not be contented patiently to bear your cross for me, seeing I have borne such a cross for you? "Comfort ye, comfort ye!" for I here give you the comfort of all comforts, peace through the blood of that cross;-the pledge and assurance that I have cancelled your transgressions, myself enduring their punishment; I have given my soul an offering for your sin' (ver. 10). "He shall see of the travail of His soul!" He looks forward, from the distant age at which the Prophet wrote, to these birthpangs of Calvary as to the natal-day of a ransomed Church, and a ransomed creation. According to His own subsequent figure, a figure probably suggested by this same prophetic note of Isaiah-" A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world" (John xvi. 21). He is "satisfied!" Small things will satisfy a small mind. It re quires great things to satisfy a great mind. What must be required to satisfy the mind of an angel? above all, what must be required to satisfy the mind of God? The salvation of This Almighty ruined mankind does so! Sufferer, from the heights of His glorified exaltation, looks down on the earth He has redeemed, and says, 'It is enough; I am satisfied. It is meet I should be glad, for this my prodigal world was dead, and is alive again; it was lost, and is found.' "Stretched on the cross, the bolts of heaven Are on the spotless Victim hurled; The rocks proclaim, in fragments riven, Around Him darkness spreads her pall, In vain the quivering lips implored: And claims the bleeding sacrifice." 66 "Tis done! the mighty work is done, Messiah bows His thorn-crowned head; The Sufferer once, the Victor now, And counting o'er the muster-roll Of the Redeemed for whom He died, He sees the travail of His soul,' And seeing, He is 'satisfied.'" IN THE MULTITUDE OF MY THOUGHTS WITHIN ME THY COMFORTS DELIGHT MY SOUL." ་་ "Exult, O barren one, that didst not bear; Break forth into joyful shouting, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail : For there are more children of the solitary one Than children of the married, saith JEHOVAH. Enlarge the place of thy tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of thy habitations: Hinder it not, lengthen thy cords, And firmly fix thy stakes (Lowth): For on the right hand and on the left shalt thou burst forth with increase; And thy seed will take possession of nations, And they shall inhabit the desolate cities. For thy husband is thy Maker; JEHOVAH, God of Hosts, is His name; For a little moment have I forsaken thee; But with great mercies will I receive thee again. Wretched, storm-tossed, comfortless (Alexander); Behold, I lay thy stones in cement of vermilion (or stibium) (Lowth), And I will found thee upon sapphires. And make thy minarets (battlements) of ruby; And thy gates of sparkling gems, And all thy boundary walls of jewels (stones of pleasure)" (Delitzsch and Alexander). -ISAIAH liv. 1-3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12. XXII. 46 Comfort me, comfort ye my people, saith your God." "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." The House Beautiful. -ISAIAH liv. II, 12. THESE are figurative words of comfort, in a chapter full of consolation. In the former one, the foundation of all comfort had been laid in the unfolding of Messiah's Person and sufferings, His death, resurrection, and exaltation. By a natural sequence, the Prophet proceeds to erect a divine structure. On 'the Rock Christ' he builds the Church, detailing the history of its rise, growth, and ultimate glory; from a small and unpro |