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a man of sorrows;" and it is quite possible that He carried in His countenance the marks of inward suffering. Prophecy required that He should be a sufferer: this chapter, and many other passages. There are in fact two classes of prophecies-the one represents Him as a sufferer, the other as a reigning King. If He had not suffered, the proof of His Messiahship would have been fatally defective (Luke xviii. 31-34, xxiv. 26, 27, 44-46; Acts iii. 18).

II. A SUFFERING SAVIOUR IN HISTORY.

"Behold the man," said Pilate. Was He not rejected, despised, "a man of sorrows"? Fine natures feel such a position as that in which He was placed, coarse natures do not. And there were deeper causes of sorrow than man could fathom. The prospect immediately before Him was sorrowful enough. He had said, "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour." "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." He had agonised in the garden. He had sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. He had cried out for the cup to pass away. He had felt the bitterness of betrayal. He had been tried by the Jewish court. He had been crowned and scourged by the Roman soldiery. Ere many hours had passed He felt the shame, the pain, the fever of crucifixion. He was forsaken of God. His heart broke. His sufferings ended only with His

life.

Such were the facts of history. Such were the requirements of prophecy. Thus-1. Scripture was fulfilled. 2. His Messiahship was proved. 3. Satisfaction was made for sin. Repentance by itself is no satisfaction for past sin (H. E. 1. 4225-4228). Nor is reformation. Nor is there any force within man's depraved nature that would impel to repentance. Therefore atonement is needed by another: Himself suitable as being Divine, human, sinless (ver. 4).

Such is the Saviour. Thus He suffered. Measuring love by the la

bour it is willing to undergo, the suffering it is willing to endure, the sacrifices it is willing to make, does the love of Christ burn in our hearts with intensity such as might be expected from our obligations to Him?

Have we indeed all received Him? Do not some, like the Jews, despise and reject Him? Reflect on this. 1. Its ingratitude. 2. Its presumption. In effect it says that God hath done an unnecessary thing in giving His Son because the end could have been gained without it. Or, that the personal acceptance of Christ, though required in the Gospel, is an unnecessary requirement: because the salvation will be given without it. 3. Its rebelliousness. It is determined love of sin and resistance of God.-J. Rawlinson.

The sufferings of Christ must always be the main subject of the believer's thought, for no other can compare with this either in the intensity, the universality, or the duration of its interests. Strangers may think the Cross repulsive, for it is to the Greeks foolishness; but to believers it is a revelation of the power and the goodness of God. "We preach Christ crucified," says St. Paul, and from his day unto our own "Christ crucified" is the only foundation of hope, the only rock of faith, and the only bulwark against death. No wonder, then, that the absorbing enthusiasm of Christianity has been proved able to break mighty empires in pieces, and to subdue to itself the fiercest of human passions! Neither is this a subject of merely local interest. Moses might be compared to one of those desert chiefs whose very name is unheard in civilised lands, but Christ rather resembles those majestic conquerors who have aspired after a universal and enduring kingdom. Not Jerusalem, or Rome, but all the races of mankind, are ransomed by His death. Of this theme the Church will never weary, for, so long as there is a sorrow to heal, a temptation to conquer, or a sin to pardon-so long, in fact, as man

continues to be man, so long will there be need of Jesus and the Resurrection. No advancement of knowledge or civilisation can atone for the want of a Saviour. Now that same Saviour on whom we trust was also the hope of the ancient prophets. We look back on an accomplished fact, and they looked forward to a glorious promise.

I. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE LORD'S LIFE. The sorrows of our Saviour's life are in some respects more completely above our sympathy than those of His death; for, while we can understand the pang of the nail or the thorn, we cannot so easily realise His mental or moral sorrows. Yet these latter are not to be overlooked. There was,

1. Our Lord's loneliness. Loneliness is the inevitable penalty of greatness. Our Lord's loneliness may seem unimportant if we look only at His divinity, but He was as perfectly man as He was truly God. Whatever, therefore, is painful to sinless man was equally painful to Christ. Now no proof is

needed that man hates to be alone. How lonely was His life! A few friends gathered round Him for a time, but forsook Him in His utmost need. Burdened with the world's redemption, He was too great and high for human sympathy. The source of all kindness, and the Creator of all families, yet of Him we are compelled "He hath trodden the winepress alone." (See p. 478.)

to say,

2. His uninterrupted self-denial. No doubt an accomplished act of selfdenial always produces satisfaction. The very nature of self-denial requires that the painful feelings predominate, otherwise the act would be self-indulgence. What life, then, can compare with the life of Christ? Whatever is pleasant He put far from Him, and whatever is painful He took as His own. Christ lived in sorrow because sorrow was His own free choice.

