It is therefore quite consistent with the pro bahility of the case, that we are informed by St. Luke of the existence of what seems to have been a considerable number of persons that looked for redemption in Israel' (ii. 38). The demeanour of these believers was exhibited in a close and con scientious adherence to the law of Moses, which was, in its statutes and ordinances, at once the rule of pious life and the schoolmaster to guide men to their Messiah (Gal. iii. 24). As examples of these 'just and devout' persons, the evangelist presents us with a few short but beautiful sketches in his first and second chapters. Besides the blessed Mary and faithful Joseph, there are Zacha rias and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna—pictures of holiness to be met with among men and women, married and unmarried, whose piety was strongly toned with this eminent feature, which is expressly attributed to one of them, 'waiting for the consola tion of Israel' (comp. Luke i. 6, with ii. 25, and 37, 38). Such hopes, stimulated by a profound and far-sighted faith, were exhibited at the birth and infancy of the Messiah Jesus by these expectant yews; and they were not alone. Gentiles displayed a not less marvellous faith, when the wise men from the East' did their homage to the babe of Bethlehem, undeterred by the disguise of humilia tion with which the Messiah's glory was to human eye obscured (Matt. ii. 2, I I). But at his death, no less than at his birth, under a still darker veil of ignominy, similar acknowledgments of faith in his Messiahship were exhibited. St. Mark men tions it as one of the points in the character of Joseph of Arimathea, that he waited for the kingdom of God ;' and it would seem as if this faith urged him to that holy boldness' of using his influence with Pilate to rescue the body of Jesus, and commit it to an honourable tomb, as if he realised the truth of Isaiah's great prophecy, and saw in the Crucified no less than Messiah him self (Mark xv. 43). To a like faith must be im puted the remarkable confession of the repentant thief upon the cross (Luke xxiii. 42)—a faith which brought even the Gentile centurion who superin tended the execution of Jesus to the conviction that the expiring sufferer was not only innocent (Luke xxiii. 47), but even the Son of God' (Matt. xxvii. 54, and Mark xv. 39). This conjunction of Gentile faith with that of Hebrews is most interest ing, and, indeed, consistent with the progress of the promise. We have seen above, how, in the earliest stages of the revelation, Gentile interests were not overlooked. Abraham, who saw Messiah's day (John viii. 56), was repeatedly assured of the share which all nations were destined to have in the blessings of his death (Gen. xii. 3 ; xxii. 18 ; Acts iii. 25). Nor was the breadth of the promise afterwards narrowed. Moses called the nations' to rejoice with the chosen people (Dent. xxxii. 43) Isaiah proclaimed Messiah expressly as the light of the Gentiles' (xlii. 6; xlix. 6) ; Haggai foretold his coming as the desire of all nations' (ii. 7) ; and when he came at last, holy Simeon inaugurated his life on earth under the title of 'a light to lighten the Gentiles' (Luke ii. 32) ; and when his gospel was beginning to run its free course, the two mis sionaries for the heathen quoted this great pro phetic note as the warrant of their ministry : I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth' (Acts xiii. 47). Plain, however, as was the general scope of the Messianic prophecies, there were features in it which the Jewish nation failed to perceive. Framing their ideal not so much from their Scriptures as from their desires, and impatient of a hated heathen yoke, they longed for an avenging Messiah who should inflict upon their oppressors retaliation for many wrongs. This wish coloured all their national hopes ; and it should be borne in mind by the student of the gospels, on which it throws much light. Not only was the more religious class, such as Christ's own apostles and pupils, affected by this thought of an external kingdom, even so late as his last journey to Jerusalem (Mark x. 37) ; but the indiscriminating crowds, who would have forcibly made him king (John vi. 15)—so strongly did his miracles attest his Messianic mission even in their view (ver. 14)— and who afterwards followed him to the capital and shouted hosannas to his praise, most abruptly withdrew their popular favour from him and joined in his destruction, because he gave them no signs of an earthly empire or of political emancipation. JESUS CHRIST, Li)re on Earth, vol. ii. p. 571, COI. 2 ; and p. 572, col. 1.] Christ's kingdom was not of this world,' is a proposition which, although containing the very essence of Christianity, offended the Jewish people, when Jesus presented himself as their veritable Messiah, and led to their rejec tion of him. Moreover, his lowly condition, suf ferings, and death, have been a stumbling-block in the way of their recognition of him ever since.
