, cannot be literally an object of sight; but the sign of his presence, which John the Baptist was told he should see, must have been the known and established symbol of a supernatural flame, which alone he could have recognized and understood.*

A notion has found its way into the mind of

*"God has been omnipresent from the beginning, and cannot be supposed at any time to be more in one place than in another. Yet it has pleased him from time to time to lift up an ensign,' to which men might come to ask for communication of His will, and to be made sensible of His presence. Such was the Shechinah granted to the Israelites, from between the Cherubim, where God is accordingly said to have dwelt. With this flame, the voice or other vehicle of communication was so connected, that the priest was obliged to come to the former, in order to avail himself of the latter. The flame was the sign; and besides this, there was the voice or

many persons, partly from an ambiguous expression of our translators, that the " bodily form" in which this appeared was that of a dove; because the expression in the English version will bear the sense of its resembling a dove; but this is not implied in the original, which only says that it appeared descending like a dove, in the same manner, i. e. as a dove with a gentle hovering motion alights on any thing; the expression distinguishing the appearance from that of a sudden flash of light. But whatever may have been its

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other channel of revelation. It afterwards pleased the Most High to set up an ensign for all the world to resort unto,

even for the nations afar.' This ensign was, the Humannature of our blessed Lord. To Him, all were now to come who desired to receive the divine communications. His words and symbolical miracles, and other acts, formed the vehicle of that communication-as much so, and in like manner, as the voice which gave the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, or which spoke at different times to Adam, to the Patriarchs, to the Prophets, and others His servants of old. Hence it is written, that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,' and that men beheld His glory,' in allusion to the analogy between Him and the Shechinah. Hence, too, the occasional radiant appearances which could not fail to have suggested to Jewish witnesses the symbol of divine manifestation."Hinds's History, vol, i. pp. 296–298.

form, the appearance must have been that of a flame, because no other could have been recognized by John as the sign of God's Spirit.

Jesus afterwards fulfilled (as on this day) the promise then made, of baptizing his disciples with the "Holy Spirit and with fire ;"-i. e. (according to the Hebrew mode of expression) with the Holy Spirit, through the outward symbol of fire; which promise He Himself repeated just before His ascension,-" Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." And on that occasion we find, of course, a like appearance recorded; with this remarkable and important circumstance mentioned, that it was not one mass of flame, but distributed among them; the appearance of a distinct flame settling on each of them.* This, which is more clearly pointed out in the original, is imperfectly expressed in our translation;

* In several of the Eastern languages the word denoting a "flame," is, I understand, nearly the same as that for a "tongue;" evidently from a resemblance in the form, and also in the kind of motion of each; which last is the origin of the expression of a "lambent (i. e. licking) flame."