Yet

we may gladly remember the suffering Saviour. A Redeemer who lived in pomp and honour, amid the palaces of the state and the triumphs of nations, would be too grand for ordinary men; but when we see Him walking in

weariness and in pain, or bitterly mourning at the tomb of a friend, or forsaken by the chosen twelve, then we remember that He was "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh."

3. Our Lord's purity and compassion. It may not at first be obvious that the purity of our Lord's nature should produce sorrow; and yet, when we consider that He gave Himself up to the battle against impurity, we may conceive how He would shrink from contact with it. Contrast the splendid purity of that palace which He forsook, with that foul and loathsome dungeon of pollution which He entered, God's holiness with our corruption, and then judge whether it was a small thing for Christ to live among men. troubles only the pure, but sorrow appeals to all. Such an emotion always filled our Saviour's breast. He saw all men, of every race and age, involved in one common ruin, &c. At last the burden of compassion became too heavy even for Him to bear, and He longed for the relief of the shame and agony of the cross (Luke xii. 50).

Sin

4. The ingratitude and opposition of the Jews. Though no comparison can fully illustrate this subject, yet suppose that, when Satan's host was cast down from heaven, a blessed spirit compassionated the awful ruin; suppose that, from the sacred light above, he journeys to the guilty darkness below, and there, by his own keen sorrow, he expiates the sin of the lost; yet suppose also that, while this strong spirit was kindling hope even in hell, all the spirits of the lost should agree to curse and torment their benefactor. possible," you cry; "impossible even in hell!" Alas! it was possible on earth. Count up the miracles of mercy, and then consider how soon indifference became ingratitude, and ingratitude ripened into opposition. We may blush for our humanity. Those who yesterday ate the sacred bread, to-day cry, "Crucify Him!" &c.

"Im

II. THE SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD'S DEATH. We may not press too closely into that mysterious scene of woe. It is rather a topic for thought than speech.

1. Our Lord's death was bitter and painful. "They pierced," says the prophet, "my hands and my feet;" and, adds Isaiah, "He was smitten of God and afflicted." For six hours He hung upon the cross. Yet doubtless His sorest sufferings were mental, for He bore all the sins of all the world.

In some mysterious manner, the debt which we could never pay through all eternity, He paid in a moment of time. Yet surely He was supported by Divine consolation? Alas, no! He who stands in my place stands beneath offended justice; and hence, perhaps, that strange, mysterious cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Yet, as these sufferings were extreme, so the result of them was excellent. By them He purchased everlasting redemption for man; and equally by them He inspires us with a holy horror of sin.

2. Our Lord's death was apparently that of a criminal. He was numbered

"We did

with the transgressors. esteem Him judicially smitten," says Isaiah, and, adds the Evangelist, "He was crucified between two thieves." The vilest wretch who dies to-day, amid the horrors of a public execution, is kindlier treated, meets with more sympathy and less contempt than did. the Lord of glory. Consider, then, the innocence of His character, and the apparent guilt of His death. How great the contrast!

3. Thus our Lord died amid ignominy and contempt. The Romans considered crucifixion to be a doom too base for any but the vilest slaves, &c.

There is no need to add that these sorrows were the revelation of eternal love. "Herein is love," herein and nowhere else is it so affectingly, so unequivocally proved, "Not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." - Bamford Burrows: The Methodist Recorder, March 29, 1877.

It

This Scripture is quoted in 1 Pet. ii. 24, as expressing the Saviour's substitutionary suffering on the cross. is quoted in Matt. viii. 17, as fulfilled by the Saviour's healing miracles. It thus at first sight presents a considerable difficulty, which, however, disappears when you remember three things. First, that the scope of this chapter is to exhibit the suffering Saviour. Second, that the thing in the mind of Matthew was the Saviour's intense sympathy, which took up into Himself the sorrows and sufferings of our fallen nature. Third, that some Scriptures are capable of many fulfilments. A passage may have one main meaning, yet that meaning may contain others within itself, as a tube may contain several tubes, or as a rose may contain many leaves overlapping each other. There is thus in the whole work of Jesus a twofold fulfilment of this important prophecy.

