II. THE CAUSE AND DESIGN OF THOSE SUFFERINGS.

IT.

III. THE BENEFIT WE OBTAIN BY THEM, AND HOW WE OBTAIN "With His stripes we are healed." We are healed, 1. Of our inattention and unconcern about divine things. The diguity of our Lord's person, the intensity of His sufferings, and the end for which He endured them, discover that things of a spiritual and divine nature are of infinite moment. Our ignorance and unbelief respecting these things. His sufferings confirm and seal His doctrine, and show the certain truth and unspeakable importance of it, and the reasonableness of a serious study of it, of laying it to heart, and receiving it in faith.

2. Of the disease of self-righteousness and self-confidence. For, if our own righteousness could have saved us, and if we could safely have trusted therein, Christ needed not to have died.

3. Of our love to sin and the commission of it. For how can we love Him and continue the willing servants of the betrayer and murderer of the Son of God, our Saviour? How can we willingly commit sin, which is so great an evil in its own nature, that it could not be pardoned, unless expiated by the sufferings and death of the Son of God, and Lord of glory? (H. E. I., 4589, 4590).

4. Of our love of the riches, honours, and pleasures of this world. For how can we reasonably desire any of these in a world, where our Lord and Master "had not where to lay His head," where He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"

5. Of our self-indulgence and selfseeking. Since His sufferings and

death show that He did not seek Himself, and He died for us, that we "might not live to ourselves" (2 Cor. v. 14, 15).

6. Of our lukewarmness and sloth. For shall we be indifferent about, and slothful in the pursuit of what cost Him His blood?

7. Of our cowardice and fear of suffering (1 Pet. iv. 1).

8. Of our diffidence and distrust with respect to the mercy of God, and His pardoning and accepting the penitent.

9. Of an accusing conscience and slavish fear of God, and death and hell (Heb. ix. 13, 14).

10. Of our general depravity and corruption of nature (Tit. ii. 14; Eph. v. 25-27).

11. Of our weakness and inability. His sufferings have purchased "the spirit of might."

12. Of our distress and misery, both present and future. For His sufferings bear away our griefs and sorrows; they are an astonishing proof of God's infinite love to all for whom He undertook; they lay the most solid foundation for the firmest confidence and most lively hope in Him. They show that

"No man too largely from God's love can hope,

If what he hopes, he labours to secure." Joseph Benson: Sermons, vol. i. pp. 232-236.

Ever since the fall, healing has been the chief necessity of manhood. It is a great mercy for us who have to preach, as well as for you who have to hear, that the Gospel healing is so very simple. Our text describes it. These six words contain the marrow of the Gospel.

I. These are sad words. They are part of the mournful piece of music which might be called "the Requiem of the Messiah," 1. Because they imply disease. This "we" comprehends all the saints, and hence it is clear that all the saints need healing. Those who are to-day before the throne of God, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, were once defiled as the lepers who were shut out of the camp of Israel. Our fathers were fallen men, and so are we, and so will our children be. (1.) The disease of sin is of the most loathsome character, and it will lead to the most deadly result in due season. It is none the better because we do not feel it. It is all the (2.) Sin is also a very painful

worse.

disease when it is known and felt. Those black days of conviction! A man needs no worse hell than his own sin and an awakened conscience.

2. Because it speaks of suffering. "With His stripes." I find that the word here used is in the singular, and not as the translation would lead you to suppose. I hardly know how to translate the word fully. It is read by some as "weal," "bruise," or "wound," meaning the mark or print of blows upon the skin; but Alexander says the word denotes the tumour raised in flesh by scourging. It is elsewhere translated "blueness," "hurt," and "spots," and evidently refers to the black and blue marks of the Scourge. The use of a singular noun may have been intended to set forth that our Lord was as it were reduced to a mass of bruising, and was made one great bruise. (a) By the suffering which that condition indicated we are saved. Our text alludes partly to the sufferings of His body, but much more to the agonies of His soul. He was smitten in His heart each day of His life. He had to suffer the ills of Providence. He had to run the gauntlet of all mankind. Satan, too, struck at Him. Put these things all together as best you can, for I lack words with which fitly to describe these bruises.