A Messiah.—The portrait of an afflicted and suffering Messiah* is too minutely sketched by the psalmist (Ps. xxii., xlii., xliii., lxix), by Isaiah (ch. liii.), by Zechariah (ch. xi. -xiii. ), and Daniel (ix. 24-27), to be ignored even by reluctant Jews ; and strange is the embarrassment observable in Talmudic Judaism to obviate the advantage which accrues to Christianity from its tenure of this unpalatable doctrine. Long ago did Tryphon, Justin Martyr's Jew, own the force of the pro phetic Scriptures, which delineated Messiah as a man of sorrows,' said he, r6v Xpeo-rbv STL al 7paOat towiwo-ovo-c cbapepbv e0•LP (Justin., Dial. 89). In later times, after the
Talmud of Babylon (7th century) became influen tial, the doctrine of two Messiahs was held among the Jews.t For several centuries it was their current belief that Messiah-Ben-Davidwas referred to in all the prophecies which spoke of glory and triumph, while on of Ephraim fell all the predicted woes and sufferings. By this expedient they both gratified their traditional idea which exonerated their chief Messiah, of David's illustrious race, from all humiliation, and like wise saved their nominal deference to the in spired prophets who had written of the sorrows of Messiah. (For a popular sketch of this opinion of two Messiahs, the reader is referred to Mr. Payne Smith's Oxford Sermons, on the Messianic Pmphecies of Isaiah, pp. ; see also Bux torf's Rabbinical Lexicon, s. v. rivo, pp. 1126 1127, and s. v. Eisenmenger's Entdecktes "ndenthum, ii. 720-750 ; Otho's Rabbinical con; Schoettgen, Horce, Heb. et Rabin., ii. 1-778.) However absurd this distortion was, it was yet felt to be too great a homage to the plain interpreta tion of the prophetic Scriptures as given by Christian writers, who showed to the votaries of the Talmud that their earlier authors had applied to the Son of David the very passages which they were for referring to the Son of Joseph. From the loth and 11th centuries, therefore, other inter. pretations have been sought for. Maimonides omits the whole story of Messiah-Ben-Yoseph in his account of the Messiah ; see Pococke, Append.
on Malachi, The Messiah has been withdrawn altogether from the reach of all predicted sufferings.
Such passages as Is. liii. have been and still are applied to some persecuted servant of God, Jere miah especially, or to the aggregate Jewish nation. This anti-Messianic exegesis is prevalent among the Neologians of Germany and France, and their ' free-handling' disciples of the English school (see Dr. Rowland Williams, Essays and Reviews, pp. 71-75 [edit. 2]). Thus Jewish sentiment has either reverted to that low standard of mere worldly expectation which recognised no humilia tion in Messiah, but only a career of unmixed triumph and glory, or else has collapsed in a dis appointment and despair, which forbids all specu lation of a Messiah whatever (Eisenmenger, Entdecktes i. 677). 'We have waited so long for the Messiah you have promised us,' said the Jews of Constantinople to their Rabbi, 'with out his arrival, that if you do not soon terminate our disappointment, we will turn Christians' (Che valier Drach, L'eklise et la synagogue, pp. 98, 99). But Jewish despair does not often resolve itself into Christian hope. Here and there affecting instances of the genuine change occur, such as the two mentioned by Bishop Thirlwall (Reply to Dr. W.'s earnestly respectful p. 78); in the second of which—that of Isaac da Costa—conversion arose from his thoughtful reflections on the present dis persion of the Jewish race for its sins. His accept ance of Jesus as the Messiah solved all enigmas to him, and enabled him to estimate the importance of such prophetic promises as are yet unfulfilled to Israel. But the normal state of Jewish Messianic opinion is that sickness of heart which comes from deferred hopes. This despair produces an abase ment of faith,* and a lowering of religious tone, or else finds occasional relief in looking out after pre tended Messiahs. Upwards of thirty cases of these are noticed by Basnage and other historians, as having deluded the nation in its scattered state since the destruction of Jerusalem. The havoc of life and reputation caused by these attempts has tended more than anything else to the discouragement of Messianic hopes among the modern Jews. Fore most in the unhappy catalogue of these fanatics stands the formidable rebellion under Bar-Cocheba, in the 2d century. Rabbi Akiba, `the second Moses,' the great light of the day in Jewry, de clared before the Sanhedrim that Bar-Cocheba was the Messiah. Rabbi Jochanan alone made oppo sition, and said, ' Grass, 0 Akiba, will grow out of thy jaws, and yer the Son of David not have come.' We know not what was the fate of Bar-Cocheba (or Bar-Coseba, ' the son of lying,' as his disappointed dupes at length called him), but the gray-headed Akiba was taken by the Romans and executed. More are said to have perished in this attempt than in the previous war of Titus. Embarrassing as all these failures are to the Jew, they only add one more to the many proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, who expressly foretold these delusions of ' false Christs' (Matt. xxiv. 24 ; Mark xiii. 22), as one class of retributions which should avenge on Israel the guilt of his own rejection. Not only, however, from the lowliness and suffer ing of the Christian Messiah, but in a still greater degree from his exalted character, there arises a difficulty of faith to the Jewish objection. The divinity of nature which Jesus claimed for himself, and on account of which the Sanhedrim procured his death, is perhaps the greatest stumbling-block in the way of his reception among the Jews. But on this we cannot now dwell.
Authorities.—Besides the works which we have already referred to, use has been made of Jost, Geschichte des 7udenthums, 3 vols., 1857 ; Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel; Pye Smith, Testimony of the Messiah, 3 vols., 1829 ; Bishop Kidder, Demonstration of the Messias, folio, 1726 ; Bleek, Einleitung in das A. T., 1860 ; Dr. M 'Caul, Messiahship of yews, Warburton Lectures, 1852 ; Reinke, Die Messianischen Psalmen, and Der Pro phet Malachi; and Oehler, art. Messias, Herzog, ix. 408-441.—P. H.