Here, again, it is upon a medal found in the ruins of Citium, and proved by Dr. Clarke in his Travels to have been Phœnician! It exhibits the lamb, the cross, and the rosary![370]
When John the Baptist first saw Jesus beyond the Jordan, in Bethabara, he exclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.”[371]
This he did not apply as a novel designation; but as the familiar epithet, and the recognised denomination of the Son of God, whose prescribed office it was, in all the changes of past worlds, as it was now in this present, to redress the broken-hearted by taking away sin.
He adds: “This is He of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for He was before me,”[372] not only in eternity, but on this earth.
“And I knew Him not; but that He should be made manifest to Israel,”[373] as He was before to other nations,—an event which was but the fulfilment of a prophecy ushered in many years before in these remarkable words—
“Behold, the former things are come to pass”:[374] not that the predictions formerly delivered had taken place, but the things, the events, the occurrences, which had been enacted before, were now re-enacted! that a renovation of the world was at hand, which the mouthpiece of the Lord commences by saying—“New things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
On turning the leaf you will see another of those pillars which grace a land of heroes, “where stones were raised on high to speak to future times, with their grey heads of moss”;[375] and whose story, though “lost in the mist of years,” may yet be deciphered from off themselves.
This costly relic of religion, erected solely in honour of the cross, is to be seen at Forres, in Scotland, and is thus described by Cordiner:—