The words referred to were spoken when Peter had made an attempt at resistance, and smitten off the ear of the High Priest’s servant, who came with others to take Jesus, and when He had rebuked Peter, saying, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? _But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled_ that _thus it must be_?” (Matt. xxvi. 51–54). “The Lord” had “sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Ps. cx. 4). And then to show that He needed not even the legions to rescue Him, but had still all power in His hands, when about to be “brought as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isa. liii. 7), as soon as He had said to the band of men and officers who came with Judas to take Him, “_I am He_” they went backwards and fell to the ground (John xviii. 3–7), signifying that they had no power to touch Him until again encouraged by Jesus. And so at each step of His trial, mocking, scourging, until by wicked hands He was crucified and slain (Acts ii. 23)—it was: “Thou couldst have no power against Me except it were given Thee from above” (John xix. 11). At each step it was His voluntary submission to ignominy and insult, and a cruel death, that He might redeem us from death, and from the power of the grave and of hell by His own blood. CHAPTER IV. TESTIMONY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES TO JESUS CHRIST AS THE MESSIAH. We have thus endeavoured to point out in how comprehensive a sense Jesus fulfilled the Law, so that one jot or one tittle should not fail or be lost. The Apostle Peter, in the third chapter of Acts, says, “Those things which God before _had showed by the mouth of all His prophets_, that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled” (ver. 18). It was the beneficent design of our Heavenly Father that so many rays of light, passing through varied channels, and spread over all past time, should concentrate upon Jesus as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, that there might be no excuse for rejecting Him. Let us recall some of the principal passages in which the Old Testament Scriptures refer to our Lord and His kingdom. 1. His coming was prophesied from the fall of Adam and Eve, in the Lord’s address to the serpent, thus, “The seed of the woman shall bruise thy head, but thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. iii. 15), a prophecy obscure at first, but abundantly explained by subsequent history and prophecy. 2. The promise was made to Abraham and renewed to Isaac and Jacob, that in their seed, all the families of the earth should be blessed (Gen. xii. 3, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4). 3. The family of Jacob was chosen to be a peculiar people to the Lord. Laws, sacrifices, and institutions were given them to be as a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ, and it was declared the sceptre “shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh come” (Gen. xlix. 10).