1

ant prophet, bearing the burdens of the peasant poor; Isaiah, the strong-hearted hater of corruption, living a lifelong martyrdom and dying a martyr's death; Jeremiah, weeping bitter tears for sins that were not his own. And the Great Unknown dimly sees what even now the Church of Christ sees not too clearly- that salvation comes through sorrow, that the suffering ones are the victorious ones, that the redemption of the nation must come, not by a crowned king, but by a Suffering Servant. Sometimes this suffering servant appears to the prophet to be the entire nation suffering for its own sins and for the sins of the world, and working out its own redemption by its own suffering; sometimes to be some one especially chosen out of that nation, suffering with and for them; sometimes the prophet himself; in one notable ode the prophet seems to see dimly in the vista of the future a single figure bearing in his own person the burdens of humanity, a Sinless Sufferer by his suffering bringing healing to others:

"Who indeed can yet believe our revelation ?

And the arm of Jehovah

to whom has it disclosed itself?

"He grew up as a sapling before us,

And as a sprout from a root in dry ground,

He had no form nor majesty,

And no beauty that we should delight in him.

66 Despised was he, and forsaken of men,

A man of many pains, and familiar with sickness,

1 Isa. xliv. 1, 2, 21; xlii. 1-4; xlix. 5-10; lii. 13-15.

Yea, like one from whom men hide the face,
Despised, and we esteemed him not.

"But our sicknesses, alone, he bore,
And our pains - he carried them,
Whilst we esteemed him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.

"But alone he was humiliated because of our rebellions,
Alone he was crushed because of our iniquities;
A chastisement, all for our peace, was upon him,
And to us came healing through his stripes.

"All we, like sheep, had gone astray,

We had turned, every one to his own way,
While Jehovah made to light upon him
The guilt of us all.

"He was treated with rigor, but he resigned himself, And opened not his mouth,

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

And like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb.

66 Through an oppressive doom was he taken away,

And as for his fate, who thought thereon,

That he had been cut off out of the land of the living,

That for my people's rebellion he had been stricken to death?

"And his grave was appointed with the rebellious,

And with the wicked his tomb,

Although he had done no injustice,

Nor was there deceit in his mouth.

"But it had pleased Jehovah to crush and to humiliate him.

If he were to make himself an offering for guilt,

He would see a posterity, he would prolong his days,
And the pleasure of Jehovah would prosper in his hands.

แ

"With knowledge thereof my Servant will interpose for many, And take up the load of their iniquities.

Therefore shall he receive a possession among the great,

And with the strong shall he divide spoil.

"Forasmuch as he poured out his life-blood,

And let himself be reckoned with the rebellious,
While it was he who had borne the sin of many,
And for the rebellious had interposed." 1

Did the Great Unknown, looking through the centuries, get a glimpse of Calvary, of the bloodstained face and the thorn-crowned brow, or did he only learn from the anguish of the past that all victory comes through battle and all salvation through suffering? Did he only see the great generic truth, which too many men have failed to see, even though it is focused and centralized in the Passion of Jesus the Christ? I do not know; only this I know that nowhere, not even by Paul, is that truth more splendidly illustrated in literature than in this fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and nowhere has it such divine illustration in history as in the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Of the great men of Hebrew history — save only Jesus of Nazareth, who can be classified with no race and no epoch, since he belongs to all humanity and all time-the three greatest are Moses, the Great Unknown, and Paul. The first is an indistinct figure; concerning his real relation to the Hebrew people much more has been imagined than is known; but history will always regard

1 Isa. liii., Polychrome Bible.

him as the great lawgiver, and always impute to him the foundations of those free institutions which the Jewish nation has given to the world. The second is still more indistinct. His name

will never be known until God shall unroll the records of his servants' histories in the luminous glory of eternity. But he is of all the prophets the most majestic in his style, as the most spiritual in his message. The truth that God is one, and is a righteous God, and demands righteousness of his children, and will accept nothing less and asks for nothing more, he might have learned from Amos and Hosea and Micah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel; but he added what none of them saw, the truth that the sorrowing ones are the triumphant ones, that suffering love is conquering love, that sorrow is victor. Christ's life and death will illustrate and exemplify this truth. Paul, the poet philosopher of the first century, will expound and apply it. But neither literature nor life has any higher message to give to the world than the message of this prophet, who has exemplified his own doctrine of self-abnegation by leaving his writings to be bound up with those of a predecessor, while he himself remains forever unknown.

CHAPTER XVI

THE MESSAGE OF ISRAEL

MOST of us can remember, and some of us still entertain, an opinion respecting the Bible something like the following: That there were in past history some thirty or forty men who were specially inspired of God to make known to the human race the truth respecting his nature and his law-truth which was undiscoverable by human reason, but which it was necessary to know in order to future salvation;1 that these men wrote what God told them to write, and what they thus wrote constitutes the Bible. Sometimes it was contended that they were simply amanuenses and wrote by dictation, word for word, what God directed them; sometimes, and in later times more generally, it was believed that a certain human element entered into their writing, but it was supposed that they had what is called plenary inspiration, that is, that they were inspired upon all topics on which they wrote, and that on all topics on which they wrote they were infallibly accurate. Some of a more liberal or lax faith held that this inspiration did not extend to all the topics on which they wrote, but only to the moral and religious topics; that they

1 See, for example, Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. i. § 1.