It gives significance to that passage of Revelation where Christ is called "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
Not alone in the four years when he ministered on earth was he the suffering Redeemer; he was always, from the foundation of the world, the devoted sacrifice: bearing on his heart the sinning, suffering, wandering race of man, afflicted in their afflictions, bearing their griefs and carrying their sorrows, the friend of the Jew and the Gentile, the seeker for the outcast, the guide of the wanderer, the defender of the helpless, the consoler of the desolate, the self-devoted offering to and for the sins of the world.
In all these revelations of God, one idea is very precious. He reveals himself not as a fixed Fate—a mighty, crushing, inexorable Power—but as a Being relenting, tender, yearning towards the race of man with infinite tenderness. He suffers himself to be importuned; he hides himself that he may be sought, and, although he is omnipotent, though with one touch he might weaken and paralyze human strength, yet he suffers human arms to detain and human importunity to conquer him, and he blesses the man that will not let him go except he bless. On this scene Charles Wesley has written his beautiful hymn beginning,—
"Come, O thou Traveler unknown."
The struggles, the sorrows, and aspirations of the soul for an unknown Saviour have never been more beautifully told.
II
CHRIST IN PROPHECY
In the Old Testament Scriptures we have from the beginning of the world an advent dawn—a rose sky of Promise. He is coming, is the mysterious voice that sounds everywhere, in history, in prophecy, in symbol, type, and shadow. It spreads through all races of men; it becomes an earnest aspiration, a sigh, a moan of struggling humanity, crying out for its Unknown God.