Chapter I: Midnight 342 (1)

II. FIRST HOUR 344
III. SECOND HOUR 346
IV. THIRD HOUR 348
V. FOURTH HOUR 350
VI. DAY DAWN 354
VII. WHEN I AWAKE I AM STILL WITH THEE 356

PRESSED FLOWERS FROM ITALY.

A DAY IN THE PAMFILI DORIA 358
THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN 362
ST. PETER'S CHURCH 363
THE MISERERE 364

The frontispiece portrait of Mrs. Stowe is from a photograph taken in 1862.

The vignette (Mrs. Stowe's home at Andover, Mass.) is from a painting in 1860 by F. Roundel.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

No one can read Mrs. Stowe's writings as a whole without perceiving how constant is the appeal to the religious sensibilities. Her greatest book, which took captive the humblest reader and such a genius in literature as George Sand, was in a marked degree a religious book; and again and again, even in playful scenes, there is a quick passage to the religious nature. The explanation is in the simple fact that Mrs. Stowe herself from early girlhood to her latest years was governed by religion, and it is not surprising, therefore, that an entire volume should be gathered from her writings exclusively given over to direct expression of religious feeling and thought.

She would gladly, especially in her later life, have confined herself to writing of this sort, for the realities of faith, especially the presence of the Divine Master, came to have a commanding power over her mind and heart, and to make her almost impatient of much concern about adventures of the ordinary sort. Even the reminiscence of the racy life of the New England of her childhood could not absorb her. "I would much rather," she writes in 1876 to her son Charles, "have written another such a book as _Footsteps of the Master_, but all, even the religious papers, are gone mad on serials." The book which she was then writing was _Poganuc People_, and the reader knows what a thread of religious experience runs through that lively narrative.

_Footsteps of the Master_ was published in 1877. In its original form, each section contained interludes of verse, sometimes her own, more frequently hymns and poems from well-known sources. There were also scriptural passages illustrative of the great divisions, and the book was set forth thus as a devotional companion. In reissuing it in this volume, the poems by the author have been preserved in the section given to her Religious Poems; the others and the illustrative scriptural passages have been omitted and Mrs. Stowe's Meditations preserved in their continuous form. The word "To the Reader," prefixed to the volume, is as follows:--

When a city is closely besieged and many of its outworks
destroyed, the defenders retreat to the citadel. In our day
there is warm fighting about the outworks of Christianity. Many
things are battered down that used to be thought indispensable
to its defense. It is time to retreat to the citadel; and that
citadel is CHRIST.

The old mediæval symbol shown above[1] is still more than ever
good for our day. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is still our King,
our Light, our Law, our Leader. These names comprise all that a
human being needs in this transitory, perplexing and dangerous
pilgrimage of life.

[1] The familiar combination of Rex. Lux, Lex, Dux.

We are born to suffer. The very conditions of our mortal
existence here imply suffering of the most terrible kind as a
possibility, a probability, or a certainty. We have affections
absorbing our whole being which are hourly menaced by danger and
by death--at any moment our sweetest joys may become sources
only of bitterest remembrance.

We are born to perplexity. We stand amid the jar and conflict
of a thousand natural laws, to us inexplicable, and which every
hour threaten us in ourselves or those dearer than ourselves. We
stand often in no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the
path of duty and right is darkened and beset.

We are born to die. At the end of every possible road of life
lies the dark River--the unknown future. If we cling to life,
it is only to see it wither gradually in our hands, to see
friends dropping from our side, places vacant at our fireside,
infirmities and pains gathering about us, and a new generation
with their impetuous energies rising around us to say, Why do
you wait here? Why are you not gone?

And the Hereafter? What is it? Who will go with us into that
future where no friend, however dear, can accompany the soul?
What hand of power and love will take ours in the last darkness,
when we have let go all others?

The dear old book which we call the Bible gives our answer to
all this. It tells us of a Being so one with the great Author
of nature and Source of all power that whoso hath seen him hath
seen the Creator. It tells us that all things that we behold in
our material world were made by him and for him: that it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and that to
him all things in heaven and on earth are made subject. It shows
him to us from the beginning of time as constantly absorbed in
the care and education of this world of ours. He has been the
Desire of all nations--predicted, waited for, come at last!

