by Hebrew scholars.  But in order to cut short the dispute, w will permit the passage to be interpreted as signifying that Bethlehem was to be the birth place of the Messiah.  What then?  Will a man’s being born in Bethlehem be sufficient to make him to be the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets?  Surely it has been made plain in the beginning of this work, that many more characteristic marks than this must meet in one person in order to constitute him the Messiah described by them!

In Zechariah ix. 9, it is written, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Sion, Shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold thy king cometh unto thee, the righteous one, and saved, or preserved [according to the Hebrew] lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.”  This has been applied by the evangelists to Jesus, who rode upon an ass into Jerusalem.

But in the first place, it is to be observed, that there seems to have been a blunder in this transaction; for according to the Hebrew idiom of the passage quoted above, the personage there spoken of, was to ride upon “an ass’ colt;” whereas, the apostles, in order to be sure of fulfilling the prophecy, represent Jesus as riding upon an ass, and the colt, too!  “They spread their garments upon them, and set him upon them."[See the evangelists in loc.] In the next place, a man may ride into Jerusalem upon an ass, without being thus necessarily demonstrated to be the Messiah.  And unless, as said before, every tittle of the marks given by the prophets to designate their Messiah, be found in Jesus, and in any other claiming to be that Messiah his being born in Bethlehem, and riding upon an ass into Jerusalem, will by no means prove him to be so.  Besides, those who will take the trouble to look at the context in Zechariah, will find, that the event spoken of in the quotation, is spoken of as contemporaneous with the restoration Israel, and the establishment of peace and happiness, which seems to cut up by the roots the interpretation of the evangelists.  And to conclude the argument,—­Jesus being born in Bethlehem, and riding into Jerusalem, allowing it to be true, would not, we think, frustrate these prophecies of a future fulfillment—­for no one can disprove, that if so be the will of God, such a person as the Messiah is described to be, might be born in Bethlehem to-morrow, and ride in triumph into Jerusalem, twenty years afterwards.

The next passage which has been offered, as a prophecy of Jesus, is to be found in the 12th chap. of Zech. v. 10, and part of it has been misquoted by John.  “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications, and they shall look on me whom they have pierced.”  So it stands in the English version; but, before I state what it ought to be, I would observe, that before the evangelist, (who in his account of the crucifixion applies this passage as referring to Jesus’ being pierced with a