But this does not happen at once. Between the old costly religion of
the rich and the new gratuitous religion of the poor there comes
an interregnum in which the redeemer, though conceived by the human
imagination, is not yet found. He is awaited and expected under the
names of the Christ, the Messiah, Baldur the Beautiful, or what not; but
he has not yet come. Yet the sinners are not therefore in despair. It
is true that they cannot say, as we say, "The Christ has come, and has
redeemed us;" but they can say "The Christ will come, and will redeem
us," which, as the atonement is conceived as retrospective, is equally
consoling. There are periods when nations are seething with this
expectation and crying aloud with prophecy of the Redeemer through their
poets. To feel that atmosphere we have only to take up the Bible and
read Isaiah at one end of such a period and Luke and John at the other.