The Witness of Prophecy 163

to be the promised Messiah. Secular history
bears wonderful testimony to the fact, that the
fulness of times had come. The drawing of the
world together within the vast unity of the
Roman Empire — the prevalence of Greek culture,
which, in manifold ways, subserved the preaching
of a universal Gospel — were plainly purposed,
each in its degree, to prepare the way of the
Lord and make His paths straight. But the
moral and spiritual preparation of Hebrew pro-
phecy bears even more manifest marks of God's
providential design.
One obvious difficulty, which suggested itself
from the first, was met long ago by St. Paul,
in the course of his argument in the Epistle to
the Romans. The nation, whose privilege it was
to bear special testimony to the Messiah, failed,
as a nation, to recognise the divine fulfilment,
when it was at last vouchsafed. But however
interpreted in the light of God's world-wide
providence, this fact, at least, further illustrates
the deep insight of the prophets, who gave warn-
ing long before that it was only a righteous
remnant, as the gleaning of an olive-tree, that
should be saved.
In Jesus Christ, all the paradoxes which meet
us in the Messianic forecast of the prophets,
find natural solution. He is Himself the Key
necessary to the interpretation of prophecy.
Without Him, the apparent contradictions must



164 A Christian Apologetic

have remained irreconcilable; we now behold
them harmonised in the wonderful unity of His
divine Person.
