Your loving daughter,
Adina.
[LETTER XXVIII.]
My Dear Father:
Like all my letters, the theme of this will be Jesus, whose claims to be the Messiah I unspeakably rejoice to hear you are beginning to regard with more favorable eyes.
Now Jesus, whose power to work miracles you yourself, my dear father, have confessed must be conferred by Jehovah alone, asserts distinctly and everywhere that he is Messias, the Son of God, the Shiloh of Israel, of whom Moses and the prophets so eloquently wrote. Besides claiming for himself this high character, he was heard, by both my Uncle Amos and myself, in the synagogue at Bethany, two days after he raised Lazarus from the dead, to read from Esaias the words following, and apply them to himself, which he had done before at Nazareth:
"The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
The synagogue was thronged, so that people trod upon one another. All eyes were now intent, and all ears were ready to hear what he should speak. He then said unto them:
"This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. Ye ask me, O scribes and men of Israel, to tell you plainly who I am—whether I am the Christ or no. What saith the prophet of Messias when he shall come? Ye have just heard his words. If such works as he prophesieth do show forth themselves in me, know ye not who I am?"