prophecy.(1) His flight into Egypt and return to Nazareth are equally in fulfilment of prophecies.(2) John the Baptist, whose own birth as the forerunner of the Messiah had been foretold,(3) goes before him preparing the way of the Lord, and announcing that the Messianic kingdom is at hand. According to the fourth Gospel, some of the twelve had been disciples of the Baptist, and follow Jesus on their master's assurance that he is the Messiah. One of these, Andrew, induces his brother Simon Peter also to go after him by the announcement:—"We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ" (i. 35ff. 41). And Philip tells Nathaniel:—"We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write: Jesus, the son of Joseph, who is from Nazareth" (i. 45). When he has commenced his own public ministry, Jesus is represented as asking his disciples:—"Who do men say that I am?" and setting aside the popular conjectures that he is John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, by the still more direct question:—"And whom do ye say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said:—Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And in consequence of this recognition of his Messiahship, Jesus rejoins:—"And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church."(4)
It is quite apart from our present object to point out the singular feats of exegesis and perversions of historical S3nse by which passages of the Old Testament are forced to show that every event in the history, and even the startling novelty of a suffering and crucified Messiah, which to Jews was a stumbling-block and to Gentiles folly,(1) had been foretold by the prophets. From first to last the Gospels strive to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, and connect him indissolubly with the Old Testament. The Messianic key-note, which is struck at the outset, regulates the strain to the close. The disciples on the way to Emmaus, appalled by the ignominious death of their Master, sadly confide to the stranger their vanished hope that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they now merely call "a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people," was the Christ "who was about to redeem Israel," and Jesus himself replies:—"O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spake! Was it not needful that the Christ (Messiah) should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."(2) Then, again, when he appears to the eleven, immediately after, at Jerusalem, he says:—"'These are the words that I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.' Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them:—'Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise from the dead the third day.'"(3)
The crucifixion and death of Jesus introduced the first elements of rupture with Judaism, to which they formed the great stumbling-block.(1) The conception of a suffering and despised Messiah could naturally never have occurred to a Jewish mind.(2) The first effort of Christianity, therefore, was to repair the apparent breach by proving that the suffering Messiah had actually been foretold by the prophets; and to re-establish the Messianic character of Jesus, by the evidence of his resurrection.(3) But, above all, the momentary deviation from orthodox Jewish ideas regarding the Messiah was retraced by the representation of a speedy second advent, in glory, of the once rejected Messiah to restore the kingdom of Israel, by which the ancient hopes of the people became reconciled with the new expectation of Christians. Even before the Ascension, the disciples are represented in the Acts as asking the risen Jesus:—"Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"(4) There can be no doubt of the reality and
universality of the belief, in the Apostolic Church, in the immediate return of the glorified Messiah and speedy "end of all things."(1)
The substance of the preaching of the Apostles in Acts, simply is that Jesus is the Christ,(2) the expected Messiah.(3) Their chief aim is to prove that his sufferings and death had been foretold by the prophets,(4) and that his resurrection establishes his claim to the title.(5) The simplicity of the creed is illustrated by the rapidity with which converts are made. After a few words, on one occasion, three thousand(6) and, on another, five thousand(7) are at once converted. No lengthened instruction or preparation was requisite for admission into the Church.(8) As soon as a Jew acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah he thereby became a Christian.(9) As soon as the
three thousand converts at Pentecost made this confession of faith they were baptized.(1) The Ethiopian is converted whilst passing in his chariot, and is immediately baptized,(2) as are likewise Cornelius and his household after a short address from Peter.(3) The new faith involved no abandonment of the old. On the contrary, the advent of the Messiah was so essential a part of Judaic belief, and the Messianic claim of Jesus was so completely based by the Apostles on the fulfilment of prophecy—"showing by the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ,"—that recognition of the fact rather constituted firmer adhesion to Mosaism, and deeper faith in the inviolable truth of the Covenant with Israel. If there had been no Mosaism, so to say, there could have been no Messiah. So far from being opposed either to the form or spirit of the religion of Israel, the proclamation of the Messiah was its necessary complement, and could only be intelligible by confirmation of its truth and maintenance of its validity. Christianity—belief in the Messiah—in its earlier phases, drew its whole nourishment from roots that sank deeply into Mosaism. It was indeed nothing more than Mosaism in a developed form. The only difference between the Jew and the Christian was that the latter believed the Messiah to have already appeared in Jesus, whilst the former still expected him in the future;(4) though even this difference