of these pretensions were; it not only demonstrates that He came from God, but it also demonstrates what He came for-what He came to accomplish for man. If words are to be permitted to have any meaning, if the language of the Bible was intended to be understood, the prophecy is a declaration, positive, unequivocal, distinct-that Messiah was to be made a propitiatory sacrifice. His innocence is asserted, His righteousness declared, His exquisite agony, bodily and mental, alike described; Jehovah is represented as crushing Him, "bruising Him," and "putting Him to grief," and "making His soul an offering for sin; He is Himself depic ed as suffering as a substitute, as "bearing the griefs and carrying the sorrows" of others, as "wounded for their transgressions, bruised for their iniquities," on their account afflicted and stricken and smitten to death, and as having "laid upon Him the iniquity of them all." Every variety of phrase is employed, as if purposely to render mistake impossible, and to mark the importance of the subject itself. Many translations of the passage have been attempted, but none succeeds in getting rid of and excluding its pervading idea. The Jew who rejects Christ, and who applies therefore the prophecy to his nation as a whole, and not to an individual, is endlessly embarrassed by its personal allusion; and the Christian (if Christian he be) who rejects the Redeemer's sacrifice and atonement, may alter and attenuate the phraseology of the passage, may change and modify and emasculate it, but the great truth cannot be concealed; its existence is indicated and its presence is felt, whatever be the language in which it is conveyed-aye, even in that which is carefully selected, not for the purpose of expressing, but of hiding it. The nature of the work of Christ, the "decease which He accomplished at Jerusalem," the efficacy of His sufferings, and the nature of His death, "His soul being made an offering for sin"-this truth is so abundantly borne out in the ample and illustrious prophecy before us, that it flames forth, however it may be clothed, just as the glory of Christ's body, when transfigured upon the Mount, shone through and illumined the robes He wore. It rises up in spite of every effort to reduce and to subdue it, even as the mighty champion of Israel snapped asunder the new ropes and the green withes by which he was attempted to be bound. -T. Binney: Sermons, Second Series, pp. 6–9. That this chapter contains a direct prophecy of Jesus Christ is so plain, that I can scarcely conceive any serious objection to be made to it. The principal doubt which is likely to arise in the mind, is that it is so literal and particular as to seem to be rather a history foisted into the texts after the events had taken place, than a prophecy delivered seven hundred years before them. But this doubt is instantly removed, by considering that the Jews, the grand enemies of Christ, were the very persons to whom the preservation of this prophecy was intrusted; that they acknowledge it to be genuine; nor ever suggested a doubt as to its authenticity. It If, then, it is genuine, to whom can it relate? It would be a waste of time to attempt to confute the interpretations that have been given by the Jews of late years, by which it is made to apply to Hezekiah, to Jeremiah, &c. will here be sufficient to observe, that as in a lock, consisting of numerous wards, that key alone is the true one which fits all the wards; so in prophecy, that only is the true interpretation of any prediction which fits every part of it; and the more numerous and uncommon such parts are, the more manifest is it, in the case of a perfect coincidence, that the true interpretation has been given. I say, the more uncommon; because if events are foretold which cannot possibly apply but to a few persons, the interpretation is then proportionably limited. If, for instance, a prophecy should relate to a king, this would narrow the range of interpretation to those who bore the kingly office; if to a king who had died a violent death, this would narrow it still more; if that death was inflicted by his own subjects, it would reduce still more considerably the number of persons to whom it could be applied. But in the present case there are circumstances so very peculiar that they can be applied to one person alone. The person here spoken of was to be the servant of God, the arm of the Lord, the subject of prophecy. Yet when he came into the world, he was to be despised and rejected of men; he was not to be received as the Messiah; he was to be put into prison; he was to be brought as a lamb to the slaughter; many were to be astonished at him; his visage was to be marred more than any man's; he was to be numbered with transgressors, and cut off by a judicial sentence out of the land of the living; his grave was to be appointed with the wicked, yet his tomb was to be with the rich man. And his sufferings were to be of no ordinary kind, and inflicted for no common cause. He was to be wounded for our transgressions, and smitten for our iniquities. Jehovah was pleased to put him to grief, and to make his soul an offering for sin, though "he had done no wrong, neither was any guile found in his mouth." But after God had thus made his soul an offering for sin, then he was to revive again; to prolong his days; to erect a spiritual kingdom; to sprinkle many nations; to be advanced above kings, who should shut their mouths before him; to be exalted and extolled, and be very high; to see and be satisfied with the effect of the travail of his soul; to justify many by his knowledge; and to make intercession for transgressors. Now, of those particulars, it is evident that most of them can be applied only to a few persons; some, from their very nature, to none but such a divine and extraordinary person as Jesus Christ; but that to Him all are appli cable in the plainest and most literal sense. We may conclude, therefore, that if the real import of any prophecy is clear and indis putable, that of this chapter is so when it is made to refer to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.