11. These are glad words. 1. Because they speak of the healing we need. Understand these words. Of that virtual healing which was given you in the day when Jesus Christ died upon the cross. But there is an actual application of the great expiation to us when by faith we receive it individually. To as many as have believed in Jesus, His stripes have given the healing of forgiveness, and it has conquered the deadly power of sin. Men have tried to overcome their passions by the contemplation of death, but they have failed to bury sin in the grave; they have striven to subdue the rage of lust within their nature by meditating upon hell, but that has only rendered the heart hard and callous to love's appeals. He who once believingly beholds the mystery.

of Christ suffering for him shakes off the viper of sin into the fire which consumed the great sacrifice. Where falls the blood of the atonement, sin's hand is palsied, its grasp is relaxed, its sceptre falls, it vacates the throne of the heart; and the spirit of grace, and truth, and love, and righteousness, occupies the royal seat. Behold Christ smarting in your stead, and you will never despair again. It is a universal medicine. There is no disease by which your soul can be afflicted, but an application of the blue bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul.

2. Because of the honour which the healing brings to Christ. Child of God, if thou wouldst give glory to God, declare that thou art healed. Be not always saying, "I hope I am saved." A crucified Saviour is the sole and only hope of a sinful world.

III. These are very suggestive words. Whenever a man is healed through the stripes of Christ, the instincts of his nature should make him say, "I will spend the strength I have, as a healed man, for Him who healed me." If you know that Jesus has healed you, serve Him, by telling others about the healing medicine. Tell it to your children; tell it to your servants; leave none around you ignorant of it. Hang it up everywhere in letters of boldest type. "With His stripes we are healed."-C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No.

1068.

(a) Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were intertwisted here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of His flagellations. My soul, stand here, and weep over His poor stricken body. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon Him without tears, as He stands before you the mirror of agonising love. He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which His

stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief. If we have ever loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.-Spurgeon.

3.

I. A LAMENTABLE DISEASE ASSUMED. 1. The baneful result of transgression. 2. Universal in its prevalency. Hereditary in its descent. 4. Incurable by human agency.

II. AN INFALLIBLE PHYSICIAN SPECIFIED. 1. Infinite in wisdom. 2. Impartial in attendance. 3. Ever easy of access. 4. Gratuitous in His practice.

III. THE REMEDY HE EMPLOYS. "His stripes," ie. the atonement. 1. Divine in its appointment. 2. Easy in its application. 3. Universal in its adaptation. 4. Infallible in its effi

cacy.

IV. THE CURE EFFECTED BY IT.

1. Is now no novelty. 2. Is radical in its nature. 3. Is happy in its influences.

CONCLUSION. This subject tends, 1. To promote humility. 2. To produce self-examination. 3. To encourage the desponding penitent. 4. To excite fervent gratitude.-Four Hundred Sketches, vol. ii. p. 93.

I. THE MEDICINE WHICH IS HERE PRESCRIBED the stripes of our Saviour. I take the term "stripes" to comprehend all the physical and spiritual sufferings of our Lord, with especial reference to those chastisements of our peace which preceded rather than actually caused His sin-atoning death: it is by these that our souls are healed.

"But why?" say you. 1. Because our Lord, as a sufferer, was not a private person, but suffered as a public individual, and an appointed representative. Hence the effects of His grief are applied to us, and with His stripes we are healed. 2. Our Lord was not merely man, or else His sufferings could not have availed for the multitude who now are healed thereby.

But healing is a work that is carried

on within, and the text rather leads me to speak of the effect of the stripes of Christ upon our characters and natures than upon the result produced in our position before God.

II. THE MATCHLESS CURES WROUGHT BY THIS REMARKABLE MEDICINE. Look at two pictures. Look at man without the stricken Saviour; and then behold man with the Saviour, healed by His stripes.

III. THE MALADIES WHICH THIS WONDROUS MEDICINE REMOVES.

The great root of all this mischief, the curse which fell on man through Adam's sin, is already effectually removed. But I am now to speak of diseases which we have felt and bemoaned, and which. still trouble the family of God. 1. The mania of despair. 2. The stony heart. 3. The paralysis of doubt. 4. Stiffness of the knee-joint of prayer. 5. Numbness of soul. 6. The fever of pride. 7. The leprosy of selfishness. 8. The fretting consumption of worldliness. (See also p. 494.)

