Nazareth Revisited

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Chapter I.

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Christ a Reality.

Whatever view may be taken of Jesus Christ, he cannot be excluded from history; He is not a legend, or a superstition or a theory that may be brushed lightly aside. He is one of those “stubborn things” that men call facts. You may ignore him, but you cannot expunge him. You may neglect him or misinterpret him; but you cannot get rid of the fact, and whatever may grow out of the fact, that he has appeared and enacted a part among men which has left an indelible impress on their condition in all civilized lands.

To the most casual observer, he towers the most conspicuous figure in the backward sweep of the eye. To the acutest mind of philosophy, he is the most palpable and indubitable problem of history. His historical verity is now conceded on every hand. An ingenious learning has abandoned the vain attempt to make him out a myth. Whatever he be, he is no myth. Every church and chapel is in some way a memento of him. Every organised Christian State in Europe is a monument to his historical memory. Hoary Ecclesiastical Rome filling the centuries, though with but the merest travesty of his doctrine, and for ages manacling the human intellect in a name that was never intended to import anything but life and liberty to the human race, is at least a guarantee to all the world that that name had a personal reality for its foundation.

We are indebted for our knowledge of him to a piece of writing which is quite extraordinary, and which may be said to be his most stupendous monument on earth, namely, the four gospels, bearing the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The antiquity and literary quality of these productions combine to impart to them a value and a significance that cannot be overstated, though familiarity interferes with perception a little. By all the ordinary rules of literary transmission, they are the indisputable productions of Christ’s friends and companions, they having been in the hands of the Christian community with that reputation ever since the beginning of Christianity. But it is their character that gives them their chief weight. They are unlike all biographical performances in this, that they make no effort to commend their subject to the reader. There is no attempt at panegyric; there is no extolling of Christ’s virtues; there is no pointing out of heroic qualities; there is none of the customary praise or commendation of his hero that is natural to a biographical writer. There is nothing even in the nature of a complimentary allusion. All we have is a plain ungarnished recital of what Christ said and of what he did—and this is in the simplest language. This is wonderful when we consider the scope there was for hero worship, and the temptation to indulge in it on the part of enthusiastic disciples. But how much more wonderful it is that this bald recital of facts conveys to the mind the impression of a personality unapproached in the whole range of human thought or writing—a character such as is never seen among men for godlike dignity, purity, beneficence and power, a figure as far above men as the heaven is above the earth. What is the explanation of this unique literary phenomenon? If we accept the view exhibited by the apostles, there is a complete explanation; that the whole case was a divine manifestation, and that the Spirit of God employed the gospel narrators in its literary exhibition. If we reject this view, we are in the presence of a fact that defies explanation, on any known principle. The New Testament is a fact: the figure it exhibits of Jesus Christ is as much a fact as any superb picture in a gallery. That the human authors were with one exception illiterate men, is a fact. If a superhuman agency were not at work, how are we to account for this superhuman performance, that without human praise or human paint of any kind, these illiterate writers have produced in the simplest language such an ideal character in Christ as transcends even the most gifted of human imaginations?

There are two ways of dealing with the subject. It can be discussed from what might be called the newspaper standpoint, as a doubtful problem on which, as judge and jury, we bring to bear what information we may possess. Or it may be stated and illustrated and argued from the New Testament writers’ point of view, with the ardour that naturally springs from appreciation and faith. If the latter course is chosen in the present case, it is because, while it surrenders none of the critical advantages that may belong to the former, it admits of a fuller statement and a more satisfactory result. The cold impartiality of the critic, however correctly applied, only leaves you at the door of the subject when you have done. When you have conciliated unbelief to the utmost; when you have gone the utmost length in your deferences to critical acumen or unfriendly bias, you have failed to do more than establish a probability, which has little influence on human motives. The better plan is to assume the historical verity of the subject in all particulars, and harmonise this view of the subject with all objections as you go along. The logic and polemics of earnest conviction take you inside the house, and set you down before the cheerful fire in the pleased society of hospitable inmates.

The wisdom of this line of treatment is forced on the mind when the nature of the subject is fully apprehended. It is not like ordinary subjects, which you may attend to or leave alone without compromising your well-being in any way. If Christ is what he is represented in the apostolic writings, it is at our hazard if we neglect him. Other subjects may be interesting, but this is of solemn and urgent moment. We may or may not attend to other things: the claims of this are imperative. The subject of Christ alone deals with personal futurity and eternity.

Astronomy appeals overpoweringly to our sense of the stupendous, the exact, the infinite: the face of the earth stirs our love of the fair and the beautiful; her rocky depths excite our curiosity as to past conditions of the globe. Agriculture supplies us with the useful: chemistry with the theoretical; history, with the actual working of things among men in their present situation. Christ alone deals with the ever-pressing problem of the meaning of existence and the destiny of human life. All other subjects are here as dumb as the stars; dark as the night; or incoherent as the roar of the storm-tossed waters on the desolate strand.

If we are to accept Christ as apostolically exhibited, there is no extravagance in the words which declare him “worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing.” It is not only as Pilate was made to record, that “there is no fault in him;” but as Paul declared, that “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;” that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily.”

Men glory in men. They see and praise greatness in the successful leading of soldiers, as in Napoleon; they admire the ability that can tell a graphic story, like a Dickens; or that can clearly delineate quick-eyed discernments and impressions of men and things, as a Shakespeare; they extol the capacity that can hold the political helm in stormy weather, like a Gladstone; or that can jingle composition in measured cadences, like a Scott or a Tennyson. But what is all this excellence but the exhibition of perishing mortal faculty in picturesque relations—impressing human mentalities, tickling human fancies, flattering human vanities, but futile in the eternal issues of things? At the best, it is the exercise of creature gift—like the strength of a horse, the constructiveness of a bee, the scent of a bloodhound, the instinct of a beaver. If we are commanded not to glory in man, it is reasonable we should not. Man is but a creature—a transient blossom of eternal power—no more to be adored for his qualities than a rose for its fragrance, a peach for its bloom.

But with Christ, it is otherwise. We are not only not forbidden, we are commanded to glory in him. The very angels were ordered to do obeisance: “Let all the angels of God worship him.” And the reason which tells us it is out of place to glory in men, tells us it is fitting we should glory in the Lord. If we are to accept the New Testament exhibition of him, the Father has planted in him intrinsic excellence, life, authority, and power; and where these are, the recognition of them in praise and deference is reasonable.

Jesus, while upon earth, said, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” These words appeal to a need most felt by those who are most alive in an intellectual sense: men who discern in the starry immensities around them the sphere of immeasurable aspiration—the potentiality of unutterable heights of faculty and glorious life—who, looking into themselves and out upon the face of the fair earth which they tread, with its multitudinous manifestation of life, with some latent intuition of the high meaning of things, have their hearts drawn out into infinite longings which nothing in human life, as it now is, can satisfy. All men experience the vanity of life as it now is upon earth, but none so keenly as these. They labour and are heavy laden: labour in the futile effort to grasp the reason of things: are heavy laden in the mental oppression which the immensity and the inscrutability of things brings upon their spirits. If Christ is what he alleged he was, there is peace for this intellectual perturbation which cannot elsewhere be found. In the light of his existence and mission, creation is delivered from the gloom in which it appears to merely natural eyes. If unbelievers say there is no gloom in creation for them, it is the mere repartee of intellectual resentment, or the utterance of a crude experience which has not yet learnt the sadness of life as it now is—the sadness that inevitably waits when the effervescence of young blood has subsided, when the poetic ardours of fresh life have expended themselves, when business has lost its aim and its interest, and when mortal energy wanes, and man is forced to recognise in the encroachments of feebleness and the disappearance of friends in the universal grave, the sad tokens of the truth that comes home at last, however long ignored in pride or silenced in the din of folly—that man is subject to vanity, and that human life is in darkness.

There are plausible theories much current and popular among even Christian professors of our time, which logically undermine the position of Christ. They either bring Christ down to men, or level men up to him, which has the same practical effect. Almost all public teachers in our day incline to this habit, which must be held an offence against reason if the Christ of the apostolic narrative is to be accepted.

