♦The Seers♦ There is nothing in the national character or circumstances to warrant it, but in the message spoken by these men, each in his turn, there was that power and significance, that forward look, which we describe as “vision.” In contradistinction to the Aryan SEEKERS, these were SEERS. ♦God♦ They had found God; this was their secret. They believed that God had spoken, and must yet speak to man more clearly still: in the hope of hearing that voice of God they lived, and that men might be prepared to recognize that Voice when it should speak, they toiled and suffered. The case of the human race was, in their thinking, bad. It was not that man had suffered, but that he had sinned, this was the tragedy. For if the relation of man to the Unseen were a personal relation, then suffering became at once the effect of a moral cause. “Ah, sinful nation.... They have forsaken the Lord.” Therefore was “the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint.” ♦The Hope♦ The word of the Seer was nevertheless a word of hope. Hope was indeed their note. The God of their vision was a God Who must, by His very nature, right all wrong, end all evil, and speak the word which must reveal the way back to Himself as the only true rest of man. The Hope grew stronger in all religious souls as its fulfilment seemed to be delayed, and every earnest young mother dreamed that the child she bore might be the Bearer of that final message from Jehovah. * * * * * ♦The Silence♦ Four hundred years of silence might well have ended the Hope, but it lived on: a sordid, national Hope in the people at large, a high world-wide Hope in the hearts of the silent waiting few, who studied the writings of those old Seers, and looked out upon the great world in its darkness; and believed that not only should the Light come, but that it should be the true glory of Israel to enlighten through It all the nations. * * * * * ♦Jesus♦ “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Many such questions must have been asked, even by those of the purest spiritual insight during the brief working life of Jesus. There was no human ideal of dignity or greatness which He did not ruthlessly deny. ♦Consecration♦ He gave Himself in solemn sacrament to His service, but used as the symbol of consecration a ceremony which usually typified repentance from sin on the part of man, remission on the side of God. ♦Method of Service♦ His human gifts and powers were unmeasurable, and He brought them to His life-work in all their perfection; but during a season of sore strain in solitary meditation, He set aside deliberately each well-tried human method which would have brought those powers and gifts into service; and chose to work out His purpose in a way startlingly new to human history, to the last inexplicable even to those who most deeply trusted Him.