- Venn. THE DESPISED AND REJECTED SAVIOUR. liii. 3. He is despised This is a summary of the history of our Lord, as it is recorded by the four Evangelists. His very first hours on earth may be cited in proof of its correctness. No place could be found for Him even in an inn. His life was a life of poverty. Scorn and insult followed Him everywhere. His life closed amid circumstances of unspeakable ignominy. In these facts we have, I. A reason for not being very strongly desirous of popularity. It is natural to desire the approval of our fellow-men; but no wise and good man will make this the end of his actions. He will seek to do right; if men applaud him for doing so, well; but if not, he will not be greatly grieved. He will not. murmur because he is called to drink of the cup that Christ drank of. Shall the servant be above his Lord? II. A consolation when fidelity to duty exposes us to unpopularity. To be reproached and ridiculed; to have our actions misjudged and our motives misrepresented; to be deserted by those whom we regarded as our friends, to be pursued by the enmity of foes whom we have not wronged, is a bitter trial. But if it should be ours, let us remember that Christ trod the same path of suffering, and sympathises with us. III. An argument for entire consecration to the service of Christ.-The shame and suffering of which the text speaks, Christ endured for us (1 Cor. v. 1416).-W. H. Sullivan, M.A.: Parish Sermons, pp. 206–222). THE MAN OF SORROWS. liii. 3. A man of sorrows, The subject of the sorrows of the Saviour has proved to be more efficacious for comfort to mourners than any other theme in the compass of revelation, or out of it. Christ is in all attitudes "the consolation of Israel," but He is most so as a man of sorrows. As Aaron's rod swallowed up all the other rods, so the griefs of Jesus make our griefs disappear. I. "A MAN." We can never meditate too much upon Christ's blessed person as God and as man. He who is here called a man was certainly "very God of very God;' ""a man," and "a man of sorrows," and yet at the same time "God over all, blessed for ever." His manhood was not the less real and substantial. It differed from our own humanity in the absence of sin, but it differed in no other respect. He was no phantasm, but a man of flesh and blood, even as our and acquainted with grief. selves; a man needing sleep, requiring food and subject to pain, and a man who, in the end, yielded up His life to death (Phil. ii. 7). This condescending participation in our nature brings the Lord Jesus very near to us in relationship. Inasmuch as He was man, though also God, He was, according to Hebrew law, our goel —our kinsman, next of kin. According to the law, if an inheritance had been lost, it was the right of the next of kin to redeem it. Our Lord Jesus exercised His legal right, and seeing us sold into bondage and our inheritance taken from us, came forward to redeem both us and all our lost estate. A blessed thing it was for us that we had such a kinsman!-It would not have been consistent with Divine justice for any other substitution to have been accepted for us, except that of a Man sinned, and man must make man. reparation for the injury done to the Divine honour. Sinner, thou mightest well tremble to approach Him whom thou hast so grievously offended; but there is a man ordained to mediate between thee and God (H. E. I. 889). Every child of God ought also to be comforted by the fact that our Redeemer is one of our own race, tempted in all points like as we are, that He might be able to succour them that are tempted. The sympathy of Jesus is the next most precious thing to His sacrifice. (a) II. "A MAN OF SORROWS." The expression is intended to be very emphatic, it is not "a sorrowful man," but " a man of sorrows," as if He were made up of sorrows, and they were constituent elements of His being. Some are men of pleasure, others men of wealth, but He was a man of sorrows. 66 Our Lord is called " a man of sorrows," (1.) For peculiarity, for this was His peculiar token and special mark. We might well call Him "a man of holiness;" for there was no fault in Him: or a man of labours, for He did His Father's business earnestly; or "a man of eloquence," for never man spake like this man. Yet had we gazed upon Christ and been asked afterwards what was the most striking peculiarity in Him, we should have said His sorrows. The various parts of His character were so singularly harmonious that no one quality predominated, so as to become a leading feature. But there was a peculiarity, and it lay in the fact that "His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men," through the excessive griefs which continually passed over His spirit. Tears were His insignia, and the cross His escutcheon. He was the warrior in black armour, and not as now the rider upon the white horse. He was the lord of grief, the prince of pain, the emperor of anguish, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." 