Article December 28, 1907 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from J. H. Jowett

[The Outlook.]

From the far beginnings of conscious human life men have known that the Christ would come; and whenever they have taken counsel of their higher selves they have striven to make ready for his coming. Those who gained the clear vision of the pure heart looked forward to his coming and were glad; their aspirations and insights and spiritual visions were like stars shining above his birthplace centuries before he was born. Their hearts divined the mystery and their hopes conspired with their hearts in a faith, often dim as a cloud on the horizon, but brightening as the day advanced. Again and again this beautiful vision of one coming from God came upon some great spirit and found lofty speech. Looking back through myth and legend and tradition, as well as through the gathering brightness of Hebrew faith, it seems as if the elect spirits had whispered together of this great hope, and their whispering had gradually risen into noble psalms and triumphant prophecies. Something stirred within them because he was already on his way, and their hearts cried out for his presence. Very beautiful and wonderfully significant were those dim anticipations, those vague expectations, which awoke whenever men began to know their own souls and feel their own needs. And when he came, it was not as a God, robed in the unapproachable splendor of enthroned divinity; but as a man like themselves, wearing their dress, speaking their language, bearing their burdens, but free from their sin, without their fear, liberated from their ignorance; the realization of the highest possibilities of their natures; he of whom they dreamed in their inspired hours, come from the God in whom they trusted.

[J. H. Jowett in The Advance.]

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