And when he came and lived a mortal life what did he show the
divine nature to be? It may all be told in one word:--LOVE.
Love, unconquered, unconquerable by human sin and waywardness.
Love, sympathetic with the inevitable sorrows of human
existence. Love, expressed in every form by which a God could
express love. His touch was healing; the very hem of his garment
had restoring virtue. He lived and loved as we live and love,
only on a higher ideal,--he gave to every human affection a more
complete interpretation, a more perfect fullness. And finally,
as the highest revelation of Love, he died for us, and in
anguish and blood and dying pains still loved, still prayed for
us, the ungrateful race of man. He passed through the night of
death that he might learn not to fear it, and came forth radiant
and immortal to tell us that we shall never die.

By a refinement of infinite mercy, the law of our lives is
written not in hard statutes but in the life of this tender
and sympathetic friend. Christ is our law. We learn courage,
patience, fortitude, forgiving love from him. The lesson
impossible in statute is made easy by sympathy. But lest the
very brightness of the ideal fill us with despair we have his
promise, "Lo, _I_ am with you alway to the end of the world!
I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you." Jesus,
as an inseparable soul-friend--a consoler, a teacher, an
enlightener--dwells on earth now in a higher sense than when he
walked the hills of Palestine.

"Forever more beside us on our way,
The unseen Christ doth move,
That we may lean upon his arm and say,
'Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?'"

To that great multitude whom no man can number, who are living
the hidden life of faith, these studies into the life of our
Master are dedicated. They have been arranged in the order of
the seasons of the Christian year, with the hope of aiding the
efforts of those who wish at these sacred seasons to bring our
Lord more clearly to mind.

We hear much of modern skepticism. There is, perhaps, no more
in the world now than there has always been, only its forms are
changed. Its answer lies not in argument, but in the lives of
Christ's followers. It was Christians who lived like Christ that
won the first battle for Christianity, and it must be Christians
who live like Christ that shall win the last. The life of faith
in the Son of God, when fully lived out, always has been and
always will be a victorious argument.

But to live this our faith must be firm. We cannot meet a
skeptical world with weak faith. If we would draw our friend
out of a swift-rushing current, our own feet must not stand on
slippery places. We must seek faith in looking to Him who has
the giving of it. We must keep Him before our minds, and come so
near Him in daily prayer that we can say: "That which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have
handled, of the Word of Life, declare we unto you."

And even to those who have no conscious belief in Christ, his
name can never be a matter of indifference. Whether they believe
it or not, Christ stands to them in a peculiar relation that no
other being holds. He is their best Friend, the Shepherd that
is seeking them, the generous Saviour and Giver that is longing
to save them from all that they fear and to give exceeding
abundantly beyond all they can ask or think.

The other _Studies_ and the _Religious Sketches_ which follow are drawn from the early _Mayflower_ and intimate how instinctively in the beginning of her career as a writer Mrs. Stowe turned her mind in this direction. Her poems appeared at irregular intervals and were gathered into a volume by themselves in 1867. The collection then issued is here slightly enlarged by the inclusion of one or two estrays.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES

FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER

I

CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

"The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

Our Lord asserts nothing more frequently than that he came to this world, not as other men come, but as a voluntary exile from a higher and purer life. He said in public, speaking to the Jews, "I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me." When the Jews tauntingly said to him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" he answered, "Before Abraham was, I AM." In fact, while he walked as a brother among men, there were constant and mysterious flashes from the life of a higher sphere. Jesus moved about in our life as a sympathetic foreigner who ever and anon in moments of high excitement breaks out into his native language. So Christ at times rose into the language of heaven, and spoke for a moment, unconsciously as it were, in the style of a higher world.

He did not say, "Before Abraham was, I _was_," but "I AM," using the same form which in the Old Testament is used by Jehovah when he declares his name to Moses, "I AM that I am." So, too, when conversing with Nicodemus, our Lord asserts that he is the only person competent to bear testimony to heavenly things, because he came from heaven.

He says, "No man hath ascended into heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." This last is one of those changes into the language of a higher world which so often awed and perplexed those who talked with Jesus. It would seem that he had the power by moments to breathe aside the veil which separates from the higher state, and to be in heaven. Such a moment was this, when he was declaring to an honest-minded, thoughtful inquirer the higher truths of the spiritual life, and asserting his right to know about heavenly things, because he came down from heaven--yea, because for the moment he was in heaven.

But in the last hours of his life, when he felt the scenes of his humiliations and sufferings approaching, he declared this truth, so often shadowed and intimated, with explicit plainness. He said, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." This was stating the truth as plainly as human words can do it, and the disciples at last understood him fully. "Lo! now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb." And in that affecting prayer that followed our Lord breathes the language of an exile longing to return to the home of his love: "And now, O Father! glorify me with thine own self--with the glory that I had with thee before the world was."