The Christ of apostolic narrative differs from all so-called great men that have ever arisen among men, in that he has both dynamical relation to the universe, and an indefeasible title to possession, according to the strictest methods of legal construction. We are leaving out of account for the moment the disparity between Christ and other men as to character. Even supposing it could be made out for a moment that their characters were equal, the difference here is an immeasurable gulf.

The brightest human intellect that ever dazzled mankind is but a burning taper in the wind, or, if you will, a glowing electric light on a spire-top. It is a thing of conditions. Take away the conditions, and the light is gone: and over the conditions, the light has no control. William Shakespeare has a brain of certain organisation: this brain has to be fed with the vital force which digestion extracts from food. Properly supplied thus, it has impressions and the power of representing them in terse words. It is no more than any other human brain, except in the larger development of specific departments of the brain. He cannot control or alter the laws that govern being, either for himself or others. His friends die and he cannot help them; he himself grows old and he cannot prevent it. The power he possesses is only such as exists in the imaginations of his admirers. The Marquis of Hertford sinks; the Queen can only send a message of sympathy. The Queen would feel mocked if the Marquis were to say, “Speak the word and thy servant shall be healed.’

With Christ, how different! if we are to accept the evidence which remains un-dissipated after the utmost alchemy of “higher criticism,” or any other effort to bring Christ within the category of mere men. By the testimony of Christ and the apostles, supported by works of superhuman power, the eternal and fundamental force of the universe (the Spirit of God) is in his hand. “Power over all flesh” is the Father’s gift to him—“all power in heaven and in earth.” What he can do in the exercise of this power has been illustrated. He can stop a storm: he can produce bread from the abstract elements, without the circuitous process of agriculture. He can discern the secrets of the human mind at any distance: he can make the dead alive again. All this he did when upon earth. Greater marvels wait, as his attested promise declares.

That a subject so unutterably sublime and so imperatively practical should be treated so indifferently is one of the saddest facts of an age in many respects the saddest, though the brightest, in human annals. It has more explanations than one. One is a lack of faith in the claims of Christ, in a large measure due to a lack of acquaintance with the true facts of his wonderful case. We propose the simple exhibition of these facts, as the best corrective of unbelief, with just that amount of attention to contested points which reason demands as they arise.

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Category: Nazareth Revisited

Chapter II.

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Christ’s Place in History.

Before entering upon biographical particulars, it seems necessary to take a general view of Christ’s position in history. It has become the habit among the fashionable thinkers of the world to regard it as “a development.” They look at the state of the world before Christ appeared, and more particularly the state of the Jews; and profess to find in these a force or bias at work which, on natural principles, brought itself to a focus in the family of Joseph, and so produced that marvel of marvels, “the man Christ Jesus.”

There is no arrogance in maintaining that this is a groundless view. The men who advance it are forced into a false position by their initial assumption that there can be no departure from the fixed and passive operations of nature as we see them. They find the Christ of the New Testament a case of continuous departure from these operations; they therefore pronounce him impossible. They find Christ a fact in history, but their principles compel them to refuse the only history that reasonably accounts for it, and so they east about for one that is in harmony with their own thoughts. They cannot remove Christ from history; they try to explain him, and, naturally, their explanations take the form of their own gratuitous thoughts. They reason gradiloquently on “tendencies.” A mechanical age produces great engineers: a military age produces great soldiers: an art-loving age, great painters. So a religious age, argue they, produced the loftiest religionist the world has ever seen. Plausible this, but fallacious, when looked into—just plausible enough to carry off superficial thinkers, but manifestly enough fallacious to protect those acquainted with and discerning of the subject from being victimised.

It is fallacious on two heads, first, as regards the nature of the age that witnessed the birth of Christ, and, second, as regards the relation between age-production and those produced. Taking the second point first: a man that really is the natural product of the age in which he lives, exhibits and exemplifies in an efficient form the principles and capacities already active before his time. He does not add to them, or go against them. The age and the man are one. The principles in the one are found in the other. A Stephenson embodies the mechanical science existing independently of him. A Napoleon expertly applies military principles universally in vogue before he was born. A Raphael reflects for you the artistic appreciations cultivated for generations before him.

But Christ—there is nothing in common between him and the age in which he was born, or any other age, before or since. Whether we take character, principles, aims, views, capacities, deportment, or achievements, he stands, not only at a measureless altitude above, but absolutely disconnected from the common ways and tendencies of men.

The best proof of this will be found in the history of his life as exhibited in the apostolic narratives in what are known as “the gospels”—of which this book aims to be but a modernised reflection. He had nothing in common with men beyond the infirmity of a mortal nature derived through his mother, from a common stock. His tastes lay where the human mind has no affinity. His intellectual interest—his mental affection—intensely centred on God, from whom man is naturally alien (Rom. viii. 7). Even at twelve years of age, he showed this powerful bias which distinguished him from all men: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business” (Luke ii. 49); and “always” it is his own testimony concerning himself, “he did those things that were pleasing to the Father” (Jno. viii. 29). His case, with reference to his own age, is only fitly classified in his own language; “Ye are from beneath: I am from above; ye are of this world: I am not of this world” (Jno. viii. 23).

See how inconsistent the facts of the case are, with the philosophic theory which would make Christ the product of a particular epoch. The age that witnessed the birth of Christ was the most unpromising of all ages, in a moral sense, of any high moral development on natural principles. The Gentile world under Roman ascendancy was sunk in the grossest immoralities of Paganism, which the revelations of Pompeii may illustrate; and as for the condition of the Jews, it was one of self-conceited barrenness and formalism, which has not been exceeded by any recorded experience of that people. The condition of the Jews is more important to be considered than the condition of the Gentile nations, as it was in the midst of the Jews that Jesus was born, and of their common race and stock in the line of David.

Christ’s own portraiture of Israel’s state is vigorous, brief and decisive. Speaking generally, he said “This is an evil generation” (Luke xi. 29). Speaking particularly, he said “In them, is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah” (Matt. xiii. 14). We turn to the prophecy and find such expressions as “heart waxed gross,” “ears dull of hearing,” “eyes closed.” In another and parallel prophecy, this is what we read: “Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men, therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.” Again, “they are drunken, but not with wine: they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes” (Matt. xiii. 14, 15: Isaiah xxix. 13, 14; 9, 10). This is the divine definition of Israel’s condition at the time of Christ’s appearing. The truth of the definition is reflected in the Rabbinical writings of that and subsequent times. The grave discussion of trifles, conducted illogically, and distorted with childish legend, impresses the mind with a sense of mental paralysis and nightmare. There is much boast of Hillel and Philo: it is astonishing how little ground for boast appears in the reading.

“Dry,” indeed, was “the ground” in which the root of Jesse quickened and sprang in the beginning of the first century—as Isaiah had foretold—“A root out of a dry ground” (Isa. liii. 2). If there had not been a divine planting in the dry ground, no such “tender plant” could have shot forth in the cracked and arid soil. It had been dry and barren for generations. Since the last words of inspiration by Malachi, Israel had slowly settled into that shallow half-clever state of self-conceit and disobedience in which Jesus found them—punctilious as to trifles, but reprobate to the “weightier matters of the law:” on the best of terms with themselves, yet by their insubordination towards the highest requirements of the law, piling up the divine anger in a slow-gathering, terrible storm that descended shortly afterwards and swept them all away. Even Malachi’s words show them well advanced in spiritual decomposition in his days. “Who is there among you that would shut the doors (of the temple) for nought? neither do ye kindle a fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord, neither will I accept an offering at your hand” (Mal. i. 10; see also 12, 13; ii. 8,9, 17; iii. 7, 9).

Such an “age” could have nothing to do with the production of Christ. It was much more likely to produce monsters like the John and Simon who figured so flaringly at the siege of Jerusalem. Many such monsters it did produce, as Josephus’s works attest, answering to Paul’s portraiture, “filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful” (Rom. i 29). Christ it could not produce, and did not produce. Christ was the work of God direct. He had nothing in common with “the age.” He was a man apart from that age and all other ages. The testimony of his enemies will be found, on the strictest investigation, to be absolutely correct: “Never man spake like this man.” Had the “age” produced him, there would have been more than one of him, and he would have reflected the characteristics of the age. There was only one of him, and he was as unlike the “age” as possible. There never was his like before or since. He will not classify thus. He will only fit the source he claims: “I proceeded forth and came from God” (Jno. viii. 42).

