NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

ABOUT seven years ago I went down to Leicester, at Mr. Hall's especial request, for the purpose of advising with him as to the preparation of a volume of Sermons, an undertaking to which he had then made up his mind. After various conversations, we fixed upon twelve, the subjects of which, with their respective modes of discussion and application, he regarded himself as able to recall without much difficulty. Among the sermons then selected was the following, composed in confirmation of a momentous point of christian doctrine, and which he had preached at Luton, in the spring of 1822. He spoke of it as most readily occurring to his mind in its entire arrangement, and I therefore urged him to commit it to paper as soon as possible. This, there is reason to believe, he accomplished accordingly. But the continued indifferent state of his health, the numerous interruptions to which he was then exposed, and his total inability to satisfy himself in composing for the press, jointly concurred in deterring him from advancing any farther towards the completion of his design, than to carry this sermon to its close, and to prepare the notes of a few others more fully than had been usual with him in his sketches for the pulpit.

The manuscript copy of this discourse, in Mr. Hall's own hand-writing, has been found since his death: not complete, it is true; but there are only two chasms of importance, and these I have been enabled to fill up by means of the reports of the same sermon which I have received from various friends. Although, therefore, I cannot but regret that the portions alluded to are not given precisely in Mr. Hall's language; yet, I trust, that nothing essential to the train of argument, or to its principal illustrations, is omitted.

June, 1831.

A SERMON.

ISAIAH liii. 8.

For the transgression of my people was he stricken.

ISAIAH has been usually styled the evangelical prophet; and, had no other part of his preaching descended to us except the portion before us, it would have sufficiently vindicated the propriety of that appellation. The sufferings of the Messiah are so affectingly portrayed, and their purpose and design so clearly and precisely stated, that we seem to be perusing the writings of an apostle rather than the predictions of a prophet: the obscurity of an ancient oracle brightens into the effulgence of gospel light. In no part of the New Testament is the doctrine of the atonement more unequivocally asserted, and the vicarious nature of our Lord's passion more forcibly inculcated, than in the context of the words selected as the basis of the present discourse.

It may not be improper to premise, that there is reason to believe that the original text has, in this instance, undergone some alteration, and

that it anciently stood thus, he was smitten unto death. It was thus written by Origen, who assures us that a certain Jew, with whom he disputed, seemed to feel himself more pressed by this expression than by any other part of the chapter. It is thus rendered by the Septuagint in our present copies; and if, in this instance, it had not concurred with the original, neither could Origen have urged it with good faith, nor the Jew have felt himself embarrassed by the argument which it suggested.

The Jews pretend that no single person is designed in this portion of prophecy; but that the people of Israel collectively are denoted under the figure of one man, and that the purport of the chapter is a delineation of the calamities and sufferings which that nation should undergo, with a view to its correction and amendment. The absurdity of this evasion will be obvious to him who considers that the person who is represented as stricken is carefully distinguished by the prophet, from the people for whose benefit he suffered; for the transgression of my people was he stricken: in addition to which, he is affirmed to be stricken even to death, which, as Origen very properly urged, agrees well with the fate of an individual, but not with that of a people.

In spite of the vain tergiversation of the Jews, and the sophistry, equally impotent, of some who

*See Orig. cont. Cels. lib. i. c. 44, and Kennicott's Observations, quoted by Bishop Lowth in his Notes on Isaiah liii.-ED.