It is then most plain on the face of the New Testament that our Lord had a history before he came to this world. He was a living power. He was, as he says, in glory with the Father before the world was. Are there any traces of this mysterious Word, this divine Son, this Revealer of God in the Old Testament? It has been the approved sentiment of sound theologians that in the Old Testament every visible appearance of an Angel or divine Man to whom the name of Jehovah is given is a pre-appearance of the Redeemer, Jesus. It is a most interesting study to pursue this idea through the Old Testament history, as is fully done by President Edwards in his "History of Redemption" and by Dr. Watts in his "True Glory of Christ." In Milton's "Paradise Lost" he represents the Son of God as being "the Lord God who walked in the Garden of Eden" after the trespass of our first parents, and dwells on the tenderness of the idea that it was in the cool of the day,--

"when from wrath more cool
Came the mild Judge and Intercessor both."

This sentiment of the church has arisen from the plain declaration in the first chapter of John, where it is plainly asserted that "no man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." The Old Testament records to which our Lord constantly appealed were full of instances in which a being called Jehovah, and spoken of as God,--the Almighty God,--had appeared to men, and the inference is plain that all these were pre-appearances of Christ.

It is an interesting study for the sacred season of Advent to trace those pre-appearances of our Lord and Saviour in the advancing history of our race. A series of readings of this sort would be a fit preparation for the triumphs of Christmas, when he, the long-desired, was at last given visible to man.

We shall follow a few of these early appearances of the Saviour, in the hope that some pious hearts may be led to see those traces of his sacred footsteps, which brighten the rugged ways of the Old Testament history.

In the eighteenth chapter of Genesis we have an account of a long interview of Abraham with a being in human form, whom he addresses as Jehovah, the Judge of all the earth. We hear him plead with him in words like these;--

"Behold now, I have taken on me to speak unto Jehovah, which am
but dust and ashes ... that be far from thee to do after this
manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the
righteous should be as the wicked. Shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right?"

What a divine reticence and composure it was, on the part of our Lord, when afterwards he came to earth and the scoffing Jews said to him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" He did not tell them how their father Abraham had been a suppliant at his feet ages ago, yet he must have thought of it as they thus taunted him.

Again we read in Genesis xxviii., when Jacob left his father's house and lay down, a lonely traveler, in the fields with a stone for his pillow, the pitying Jesus appeared to him:--

"He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the
top of it reached unto heaven; and behold the angels of God
ascending and descending upon it. And behold, Jehovah stood
above it, and said, I am Jehovah, God of Abraham, thy father."

As afterwards Jesus, at the well of Samaria, chose to disclose his Messiahship to the vain, light-minded, guilty Samaritan woman, and call her to be a messenger of his good to her townsmen, so now he chose Jacob--of whom the worst we know is that he had yielded to an unworthy plot for deceiving his father--he chose him to be the father of a powerful nation. Afterward our Lord alludes to this vision in one of his first conversations with Nathaniel, as given by St. John:--

"Jesus said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under
the fig-tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than
these, Verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open
and the angels of God ascending and descending _upon the Son of
man_."

This same divine Patron and Presence watches over the friendless Jacob until he becomes rich and powerful, the father of a numerous tribe. He is returning with his whole caravan to his native land. But the consequence of his former sin meets him on the way. Esau, the brother whom he deceived and overreached, is a powerful prince, and comes to meet him with a band of men.

Then Jacob was afraid and distressed, and applies at once to his heavenly Helper. "I am not worthy," he says, "of all the mercy and all the truth which thou hast shown to thy servant, for with my staff I passed over this Jordan and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and smite me and the mother with the children." Such things were common in those days--they were possible and too probable--and what father would not pray as Jacob prayed?

Then follows a passage of singular and thrilling character. A mysterious stranger comes to him, dimly seen in the shadows of the coming dawn. Is it that human Friend--that divine Jehovah? Trembling and hoping he strives to detain him, but the stranger seeks to flee from him. Made desperate by the agony of fear and entreaty, he throws his arms around him and seeks to hold him. The story is told briefly thus:--

"And Jacob was left alone. And there wrestled A MAN with him
until the breaking of day. And when he saw that he prevailed not
he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob's
thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And the man
said, Let me go, for the day breaketh; and he said, I will not
let thee go except thou bless me. And he said, What is thy name?
and he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no
more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince thou hast power with God
and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob said, I beseech thee
tell me thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost
ask after my name? And he blessed him there."