It is vain for the critics to explain him in any other way. He cannot be explained on any hypothesis but his own: and this hypothesis does not rest upon his own ipse dixit merely. It is supported and attested and proved in a variety of ways. He was careful to emphasise this. He allowed that he gave evidence on his own behalf, but pointed out that his testimony was confirmed externally. He admitted if it were not so, his self-testimony was not entitled to belief: “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me, and I know that his witness is true. Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth.… But I have greater witness than that of John; the works which the father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me.… If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works” (Jno. vi. 31–33, 36; x. 37).

The nature of the “works” he pointedly defined when John’s wavering message came from prison: “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?… Then Jesus answering, said unto them (John’s messengers), Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised” (Luke vii. 20–22). These were “works” which certainly no man can do. Their significance, and even their truth, has been frittered out of public conviction through the sheer effect of perseverance on the part of hostile criticism. But the facts remain, after all their refinements; and the verdict of common sense is well formulated by Nicodemus: “We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him” (Jno. iii. 2). Had Nicodemus had the fact of Christ’s resurrection before him at this time, he would have felt how immeasurably beyond question his whole conclusion had been placed; for if there is one thing that all men would be agreed in allowing, it is that a dead man has no power to bring himself to life again.

The attempt to explain Christ on any principle but the one furnished in the Bible narrative must be a failure on other grounds. He is part of a history extending over thousands of years. He is not an isolated phenomenon: he is built into the Bible as a whole. The bulk of the Bible existed before he appeared, and it bears upon him in a way necessitating that view of himself which he promulgated. He is part of a structure, apart from which he cannot be understood. Though the brightest figure in Israel’s history, he is but the culmination of that history, which is the history of a work which God has been doing from the beginning; and He must be looked at in connection with that work. We can only truly ascend to the Christ of the Bible by the gradually rising level of the progressive work it records.

The modern habit of detaching him from the Old Testament scheme of things creates difficulties that do not belong to the subject itself. The theologian and the Rationalist both fall into this mistake, each in a different way. The theologian brings to the subject a philosophy that not only enables him to dispense, but necessitates his dispensing with Jewish history and hopes in the ages before Christ came, and compels him to adopt views and theories of Christ’s work that virtually transform him into another Christ than that exhibited in the Apostolic narrative. The Rationalist, on the other hand, perceiving that prophecy involves divinity, puts forth his whole strength in the endeavour to show that there has been no prophecy: that Christ was not predicted or foreseen: that he came as a happy accident, to which events and utterances that went before him were ingeniously accommodated.

Both views are inconsistent with the elementary facts of the case. The theologian we may dismiss in a word as the product of an organised corruption of apostolic truth: which began in the apostolic age (2 Thes. ii. 7;  1 Jno. ii. 18, 19), which it was predicted would obtain complete ascendancy (2 Tim. iv. 4), and which became finally triumphant in Christendom in the shape of Roman Ecclesiasticism, under whose baleful shadow the most elementary principles of revealed truth perished from the recognised orthodox Christian community. The man who regards immortality as the attribute of human nature, and who thinks it is in a disembodied state, that man becomes the subject of judicial retribution for good or evil:—such a man is not likely to find any connection with Christ in writings that deal only with bodily death and resurrection, and the future settlement of the earth on the basis of the covenants made with the fathers of the Israelitish nation, and amplified in the writings of the prophets that God sent to them.

The question introduced by the Rationalist is at once more vital and more difficult to the general run of mankind. At the same time it is more capable of a decisive settlement. The Rationalist says the Old Testament has nothing to do with Christ, because Christ has nothing to do with God except in the passive sense in which all men have to do with Him, which, practically, is no sense at all, for if God in nature is the only accessible form of God, we may as well cease to talk of God as distinct from nature. On the Rationalist hypothesis, there is nothing but nature, and, therefore, Christ had no more to do with God than tigers and elephants and worms; in which case, we have no hope: for nature gives no hope of life to come for the individual, which is exactly what is promised and pledged in Christ.

But Rationalism is not rational. It ignores facts that cannot be set aside. There is an ingredient in the situation that Rationalism does not take into account, and that is, the resurrection of Christ, which Christ himself plainly predicted, and the occurrence of which was the very essence of the testimony given by the apostles after the crucifixion. A dead man cannot raise himself, and if Christ rose, God raised him, and, therefore, endorsed him.

How much, for us moderns, depends upon this question of the resurrection of Christ. It cannot be exaggerated in its importance. Establish it, and there is an end of all dispute or doubt. Its establishment is a process of logical demonstration. In this it may seem to have a weak foundation: but it is the foundation on which the bulk of human convictions rest. A logical demonstration, if truly logical, is of immense practical power where there is a capacity to perceive it. The power to act out a conviction logically is almost universal: but the power to discern the ground of conviction is unfortunately scarce, while the force of mere feeling of all kinds is great. Hence, the demonstration of the resurrection of Christ, though obvious, commends itself only to the few. This is not the place for the demonstration. It is exhibited in some measure in The Trial, a work by the present writer, intended to exhibit the correctness of Christ’s resurrection in a popular and entertaining way. We refer to it as indicating where the citadel of faith lies. It is spending strength in vain to fight the assaults of Rationalism in the open. The citadel commands the whole position. Entrenched here, faith is impregnable. All attempts to get rid of the evidence of Christ’s resurrection have, and ever must be, complete failures when the evidence is completely marshalled.

Settle the resurrection of Christ, and you settle the question of whether the Old Testament prophecy had any reference to Christ, for the risen Christ taught that it had. After his resurrection he said, “These are the words that I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms CONCERNING ME” (Luke xxiv. 44). Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, “Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, &c.” “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures THE THINGS CONCERNING HIMSELF.” (Ib. 27).

These sayings, uttered after his resurrection, refer us back to things he had said on the same subject while yet alive, before his crucifixion. Going back to these, we find that he made frequent allusion to the fact that he was contemplated in the written utterances of the prophets from the days of Moses downwards. Reading a passage from Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth on one occasion, he said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke iv. 21). Recommending the Jews to “search the Scriptures” of the Old Testament, he said “They are they that TESTIFY OF ME” (John v. 39). Communing sorrowfully with his disciples on the very eve of his sufferings, he said, “This that is written must yet be accomplished IN ME, ‘and he was reckoned amongst the transgressors’ ” (Luke xxii. 37). In his public teaching, combatting the popular idea that he was putting himself in competition with Moses and the prophets, he said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy but TO FULFIL” (Matt. v. 17). Chiding the Pharisees for putting forward Moses as a reason for their rejection of him, he said, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for HE WROTE OF ME” (Jno. v. 46). Discussing for a moment the hypothesis of his consenting to evade the sufferings appointed for him, he said, “How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that THUS IT MUST BE” (Matt. xxvi. 54). There are other allusions of the same sort. They show that Christ’s view was that the prophets foreshadowed him; and if he rose from the dead, his view must prevail.

The matter establishes itself in another way: If Christ rose from the dead, Christ necessarily fulfilled the promise he made to his disciples,—that he should afterwards send upon them the spirit of God, who should guide them into all truth (Jno. xiv. 26 : xvi. 13), and who should put words into their mouths when brought before governors and kings (Matt. x. 19, 20). That this promise was fulfilled is a matter of record which cannot be denied (Acts ii. 1–4: v. 32). Consequently in the utterances of the disciples, we have words equally reliable to those of Christ, and on this subject, those utterances are plain beyond all ambiguity. All of them recognise that Christ was contemplated in the writings of the prophets. Take Peter, who was made the official mouthpiece of the apostolic band: “All the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days” (Acts iii. 24). In his letter (1 Pet. i. 10) he speaks of the prophets “searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of christ and the glory that should follow.” Paul, of equal or greater eminence as an apostle says, “To him (Christ) give all the prophets witness” (Acts x. 43). He also said to a Jewish audience in the provinces, in reference to the successful opposition of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem to the claims of Christ, “Because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath Day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him” (Acts xiii. 27). Zecharias, the father of John the Baptist, in celebrating the birth of Christ, said, “The Lord God of Israel … hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began” (Luke i. 70).