IV. THE CURATIVE PROPERTIES OF THIS MEDICINE. All manner of good this divine remedy works in our spiritual constitution. The stripes of Jesus when well considered, 1. Arrest spiritual disorder. 2. Quicken all the powers of the spiritual man to resist the disease. 3. They restore to the man that which he lost in strength by sin. 4. They soothe the agony of con viction. 5. They eradicate the power of sin; they pull it up by the root; destroy the beasts in their lair; put to death the power of sin in our members.

V. THE MODES OF THE WORKING OF THIS MEDICINE. How does it work? Briefly, its effect upon the mind is this. The sinner hearing of the death of the incarnate God is led by the force of truth and the power of the Holy Spirit to believe in the incarnate God. faith come gratitude, love, obedience, &c. (a)

After

VI. ITS REMARKABLY EASY APPLI CATION. There are some materia medica which would be curative, but they are so difficult in administration. and attended with so much risk in their operation, that they are rarely if ever

employed; but the medicine prescribed in the text is very simple in itself, and very simply received; so simple is its reception that, if there be a willing mind here to receive it, it may be received by any of you at this very instant, for God's Holy Spirit is present to help you. How, then, does a man get the stripes to heal him? 1. He hears about them. 2. Faith cometh by hearing; that is, the hearer believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and he trusts in Him to save his soul. 3. Having believed, whenever the power of his faith begins to relax, he goes to hearing again, or else to what is even better, after once having heard to benefit, he resorts to contemplation; he resorts to the Lord's table that he may be helped by the outward signs; he reads the Bible that the letter of the word may refresh his memory as to its spirit, and he often seeks a season of quiet, &c.-Poor sinner, simply trust and thou art healed; backsliding saint, contemplate and believe again.

Since the medicine is so efficacious, since it is already prepared and freely presented, I do beseech you take it.— C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 834.

(a) Looking upon the "stripes" of Jesus, one may be led, 1. To think of the awfully malignant nature of sin, which would require for its expiation so great a sacrifice as that of the Son of God, and of the great depravity of his own heart in having been so destitute of love towards one so full of grace and goodness toward him. He is thus brought to tremble for his sin, and to mourn for it with deep contrition. And here is true repentance. 2. The inestimable value of the sacrifice, and the boundless love of God manifested in it, show him also that an atonement of most amply sufficient value has been offered for his siu; that the gracious God must be most mercifully disposed and willing to pardon and save him. Thus a

comfortable and satisfying faith is generated in his heart. 3. The apprehension of the favour. ing mind in God towards him, with all the love manifested in the sufferings of Christ, disposes his heart to the love of God. 4. Seeing also that he owes his renewed being and hopes to his God and Saviour, he is ready to give himself wholly to His service. For he feels the force of the apostle's words (Rom xii. 1.; 2 Cor. 14, 15). 5. When in the service of Christ he meets with great difficulties and trials, he remembers that Christ bore for him his eternal sufferings, and thinks little of anything he can endure for Him in his short life upon earth. 6. From the contemplation of the humiliation and death of Christ flow endless streams of benevolence, readiness to give, or to do, or endure anything for our neighbour (2 Cor. viii. 9; 1 John iii. 16). 7. While that contemplation urges him to devote himself to the service of God and the promotion of his neighbour's good, it also keeps him humble in his greatest zeal, both by the example of his crucified Saviour, and also by the remembrance that his only hope of mercy rests in his coming as a worthless creature for salvation to Christ, in reliance upon His merits alone. Every one who has been brought to such views of sin as the sufferings of Jesus set forth, feels himself strongly repelled, by those sufferings, from all sin. Shall he add another sin to those by which he has pierced his beloved Saviour with sorrow and pain? Here is a most cogent motive to the resistance of temptation in the true believer. And if he finds difficulty in such resistance, he remembers that his Saviour suffered crucifixion for him, and feels that he must therefore think little of "crucifying the flesh, with its affections and lusts," for His sake (1 Pet. iv. 1, 2).