How like is this mysterious stranger to the One in the New Testament history who after the resurrection joined the two sorrowful disciples on the way to Emmaus. There is the same mystery, the same reserve in giving himself fully to the trembling human beings who clung to him. So when the disciples came to their abode "he made as though he would go farther," and they constrained him and he went in. As he breaks the bread they know him, and immediately he vanishes out of their sight.

In his dying hour (Gen. xlviii.) the patriarch Jacob, after an earthly pilgrimage of a hundred and forty-seven years, recalls these blessed visions of his God:--

"And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in
the land of Canaan and blessed me."

And again, blessing the children of Joseph, he says:--

"God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God
which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which
redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads."

But it was not merely to the chosen father of the chosen nation that this pitying Friend and Saviour appeared. When the poor, passionate, desperate slave-girl Hagar was wandering in the wilderness, struggling with the pride and passion of her unsubdued nature, he who follows the one wandering sheep appeared and spoke to her (Gen. xvi.). He reproved her passionate impatience; he counseled submission; he promised his protection and care to the son that should be born of her and the race that should spring from her. Wild and turbulent that race of men should be; and yet there was to be a Saviour, a Care-taker, a Shepherd for them. "And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me; for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?"

Afterwards, when the fiery, indomitable passions of the slave-woman again break forth and threaten the peace of the home, and she is sent forth into the wilderness, the Good Shepherd again appears to her. Thus is the story told (Gen. xxi.):--

"And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child
under one of the shrubs, and she went and sat down a good way
off, for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And
God heard the voice of the lad, and the angel of the Lord called
to Hagar out of heaven, saying, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear
not. God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise,
lift up the lad, hold him in thy hand, for I will make of him
a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of
water."

Thus did he declare himself the Care-taker and Saviour not of the Jews merely, but of the Gentiles. It was he who afterwards declared that he was the living bread which came down from heaven, which he gave for the life of the WHOLE WORLD.

Afterwards, in the history of Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, we read of a divine Being who talked with him in a visible intimacy:--

"And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the
cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle,
and Jehovah talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy
pillar stand at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose up
and worshiped, each man in his tent door. _And Jehovah spake
unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend._"

Some record of this strange conversation is given. Moses was a man of wonderful soul, in whom was the divine yearning; he longed to know more and more of his God, and at last beseeches to have the full beatific vision of the divine nature in its glory; but the answer is: "Thou canst not see my face [in its divine glory], for there shall no man see me and live." That overpowering vision was not for flesh and blood; it would dissolve the frail bonds of mortality and set the soul free, and Moses must yet live, and labor, and suffer.

What an affecting light this interview of Moses sheds on that scene in the New Testament, where, just before his crucifixion, the disciples see their Master in the glory of the heavenly world, and with him Moses and Elijah, "who spake with him of his decease, which he should accomplish at Jerusalem,"--Moses, who had been taught by the divine Word in the wilderness how to organize all that system of forms and sacrifices which were to foreshadow and prepare the way for the great Sacrifice--the great Revealer of God to man. We see these noble souls, the two grandest prophets of the Old Testament, in communion with our Lord about that last and final sacrifice which was to fulfill and bring to an end all others.

A little later on, in the Old Testament history, we come to a time recorded in the Book of Judges when the chosen people, settled in the land of Canaan, sunk in worldliness and sin, have forgotten the Lord Jehovah, and as a punishment are left to be bitterly oppressed and harassed by the savage tribes in their neighborhood. The nation was in danger of extinction. The stock from which was to come prophets and apostles, the writers of the Bible which we now read, from which was to come our Lord Jesus Christ, was in danger of being trampled out under the heel of barbarous heathen tribes. It was a crisis needing a deliverer. Physical strength, brute force, was the law of the day, and a deliverer was to be given who could overcome force by superior force.

Again the mysterious stranger appears; we have the account in Judges xiii.

A pious old couple who have lived childless hitherto receive an angelic visitor who announces to them the birth of a deliverer. And the woman came and told her husband, saying, "A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible; but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name." This man, she goes on to say, had promised a son to them who should deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. Manoah then prays to God to grant another interview with the heavenly messenger.