There are many such like expressions in the apostolic writings. The case could not be made stronger by further quotation. It is plain that if we are to be guided by Christ and the apostles, we may dismiss the doubts raised by modern criticism as merely so much elegant mystification in which the writers have involved themselves and others, through the disturbing power of initial fallacies. The question of whether we should be guided by Christ and the apostles, is settled by the fact of Christ’s resurrection and the effusion of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Therefore, we may, without reservation, accept it as an established truth, that the appearance of Christ 1800 years ago, was the fulfilment of what had been foretold by the prophets under the inspiration of the Spirit of God.

One step more, and we bring this chapter to a conclusion. In the estimation of those acquainted with the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets, it must ever be a self-evident proposition that those Scriptures foreshew the appearing of the Messiah (Hebrew) or Christ (Greek). The predictions of him are not vague or uncertain. If it merely rested on the statement made in the garden of Eden at the crisis of human transgression, there might be doubt, though even then the indication would be felt by reflective minds to be strong: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” But it does not rest on this. There are plain and positive statements that cannot by unsophisticated candour be understood in any other way than as foretelling the appearance in Israel of a God-given leader, teacher and King. Such is the statement of Moses: “The Lord said unto me … I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him” (Deut. xviii, 17, 18). Such also is the prophecy of Balaam: “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel” (Num. xxiv. 17). The words of Jacob cannot otherwise be reasonably understood: “The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah nor a law-giver from between his feet until Shiloh come: and unto him shall the gathering of the people be” (Gen. xlix. 10).

And what else is to be understood of the covenant made with David? (2 Sam. vii). Speaking now from the hostile critic point of view, even if it referred to Solomon, it was as much a prophecy as if it referred to Christ; and if prophecy was there at all, then the obligation arises to receive every application of the covenant that the spirit of prophecy in David and in the apostles may indicate. In this way, the voice of criticism is silenced: for the Spirit of God applies this covenant to Christ, both by David and by Peter. David in his “last words” which he attributes to the Spirit of God (2 Sam. xxiii. 2) alleges the substance of this covenant to contain “all his salvation and all his desire” (see verse 5); and he associates its realisation with a just king “ruling over men,” the advent of whose day he compares to the dawn of a cloudless morning. Peter, speaking still more plainly after the promised effusion of the Holy spirit, says that David knew that God had covenanted “to raise up Christ to sit upon his throne” (Acts ii. 29). By these two, the truth is established that Christ was the king promised in the covenant that God made with David.

When we look at the other prophets—the books bound together as a prophetic collection from Isaiah to Malachi—it is like looking at a starry galaxy of glory, Christ shines in them all: not merely his light, but he himself appears in all their visions—palpably as a person—as palpably as Jesus of Nazareth appears in the apostolic narratives. A hurried sample or two from each will best illustrate this:

christ in the prophets.

In Isaiah, “A King shall reign in righteousness” (xxxii. 1). “The Spirit of God shall rest upon him … and shall make him of quick understanding … with righteousness shall he judge the poor” (xi. 1–:3, 4). “Of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and his kingdom” (ix. 7). “Behold my servant … I have put my Spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles … the isles shall wait for his law” (xlii. 1–4). But first, “he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (liii. 3).

In Jeremiah, “a King (righteously branched from David) shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth” (xxiii. 5). “I will cause him to draw near and he shall approach unto me” (xxx. 21). “He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land,” in the days when “God shall perform the good thing promised to Israel” (xxxiii. 14, 15).

In Ezekiel, the throne of David shall be “no more until he come whose right it is (xxi. 27). Israel shall then be one nation on the mountains of Israel, “and one King shall be King to them all” (xxxvii. 22).

In Daniel, a prophetic vision is seen in which “one like the Son of Man” appears and receives “a kingdom, glory, and dominion, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve and obey him” (vii. 13, 14). But first, Messiah, the Prince, should be cut off, and punitive desolation overwhelm Jerusalem and the temple, and overspread the Holy Land (ix. 26).

In Hosea, the children of Israel, after many days of kingless wandering among the nations, should return and have one head—even a divine head. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself: in me is thine help. I will be thy King” (xiii. 9, 10; i. 11; iii. 4, 5).

In Joel when the captivity of Judah returns, war is proclaimed against the Gentiles; Jehovah’s mighty ones descend, by whom Jehovah thereafter dwells in Zion. “Then shall Jerusalem be holy, and no stranger shall pass through her any more” (iii. 1, 9–12; 17).

In Amos, ‘I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof (which involves the re-establishment of the throne in a personal occupant) … and I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel … and I will plant them in their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land” (ix. 11–15)

In Obadiah, “Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and saviours shall come up on Mount Zion … and the Kingdom shall be the Lord’s” (21).

In Jonah there is no direct allusion: it is the only exception.

In Micah he was to be born in Bethlehem: smitten on the cheek: Israel scattered: but at the last “this man” should be the vanquisher of the enemy, the establisher of peace, judge among the nations, and “great to the end of the earth” (v. 2, 13, 4–6; iv. 3).

In Nahum, he is saluted on the mountains as one that bringeth good things, consequent on whose appearance the enemy should be utterly cut off, and Judah resume the observance of her holy feasts (i. 15).

In Habakkuk, God goes forth for salvation with His anointed (Christ), “and the earth shall be filled, with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (iii. 13, ii. 14).

In Zephaniah, a day is exhibited when Israel shall be no more haughty, nor do iniquity. “In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear thou not … the King of Israel, the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more” (iii. 11, 13, 16, 15).

In Haggai, “the desire of all nations shall come and I will fill this house with glory … I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen” (ii. 7, 22).

In Zechariah, “I will bring forth my servant, the BRANCH … He shall sit and rule upon his throne … Thy King (O Jerusalem) cometh unto thee, just and having salvation … he shall speak peace to the heathen and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea … The Lord shall be King over all the earth” (iii. 8; vi. 13; ix. 9, 10; xiv. 9).

In Malachi, “The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant … Behold he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming?… Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness rise with healing in his beams.” (iii. 1, 2; iv. 2).

If these statements do not foretell the appearing of the Messiah, it is difficult to imagine how language could be framed to foretell it. In truth, the question is beyond controversy. It never could have been raised but for the necessity created by a false theory of Christ. The robust sense of scientific intelligence will always decide (against the artificial refinements of mercurial and invertebrate idealism—dreamy, speculative and illogical) that explain it how it may, the prophets foretold the appearing of Christ: and the same intelligence applied to the life of Christ, must necessarily come to the conclusion expressed in the words of Philip to Nathanael, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write” (Jno. i. 45).

Moses wrote of Christ in a way not yet hinted at. The whole economy of divine service established by his hand in the midst of Israel, was a prophetic allegory of him. This we have on the authority of Paul, who was guided by the Holy Spirit; and the statement which he makes is borne out by the results of the study of Moses from this point of view. The allegory is a complete and speaking one.

Let the reflecting reader consider how completely the fact of this continuous and extended prophecy of Christ, over so long a time, of itself establishes the divinity of Christ. If, in addition to this, he obtains a full view of Christ himself, as displayed in the apostolic narratives, and an adequate perception of all the evidences that prove his resurrection, he must needs feel so overpowered by conviction as to fling away all reserve, and accept the profession of the name of Christ with all the earnest ardour which such a conviction must, in the highest reason, inspire. The apologetic tone of modern professors ill befits a subject so incontestably true and so unutterably stupendous in its importance.

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Chapter III.

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The Necessity for Christ in the Divine Scheme of History

We speak of his appearing 1,850 years ago. Why did he appear then, and not later or sooner? The general answer is plain, leading to one not so plain, but which is pleasing in its speculative interest. The general answer is, that the time appointed had come. This is what Paul says: “When the fulness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Gal. iv. 4). Jesus himself referred similarly to the matter: “The time is fulfilled” (Mark i. 15.) The vision shewn to Daniel necessitates this conclusion: for to him it was said by the angel who enlightened him, “From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince shall be,” such and such a time which expired in the days of Christ

The next question would introduce a more difficult topic: “Why was such a time appointed?” We might well leave this. We might well be satisfied that the appointment of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, must needs have its basis in perfect wisdom, even if our poor blind eyes could not see it. But it is not presumption to scan His work in the spirit of enquiring reverence. On the contrary, it is well pleasing to God that we do so: “The works of the Lord are great: sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.” Christ is His greatest work upon earth hitherto: and those who love him most will find the most pleasure in seeking out all the divine “whys and wherefores” related to him that may be attainable.

