The words “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” were originally addressed by a poetical courtier to Solomon or some other Hebrew monarch, on his accession and marriage;[199] nor can the slightest reason be assigned for supposing that the ode in which the words occur had any reference more remote than the immediate occasion of its composition. The first half of the Psalm[200] is addressed to the prince; the remainder to his bride,[201] who is exhorted to give her undivided affection to the new relation which she has formed; to “forget her own people, and the house of her father;” and who is consoled with the hope, that “instead of her fathers she shall have her sons, whom she shall make princes through all the land.” Those who can satisfy themselves with the theological conceit, that this is a prophetic allegory, descriptive of the relation between Christ and his Church, appear to have placed themselves so far beyond the reach of all the rules of interpretation, that argument becomes fruitless; _no possible media of refutation exist_. They must belong to the class who have succeeded in spiritualizing the Song of Solomon; to whom therefore it has ceased to be a matter of the smallest consequence, _what words_ are presented to them in Scripture, as they have attained the faculty of seeing one set of ideas, wherever they look, and an incapacity to see anything else. Bishop Young, convinced that the prophetic claims of this Psalm must be relinquished, and that the term _God_ in it is addressed merely to the Hebrew monarch, and therefore used in an inferior sense, renders the passage thus; “thy throne O mighty prince, is for ever and ever.”[202] And surely, even those who can persuade themselves that scripture can have two intended meanings, and who imagine the poem in question to have referred primarily to Solomon, and remotely to the Messiah, must perceive that a word by which the Jewish prince might be accosted, cannot imply the supreme deity of Christ. Christ is said, in the common translation, to have made the worlds; but it is generally admitted that the phrase does not denote the construction of the material universe, and is even incapable of bearing this meaning. It describes Jesus as the agent of God in bringing about the successive states of our social world; in introducing the preluding revolutions, and the final catastrophe of human affairs. If it be asked, _what ages, what revolutions_, are thus attributed to the instrumentality of Christ? the answer must be sought in the fact, that the author was a Hebrew, writing to Hebrews. He seized on the grand Jewish division of time and Providence into two portions—the period before, and the period after, the coming of the Messiah; and these were the two AGES, frequently called “the present world,” and “the world to come,” which Christ is said to have constituted. Does any one inquire, in what way our Lord, if he were not at least pre-existent, could administer the arrangements of