The prayer is heard; the divine Man again appears to them and gives directions for the care of the future child,--directions requiring the most perfect temperance and purity on the part of both mother and child. The rest of the story is better given in the quaint and beautiful words of the Bible:--

"And Manoah said to the angel of Jehovah, I pray thee let us
detain thee till we shall have made ready a kid for thee. And
the angel of Jehovah said to Manoah, Though thou detain me
I will not eat of thy bread; and if thou wilt offer a burnt
offering thou must offer it unto Jehovah. For Manoah knew not
that he was an angel of Jehovah. And Manoah said, What is thy
name? that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor.
And the angel of the Lord said unto him, Why askest thou my
name, seeing that it is secret? So Manoah took a kid with a meat
offering and offered it upon a rock to the Lord; and the angel
did wonderously, and Manoah and his wife looked on. For it came
to pass, when the flame went up to heaven from off the altar,
that the angel of Jehovah ascended in the flame on the altar,
and Manoah and his wife fell on their faces on the ground. And
Manoah said, We shall surely die, for we have seen God."

This tender, guiding Power, this long-suffering and pitying Saviour of Israel, appears to us in frequent glimpses through the writings of the prophets.

Isaiah says, "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of his Presence saved them; in his love and his pity he redeemed them, and he bore and carried them all the days of old."

It is this thought that gives an inexpressible pathos to the rejection of Christ by the Jews. St. John begins his gospel by speaking of this divine Word, who was with God in the beginning, and was God; that he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

This gives an awful, pathetic meaning to those tears which Christ shed over Jerusalem, and to that last yearning farewell to the doomed city:--

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and
stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have
gathered thy children as a hen doth gather her brood under her
wings, and ye would not."

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.

In the Garden of Eden came the first oracle, which declared that the SEED of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This was an intimation, vague yet distinct, that there should come a Deliverer who should break the power of evil. From that hour every mother had hope, and child-bearing was invested with dignity and blessing. When the mother of all brought the first son into the world, she fondly hoped that she had brought forth the Deliverer, and said, "I have gotten the MAN _Jehovah_."

Poor mother! destined to a bitter anguish of disappointment! Thousands of years were to pass away before the second Eve should bring forth the MAN Jehovah.

In this earliest period we find in the history of Job the anguish, the perplexities, the despair of the helpless human creature, crushed and bleeding beneath the power of an unknown, mighty Being, whose ways seem cruel and inexplicable, but with whom he feels that expostulation is impossible:--

"Lo, he goeth by me and I see him not; he passeth on also and
I perceive him not. Behold, he taketh away, and who can hinder
him? who will say unto him, What doest thou? If God will not
withdraw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him. How
then shall I answer him and choose out words to reason with him?"

Job admits that he desires to reason with God to ask some account of his ways. He says:--

"My soul is weary of my life. I will speak in the bitterness of
my soul. I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; show me why
thou contendest with me. Is it good that thou shouldest oppress,
that thou shouldest despise the work of thy hands?"

He then goes through with all the perplexing mysteries of life. He sees the wicked prosperous and successful, and he that had always been devoted to God reduced to the extreme of human misery; he wrestles with the problem; he longs to ask an explanation; but it all comes to one mournful conclusion:--

"He is not a man as I am, that I should answer him, and we
should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman
[arbiter] between us, that might lay his hand on both of us.
Let him take his rod away and let not his fear terrify me. Then
would I speak; but it is not so with me."

Here we have in a word the deepest want of humanity: a daysman between the infinite God and finite man; a Mediator who should lay his hand on both of them! And then, in the midst of these yearnings and complainings, the Spirit of God, the Heavenly Comforter, bearing witness with Job's spirit, breaks forth in the prophetic song:--

"I know that my Redeemer liveth
And that he shall stand in the latter days upon the earth.
And though worms destroy this body,
Yet in my flesh shall I see God.
I shall see him for myself and not another.
My reins are consumed with longing for that day."

As time passes we have the history of one man, called from all the races of men to be the ancestor of this SEED. Abraham, called to leave his native land and go forth sojourning as a pilgrim and stranger on earth, receives a celestial visitor who says: "Abraham, I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be thou perfect." He exacts of Abraham the extremes of devotion--not only to leave his country, kindred, friends, and be a sojourner in a strange land, but to sacrifice the only son of his heart. And Abraham meets the test without a wavering thought; his trust in God is absolute: and in return he receives the promise, "In THY SEED shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." How Abraham looked upon this promise we are told by our Lord himself. The Jews asked him, "Art thou greater than our father Abraham?" And he answered, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day--he saw it, and was glad."