One clue we get simply, when we look back and see that 1,850 years ago the time for the ending of the Mosaic system of things had come. The ending of if, then, is beyond all controversy. Both the law-worshipping Jew and the divinity-of-Moses-denying Gentile are compelled to recognise the historical fact (whatever their interpretation of it may be) that since that time the law of Moses has ceased to be a nationally operative thing in the earth. It has had neither the land nor the nation essential to its operation. The land has been in the hands of strangers and in a state of desolation: and the race on whom alone it was enjoined, have been scattered, down-trodden, and denationalised in the lands of “the heathen,” as all Gentile nations are called in scripture.

Now, considering that the end of the system as a divinely operative system in the earth did actually, as a matter-of-fact not to be contradicted, arrive 1,850 years ago, we may easily see one reason why Christ should appear then, and not before or since. It is an apostolic declaration that Christ is “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” on him (Rom. x. 4). It is another declaration, already quoted, that in becoming “the end of the law,” he was “made under the law.” He could not have been “made under the law,” if he had appeared after the law had passed out of operation; and he could not have become “the end of the law,” had he been born while it was in the full career of its national mission. His appearance at the exact time chosen was a necessity from this point of view.

But why, and in what sense, and how, did he become the end of the law? We will not enter largely into the field of contemplation to which these questions invite. Yet a glance at general outlines is necessary. The “why” requires us to remember that the law was of God’s appointing, and that Christ was of God’s sending, and that the one and the other were associated in God’s plan of things upon the earth. They were not disconnected. The Mission of the law could not be completed till it ended in Christ. It had to be fulfilled in him, as he said: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil,” and again, that “not one jot or tittle should pass from the law till all was fulfilled” (Matt. v. 17–18). Paul declared Christ to be substance of the things contained in the law (Col. ii. 17).

To us, the righteousness of God is manifested “without the law,” and made available by faith in Christ outside the law altogether (Rom. iii. 21); but though preached “without the law,” it was not developed “without the law.” It was generated under the law, in so far as Christ was born under the law, and obedient under the law, and died under the law. Paul denies that the faith of Christ made void the law; he contends it established it (Rom. iii. 31). The correctness of his contention we can see when we realise that the Christ who is offered for our faith is a Christ in whom all the excellence and virtue of the law became, as it were, personally incorporate. It was under it that he was “made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. i. 30). That is, he was in all things obedient while in that position, and therefore the rightful heir of whatever blessedness it was in the power of the law to confer upon those who “continued in all things written in the book of the law to do them,” which none else did but he. But this heirship was inaccessible to others so long as the law continued in force. It was needful the law should be taken out of the way, before those who were cursed by it (because of sin) could partake of the blessings secured in the sinless Christ alone. And it was taken out of the way—not arbitrarily—not in caprice; for it is not in God to change. It was taken out of the way in a manner that preserved the continuity and harmony and majesty of the divine action, while opening the way for forgiveness and favour to those believing in Christ. It was taken away by Christ dying, which placed him beyond its operation. “The law hath dominion over a man so long as he liveth” (Rom. vii. 1). When he is dead, it has no further jurisdiction. It was only ordained for living mortals. When Christ hung lifeless on the cross, it had no further hold on him. When he rose from the dead, he was a flee man. This is Paul’s argument: “Ye (who have been baptised into the risen Christ) are become dead to the law by the body of Christ (in his death) that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead” (Rom. vii. 4). It is in this connection that the force is apparent of Paul’s declaration that Christ, in his death, “blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” (Col. ii. 14); and further, that those who are in Christ are “no longer under the law, but under grace” and are to “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Gal. v. 1).

There were two purposes in the establishing of the law, that ended in Christ. Paul informs us that one was that sinful man might be manifest to himself, and that every mouth might be stopped in the conviction of his own helplessness. “The law entered that the offence might abound” (Rom. v. 20): that sin “might appear sin, work death by that which is good” (vii. 13), “that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God” (iii. 19). The other was, that what the law could not do for man left to himself, God in His love and grace might do, in sending His own Son, who should “magnify the law and make it honourable” in its complete observance, and who should then, in further and loving obedience, remove it out of the way in surrendering to the death of the cross, by which the curse of the law should come on him, for all who should come unto God by him. The law during the time it was in force completely accomplished these two things. First, Peter declared that Israel had found it a yoke which neither his generation nor their fathers were able to bear” (Acts xv. 10). Secondly, Jesus, who could challenge the Jews on the score of his perfect fulfilment of it, saying, “which of you convinceth me of sin?” (Jno. viii. 46), appeared just before it had run its course, putting away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and in rising again, laid the foundation for the salvation of all those who have faith in him as the Lamb of God.

These things bear upon the question of why Christ should have appeared before the disappearance of the Mosaic system from the land of Israel. They may not touch other enquiries that may arise. Why should the Mosaic system have disappeared 1,850 years ago? Why should it not have continued till the time for the setting up of the kingdom of God? And why should not Christ then have emerged from the tomb to ascend at once the throne of universal power and glory? We may be sure there is wisdom in the Divine plan on all these heads. We may even, with a little reflection, be able to discover it.

Israel’s transgressions required their dispersion amongst the Gentiles for double the length of time occupied by their national existence; the land had to rest unoccupied and untilled for a protracted period to make up for the years that Israel stole from the land in violation of the law that required them to let the land rest every, seventh year (Is. xl. 1; Lev. xxvi. 34nd;35). Both these evantualities were provided for in prophecy. Moses and all the prophets foretold the downtreading of the land and the scattering of the people. Both were necessities in the divine plan; and both involved the suspension of the Mosaic system. It was, therefore, impossible that that system could continue until the setting up of the kingdom under the seed promised to Abraham and the Son promised to David. A long interregnum of “many days” was inevitable, during which Israel was to be “with-out a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, &c.,” as was specifically predicted (Hos. iii. 4).

It was impossible for other reasons. It was necessary that there should be an interval between the sufferings of Christ and his exaltation as Jehovah’s king in all the earth, in preparation for his effectual assumption of that position, both as regards the Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were not in any sense ready to receive hint at the time of his first appearing. He was a stranger to them, who interested them for a while by his extraordinary “works,” and then alienated them by his unpalatable condemnations of the national ways. All interest in him ceased with his destruction. His resurrection re-kindled that interest in the heart of a class: but had the Lord at that time ascended the throne of David, instead of departing to the Father for a season, there would have lacked the pathetic interest and the dramatic triumph that will belong to his installation in their midst after more than 18 centuries’ absence and rejection. For all that time the Jews have refused him, and cursed his name. They have not been allowed to forget him. “Bye a foolish nation I will anger you,” said God, by Moses. In the providence of God, the civilization of the Gentiles, among whom Israel has been scattered, has been inextricably blended, with the name of the crucified Jesus; and in all the countries of their dispersion they have been kept in a chronic state of anger by the exhibition of the mementoes and symbols of their crucifixion of Christ, and by the taunts, and insults, and persecutions on that head to which they have been subjected at the hands of their Christian neighbours. They have been kept face to face, in all the generations of their exile, with the crucified Nazarene. With what an interest, so far as they are concerned, does this long and bitter interval invest the introduction of Christ to them at his second appearing. “They shall look upon me, whom they pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one who mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him” (Zech xii. 10).

Nothing in human narrative approaches in touching pathos the story of Joseph’s contact with his brethren after their sale of him into slavery, and his separation from them for over 20 years. It brings tears to the eyes of strong men who have read it many times. So nothing in history will at all come near the sublime event of the revelation of “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews,” after many centuries of scorn, to the nation whose fathers crucified him 1,850 years ago, and who in all the interval, have endorsed and justified their fathers’ act. He will interfere in their behalf before they know him, and will be identified as the Crucified only after he has manifested himself as the Victorious against their foes. Who can conceive anything more superlatively interesting than such a situation—a completer retribution, a more thrilling scene of national self-humiliation, a more eagerly willing people to serve and to glorify the man of God’s right hand? All this will result from the plan by which Christ appeared and was rejected by Israel many centuries before the time appointed for the manifestation of his kingly glory in their midst. It will be a repetition, on the largest and grandest scale, of the wisdom and beauty and thrilling interest which have attached to all the arrangements in which God has had a hand in the past. They have all been characterised by perfect ripeness of result, intensity of interest, and completeness of climax.

