THE HOPE OF ISRAEL. Daily the faithful Hebrew, in his family devotions, prayed for the coming of his Saviour. In the public ceremonies of religion the sublime tones of the Mosaic liturgy eloquently chanted God's promise of a Redeemer. Hence the strained look for His advent, especially at the opening of the Christian era, when the prophetic seventy weeks of years were nearly completed. "Art thou He that is to come, or look we for another?" demanded the High-Priests of John the Baptist. Israel never ceased to hope. Whether groaning under persecutions or even scandalized by apostate High-Priests, the voice of the prophets, the last of whom was dead four hundred years, still echoed in the souls of the chosen people, still was implicitly believed, telling of the coming of the Saviour, the Desired of Nations, the Seed of the Woman, the Fruit of the Virgin's womb, the Lawgiver superior to Moses, the Child-God Child-God of the House of David. Whether wailing out his prayers in the Temple, or tearfully explaining the sacred promise to his children, or writhing beneath the heel of the Roman soldier, or wildly shouting defiance against the pagan stranger in bloody revolt, the true Israelite always trusted in the coming of his Messias. The people of God were about to be rewarded for having cherished this Grace of Expectation. II. THE WRITINGS WHICH TELL OF JESUS. ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES AND THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. HE first writings which told the Church about her Founder were probably the Epistles of St. Paul. Some of these, it is believed, antedate the earliest of the four Gospels. Throughout his writings St. Paul shows perfect familiarity with his Master, whom he had probably seen and heard in the flesh, and to whom he was drawn, after his conversion at the gate of Damascus, into an intimate spiritual union, filled with special revelations. From the divine preexistence of Jesus to His guidance of the individual soul by His Holy Spirit, every principle of His religion and many of the details of His life are narrated or expounded by this most powerful of Christian. teachers. St. Luke, a disciple of St. Paul, has recorded in the Book of the Acts the earliest public discourses on the life and doctrine of Jesus, namely, those of St. Peter and others of the disciples in the beginning of their ministry. These are brief summaries of the career of our Saviour, from His connection with the old Scriptures as the fulfilment of their prophecies, to His ascension into heaven and sending down the Holy Ghost, outlining His preaching, journeys, miracles, betrayal, accusation, trial, execution, and His resurrection from the dead. These witness the all-pervading knowledge of Christ and of His mission in the primitive Church; but they are not the foremost sources of the Saviour's Life. Surpassing all other evidence is the Gospel, the Glad Tidings, consisting of the four narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. THE FOUR GOSPELS. Brief as are these narratives, their power over the human rind, especially when read by seekers after a better life, is a wonderful fact in literary history. No book but God's book could so master the upright heart as the book of the Gospels has always done. In language which is a medium of incomparable clearness, facts are recited and rules of conduct are laid down which have superseded all previous moralizings and philosophizings, and capped with supreme beauty all former history. Simplicity is their foremost literary attribute; nay, literary defects are everywhere found, lack of artistic grouping, fragmentary jumbling of occurrences and precepts, memoranda of apparently chance conversations; yet the events are the manifest power of God. But Holy Church, divinely guided, could alone settle the question of their inspiration and authenticity. It is the divine and human character of Jesus Christ living, speaking, organizing, dying, rising and ascending into heaven, that is shown in these books. If God be King of men, He is King in the kingdom of books, and so the book which tells of the Son of God may well be God's. This explains the tears of penitence its reading brings forth, like the touch of the rod of Moses on the rock in the desert; this explains the ever-increasing veneration in which the Gospels are held by the best men and women in all ages. This power of the Four Gospels began immediately with their publication. We find them unanimously accepted in the Church as the Word of God as early as any extant records tell of |