CHAPTER XVII.

Proofs of Divinity of Christ's Sufferings derived from Old Testament-Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah-Isaiah, lxiii. : "I have trodden the wine-press alone"-Zechariah, xiii., 7 : “Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd"-Zechariah, xii., 10: “And they shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced."

In the progress of our argument, we have hitherto confined ourselves to evidence deduced from the New Testament. But the Old Testament is not to be overlooked or undervalued. Though its inspired patriarchs and prophets saw as " through a glass darkly," yet does the wonderful fulfilment of their inspired visions afford one of the most striking proofs of the verity of our holy religion. The Old Testament shadows forth the Messiah to come in colours not to be mistaken. It plainly intimates his miraculous conception; it places the glorious truth of his divinity beyond peradventure; it announces him as a sufferer for the sins of others in terms peculiar and significant; and, when it thus alludes to him as a sufferer, it limits not his sufferings to a single department of his being; it speaks of him, not as a partial, but as a general sufferer. The prevalent theory of later times, that the sufferings of Christ were confined to his humanity, finds no countenance in the Old Testa

ment.

The Old Testament leaves us to believe that the expected Messiah would suffer in the same undivided and indivisible natures in which he was to be born.

The last three verses of the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, and the whole of the fifty-third chapter of that sublimest of the sons of men, have Christ for their absorbing theme. Their reference to the Messiah who was to come is so palpable that, in reading the passages, we may consider the name of Christ as actually substituted for the nameless sufferer, whose heart-touching story is there told with a pathos not to be found in the "multitudinous" volumes of uninspired lore. With a pen dipped in his tears, the rapt prophet recounted the imputed imperfections and outward pangs of his beloved Saviour; his marred visage; his want of form and comeliness to the carnal eye; his wounds for our transgressions; his bruises for our iniquities; his stripes by which we are healed. But when he drew near to the furnace of expiatory suffering burning within, pervading the spiritual elements of the incarnate God in the most inaccessible recesses of his sacred being, the prophet's powers of expression, copious as they were, seemed utterly inadequate to the overpowering thoughts that were hovering around him. He could but say, "His soul" shall be made "an offering for

sin ;" "he shall pour out his soul unto death;" "he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied."-Isaiah, liii., 10-12.

The Hebrew word here translated "soul" is of most capacious import. It signifies breathing, living immateriality, wherever found. In the first chapter of his inspired history, Moses applied this Hebrew term to designate the vital principle of the lower ranks of animated nature, though our translators have there rendered it "creature.". Genesis, i., 24. The royal psalmist used this identical Hebrew word to denote the ethereal essence of the Deity. "The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth."-Psalm xi., 5. The same Hebrew word was used for the same purpose in Judges. "And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel."-Judges, x., 16. The same Hebrew word was also twice used in Jeremiah to express the ethereal essence of God. "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord; and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?"-Jeremiah, v., 9. Yea, I" (the Lord) "will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul."-Jeremiah, xxxii., 41.

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When Isaiah appropriated the same Hebrew term to the expected Messiah; the predicted Immanuel; the "child" that should be born; the "son" that should be given; whose name should be called "Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace," he must have meant to use the term in as comprehensive a sense as it was used by his brother-prophets. He must have intended to designate the whole breathing, animated, living immateriality of the God "manifest in the flesh," whose advent had, from the creation, formed the glowing theme of inspired prediction and heaven-taught song. The Hebrew word is used by the evangelical prophet without stint or limitation, The human soul of the anticipated Messiah, the "Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father," was so small a speck in the distant and boundless horizon of his united and infinite spirituality as scarcely to engage, much less to absorb the expanded vision of the rapt seer.

The Prophet Isaiah must, then, be understood as saying, that the whole immaterial nature of Christ should be made an offering for sin; that his whole immaterial nature should be poured out unto death; that he should see of the travail of his whole immaterial nature and be satisfied. any biblical critic should wish to limit the Hebrew

If

word translated "soul" to the mere human soul of Christ, let him test the accuracy of his criticism by actually inserting before the substantive "soul,” as often as it is here repeated, the adjective “human." We do not perceive how the critic can object to this test; for, if the adjective is to be silently incorporated by intendment, it might as well be actually incorporated by an overt act. We have already alluded to this test as applicable to passages in the New Testament; but its importance seems to justify its repetition here.

The prophecy of Isaiah contains other passages bearing on our subject. We select one of them: "I have trodden the wine-press alone.”— Isaiah, lxiii., 3. What was the wine-press thus trodden? It was not the wine-press of some terrestrial vintage. It was, what it is elsewhere called in scripture," the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God."-Revelation, xix., 15. Who was he who trod this wine-press alone? It was he "that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ;"" travelling in the greatness of his strength."

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"I have trodden the wine-press alone" was a declaration of too lofty and awful an import to have been designed by the Holy Ghost for the "meek and lowly" human son of the Virgin. The