When we consider the bearing of the interval on the Gentile world, it is not difficult to see, if not an exactly similar, at least an equally valuable preparation for what is coming. Had Christ proceeded to “reign over the Gentiles” at his first appearing, there would have been a want of that fitness of circumstances that makes things interesting. The principal part of European territory was in a state of native wildness. The Roman world was limited in extent and crude in condition, possessing a civilization that was more of the nature of barbarism. Had Christ been introduced to the world’s notice at such a time in a political capacity, he would have found the situation in every sense unprepared. He would have been as unsuited to the situation as the situation would have been without a history and without an identity in the world’s eyes, and the world would have been without a population, or an appreciation adequate to his kingly glory and power, whereas after 1,850 years of preparation, how differently the matter stands. Introduced to them as a doctrine—“preached among the Gentiles” by apostolic and many other agencies—talked of and debated about and wondered at—fought over, warred about, loved and hated, belauded and condemned,—a problem for philosophers, a theme for believers, a stumbling block for angry Jews and atheists, his name and renown have interwoven themselves with human affairs in all civilized countries. And his influence by these very means, has been made operative. His influence has altered human ways and modified human condition in many important respects. Europe of 1890 is a very different Europe from that of a.d. 34. Though the world is all dark and ungodly, there is a state of things on which the kingdom of God will more readily graft than it would have done upon the Roman society of the first century.

Above all, the world has become acquainted with his name in a way that prepares for his entrance upon universal power at his coming. Though Christ is not intelligently or savingly known in the world at large, all have heard of him, and have formed such an estimate of his greatness and worth (however distorted by superstition) that they will be predisposed to acquiesce in his authority much more readily when he comes than if they had never heard of him at all. This is the result of Christ having appeared 1,850 years ago and remaining absent for all the period since. There is a better and more developed world to inherit, and the conditions of a readier and heartier welcome existing than there would have been if the appearing of Christ as a sacrifice had happened just before his manifestation as a king.

But the principal object accomplished by having the sufferings and the glory so far apart, is doubtless that which has reference to the Lord’s own brethren. These had to be developed in certain fixed numbers for the work of governing the nations with Christ upon the earth in the day of his glory. Many had been prepared for that work in the times of the law that went before Christ—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, and all that feared Yahweh’s name, small and great—who, having pleased God by faith and obedience in their several generations, went to “rest” like Daniel, in faith of the promised Messiah, and in waiting for “the end of days” when they should rise at his coming to “stand in their lot” or inheritance. But they were not nearly sufficient in number for the great world-wide work to be done in the day of Christ. It was therefore needful to send out for “guests” to the Gentiles “by-ways and hedges,” that the number might be made up. And the interval of 1,850 years has proved a needful interval for this work. The interval is now nearly ended and the work nearly done. But not only the time has been needed; the doctrine associated with Christ’s first appearing was a necessity in the work of their development. The brethren of Gentile times were to be developed by the preaching of the Cross in its scriptural relation to the kingdom. They were to be attracted by the offer of the forgiveness of sin through faith in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus; as of a lamb without spot, who died that they might live and reign with him. Their affections were to be drawn to him as the Purifer from sin and the Saviour from death, without whom they could do nothing. They were to be prepared to take part in the song which ascribes their deliverance “to Him who washed them from their sins in his own blood.” If Christ had not “appeared at the end of the (Mosaic) world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” this could not have been done. But it has been done. The preparation had been accomplished, as it could in no other way, by the occurrence of the death of Christ 1,850 years ago, and its proclamation, in all the interval, as God’s arrangement for the reconciliation of men. Many thousands, in the apostolic age and since, have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The true greatness of the triumph will not be manifest, however, till the thrilling moment arrive when a multitude that no man can number stands before the Lord Jesus in the day of his return, in the rapturous conviction declared in song, that they owe to him the acceptance they find, and the glory, honour, and immortality in which they rejoice.

From all these considerations, it becomes evident that it was not a matter of chance that Christ appeared 1,850 years ago, or that his manifestation in kingly glory has been far separated from the day of his rejection and shame. Both are matters of divine arrangement: and both are essential to the scheme of things which God has devised for the final deliverance of the earth from its woe.

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Chapter IV.

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Preparation.

The “fulness of time” having arrived for the appearance of Christ “to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” we have to note the preparatory steps taken—divine steps; for this was to be a divine work in a sense in which no other work among men had been divine. In former cases, human instruments had been used; in this case, God himself, by the Spirit, was to do the work by a man expressly provided, in whom His glory should be manifest: as the Spirit had declared by Isaiah, “The glory of Yahweh shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Is. xl. 5) In harmony with this character of the situation, is the opening incident.

The angel Gabriel is on the scene in the 36th year of Augustus Caesar, the first imperial head of the Roman empire, and in the last year but one of Herod, his vassal, who reigned in Judæa. We will not stay to consider these men, who figured so prominently in the age that witnessed the birth of Christ. They could contribute nothing valuable to the subject. They were men of strong individuality, but not in a good sense. They were vigorous specimens of the kind of men of whom Daniel says that God sets on high “the basest of men.” They were both able men, but bad men from a divine point of view, especially Herod, whose enormities filled the minds of men with detestation, and made his death an event of public joy. Nor shall we contemplate the situation of things among the people, either Jew or Gentile, or take any cue from the laborious and cloudy literature of their day, with which it is so fashionable for “learning” to cumber the subject. They have no more to do with the nature of the events transacted than the traditions and habits of an obscure country village of our day have to do with the aims and manners of Victoria’s Court. They were but the dung beds in which the heavenly plant was planted, by divine power, and nurtured by divine energy, contributing, by divine suction, some of the elements of growth in the case, but no more determining the character of that growth than the manure determines whether the root it environs shall grow roses or Crab apples.

We look at Gabriel, who asserted a peculiar dignity and authority in his rebuke to Zacharias for doubting his word, saying: “I am Gabriel that stand in the presence ate God” (Luke i. 19). There are myriads of angels, but here is one whose words suggest a special status in the Father’s presence—a special intimacy with the Eternal Creator. There is something fitting in such an exalted representative of the Divine Majesty being employed in the initiation of the work about to be done—the laying of the foundation of God’s house of everlasting glory upon earth. It was not Gabriel’s first appearance in the mighty transaction. Between five and six hundred years earlier, he was sent to Daniel to inform him of this very matter, viz., the appearance of the sacrificial Messiah to make an end of sins, and to bring in everlasting righteousness (Dan. ix. 24). Daniel says “While I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation, and informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel:‘I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplication, the commandment came forth and I am come to shew thee,” &c. (verses 21, 23). It is very interesting to think of this angelic personage coming to Daniel by divine command to enlighten him with reference to the purpose of God m Christ; and then re-appearing on the scene, after a lapse of over five centuries, to perform acts in execution of that purpose.

The acts performed were simple but essential. Two visits had to be made; two announcements delivered; and power exerted in the accomplishment of the work in hand. This double form of Gabriel’s errand arose from the double nature of the work. Not only was the long-promised Saviour to be born, but a forerunner was to be provided also, the necessity for whom may appear in the sequel. Not only was the name of the Father to be manifested in the seed of Abraham, but as became the dignity and the moral necessities of such an event, a man was to be raised up who should fitly herald such a manifestation in going “before his face and preparing his way before him.” The two phases of the work were six months apart; and as was fit, the business of the forerunner had the first attention. Gabriel went first on this business to Zacharias, the husband of Elizabeth, who was related in cousinship to the virgin, of whom it was purposed Christ should be born. It was a suitable and happy arrangement that the forerunner of Christ should be provided from a related family. When men are allied both “in the flesh and in the Lord,” the union has double power and sweetness.