2. By way of eminence. He was not only sorrowful, but pre-eminent among the sorrowful. All men have a burden to bear, but His was heaviest of all. Common sufferers must give place, for none can match with Him in woe. He who was the most obedient Son smarted most under the rod when He was stricken of God and afflicted; no other of the smitten ones have sweat great drops of blood, or in the same bitterness of anguish cried, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The reasons for this superior sorrow may be found in the fact that with His sorrow there was no admixture of sin. Sin deserves sorrow, but it also blunts the edge of grief by rendering the soul untender and unsympathetic. We do not start at sin as Jesus did, we do not tremble at the sinner's doom as Jesus would. His was a perfect nature, which, because it knew no sin, was not in its element amid sorrow, but was like a land bird driven out to sea by the gale. To the robber the jail is his home, and the prison fare is the meat to which he is accustomed, but to an innocent man a prison is misery, and everything about it is strange and foreign. Our Lord's pure nature was peculiarly sensitive of any contact with sin; we, alas! by the Fall, have lost much of that feeling. Our hands grow horny with toiling, and our hearts with sinning; but our Lord was, as it were, like a man whose flesh was all one quivering wound; He was delicately sensitive of every touch of sin. We go through thorn-brakes and briars of sin because we are clothed with indifference, but imagine a naked man, compelled to traverse a forest of briars and such was the Saviour, as to His moral sensitiveness. He could see sin where we cannot see it, and feel its heinousness as we cannot feel it: there was therefore more to grieve Him, and He was more capable of being grieved. Side by side with His painful sensitiveness of the evil of sin, was His gracious tenderness towards the sorrows of others. All men's sorrows were His sorrows. His heart was so large, that it was inevitable that He should become "a man of sorrows." Besides this, our Saviour had a peculiar relationship to sin. Sin was laid upon Him, and He was Himself numbered with the transgressors; and therefore He was called to bear the terrible blows of Divine justice, and suffered unknown, immeasurable agonies. "It pleased the Father to bruise Him, He hath put Him to grief." Behold the man, and mark how vain it would be to seek His equal sorrow. 3. To indicate the constancy of His afflictions. Born in a stable, sorrow received Him, and only on the cross at His last breath did sorrow part with Him. His disciples might forsake Him, but His sorrows would not leave Him. He was often alone without a man, but never alone without a grief. 4. Because of the variety of His woes; He was a man not of sorrow only, but of "sorrows." All the sufferings of the body and of the soul were known to Him. Affliction emptied its quiver upon Him, making His heart the target for all conceivable woes. (1.) Our Lord was a man of sorrows as to His poverty. Oh, you who are in want, your want is not so abject as His He had not where to lay His head, but you have at least some humble roof to shelter you. (2.) Our Saviour knew the heart-rendings of bereavement. Jesus wept, as He stood at the tomb of Lazarus. (3.) Perhaps the bitterest of His sorrows were those which were connected with His gracious work. He came as the Messiah sent of God, on an embassage of love, and men rejected His claims. There was no name of contempt which they did not pour upon Him; nay, it was not merely contempt, but they proceeded to falsehood, slander, and blasphemy. There was not a word He spoke but they would wrest it; not a doctrine but what they would misrepresent it: He could not speak but what they would find in His words some occasion against Him. Was there ever man so full of goodwill to others, who received such disgraceful treatment from those He longed to serve? (4.) His was a lonely life; even when He was with VOL. II. His followers, He was alone. (8) (5.) In the last crowning sorrows of His life, there came upon Him the penal inflictions from God, the chastisement of our peace, which was upon Him. The sharpest scourging and severest griefs were all within; while the hand of God bruised Him, and the iron rod of justice broke Him, as it were, upon the wheel. III. "ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF." 1. With grief He had an intimate acquaintance. He did not know merely what it was in others, but it came home to Himself. We have read of grief, sympathised with grief, sometimes felt grief: but the Lord felt it more intensely than other men in His innermost soul; He, beyond us all, was conversant with this black-letter lore. 2. It was a continuous acquaintance. It was indeed a growing acquaintance with grief, for each step took Him deeper down into the grim shades of sorrow. As there is a progress in the teaching of Christ and in the life of Christ, so is there also in the griefs of Christ. The tempest lowered darker, and darker, and darker. His sun rose in a cloud, but it set in congregated horrors of heaped-up night, till, in a moment, the clouds were suddenly rent in sunder, and, as a loud voice proclaimed, "It is finished !" a glorious morning dawned where all expected an eternal night. 