SECTION XI

the fulfillments

(Matt. 1 and 2)

That the whole christological development of the ancient æon was fulfilled in Christ as the Prince of the new æon, that He was Himself the actual fulfilment of every exalted aspiration and effort that had preceded Him, is a doctrine announced by each and all of the apostles and Evangelists.

But a most intimate relation must prevail between the first beginnings and the perfection of the development of any definite life; it is but natural that the blossom and consummation of such development should be announced by frequent and most striking preludes. All the significant beginnings in the history of any celebrated life, will recur with increased force and ideality during the course of its development, and at length they will celebrate their fulfilment in the perfection of the maturity of this definite organic life.

When Christian Rome, in the days of its purely patriarchal rule in the West, poured forth the dawn of Christian civilization over the mass of nations enveloped in the night of heathen darkness, then were fulfilled the great things anticipatively sung by the poets of the Eternal City.

When Luther affixed his theses to the castle church of Wittenberg, then was fulfilled, preliminarily at least, the inspired call with which Arminius had invoked the heroes of Germany against the world-wide supremacy of Rome.

But the relation and similarity between beginning, middle, and end, are not only displayed in broad, general features, but often far more wonderfully in separate, nay, in very special particulars. Natural philosophers have long known this great law of life; it is beginning to dawn upon historians; even theologians will have to acquaint themselves with it. When this is the case, many of the unfortunate critical remarks on significant references between the Old and New Testaments, will, at all events, come to nothing.

When the Evangelist Matthew was led, both by his own turn of mind and his vocation, to contemplate and exhibit, with the greatest distinctness, the fulfilment of the christological beginnings of the Old Testament in the life of Jesus, it could not escape his penetrating glance, that the general fulfilment of the divine-human life in Christ was surrounded by many particular fulfilments, that the corolla was adorned with a rich wreath of flower-leaves. This was not merely his peculiar way of viewing it, still less a weakness of rabbinical exegesis. Even John was acquainted with this vital law, that the prelude reappears in the completion. He saw, e.g., the speaking circumstance, that not a bone of the crucified Saviour, the antitype of the pascal lamb, was broken. In both cases, too, this happened from the same reason: it was during the world’s midnight hour, and under violent excitement of mind, that the sacrifice took place; it was no time for the performance of customary ceremonies or usages. Matthew then found the history of Christ’s infancy rich in such prophetic features. In the birth of the Redeemer, the true Immanuel, of the Virgin, he rightly saw (Mat 1:22-23) the fulfilment of that prophetic scene in Isaiah (Isa 7:14) in which the birth of the son of a virgin-mother, and the circumstance that she should call his name Immanuel, was, as we have already seen, held forth to king Ahaz as a sign of deliverance. The birth of Christ was the fulfilment of this scene in a threefold respect: the virginity of the mother, the heroic courage and redeeming love, and the consecration of the new-born child to be a sign and assurance of deliverance, but also, especially, the entire uniqueness of these three typical incidents were in this case perfect. With a free view of its meaning does the Evangelist quote also the passage in which Micah (5:1) had announced the theocratic glory of Bethlehem. He, as well as the Jewish scribes, rightly applies it to the birth of Christ at Bethlehem. These words pointed out, not merely as a typical, but as a conscious prophecy, that the Messiah would be born at Bethlehem. Nay, this passage is a key to other passages whose reference is more obscure. The Governor of Israel is here designated as Him whose goings forth or beginnings¹ have been from of old, and from everlasting; therefore, as the essential fulfilment. When Matthew was contemplating the flight of the parents of Jesus to Egypt, for the preservation of the Holy Child, and their return thence (chap. 2:15), not only did the saying of Hosea (Hos 11:1)-Out of Egypt have I called My Son-wherein God is stating His relation to the infancy of the people of Israel-appear to him highly significant; but also the actual similarity, that the typical son, the nation, in which the true Son was enclosed as the essence of its being, was called out of Egypt, and that now the true Son of God, with whom even the deliverance of the typical one recurred, should be called out of the same country. He even saw the recurrence and awful fulfilment of what was terrible in the history of Israel, when the prince who sat on David’s throne slew the children of Bethlehem in order to destroy that great Son of David, who, according to promise, was to be Israel’s Saviour and Deliverer. This occurrence recalled to his mind the terrible ruin of his nation, and the sad delusion of the reigning house. It had once, indeed, seemed to the prophet Jeremiah, when he saw in the Spirit the children of Israel led captive to Babylon, as though Rachel, their ancestress, were rising from her tomb in Rama to bewail her unhappy children, as though the lamentation of a spirit were resounding in heart-breaking tones upon the tops of the mountains; but Matthew felt that this incident, the slaughter of the children, was sadder than even that, that the troubles of his nation had now reached their climax, and that its faithful ancestress had now more reason than ever to be disturbed in her grave, and to lift up her voice in lamentation for her children. Such, however, is the Evangelist’s spiritual liberty in his view of the relations between the Old and New Testaments, that he forms expressions according to actual circumstances, and reads sayings in the prophets which no literalist, but only a discerning child of the theocratic spirit, could read in them. Jesus grows up in Nazareth—the Messiah, the heir of all the promises, in that despised corner of Galilee—what a heavy cross to Jewish pride! Well, thinks Matthew, I find this despised origin, which obscures the Messiah to the carnal eye, pointed out in the prophets, in the rod that is to spring from the roots of Jesse, and elsewhere, so clearly that I am certain the prophets have, in the spirit of the words, declared that he shall be called a Nazarene. In a word, he meets the Nazarene everywhere in the writings of the prophets. So practical an eye, looking upon the life of Jesus, could not but behold it richly adorned with fulfilments of Old Testament christological notions of every kind.

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Notes

Having pointed out the general notion of these prophecies, it would be needless to dwell further on that exegetical treatment of the passages in question, which depends upon a misconception of the organic nature of prophecy.

1) מוֹצָאׂת