Zacharias was a priest, of the course of Abijah, the eighth of the twenty-four courses into which the Aaronic families were divided by David for purposes of service by rotation (1 Chron. xxiv). His wife Elizabeth was also “of the daughters of Aaron.” We may realise in this circumstance the unity and harmony of God’s plan in working out His purpose upon earth. Aaron’s family were chosen at the beginning to act the part of God’s representatives in the midst of Israel. For many generations they had sustained this position; and now, as a new shoot in the heart of the old growth, leading to a new flowering of the divine work in the earth, a branch of that same family (just before the Aaronic priesthood is set aside) is chosen to furnish a man to go before the face of the Lord in the new manifestation, to prepare his way before him. Both Zacharias and Elizabeth “were righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” For a lifetime they had sustained this character. Both were now old, and they were childless. Elizabeth’s barrenness had been a deep disappointment to both, and had been the subject of frequent petition on the part of Zacharias (Luke 1. 13). The prayer was now to be answered, and the barrenness end in the birth of the greatest among the prophets; on which it has to be observed as a frequent—we might almost say, a constant—feature in the work of God, that He makes the accomplishment even of His declared purposes wait upon the prayers of His people; and makes use of human incompetences for the execution of His greatest works.

Moses, in Egypt, prays earnestly at the various critical points in the progress of the work of deliverance; Israel’s various leaders and judges, the same, in times of affliction; David pours out his soul constantly in the trouble that preceded his elevation to the throne; Daniel, at the end of the seventy years, makes petition for the promised return of Jehovah’s favour to Zion.

The second point (God’s use of human weakness) stands out with equal prominence. Here a barren woman is made to provide the Lord’s forerunner; and a virgin is made the mother of the Lord himself. So a barren woman (past the time of life) gave Isaac, the child of promise: a barren woman, Joseph, the chief among the sons of Jacob: a barren woman, Samuel, leader among the prophets: a barren woman, the strongest among men, Samson. Going wider, a herd youth, despised among his brothers, is chosen as the founder of Yahweh’s royal house in the earth; a runaway flockmaster is made the deliverer of Israel and mediator of the covenant of Sinai: a nation of serfs is made use of to manifest the divine power in the face of all the earth. The principle underlying this mode of procedure is defined prophetically thus: “Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit” (Zech. iv. 6); apostolically thus: “that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Cor. i. 29). The principle will be found to have the sanction of the highest reason. The glory of all that man is, belongs to God from whom it springs. It is unreasonable that man should glory in himself as if he had made himself. It is not only unreasonable; it is degrading. Man’s most ennobling honour is found in recognising God as the fountain of life and wisdom and power. Man can only find his chief joy in this recognition. God’s purpose is to cause the discernment of this to be universal yet; and in prosecuting the purpose, he makes use of circumstances and conditions and instruments that exclude the possibility of man having any share in the glory or credit of the transaction.

To the husband of this barren woman, Gabriel presents himself in the temple, while Zacharias is attending to his office as priest. The angel appears “at the right side of the altar of incense.” This is the divine symbol of acceptable prayer. That the angel should appear here to announce the granting of a request, is one of those inexpressibly beautiful coincidences of literal circumstance with spiritual analogy with which the Scriptures abound. The dispensational importance of the request to be granted adds to its beauty: this importance was beyond all expectation or knowledge on the part of Zacharias, who had asked a son, probably, for his personal comfort merely. Thus God, in granting our requests, may give us—“above all that we ask or think.” When Zacharias saw the angel, he was afraid. We are all naturally startled by the appearance of a person in an unexpected place. In this instance, it was the holy place, outside the veil—a place above all others on earth protected from the likelihood of intrusion. But it was not only a visitor in a very unexpected place, it was a very unexpected visitor—an angel. This would add to Zacharias’s perturbation. In most recorded cases, fear has been the effect produced by the appearance of an angel. The reason of this, probably, lies in the aspect of an angel, which was described by Manoah’s wife (to whom an angel had announced the coming birth of Samson), as “very terrible” (Jud. xiii. 6)—a description illustrated by the statement that the angel that appeared to the woman at the sepulchre of Christ, had “a countenance like lightning” (Matt. xxviii. 3). The human aspect startles a beast; it is not wonderful that the angelic aspect should startle weak mortal man. But there is no cause for fear to the righteous. Though power greater than dynamite lies latent in the graceful and brilliant form of an angel, it is under the control of perfect and beneficent intelligence. The passenger on board an Atlantic liner, who walks on deck over the engine boilers, has much more cause for fear than the God-fearing man who stands in the presence of the thunder that sleeps in angelic hands. “Fear not,” said the angel to startled Zacharias: “thy prayer is heard; thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.… Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, … to make ready a people pre-pared for the Lord.”

Zacharias, calmed and re-assured by the angel’s kindly manner, is able to let his mind dwell for a moment on what the angel has said. He realises its extraordinary import—that he, an old man, and his wife barren, and “well stricken in years,” should have the gloom of old age lightened by the birth of a son—and a son, too, who should have a mission from the Lord “to turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,” for which he should be qualified by being “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb.” It naturally seemed to him incredible. He had been praying for it for years, and yet, when his prayer is heard, he is incredulous. How natural this is. It was so in the case of those who prayed for Peter’s release: they could not believe their senses when Peter presented himself at the door (Acts xii. 5, 13–16). It is human weakness. The saints of the nineteenth century may hope to have their own joyful experience of this shortly, when after praying for a lifetime for the Lord’s coming amid increasing human frailty, and, it may be, faltering expectation, the angel of his presence will announce that the prayer is answered to the joy of thousands, who will only find suitable vent to their feelings in tears.

Zacharias, not quite realising at the moment the guarantee contained in an angel’s word, asks, “Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.” Tiffs was casting a slight on God’s messenger, and therefore on God—an excusable error, perhaps, but still an error, and in a certain relation of things, the greatest offence a man can commit against God—to doubt His word. As faith is so pleasing to God as to be “counted for righteousness?” so distrust of His pledged word, when we know He has pledged it, is the most displeasing sin against Him a man can commit. It was visited in the case of Moses (Num. xx. 12), and it was now visited in the case of Zacharias (and these things were “written for our learning”). The mode of the visitation was gentle, adroit, and effectual: “I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And behold thou shall be dumb, and not able to speak until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believedst not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.” Thus was Zacharias rebuked and the verity of the communication authenticated in a very tangible manner, at the same time: for when the angel had withdrawn, Zacharias found himself unable to speak in a situation which made the fact very noticeable. He was “executing the priest’s office before God in the order of his course:” and it was his business (having gone into the temple “to burn incense”) to go forth now to the people who were waiting in the court outside, to pronounce the customary blessing before their dispersal. They were waiting for this: they had to wait longer than usual; for the appearance of the angel to Zacharias had detained him; and the people who knew nothing of it, “marvelled that he tarried so long.” When he went out to them, he could not speak to them, though his natural impulse in such a position would incline him to overcome any obstacle, if it were possible. “He beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.” They understood, from his gestures, that he had seen something in the temple which had deprived him of his power of utterance. The people dispersed and Zacharias retired.

This brought to a close the opening incident in the great and glorious work about to be manifested on the earth. Zacharias, having completed his period of service for the time being, “departed from Jerusalem to his own house,” in “the hill country of Judea”—probably in the neighbourhood of Hebron if not Hebron itself, which was a priestly city, assigned to the sons of Aaron, to whose family Zacharias belonged. Here, without delay, the angel’s words were fulfilled. “Elizabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered, and she brought forth a son.” It was no natural occurrence: that is, it was not the result of nature left to itself. It was a case parallel with Sarah’s “who received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised” (Heb. xi. 11). It was the incipient fulfilment of the words of God: “Behold I will send My Messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me” (Mal. iii. 1) A man who was Yahweh’s messenger was no ordinary man: and the child who was to be this man was no ordinary child. He was produced by divine interposition, and he was “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb,” as Gabriel declared (Luke i. 15), which is the key to John’s life and characteristics—a puzzle to the natural-man thinkers and ecclesiastical traditionists of this benighted age, but “all plain” to those who have got into the groove of Bible thought instead of standing patronisingly outside, and trying to squeeze Bible things into human moulds.

