All this is to come to pass through the coming One.  He is the key that unlocks this wondrous future.  Through all, above all, growing ever bigger, is the shadowy majestic figure of a Man coming. His personal characteristics make Him very attractive and winsome.  He will be of unusual mental keenness both in understanding and in wisdom, combined with courage of a high order, and, above all, dominated by a deep reverential, a keenly alert, love for God.  He will be beautiful in person and, in sharp contrast with earth’s kings, while marked personally with that fine dignity and majesty unconscious of itself, will be gentle and unpretentious in His bearing.  His relations with God are direct and very intimate, being personally trained and taught by Him.  Backed by all of His omnipotence, He will be charged with the carrying out of His great plans for the chosen people and through them for the world.

In a fine touch it is specially said that “He will judge the poor.”  Poor folk, who haven’t money to employ lawyers to guard their interests, and haven’t time for much education to know better how to protect themselves against those who would take advantage of them—­the poor, that’s the overwhelming majority of the whole world—­He will be their judge.  They will have a friend on the bench.  But He will have this enormous advantage in judging all men, poor and otherwise, that He will not need to decide by what folk tell Him, nor by outside things.  He will be able to read down into the motives and back into the life.

Such is the plan for the coming One outlined in these old pages.  To many a modern all this must seem like the wildest dream of an utterly unpractical enthusiast.  Yet, mark it keenly, this is the conception of this old Hebrew book that has been, and is, the world’s standard of morals and of wisdom.  The book revered above all others by the most thoughtful men, of all shades of belief.  It is striking how the parts of this stupendous conception fit and hold together.  There is a mature symmetry about the whole scheme.  For instance, the changes in the light of sun and moon run parallel with the changes in growth and in the healthfulness and longer lives of man.  Increased light removes both disease and its cause, and gives new life and lengthened life.

Surely these Hebrews are a great people in their visions.  And a vision is an essential of greatness.  Yet this sublime conception of their future is not regarded as a visionary dream, but calmly declared to be the revealed plan of God for them, and through them for the earth.  And that, too, not by any one man, but successively through many generations of men.  The prophetic spirit of the nation in the midst of terrible disaster and of moral degradation never loses faith in its ultimate greatness, through the fulfilling of its mission to the nations of the earth.

Is it to be wondered at that the devout Israelite, who believed in his book and its vision, pitched his tent on the hilltop, with his eye ever scanning the eastern horizon, for the figure of the coming One?  And when eyes grown dim for the long looking believed that at last that figure was seen, the heart breathed out its grateful relief in “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen.”