A

I. THAT WHICH CONSISTED IN HIS ATONING DEATH FOR SIN.

In this sense He took the infirmities and sicknesses of our souls. In the phraseology of the Old Testament the bearing of sin is equivalent to the consequences of its guilt. The Lord Jesus Christ was the great sin-bearer. He took upon Him our nature, not only that He might adequately represent humanity and be an example, but especially that He might bear the sin of man in His death on the cross (1 Pet. ii. 24; 2 Cor. v. 21). When you look for a reason why the Son of God became a man and was crucified, you cannot find it in any breach of law by Him, nor in the circumstance that He had provoked the authorities, and fallen under their power. You can only find it in the fact that His death was the atoning satisfaction for sin, on the ground of which its penal consequences can be removed from the sinner; and

in the further fact that it is the fullest condemnation of sin, and the most powerful motive to abandon it. Thousands have believed this, and found peace to their consciences; and not only so, they find that faith in Him crucifies sin, and inspires them with the ardent desire to be free from its power. So that our text contains the three ideas essential to the Saviour's work: viz., 1. Suffering. 2. Substitution. 3. Salvation.

But this is not the only fulfilment of this prophecy. There is

II. THAT WHICH CONSISTED IN HIS FEELING FOR, AND HELP IN, MEN'S BODILY SUFFERINGS.

We must bear in mind the close connection between the body and the soul. Sin has affected both. While the seat of sin is the soul, the body, as its instrument, participates in the sin. It suffers in consequence of sin. In Scripture all bodily infirmity, suffering, death in man, is traced to sin. The disease of leprosy was selected by Moses as the representation of this truth. The exclusion of the leper from the congregation, and the ceremonies connected with his re-admission, marked and kept this great truth in memory.

It was therefore fitting that He who came to destroy death and sin should take into His view and into His heart, not only the spiritual, but the physical aspects of the case He had undertaken. Man's completed redemption will be the redemption of the body at the resurrection. The final state of the glorified is one in which there shall be no more sorrow, nor sickness, nor pain, nor death. How then could He who came to accomplish that redemption be indifferent to the sufferings in which He saw a part of the misery He came to remove?

In this view, what a splendid career was His life on earth! There have been philanthropists, like Howard, and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, who have had compassion on the prisoner and the slave. But who has devoted Himself with such fulness of consecration and such forgetfulness of self?

Whoever, in so short a time, accomplished so much, left such a mark behind Him in the grateful memories of those whom He had relieved and cured, and whose dark lives He had made bright by His healing touch? He could not see suffering without compassion, and He could not feel compassion without stretching out His hand to help.

In those works of beneficence He furnished a pre-intimation of the spiritthat would characterise His religion. We have heard something about the religion of humanity. Men are to live for man rather than for God. Its practical effect will be nothing, because it takes away the motive power that would impel man to live for man. Nothing but the love of God creates the love of man. The idea is as old as Christianity; it is a part of Christianity, it is essential to it, it is borrowed from it. One of the first principles of practical Christianity is that "none of us liveth to himself." "We live unto the Lord," and our life to Him is manifested in living and working for our fellow-men. Christianity inspires its votaries with the desire to communicate it to others. But that is not all. In keeping with the idea that Christ has redeemed the human body as well as the human soul, it interests itself in everything that concerns the wellbeing of man. Wherever it is extended, it improves his material. condition. The savage becomes civilised. Slavery has been abolished. Even war has yielded to its influence. There is greater reluctance to engage in it; restrictions are imposed on its conduct; benevolent ministers attend friend and foe alike on the battlefield. Christianity leads men to use their material opportunities to the best advantage; yet it does not encourage its votaries to turn coldly from those who have been unsuccessful in the race of life. The numberless institutions of the present day for the improvement of the material condition of the people, as a rule owe their origination and perpetuation to the humanising influence of Christianity.