PREFACE

WHEN St. Luke tells us (Acts 11:26) that “at Antioch the disciples were first named Christians,” he implies that they were Christians before they bore the name. If Christian means a believer in Christ, all that have ever believed in the Messias—the Hebrew equivalent for Christ—have been Christians. And since “there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), all that have been saved from Adam to Noe, from Noe to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Jesus Christ, and from Jesus Christ to our own day, have been Christians, or believers in the Messias. It does not follow from this that the Messianic dispensation has been at a standstill ever since the time of Adam. As the sunlight has its dawn, its increase, and its noonday brightness, illumining the whole earth, so has the Sun of Justice his dawn immediately after the fall of our first parents, his increase under the dispensations of the four great mediators of the Old Testament, and his noonday brightness on Thabor, Calvary, and Mount Olivet, whence he “enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9). It is the object of the present work to study the rise and progress and supreme splendor of this Light of the World from the inspired sources supplied by God’s own goodness and infinite wisdom.

The subject is as many-sided as it is important and interesting. For it may be treated as a weapon against the Jew and unbeliever, as a crutch for the feeble in the faith, as an everflowing fountain for the dogmatic theologian, as a topic for the preacher, as a meditation for the devout, as a series of interesting facts for the historian and the psychologist. Without extending this treatise to the length that would be required if each of these different views were the sole object of the work, the author has endeavored to combine them all in such a manner that the reader may readily adapt the subject to his own special purpose. The prophecies have been arranged under the eight heads of the Genealogy, the Birth, the Childhood, the Names, the Offices, the Public Life, the Suffering, and the Glory of the Messias. This division does not imply that each prediction foretells only one event in the life of our Saviour, nor does it neglect the chronological development of the Messianic doctrine, as a glance at the table of contents will show; but it has been adopted chiefly to impress the reader with the truth that the whole life of Jesus Christ has been the object of prophetic vision and divine revelation.

It is with sincere sorrow that the author surrenders a work that has afforded him so many hours of interior joy and consolation, but also with the lively hope “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation, in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17).

WOODSTOCK COLLEGE, MD.,

Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, 1893.