Editorial March 21, 1908 Issue

THE APPEARING OF MAN

John B. Willis

Israel's Messianic hope was the greatest, the richest, the most inspiring anticipation of human history. It embraced and expressed the consummation of the noblest longings of all mankind. The nations of the distant East, whose wise men with uplifted gaze found and followed the Bethlehem star, the nations of the distant West, whose expectation of the coming of a wondrous "Fair God" made them the more accessible to the daring and cruel adventurers who effected their enslavement. — to all these had come, with greater or less clearness, the vision of a saving hero, a princely man; and for the reason that the possibility of this man is the silent but impelling companion of every uplooking child of humanity.

By the many this hero was thought of as simply a divinely appointed leader, who was to retrieve the nation fortunes and destroy the nation's foes, but in the thought of Israel's greater prophets his character and mission had reached a splendor of exaltation which renders their forestatements respecting him the marvel of literature. Nevertheless, the richest meaning, the true spiritual significance of this great expectation, was conveyed to the world only through the teaching of him who fulfilled for all time the personal sense of the Messianic coming.

In the light of the Master's healing words and works, the sweep and compass of the appearing of the true man is revealed. It is an appearing which is identical with the triumph of the gospel, which measures the completeness of humanity's redemption, and which rebukes all the dogmas that have dwarfed and degraded the concept of Christ's presence and reign by failing to identify it with the spiritual triumphs of the present life and of each and every individual.

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