Some of the incidents in the life of Jesus appeared to agree with detached sentences in different parts of the Jewish scriptures. This confirmed the belief of his disciples, that he was, as he claimed to be, the Messiah whom those scriptures foretold. And returning to them with this prepossession, they were able, by straining the facts a little on one side, and the meaning of their scriptures on the other, to find in almost every page some fresh coincidences. A new and intense interest was thus imparted to the revered but familiarized writings; words and sentences, fallen through the lapse of time into dry forms, were vivified by the discovery of a mysterious connexion with present things; coincidences the most doubtful were magnified into fulfilled prophecies; and imagination found abundance of connexions which common sense alone would never have discovered.

From the confidence and frequency with which the Apostles directed inquirers to search the Scriptures for the evidence of the Messiahship of Jesus, it seems clear that they relied upon the fulfilment of prophecy as their strongest argument.

These arguments of the Apostles were addressed chiefly to Jews. But since we are able to read the Jewish scriptures as well as the Jews of that time, we can put ourselves into the same position for feeling and appreciating the force of an argument on which the Apostles laid so much stress. Let us, then, for a time imagine ourselves in the place of the Jews of Berea, and follow the Apostle's urgent exhortation to search the Old Testament whether these things were so, i. e. whether Jesus of Nazareth was he of whom Moses and the prophets wrote.