say that
the most uncritical, old-fashioned reader of the Old Testament that
found Jesus Christ in the Song of Solomon, and in the details of the
Tabernacle, and in all the _minutiae_ of worship and sacrifice, was
nearer to the living heart of the thing than the most learned scholar
that has been so absorbed in the inquiries as to how and when this,
that, and the other bit of the Book was written, that he fails to see
the one august figure that shines out, now more and now less dimly, and
gives unity to the whole. 'To Him gave all the prophets witness.' And
when Peter declared, as he did in my text, that ancient Israel, by its
spokesmen and its organs, testified beforehand of the sufferings of
Christ, he is but echoing what he had learned from his Master, who turns
to some of us with the same rebuke with which He met His disciples
after the Resurrection: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that
the prophets have spoken.' The Old and the New are a unity, and Christ
and His Cross are the substance and the centre of both.

II. Note here Christ and His Cross, the theme of Gospel preaching.

If you will glance at your leisure over the whole context from which I
have picked these clauses as containing its essence, you will find that
the Apostle speaks of the things which the prophets foretold as being
the same as 'those which are now reported unto you by them that have
preached the Gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from
heaven.' I must not take for granted that you are all referring to your
Bibles, but I should like to point out, as the basis of one or two
things that I wish to say, the remarkable variety of phrase employed in
the text to describe the one thing. First, Peter speaks of it as
'salvation,' then he speaks of it in the next clause as 'the grace that
should come unto you.' Then, in the next phrase, he designates it more
particularly as 'the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should
follow.' Now, if we put these designations together--salvation, grace,
Christ's sufferings, the subsequent glory--we come to this, that the
facts of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the great
vehicle which brings to men God's grace, that that grace has for its
purpose and its effect man's salvation, and that these facts are the
Gospel which Christian preachers have to proclaim.

Now notice what follows from such thoughts as these. To begin with, the
Gospel is not a speculation, is not a the