8.

Thus the due effect of the sufferings of Christ upon man is the entire renovation of his heart. It tends to purify him from all sin, to fashion his soul in the frame of perfect holiness, to urge him to devoted zeal in all ways of piety and charity. The wisdom of God in appoint ing those sufferings as the means of our salvation, is justified in the beauty of holiness to which those who duly look upon them are thus brought. As the Israelites looked upon the brazen serpent till they were healed, so let us look upon our suffering Saviour till all the disorders of our souls are remedied, and we are restored to the "spirit of love and of a sound mind."-R. L. Cotton, M.A.: The Way of Salvation, pp. 95-99.

we have turned every one to his own way. says, "Behold, I come as a thief" (Rev. xvi. 15)-common sense will fix the resemblance to a single point, that He will come suddenly and unex pectedly.

So, when wandering sinners are compared to wandering sheep, we have a striking image of the danger of their state, and their inability to recover themselves. Sheep wandering without a shepherd are exposed, a defenceless and easy prey, to wild beasts and enemies, and liable to perish for want of pasture; for they are not able either to provide for themselves, or to find their way back to the place from whence they strayed. Whatever they suffer, they continue to wander, and if not sought out, will be lost. Thus far the allusion holds.

But sheep in such a situation are not the subjects of blame. They would be highly blameable, if we could suppose them rational creatures; if they had been under the eye of a careful and provident shepherd, had been capable of knowing him, had wilfully and obstinately renounced his protection and guidance, and voluntarily chosen to plunge themselves into danger, rather than to remain in it any longer.

Thus it is with man. 1. His wandering is rebellious. God made him upright, but he has sought out to himself many inventions (Eccl. vii. 29).

2. God has appointed for mankind a safe and pleasant path, by walking in which they shall find rest to their souls; but they say, "We will not walk therein" (Jer. vi. 16).

3. They were capable of knowing the consequences of going astray, were repeatedly warned of them, were fenced in by wise and good laws, which they presumptuously broke through.

4. When they had wandered from Him, they were again and again invited to return to Him, but they refused. They mocked His messengers, and preferred the misery they had brought upon themselves to the happiness of being under His direction and care.

Surely He emphatically deserves the name of the Good Shepherd, who freely laid down His life to restore sheep of this character.-John Newton: Works, p. 712.

We are like sheep, 1. In our proneness to err. No creature is more prone to wander and lose his way than a sheep without a shepherd. So are we apt to transgress the bounds whereby God has hedged up our way (Jer. xiv. 10). This has been manifest in every period of our life (Ps. xxv. 7, xix. 12).

2. In our readiness to follow evil example. Sheep run after one another, and one straggler draweth away the whole flock; and so men take and do a great deal of hurt by sad examples. Sheep go by troops, and so do men follow the multitude to do evil; what is common passeth into our practice without observation (Eph. ii. 2, 3).

Oh,

3. In our danger when we have gone astray. Straying sheep, when out of the pasture, are in harm's way, and exposed to a thousand dangers. consider what it is for a poor solitary lamb to wander through the mountains, where, it may be, some hungry lion or ravenous wolf looketh for such a prey. Even so is it with straying men: their judgments sleepeth not; it may be in the next hour they will be delivered to destruction (Jer. vii. 6, 7; Rom. iii. 16).

4. In our inability to return into the right way. Other animals can find their way home again, but a strayed sheep is irrecoverably lost without the shepherd's diligence and care. could wander by myself, but could not return by myself" (Augustine).

5. In our need of a redeemer.

"I

CONCLUSION. Has the Good Shepherd brought us back? Then, 1. Let us magnify His self-sacrificing and tender mercy, in following us, and bringing us into the pastures where there is at once safety and true satisfaction.

2. Let us remember for ourselves, and preach to others, that the sheep do not fare the better for going out of the pasture. In departing from God, we turn our back upon our own happiness. The broad and easy ways of sin are pleasing to flesh and blood, but destructive to the soul. Adam thought to find much happiness in forbidden fruit, to mend and better his condition,