3. This acquaintance of Christ with grief was a voluntary acquaintance for our sakes. He need never have known a grief at all, and at any moment He might have said to grief, Farewell. But He remained to the end, out of love to us, grief's acquaintance. What shall I say in conclusion, but just this: let us admire the superlative love of Jesus. O love, what hast thou done! Thou art omnipotent in suffering. Few of us can bear pain, perhaps fewer still of us can bear misrepresentation, slander, and ingratitude. These are horrible hornets which sting as with fire: men have been driven to madness by cruel scandals which have distilled from venomous tongues. 2 H 477 Christ, throughout life, bore these and other sufferings. Let us love Him, as we think of how much He must have loved us.-C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1099. (a) It has been to me, in seasons of great pain, superlatively comfortable to know that in every pang which racks His people the Lord Jesus has a fellow-feeling. How completely it takes the bitterness out of grief to know that it once was suffered by Him! The Macedonian soldiers, it is said, made long forced marches which seemed to be beyond the power of mortal endurance, but the reason for their untiring energy lay in Alexander's presence. He was accustomed to walk with them, and bear the like fatigue. If the king himself had been carried like a Persian monarch in a palanquin, in the midst of easy, luxurious state, the soldiers would soon have grown tired; but, when they looked upon the king of men himself, hungering when they hungered, thirsting when they thirsted, often putting aside the cup of water offered to him, and passing it to a fellow-soldier who looked more faint than himself, they could not dream of repining. Every Macedonian felt that he could endure any fatigue if Alexander could. This day, assuredly, we can bear poverty, slander, contempt, or bodily pain, or death itself, because Jesus Christ our Lord has borne it.-Spurgeon. (8) Even if they sympathised with Him to the utmost of their capacity, they could not enter into such griefs as His. A father in a house with many little children about him, cannot tell his babes his griefs; if he did they would not comprehend him. What know they of his anxious business transactions, or his crushing losses ? Poor little things, their father does not wish they should be able to sympathise with him; he looks down upon them, and rejoices that their toys will comfort them, and that their little prattle will not be broken in upon by his great griefs. The Saviour, from the very dignity of His nature, must suffer alone. The mountain-side, with Christ upon it, seems to me to be a suggestive symbol of His earthly life. His great soul lived in vast solitudes, sublime and terrible, and there amid a midnight of trouble, His spirit communed with the Father, no one being able to accompany Him into the dark gleus and gloomy ravines of His unique experience. Of all His life's warfare He might have said in some senses, "of the people there was none with me; "and at the last it became literally true, for they all forsook Him--one denied Him and another betrayed Him, so that He trod the wine-press alone.-Spurgeon. "Behold the man!" There is a fascination in His human sympathies, tears, words, that is irresistible. As we toil on our way amid sorrow and distress, we remember Who it is that has power to succour the tempted (Heb. iv. 15). The Redeemer was emphatically "a man of sorrows." In the Gospel narrative this is more frequently implied than expressed, although there are not wanting passages in which it is definitely stated (Mark iii. 5; John xi. 35; Matt. xxvi. 37, 38). There are various causes for sorrow: I. ISOLATION OF SPIRIT.-It is no mere conceit, in which the poet tells us that "Not e'en the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh." A wiser than he had said: "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," &c. This solitariness of spirit was the heritage of Christ. 1. There was no spirit on earth that could claim perfect kindred with His spirit. No sympathy-in the true use of the word-could be between Him and sinful souls. The best and holiest could not look upon life from His standpoint, nor enter into His feelings, nor share His aspirations. 2. He was love personified; they were selfish. The affections of His heart were perpetually welling up like an inexhaustible fountain; they were wrapped up in self, and knew no higher delight than self-gratification— no higher principle than love of self. 3. His heart yearned after companionship, and found it not. It called to its fellows, but they understood not its language. Hence He was alone (ch. lxiii. 3). II. THE CONTEMPLATION OF SORROW IN OTHERS. This was pre-eminently the case with Jesus Christ. When the news of the Baptist's death was brought to Him, He went into the wilderness, but at the cry of human need He soon came forth again; and as soon as He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion toward them, and healed their sick. As He journeyed from place to place there were always appeals to His tenderest feelings. Not often was |