The same promise was repeated to Jacob in the self-same words, when he lay sleeping in the field of Luz and saw the heavenly vision of the Son of man.

From the time of the first announcement to Abraham his descendants became the recipients of a special divine training, in which every event of their history had a forelooking to this great consummation. They were taken into Egypt, and, after long suffering, delivered from a deadly oppression. In the solemn hour of their deliverance the blood of a spotless lamb--"a lamb without blemish"--was to mark the door-posts of each dwelling with a sign of redemption. "Not a bone of him shall be broken," said the ancient command, referring to this typical sacrifice; and when in a later day the Apostle John stood by the cross of Jesus and saw them break the limbs of the other two victims and leave Jesus untouched, he said, "that it might be fulfilled which was commanded, not a bone of Him shall be broken."

The yearly festival which commemorated this deliverance was a yearly prophecy in every Jewish family of the sinless Redeemer whose blood should be their salvation. A solemn ritual was instituted, every part of which was prophetic and symbolic. A high priest chosen from among his brethren, who could be touched with the feelings of their infirmities, was the only one allowed to enter that mysterious Holy of Holies where were the mercy-seat and the cherubim, the throne of the Invisible God. There, for the most part, unbroken stillness and solitude reigned. Only on one memorable day of the year, while all the congregation of Israel lay prostrate in penitence without, this high priest entered for them with the blood of atonement into the innermost presence of the King Invisible. Purified, arrayed in spotless garments, and bearing on his breast--graven on precious gems--the names of the tribes of Israel, he entered there, a yearly symbol and prophecy of the greater High Priest, who should "not by the blood of bulls and of goats, but by his own blood, enter at once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."

Thus, by a series of symbols and ceremonies which filled the entire life of the Jew, the whole national mind was turned in an attitude of expectancy towards the future Messiah. In the more elevated and spiritual natures--the poets and the prophets--this was continually bursting forth into distinct predictions. Moses says, in his last message to Israel, "A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you from the midst of your brethren like unto me; unto Him shall ye hearken." Our Lord referred to this prophecy when he said to the unbelieving Jews, "Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me."

The promise made at first to Abraham was afterwards repeated not only to Jacob, but long centuries afterward to his descendant, David, in a solemn, prophetic message, relating first to the reign of Solomon, but ending with these words: "And thy house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever." That David understood these words as a promise that the Redeemer should be of his seed is evident from the declaration of St. Peter in Acts ii. 30, where he says that "David being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins he would raise up Messiah to sit on his throne, spake thus concerning him."

The Psalms of David are full of heaving, many-colored clouds and mists of poetry, out of which shine here and there glimpses of the mystic future. In the second Psalm we have a majestic drama. The heathen are raging against Jehovah and his anointed Son. They say, Let us break their bands in sunder and cast away their cords. Then the voice of Jehovah is heard in the tumult, saying calmly, "Yet have I set my king on my holy hill of Zion." Then an angelic herald proclaims:--

"I will declare the decree.
The Lord hath spoken:
Thou art my Son;
This day have I begotten thee:
Ask of me and I will give the heathen for thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."

This mighty king, this glorious defender, is celebrated as the All-Loving One. His reign is to be a reign of truth and love. All the dearest forms of human affection are used to shadow forth what he will be to his people. He is to be the royal bridegroom; his willing people the bride. So, in the forty-fifth Psalm, entitled "A Song of Love," we have the image of a mighty conqueror--radiant, beloved, adored, a being addressed both as God and the Son of God, who goes forth to victory:--

"Thou art fairer than the children of men.
Grace is poured into thy lips.
Therefore God hath blessed thee forever.
Gird thy sword on thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and
majesty.
And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of thy truth and
meekness and righteousness.
Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.
A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
Thou lovest righteousness and hatest iniquity.
Therefore God--thy God--hath anointed thee with the oil of
gladness above thy fellows."

Then follows a description of the royal bride, the king's daughter, who is all glorious within--her clothing of wrought gold--who with gladness and rejoicing shall be brought to the king to become mother of princes.

It is said by some that this is a marriage hymn for the wedding of a prince. It may have been so originated; but in the mind of the devout Jew every scene and event in life had become significant and symbolical of this greater future. Every deliverer suggested the greater Deliverer; the joy of every marriage suggested the joy of that divine marriage with a heavenly bridegroom.

