The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion

It is in accordance with the analogy of history that great manifestations and epochs, designed to satisfy the spiritual wants of ages, should be anticipated by the prophetic yearnings of pure and susceptible hearts, inspired by a secret Divine consciousness. All great events that have introduced a new developement of human history have been preceded by unconscious or conscious prophecy. This may seem strange to such as ascribe to God the apathy of the Stoics, or who believe only in the cold, iron necessity of an immanent spirit of nature; but to none who believe in a personal, self-conscious Deity, a God of eternal love, who is nigh unto every man, and listens willingly to the secret sighs of longing souls, can it appear unworthy of such a Being to foreshadow great world-historical epochs by responding to such longings in special revelations.

Far more probable, then, would such manifestations be, in reference to the highest object of human longings, the greatest of all world historical phenomena; and so, at the time of Christ's coming, the people of Judea, guided by the prophecies of the Old Testament, yearned for the appearance of the Messiah with an anxiety only rendered more intense by the oppressions under which they groaned. This feeling would naturally be kept alive in Bethlehem, associated as the place was with recollections of the family of David, from which the Messiah was to come. So, even among the shepherds, who kept nightly watch over the flocks, were some who anxiously awaited the appearance of the Messiah. It is true, the account does not say that the shepherds thus longed for the Messiah. But we are justified by what followed in presupposing it as the ground for such a communication's being especially made to them; and it is not unlikely that these simple souls, untaught in the traditions of the scribes, and nourished by communion with God, amid the freedom of nature, in a solitude congenial to meditation and prayer, had formed a purer idea of the Messiah, from the necessities of their own hearts, than prevailed at that time among the Jews. A vision from Heaven conducted them on that night, so big with interest to man's salvation, to the place where the object of their desire was to be born. [45]