Surely these Hebrews are a great people _in their visions_. And a vision
is an essential of greatness. Yet this sublime conception of their future
is not regarded as a visionary dream, but calmly declared to be the
revealed plan of God for them, and through them for the earth. And that,
too, not by any one man, but successively through many generations of
men. The prophetic spirit of the nation in the midst of terrible disaster
and of moral degradation never loses faith in its ultimate greatness,
through the fulfilling of its mission to the nations of the earth.

Is it to be wondered at that the devout Israelite, who believed in his
book and its vision, pitched his tent on the hilltop, with his eye ever
scanning the eastern horizon, for the figure of the coming One? And when
eyes grown dim for the long looking believed that at last that figure was
seen, the heart breathed out its grateful relief in "Now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen."



Strange Dark Shadowings.


But, too, there is in this vision of glory something very different, so
mixed in that it won't come out. There are dark shadows from the first
touch upon the canvas. Always there is a bitter, malignant enemy. There is
decisive victory, but it comes only after sharp, hard, long-continued
fighting. But in the latter parts, that is, in David's time, and
intensifying in the later pages, there is something darker yet. Through
these lines run forebodings, strange, weird, sad forebodings of evil.
There are dark gray threads, inky black threads, that do not harmonize