Now, as it has been pointed out before this, an illusion of the twilight was converted by the impatience and the carnal hearts of the Jews, into a delusion. It was true that a mighty King was coming, that He should set up a kingdom great and glorious, one which should crumble widest kingdoms into the dust. It was true that the enemies of God’s people should fall before this kingdom which should have no end; true that this King was He which should redeem Israel. All this which was prophesied was no delusion: all was true: all came to pass. But now let us search out the fault of the Jews, who were deluded by revelation, and blinded by partial light. They were told that these great things would be: they were bidden to prepare to receive them. Forthwith they decided in their own minds _how_ and _in what way_ God would bring them about; they gave form and shape to those indistinct half-seen masses after the pattern and desire of their own vain hearts; they decided that God would give them the exact reality of their own carnal dreams; they prepared their heart therefore to receive its own interpretation, and shut it close against any other. And so when the course of time brought them close to that which their fancy in the twilight had thus disguised, they could not recognise it, they refused to believe it: they passed on beyond it, still searching after the unreal fabric of their own imagination; and even now, while the twilight seems deepening to darkness about them, they go on and on across the blank desert, seeking those gigantic hopes which have already, could they but believe it, been much more than fulfilled. “Oh, say, in all the bleak expanse, Is there a spot to win your glance, So bright, so dark as this? A hopeless faith, a homeless race, Yet seeking the most holy place, And owning the true bliss!” That this was not God’s doing, but the result of their own impatience, and of the earthliness of their own hearts, we have abundant proof. In that light, neither clear nor dark, there were those who were content to wait until God Himself should reveal the manner of those great things that He had foreshadowed; many died thus implicitly waiting; some, with Elizabeth, and Simeon, and holy Anna, departed in peace, their eyes having just seen His salvation. They had by diligent use of the light they had, attained to a more spiritual understanding of prophecy; and so to them was fulfilled that saying, “Unto you that have shall more be given.”