John’s birth was a glad surprise to Elizabeth’s “neighbours and cousins,” who “rejoiced with her,” in the “great mercy the Lord had shewn her” in giving her a son in her old age They did not understand the event in its true character at first. They made the usual arrangements to have the child circumcised and named. They settled among themselves that the child should be called Zacharias, after his father, who had been dumb for over nine months, and whom apparently they could not, or did not, consult on the subject. When the eighth day arrived, their arrangement was upset to their own astonishment and fear. First, Elizabeth insisted that he should be called John, not Zacharias. They were surprised at this, saying, there were none of her relations called by the name of John. They made. signs to Zacharias himself, asking what the child should be called. Zacharias called for a writing table, and wrote, “His name is John.” They had not recovered from their surprise at his decision when he surprised them still more by breaking forth in a stream of speech, all the more voluble from having been so long restrained, and from being now impelled by the Holy Spirit; for “he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and blessed God” that the time had come for the fulfilment of the longstanding promise of Christ. Then apostrophising the infant, he said: “And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for though shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation to his people, for the remission of their sins; through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us; to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke i. 76–79).

No wonder that those who heard these things “laid them up in their hearts,” saying, “What manner of child shall this be?” In process of time, it became manifest “what manner of child” he was. “The hand of the Lord was with him” (Luke i. 66), which explained all. He was no chance evolution of natural force. He was no phenomenal bud on the Adamic tree. He was the workmanship of God, for the specific work of heralding His son, and preparing His way. This feature is ignored in “learned” presentments of the subject, due to the learned fable that the apostolic narratives are not infallible narratives, but merely human recitals honestly written but largely marred by the presence of exaggeration and myth to which merely human miters of that age were naturally exposed. A recognition of the inspired nature of these narratives (proved in so many ways), fences off the nebulous and derogatory views of learning on this subject, and enables us to recognise in John “a man sent from God” to “bear witness of the Light” about to be manifested to Israel; and therefore not a man to be explained on any of the philosophical hypotheses with which the wise of this world delight to amuse themselves and their readers. There is still need to listen to Paul’s advice: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy or vain deceit.” Modern science is more respectable than ancient philosophy: it is more accurate in its diagnosis of the phenomena of nature. Nevertheless, it is as powerless as ancient philosophy to explain the ways of God, and as liable to obscure and pervert them by its presumptuous applications.

“The child grew and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the desert till the day of his shewing unto Israel.” This covers the whole interval from his birth till his appearance as a preacher on the banks of the Jordan. It tells us as much as we need to know. It does not mean that he lived no part of the time in his mother’s house, but that he remained in seclusion instead of beginning at twelve years of age, like other boys, to attend the feasts at Jerusalem regularly. He was unseen and unknown outside his own domestic circle till the hour for his public work arrived. His mother lived “in the hill country,” where desert abounded, and here he would doubtless spend much of his time in the open air, indulging in contemplation and prayer, and acquiring those habits of hardihood for which he became known to the crowds who afterwards listened to his preaching. When he introduced himself to public notice at the age of 27, “he had his raiment of camel’s hair and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.” The report was raised that he was demonaically possessed. This report was partly grounded on his eccentricity of habit, for “John came neither eating nor drinking” (Matt. xi. 18); and partly on the vehement dogmatism of his preaching, which was untinged with deference to the influential classes, and fired with a directness and intensity of denunciation against wickedness, that identified him with the prophets of whom Jesus said he was the greatest. These two peculiarities probably explain the attention of which he immediately became the object. He “did no miracle” (Jno. x. 41); yet there “went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan.” Had his preaching consisted of the incoherent rhodomontade of fanaticism, ancient or modern, this attention would soon have subsided. But instead of subsiding, it went on increasing for over three years, until the leaders of the people were themselves drawn by the popular current to listen to him, and even Herod, the king of the country, felt constrained to defer to his words (Mark vi. 20). This fact is proof of a powerful attraction in the work of John. There is no difficulty in discovering the secret of this attraction, when the nature of the times is considered in connection with the nature of his teaching. The time specified in Dan. ix. for the appearance of the Messiah was about to expire; and we learn from Josephus and Tacitus that there was a general expectancy of Messiah’s advent. This would tend to fix attention on John. As a matter of fact, Luke informs us that “the people were in expectation; all men mused in their hearts of John whether he were the Christ or not” (Luke iii. 15). John also (the other John) tells us that “the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who art thou?” To whom he answered, “I am not the Christ” (Jno. i. 19, 20). This general suspense and anticipation would dispose the people to attend to a teacher so emphatic and peculiar. The nature of his teachings would rivet the attention excited by his peculiarity. He commanded them with authority to repent: to turn from their sins; and to submit to baptism at his hands for the remission of the same. With this command, he associated two solemn intimaations—first, that judgment was impending on that generation: the axe was lying at the root of the trees, and every tree failing to bring forth good fruit would be cut down and cast into the fire; and secondly, that the coming one was among them, about to make his appearance, “whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Jno. i. 26; Matt. iii. 10–12).

It is not surprising that such teaching—delivered with the fervour and fearlessness of divine authority,—should arrest attention at a time when moral earnestness had been killed by a punctilious and hypocritical ritualism; and when the public mind was in the tension of a justly-founded expectancy. His style was an acceptable contrast to the mumbling formalisms of the scribes, who, like the clergy of the present day, were mere “intoners” of word-forms in which they had no faith. It would be pleasing to the lovers of righteousness to see him turn on the Pharisees and Sadducees as he did when they at last ventured furtively to follow the crowds in their eager attendance on John’s preaching: “O generation of vipers! who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” John anticipated their claim on the score of Abrahamic descent. “Think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father’: for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” The context supplies the explanation of John’s apparent brusqueness. He said, “Bring forth fruits meet for repentance”—implying that they were not fit subjects for the remission of sins. Remission of sins is offered only to those who confess and forsake their sins. The Pharisees and Sadducees were not in the mood to do either. They were in the state afterwards described by Jesus: “outwardly righteous,” but in their hearts and lives, as God estimates them, full of iniquity. John, as a man by whom the Spirit spoke, was able to address words which, though extremely harsh, were perfectly suitable to their state. To those who came with sincere desire to know God’s will, that they might do it, he spoke in terms of instruction. “The people asked him, What shall we do then? He answereth and said unto them, he that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none: and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also the publicans to be baptised, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence unto no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages” (Luke iii. 10, 14).

It has been a difficulty with the “learned” why John took such an extreme and authoritative attitude, and particularly why he baptised with water. Much labour and ingenuity have been expended for the purpose of showing that baptism was Orientally practised as a religious rite before the days of John, from which it is argued that John, whose fervour is attributed by this class to his emulation of the eremite asceticism of the first century, adopted it from predecessors. There is not the least room for this idea, or for any uncertainty on the point, when men accept the apostolic account (and if that is not accepted, there is no reason for attaching value to any account: for all other literature on the subject, ancient or modern, is hazy and incoherent. But most men have a curious propensity for preferring the cloudy and bewildering vaticinations of unbelieving bookworms, to the straight, clear, and authenticated record of apostolic inspiration). The apostolic account is simple and all-sufficient. John tells us that the Pharisees sent a deputation to John, enquiring, “Why baptisest thou?” (Jno. i. 24, 25)—(the very question of the modern “literati.”) John’s answer sets the question at rest for ever. The pith of it is contained in verse 33: “He (God) … sent me to baptise with water.” With what object, John? This also is settled: “After me cometh a man who was preferred before me: (for he was before me). And I knew him not, but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore, am I come baptising with water” (verses 30, 31.) John’s baptism was, therefore, part of the work God gave John to do. He did it because he was sent to do it, and commanded to do it. He was commanded to do it because the word of God came to him, conveying the command as distinctly and directly as that same word came to Moses and all the prophets, “not by the will of man,” as Peter informs us, but “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” The very date of the coming of this word is exactly supplied: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar … the Word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness” (Luke iii. 1). His baptism, his burning words, and commanding manner are all explained by this. He was the Lord’s messenger, specially raised up and equipped, “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb,” and sent forth at the ripe moment, “in the spirit and power of Elias,” to do the work of “preparing the way of the Lord.”