So far as the Messianic ideal of the prophets took this national form, it greatly helped to effect their union with the people. All the people were thoroughly at one with them in wishing for the national glory of Israel. If, by proclaiming Jahveh’s anger and predicting misfortunes, they excited popular displeasure and dislike, equally, by promising his favour and predicting prosperity, they excited popular feelings of pleasure and good-will. In fact, this part of their preaching sugared the pill of their denunciations, and probably had a large share in giving them their final success. As the condition of Israel grew more desperate, their confidence in an ultimate revival of good fortune must have seemed a tower of strength to desponding minds. During the captivity, when their store of malediction had become exhausted, and only that of blessing remained, they promised nothing but happiness. This, of course, would render the prophetic religion agreeable to the people, and so must have contributed to make it the religion of Israel.
Though most of the prophets included in their Messianic dreams the material greatness of Israel, they were far too highly developed to look for this alone. The noble morality, the noble conception of God, which formed the essence of their religion, made social and political prosperity seem to them of only secondary value. In their ideas, the chief result of the Messiah’s coming was to be the reconciliation of Jahveh and his people through their abandonment of sin. They expected the establishment of a new covenant, that could not be broken like the old, when the law of Jahveh should be written in the hearts of Israel.[37] The grandest religious language the world has ever known is the expression of this dream of a people wholly free from sin; the heavenly new Jerusalem of Christianity is only a vague copy of the ideal Jerusalem which the prophets imagined for earth.
This vision of a sinless age was present to all the prophets, and is the chief feature of their prophecies. It was preserved in the sacred literature of the Jews; and, after forming for centuries a perpetual incentive to religious purity, it finally produced all that is best in Christianity. Back to it are traceable the forces which moulded the personal character of Christ, and stamped upon Christianity its noble morality. The first Christians not only believed in the coming of this ideal age, but struggled actually to realize it, and made the nearest possible approach to success. In the hopes of most of the prophets it was closely connected with the national Messianic ideal, the vision of Israel as a prosperous and powerful state. But it was also connected, in the minds of the noblest prophets, with another Messianic ideal, which I will call the spiritual Messianic ideal—the vision of the whole world reconciled to God, which produced Christianity itself.