not of this world, they would not own Him for the Messiah of the prophets, but persecuted Him and put Him to death.
There was another way by which the world was prepared for the coming Redeemer. As He was foretold in prophecy, so He was foreshadowed in types or figures, by which we mean certain persons or things in the Old Law representing persons or things in the New.
We all know that there is nothing like a picture for giving right notions and correcting wrong ones. A teacher who has anything difficult to explain—the structure of a flower, the plan of a battle, the family of a king—turns at once to the blackboard, and with a few strokes of chalk shows easily what many words would never have made clear.
God taught His people by examples as well as by words. In a number of types He sketched before their eyes the character of the Messiah and the main lines of the work He was to do. The likeness fell far short of the perfect beauty of our Lord's character, but it was a likeness still.
Innocent Abel, slain through jealousy by his brother, was a figure of Christ put to death through the hatred and envy of His brethren, the Jews:
Noe who built an ark, one only, to save all who entered therein, prefigured our Lord, the Founder of one Church for the salvation of men:
Isaac, the beloved son of his father, willingly submitting to death, and carrying the wood on which he was to be sacrificed, represented the well beloved Son of God led without resistance to the slaughter, and bearing His own cross on the way to Calvary.
