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But I am glad to find that you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French revolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in the ancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, who identify the labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and who find the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history of the solar day.
He spake, 'I come, ordain'd a world to save, To be baptis'd by thee in Jordan's wave." These words are hardly borne out by the story, and seem scarce accordant with the modesty with which our Lord came to take his common portion among the baptismal candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of John's recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent confirmation by the Voice and Dove.
And Clotilde was touched by the reception given to Pascal as a saviour, the awaited Messiah. These poor people pressed his hands they would like to have kissed his feet; looking at him with eyes shining with gratitude. True, the disease was not yet cured: perhaps this was only the effect of the stimulus, perhaps what he felt was only the excitement of fever. But was it not something to gain time?
I gave him this answer. How, I require, could we believe him to be the Messiah, when you can produce no genuine proof from the prophets in his favour, since all those things adduced by the evangelists from them, to prove Jesus the Messiah, are nothing to the purpose? And we have many and evident reasons to prove that he was not the Messiah.
Yet, who could tell? Therein, perchance, lay the rejuvenated world of to-morrow. Astray, full of doubts, he nevertheless, in his horror of violence, made common cause with old society now reduced to defend itself, unable though he was to say whence would come the new Messiah of Gentleness, in whose hands he would have liked to place poor ailing mankind. A new religion, yes, a new religion.
The great sacrifice for the sins of mankind was offered at the death of the MESSIAH, who is called in scripture "The Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." To judge of the reasonableness of the scheme of redemption, it must be considered as necessary to the government of the universe, that GOD should make known his perpetual and irreconcileable detestation of moral evil.
And this their obstinacy, as it is called, will not by this time, I think, appear unreasonable to any sensible man; and he will now be able to appreciate the justice of that idle cant about the carnal Jews, and their worldly-minded expectation of a temporal prince, as their Messiah.
Here the Mishna and the Gemara were written. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants are Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe, and spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for the Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel.
Similarly John, who wrote his gospel for Gentile readers, could not introduce Jesus to them as the Messiah, and catch their interest; he took an idea, as common in the thought of that day as Evolution is in our own the Logos or Word, in whom God expresses Himself and through whom He acts upon the world and used that as a point of contact with the minds of his readers.
He did not know Jesus to be the Christ till after His baptism, yet he shrank back from the idea of baptizing him, and pleaded his unworthiness. He was worthy, and specially appointed of God, to make manifest the Messiah, but gave way under a sense of unworthiness at the thought of baptizing his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth!
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