The Messiah predicted

Which He had promised afore by His prophets.
Romans 1:2


The Jews, throughout their history, differed from every other nation in their expectation of a Messiah. While heathen kingdoms decayed and fell without hope of deliverance, in Israel political decline was attended by an increasing expectation of a high and God-sent deliverer. This idea was always referred by the prophets to Divine revelation, and we have every reason to receive their testimony; for it is contrary to the very nature of things that such golden fruit as this should grow on the barren thorn of the simple human heart. Could this have been, surely the great and noble spirits of other nations would also have confidently expected salvation, whereas we only hear from the lips of a few some dim and obscure yearnings of this kind. It was only as a vanished epoch, a poetical dream, or a political panegyric, that heathen poets ever sang of a golden age. The heathen were "without hope" because they were without God in the world.

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