So the seventy-second Psalm, written originally for Solomon, expands into language beyond all that can be said of any earthly monarch. It was the last poem of David, and the feelings of the king and father rose and melted into a great tide of imagery that belonged to nothing earthly:--

"Yea, all kings shall fall down before him;
All nations shall serve him.
He shall deliver the needy when he crieth;
The poor also, and him that hath no helper.
He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of
the needy.
He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence,
And precious shall their blood be in his sight.
And he shall live, and to him shall be given the gold of Sheba.
Prayer also shall be made for him continually, and daily shall he
be praised.
His name shall endure forever.
His name shall be continued as long as the sun.
Men shall be blessed in him.
All nations shall call him blessed."

But in these same Psalms there are glimpses of a divine sufferer. In the twenty-second Psalm David speaks of sufferings which certainly never happened to himself--which were remarkably fulfilled in the last agonies of Jesus:--

"All they that see me laugh me to scorn.
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
He trusted in God that he would deliver him.
Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax--it is melted in my bosom.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd.
My tongue cleaveth to my mouth.
Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
For dogs have compassed me,
The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet.
I may tell all my bones. They look and stare on me.
They part my garments among them
And cast lots for my vesture."

In this Psalm, written more than a thousand years before he came into the world, our Lord beheld ever before him the scenes of his own crucifixion; he could see the heartless stare of idle, malignant curiosity around his cross; he could hear the very words of the taunts and revilings, and a part of the language of this Psalm was among his last utterances. While the shadows of the great darkness were gathering around his cross he cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It would seem as if the words so bitterly fulfilled passed through his mind, as one by one the agonies and indignities followed each other, till at last he bowed his head and said, "It is finished."

As time rolled on, this mingled chant of triumph and of suffering swelled clearer and plainer. In the grand soul of Isaiah, the Messiah and his kingdom were ever the outcome of every event that suggested itself. When the kingdom of Judah was threatened by foreign invasion, the prophet breaks out with the promise of a Deliverer:--

"Behold, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a
virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son and shall call his
name Immanuel [God with us]."

Again he bursts forth as if he beheld the triumph as a present reality:--

"Unto us a child is born
Unto us a son is given.
The government shall be upon his shoulders.
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end,
Upon the throne of David and his kingdom,
To establish it with justice from henceforth and forever.
The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this."

Again, a few chapters further on, he sings:--

"There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse
A Branch shall grow out of his roots.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him;
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and might,
The spirit of knowledge, and fear of the Lord.
With righteousness shall he judge the poor,
And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth."

Then follow vivid pictures of a golden age on earth, beneath his sway, when all enmities and ferocities even of the inferior animals shall cease, and universal love and joy pervade the earth.

In the fifty-third of Isaiah we have again the sable thread of humiliation and sorrow; the Messiah is to be "despised and rejected of men;" his nation "hide their faces from him;" he "bears their griefs, and carries their sorrows," is "wounded for their transgressions," is "brought as a lamb to the slaughter," is "dumb before his accusers," is "taken from prison to judgment," is "cut off out of the land of the living," "makes his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death," and thence is "raised again to an endless kingdom."

Thus far the tide of prophecy had rolled; thus distinct and luminous had grown the conception of a future suffering, victorious Lord and leader, when the Jewish nation, for its sins and unfaithfulness, was suffered to go to wreck. The temple was destroyed and the nation swept into captivity in a foreign land.

But they carried everywhere with them the vision of their future Messiah. In their captivity and sufferings their religious feelings became intense, and, wherever they were, the Jews were always powerful and influential men. Daniel, by his divine skill in spiritual insight, became the chief of the Chaldean magi, and his teachings with regard to the future Messiah may be traced in those passages of the Zendavesta which predict his coming, his universal dominion, and the resurrection of the dead. Everywhere through all nations this scattered seed of the Jews touched the spark of desire and aspiration--the longing for a future Redeemer.

In the prophecies of Daniel we find the predictions of the Messiah assuming the clearness of forewritten history. The successive empires of the world are imaged under the symbol of a human body, with a head of gold, a breast of silver, body and thighs of brass, legs and feet of iron. By these types were indicated the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman nations, with their successive rule. In prophetic vision, also, a stone was without hands cut out of the mountains, and it smote the feet of the image, so that the whole of it passed away like the chaff of the threshing-floor.

How striking this description of that invisible, spiritual force which struck the world in the time of the Roman empire, and before which all the ancient dynasties have vanished!

