devoted head, and was afterwards led across the green slopes of Olivet, away amid the desolate regions of the Dead Sea shore-' the land not inhabited '-never more to return;-what a vivid reality would the sight impart to his own varied. utterances in this chapter! What emphatic beauty and reality would be given to the words of a contemporary prophet-" The iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found (Jer. 1. 20). Let us, too, hear a divine voice rising from the great sacrificial altar-"I will be merciful to your unrighteousness; your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more:" and, in conjunction with that, the touching appeal which a great religious painter has put under his picture of the bleeding, thorn-crowned Sufferer-"I HAVE BORNE THESE THINGS FOR THEE-WHAT HAST THOU DONE FOR ME?" * *This impressive picture of Corregio's is in the Royal Gallery of Munich. The rope which binds the hands of the "O shame beyond the bitterest thought That sinners know what Jesus wrought, Yet feel their haughty hearts untamed! Let not Thy blood on earth be spent : Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent. Nor let my spirit farther roam; 'Tis Thine, by vows, and hopes, and fears, IN THE MULTITUDE OF MY THOUGHTS WITHIN ME THY COMFORTS DELIGHT MY SOUL." Divine Victim is represented as depending over the Latin inscription "Ego, pro te, hæc passus sum; Tu vero quid fecisti pro Me?" "The punishment was laid upon Him for our peace; And by His bruises we are healed. All we, like sheep, went astray; We had turned aside every one to his own way; And JEHOVAH caused to fall (rush) upon Him the iniquities of us all. It was enacted, and He was made answerable, yet He opened not His mouth (Lowth): Like a lamb which is led to the slaughter-bench, And as a sheep before her shearers Is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. For the wickedness of my people punishment fell on Him (Delitzsch), Although He had done no wrong Neither was there any guile in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord painfully to crush Him (Hengstenberg); And the purpose of JEHOVAH shall prosper through His hand (Delitzsch). Of the travail of His soul, He shall see (the fruit) and shall be satisfied." -ISAIAH liii. 5-11. XXI. "Comfort ne, comfort ye my people, saith your God." "The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. He shall see His seed. . . . He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied." Suffering and Victory. -ISAIAH liii. 6, 10, 11. IN the preceding exposition, we found that the Prophet's remarkable utterances had their only true explanation in the expiatory sacrifice of the great Redeemer-the divine Surety-Substitute— on whose guiltless head the Lord had laid the burden of His people's transgressions; "who," in the language of St Peter, as he quotes or paraphrases the words of this chapter, "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree;... by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Pet. ii. 24); who Himself, in the days of His flesh, declared, that, as the Son of man, He came "to give His life a ransom for many;" and that “thus it behoved Christ to suffer” (Luke xxiv. 46). We may only farther observe, before leaving the subject, that the alternative theory of “the Cross and Passion "-viz., that the Adorable Sufferer yielded His life merely as an Example—is, in itself, altogether inadequate and unsatisfactory in the light of the strong language employed in this chapter;-language which had its counterpart and fulfilment in the mysterious anguish of Gethsemane and Calvary, the bloody sweat, the strong crying and tears, the horror of great darkness, and the Eloi cry. But admit that He drank the cup of penal woe, that "Messiah was cut off, but not for Himself," then, such phrases and assertions as those on which we have already commented, become perspicuous and intelligible :-"the most abject of men;" "marked out by the stroke of |