As is well known, the Jews looked for a Messiah in the days of our Saviour. For centuries after the wliqle nation -n'as incessantly on the watch : their prosperity seemed the harbinger of his coming; their darkest ca- lamities, they believed, gathered them only to display, with the force of stronger contrast, the mercy of their God and the glory of their Redeemer. Calculation upon calculation failed, until at last, their courage threaten- ing desertion, the rabbinical interdict was sent forth to re- press the dangerous curiosity which,'often baffled, would still penetrate the secrets of futurity. " Cursed is he who calculates the time of the Messiah's coming" was the daily message to the faithfid of the synagogue ; and at last it was declared that "No mdicatiou is given
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T/ith regard to the particular epoch at which the proph- ecy of the 11th chapter (of Isaiah) is to be accom- plisheii," but that the inspired messenger of God has iurnislied means of determining by the evidence of our senses the dijitiiiclice siyiin by which the advent of the Messiah is to be marked, viz. (1) the arrival of the golden wje (ver. 7, 8, 9) ; (2) the rallying of the nations, unsought and uninvited, around the Messianic banner (ver. 10); and (3) the second ingathering of the whole of the Jewish people, including the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, as well as those which composed the kingdom of Samaria, and are popularly spoken of as " the lost tribes" (ver. 11 and 12. Compare on this point Lindo, The ConcUiaior of li, Manassek ben-Israel [Lond. 1842, 2 vols. 8vo], ii, 143). "As Jews, we," they say, "main- tain that tiie promised Messiah has not yet appeared, and that the world has never witnessed such a moral picture as the prophets predict of the Messianic age." And yet they are obliged themselves to confess that " Various opinions prevail [among them] with respect to what is to be precMy understood by the coming of the Messiah. Some hold that it implies the birth of a par- ticular personage; others, that it describes the conjunc- tion of certain events which are to act with extraordi- nary moral power on the world at large. But what it does especially behoove us to bear in mind is, first, that the prophets identify the iMessianic advent with an age when brute force shall have come to an end, when war- fare and strife shall have disappeared from the earth, and when love shall have become the sole governing principle of humanity; and, secondly, that this impor- tant work of tlie regeneration of mankind is to be brought about by the instrumentality of the Jewish peojile, if not by some remarkable individual born of that race."
Jesus the Christ they refuse to recognise as that " re- markable individual," " because," as one of their number has declared, " we do not find in the jjresent compara- tively imperfect stage of human progress the realization of that blessed condition of mankind which the prophet Isaiah associates with the <era when Messiah is to ap- pear. And as our Ilebreio Scriptures speak of one Messianic advent only, and not of two advents (even those in the synagogue who speak of a Messiah from the house of Joseph concurrently with one from the house of David make their advent synchronous) ; ami as the inspired Book does not pn ni-li Mi .^.^iuli's kiiiiiilnin as a matter of faith, but distimthj idmliiii^ ii n-lth inci- ters of fact which are to be made evident tn tin .<ii/.<,y. ■w.e cling to the plain inference to be drawn f nun tin h.ii of the Bible, and we deny that Messiah has yil a/i/ii nml. and upon the following grounds : First. Because of tlie three distinctive facts which the inspired seer of Judah inseparably connects with the advent of the Messiah, vi/. the cessation of war and the uninterrupted reign of peace, tlie ])revalence of a ])erfect concord of opinion on all matters Ijearing upon the worship of the one and only (iod, and I lie ingathering of the remnant of Judah and of tlie dispersed ten tribes of Israel — not one has, lip to the ]ireseiir lime, been accomplished. Second. \Vc dissent from the iiroposition that Jesus of Nazareth is the [Messiah announced by the prophets, because the Cliurch which lie founded, and which his successors de- veloped, has offered, during a succession of centuries, a most singular contrast to what is described by the lie- brew Scriptures as the immediate consequence of Jles- siah's advent, and of his glorious kingdom. Tlie prophet Isaiah declares that when the Messiah appears, peace, love, and union will be permanently established; and every candid man must admit that the worhl has not yet realized the accomplishment of this projihecy. Again, in the days of Messiah, all men, as Scripture saith, ' are to serve (iod with one accord ;' and yet it is very certain that since the appearance of him whom our Christian brethren believe to bo ^lessiah, mankind has been split into more hostile divisions on the grounds of religious belief, and more antagonistic sects have sprung
up, than in any historic age before Christianity was preached." For the articles of confession, see the arti- cle Judaism, iv, 1057, col. 1 (9 and 12), 1058, and espe- cially those portions in Conservative and Reformed Ju- . DAis.M ; also Restoration of the Jews. : IV. Proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. — This discus- [ sion resolves itself into two questions. See Jesus Cnaisr.