In the ninth chapter of Daniel, verses 25, 26, 27, we find given the exact time of the coming of the Messiah, of his death, of the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the cessation of the Jewish worship and sacrifices. Remembering that Daniel was the head of the Chaldean magi, we see how it is that their descendants were able to calculate the time of the birth of Christ and come to worship him.[2]

[2] M. Lenormant says in _The Magic of the Chaldees_: "The more one
advances in the understanding of the cuneiform text, the more one
sees the necessity of revising the condemnation too prematurely
uttered against the Book of Daniel by the German Exegetical School.
Without doubt, the use of certain Greek words serves to show that
it has passed through the hands of some editor since the time
of Alexander. But the substance of it is much more ancient--is
imprinted with a perfectly distinct Babylonian tinge, and the
picture of life in the court of Nabuchodonosor and his successors
has an equal truthfulness which could not have been attained at a
later period."

At length the Jews were recalled from captivity and the temple rebuilt. While it was rebuilding prophets encouraged the work with prophecies of the Lord who should appear in it. The prophet Haggai (ii. 3-9) thus speaks to those who depreciate the new temple by comparing it with the old:--

"Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory?
Yet now be strong, all ye people of the land, and work, for I am
with you, saith the Lord of Hosts. For thus saith the Lord: Yet
a little while and I will shake the heavens and earth, the sea
and the dry land, and the Desire of all nations shall come, and
I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord. The glory of
this latter house shall be greater than of the former, for in
this house will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts."

The prophecies of Zechariah, which belonged to the same period and had the same object,--to encourage the rebuilding of the second temple,--are full of anticipation of the coming Messiah. The prophet breaks forth into song like a bird of the morning:--

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion;
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem:
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee.
He is just and hath salvation;
He is lowly, riding upon an ass--
Upon a colt, the foal of an ass."

Again he breaks forth in another strain:--

"Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd,
Against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts.
Smite the Shepherd,
And the sheep shall be scattered."

We remember that these words were quoted by our Lord to his disciples the night before his execution, when he was going forth to meet his murderers. A hundred or so of years later, the prophet Malachi says:--

"Behold, I send my messenger.
He shall prepare the way before me.
The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple:
Even the messenger of the covenant, in whom ye delight;
But who may abide the day of his coming?
Who shall stand when He appeareth?
For, like a refiner's fire shall He be,
And like fullers' soap.
He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.
He shall purify the sons of Levi."

How remarkably this prophecy describes the fiery vehemence and energy of our Lord's first visit to the temple, when he drove out the money-changers and completely cleansed the holy place of unseemly traffic!

With this prophet the voice of prediction ceases. Let us for a moment look back and trace its course. First, the vague promise of a Deliverer, born of a woman; then, a designation of the race from which he is to be born; then of the tribe; then of the family; then the very place of his birth is predicted--Bethlehem-Ephratah being mentioned to discriminate it from another Bethlehem. Then come a succession of pictures of a Being concerning whom the most opposite things are predicted. He is to be honored, adored, beloved; he is to be despised and rejected--his nation hide their faces from him. He is to be terrible and severe as a refiner's fire; he is to be so gentle that a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench. He is to be seized and carried from prison to judgment; he is surrounded by the wicked; his hands and feet are pierced, his garments divided; they cast lots for his vesture; he is united by his death both with the wicked and with the rich; he is cut off from the land of the living. He is cut off, but not for himself; his kingdom is to be an everlasting kingdom; he is to have dominion from sea to sea, and of the increase of his government and of peace there is to be no end.

How strange that for ages these conflicting and apparently contradictory oracles had been accumulating, until finally came One who fulfilled them all. Is not this indeed the Christ--the Son of God?

III

THE CRADLE OF BETHLEHEM

We should have supposed that when the time came for the entrance of the great Hero upon the stage of this world, magnificent preparations would be made to receive him. A nation had been called and separated from all tribes of earth that he might be born of them, and it had been their one special mission to prepare for the coming of this One, their Head and King, in whom the whole of their organization--laws, teachings, and prophecies--was to be fulfilled. Christ was the end for which the tabernacle was erected and the temple built, for whom were the Holy of Holies, the altars, and the sacrifices. He was the Coming One for whom priests and prophets had been for hundreds of years looking.

What should we have expected of divine wisdom when the glorious hour approached? We should have thought that the news would be sent to the leaders of the great national council of the Sanhedrim, to the High Priest and elders, that their Prince was at hand. Doubtless we should suppose that the nation, apprised of his coming, would have made ready his palace and have been watching at its door to do honor to their newborn King.

Far otherwise is the story as we have it.