me
at a time of great and universal wickedness, and shall establish a
kingdom of righteousness on the earth. Some years ago the Rev. Dr. John
Newton, of Lahore, took advantage of this prediction and wrote a tract
showing that the true deliverer and king of righteousness had already
come in the person of Jesus Christ. So striking seemed the fulfilment
viewed from the Hindu standpoint, that some hundreds in the city of
Rampore were led to a faith in Christ as an avatar of Vishnu.

A remarkable illustration of a felt want of something brighter and more
hopeful is seen in the legends and predictions of the Teutonic and Norse
religions. The faiths of all the Teutonic races were of the sternest
character, and it was such a cultus that made them the terror of Europe.
They worshipped their grim deities in the congenial darkness of deep
forest shades. There was no joy, no sense of divine pity, no peace. They
were conscious of deep and unutterable wants which were never met. They
yearned for a golden age and the coming of a deliverer. Baldr, one of
the sons of Woden, had passed away, but prophecy promised that he should
return to deliver mankind from sorrow and from death. "When the twilight
of the gods should have passed away, then amid prodigies and the crash
and decay of a wicked world, in glory and joy he should return, and a
glorious kingdom should be renewed." Or, in the words of one of their
own poets:

"Then unsown the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr;
With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace,
Shrines of gods the great and holy,
There the just shall joy forever,
And in pleasure pass the ages."

The well-known prediction of the Sibyl of Cumae bears testimony to the
same expectation of mankind. The genuine Sibylline Oracles were in
existence anterior to the birth of Christ. Virgil died forty years
before that event, and the well-known eclogue _Pollio_ is stated by him
to be a transcript of the prophetic carmen of the Sibyl of Cumae. But for
the fact that it has a Roman instead of a Jewish coloring, it might
almost seem Messianic. The oracle speaks thus: "The last era, the
subject of the Sibyl song of Cumae, has now arrived; the great series of
ages begins anew. The virgin returns--returns the reign of Saturn. The
progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy
by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the
whole world shall commence. Whi