Jews alone but must include all mankind.

THE FULLNESS OF THE TIMES

The Jews under their Roman masters had come to a time, as we saw in
the preceding chapter, when they were wildly expecting an immediate
fulfillment of these hopes. The short taste of freedom and happiness
which they had enjoyed under Judas and Simon Maccabeus, followed by a
tyranny more cruel and distasteful than any which their ancestors had
known, made them almost mad with the desire for some kind of a
Saviour. And it seemed to them that he must come soon.

=The chance for a world-Saviour.=--All over the world just at this
time there were strange hopes and longings in men's hearts. The Romans
had robbed many other nations besides the Jews of their independence.
These people had no real nation of their own any longer to live
for--and they hated Rome. What was there to make life worth living
unless some Redeemer should come from God?

Moreover, it was possible now to think of such a Saviour as a
world-Saviour. In the earlier centuries men hardly knew that there was
a world outside their own tribe and a few of their neighbors. There
were no maps. Only a few could travel, and see for themselves how
great a world there really was--and how many nations there were--made
up of men like themselves. The common people of Asia scarcely knew
that there was a Europe, and the enormous continent of Africa, except
for Egypt, did not exist for them. As for what is now called the New
World, North and South America, no one knew of its existence.

=Preparations for Christianity.=--But the Romans built good roads all
over the great countries which bordered on the Mediterranean Sea, and
many were the travelers who went to and fro upon them. They
established one government for all this Mediterranean world. One
language came to be understood everywhere--not Latin, the language of
the Romans themselves, but Greek. Beyond the boundaries of the empire
there were, of course, vast territories. But it was possible now for
even the common people to realize that their own village or city or
tribe was only a small part of one great world. And for the first time
in history there was a chance for some one to take the old Jewish hope
of a better and happier Jewish people and change it into a world-hope
of a better and happier human race, and to gather a few men and women
together and start them working for it.

THE COMING OF JESUS

In the wonderful providence of God there w