prophecy.(1) His flight into Egypt and return to Nazareth are equally in fulfilment of prophecies.(2) John the Baptist, whose own birth as the forerunner of the Messiah had been foretold,(3) goes before him preparing the way of the Lord, and announcing that the Messianic kingdom is at hand. According to the fourth Gospel, some of the twelve had been disciples of the Baptist, and follow Jesus on their master's assurance that he is the Messiah. One of these, Andrew, induces his brother Simon Peter also to go after him by the announcement:--"We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ" (i. 35ff. 41). And Philip tells Nathaniel:--"We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write: Jesus, the son of Joseph, who is from Nazareth" (i. 45). When he has commenced his own public ministry, Jesus is represented as asking his disciples:--"Who do men say that I am?" and setting aside the popular conjectures that he is John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, by the still more direct question:--"And whom do ye say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said:--Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And in consequence of this recognition of his Messiahship, Jesus rejoins:--"And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church."(4) {119} It is quite apart from our present object to point out the singular feats of exegesis and perversions of historical S3nse by which passages of the Old Testament are forced to show that every event in the history, and even the startling novelty of a suffering and crucified Messiah, which to Jews was a stumbling-block and to Gentiles folly,(1) had been foretold by the prophets. From first to last the Gospels strive to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, and connect him indissolubly with the Old Testament. The Messianic key-note, which is struck at the outset, regulates the strain to the close. The disciples on the way to Emmaus, appalled by the ignominious death of their Master, sadly confide to the stranger their vanished hope that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they now merely call "a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people," was the Christ "who was about to redeem Israel," and Jesus himself replies:--"O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spake! Was it not needful that the Christ (Messiah) should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."(2) Then, again, when he appears to the eleven, immediately after, at Jerusalem, he says:--"'These are the words that I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me.' Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them:--'Thus it is