Read it through once

The Messianic idea was not peculiar to the Jewish race-- the idea of a Person gathering up within himself, in an effective fulness and harmony, the restorative elements of humanity, which have lost their power through dispersion and consequent obscuration. There have been Messiahs of various orders and ranks in every age,-- great personalities that have realized to a greater or less extent (though there has been but one, the God-Man, who fully realized), the spiritual potentialities in man, that have stood upon the sharpest heights as beacons to their fellows. In the individual the species has, as it were, been gathered up, epitomized, and intensified, and he has thus been a prophecy, and to some extent a fulfilment of human destiny.