merely; and very often the divisions are not just. Now anybody reading this 52nd chapter must see that the 13th, 14th, and 15th verses belong strictly to the 53rd chapter. He begins with, "Behold, my servant shall deal prudently" that is, the Saviour, wisely; he shall be exalted, and extolled, and be very high "he shall be worshipped and adored as King of kings. But, he says, notwithstanding this, "many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man," so marred by suffering, by the lines of sorrow and of grief; and his form

more than the sons of men;" or, as he describes it in the next chapter, "there is no beauty that we should desire him." But, nevertheless," he shall sprinkle”

with the efficacy of his atoning sacrifice" many nations; kings shall be dumb in his presence, under a sense of his greatness; and that which they had rot been told of they shall see; and that which they had not known they shall then by his grace begin to consider.

i word by Ar de ISAIAH here begins the graphic picture of the sorrows of the Man of Sorrows which I have now read, by asking, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed ?" that is, thousands will think it too good to be true, too marvellous to be fact, too vast for the human understanding to com

prehend and the human heart to receive. And these words are only in keeping with what the apostle tells us when he speaks of the preaching of the Cross being foolishness to them that perish; and when he says, "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." It is a melancholy fact at this moment, that thousands the vast majority of the world do not accept the Gospel of Christ; and out of those that profess the Christian name how few have received it in all its simplicity, its fulness, and its power outasut

Then he proceeds to draw a graphic and impressive portrait of the features of Christ upon the cross: in fact, this chapter might well be called the crucifix; not the crucifix that a priest carries in his hand, bút the crucifix, the Christ upon the cross, in whom we trust, and through whom our salvation comes. He begins first of all with the prediction, "He shall grow up before him as a tender plant "frail seemingly, easily nipped by the first frosts of winter, or the retiring frosts of spring; "he shall be as a root out of a dry ground "-descended of a royal and illustrious house, but a house sunk into obscurity in the lapse of the years; "he hath no form nor comeliness"-no external personal beauty; no march of armies heralds his approach, no sound of trumpets tells us he is near; a lonely, solitary woman, a few shepherds from the plains of Bethlehem; and the only thing of magnificence and pomp at that unprecedented scene was the angels in the sky chanting their Christmas hymn, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.' Then it is added also, " And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him," that is,

what the world calls beauty: the world, the coarse, the vulgar eye, is pleased with gaud, and glitter, and show, and brilliant colours; but the exquisitelyattuned heart sees beauty where the world sees none, and in piety the loveliest beauty of all. But Jesus had a beauty that the few. could appreciate-that the multitude could not see! "He is despised and rejected of men:" what a statement is that! Plato, the great Greek philosopher, predicted that if truth were to come from heaven to earth, all men would recognise the grandeur of its presence, and do it homage. Truth has come-truth in all its purity and perfection; and the record of history is, "He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Can you conceive language more expressive? it is a picture that one dreads to touch, lest one should damage and injure it. He was a man of sorrows. that? His heart saturated with is with the dews of heaven; his familiar acquaintance, was grief. has all sorrow become since the tasted it! how welcome should grief be to us, seeing that we suffer with him who first suffered for us! "And we hid as it were our faces from him;" that is, we expected the Messiah, the Jews would say; we are ashamed of this man pretending to be him. But then, what does the prophet say? Hear his account of it. Why was he a man of sorrows? Why was the only innocent Being that ever appeared in our world the greatest sufferer that ever appeared in our world? Just mark this: if Christ was a mere man, perfectly innocent, as he is declared to be, it

How shall I explain

sorrow, as the soil acquaintance, his How sweetened. Man of sorrows

was as unjust in God to afflict him as it would be to admit into heaven Judas Iscariot; because the law of the universe is, perfect innocence is perfect happiness. Then how do you explain this strange phenomenon, that the Being who by confession of Satan, of Pilate, of the Jews, of a voice from heaven, was perfectly holy, was the greatest sufferer that ever lived? The answer is given in what follows: he suffered not from sin in him, for he had none; but from sin on him, for the pressure of the weight of the world's sin was upon him. Hence the explanation of this mystery is, "Surely "-there can be no doubt of it-" he hath borne our griefs, he hath carried our sorrows; he was wounded "-not for his own transgressions, for he had none; but "for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of"-and the price, and the pathway to our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." Now can any man who reads these words doubt or deny that substitution, vicarious sacrifice, atonement, is the great, and dominant, and essential truth of the religion of the Cross? The whole of our preaching ought to centre round Christ crucified; and that preaching in which Christ crucified is not, or of which Christ crucified is not, the basis, is defective in the main and vital element of the Gospel of Christ.

He proceeds to explain what was our condition. "All we like sheep have gone astray." Here was our character; we had gone astray from Paradise, astray from happiness, astray from righteousness and heaven. And then I need not tell you the sheep that has gone astray is the most helpless of all crea

tures. Lose your dog, and he will track his way home to his kennel or to your house; but a lost sheep never gets back to the fold-it is devoured by the wolf, drowned in the flood, or dashed to pieces upon the rocks; it has no scent, it has no intuitive instinct, that brings it back from a distance to the fold from which it has gone astray. Now that was our condition: we were not lost dogs that might find their way by an ineradicable instinct back to their home; but we were lost sheep, helplessly and hopelessly lost. But what is the picture of its recovery? The great and good Shepherd missed one out of the hundred sheep in his fold; and so much was he interested in the recovery of that one lost sheep, that he left the ninety and nine, and went after it, and found it; and did not rebuke it, nor reprimand it, nor say a severe word to it; but folded it in his bosom, laid it on his shoulder, brought it home rejoicing, and bid all the inmates of his home rejoice-not that the ninety and nine remained in the fold, but that this lost sheep was found, this dead one was now alive.

Then he goes on to describe still further what the Messiah was. "He was oppressed;" oppressed by a load of sin that no estimate of ours can possibly appreciate. What must have been the agony of that guileless, spotless soul, when he cried out in those awful words, that pierced the very heavens, and startled all hell, but woke on earth the music of songs that shall never die, " Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani !”—“ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" A very eminent writer has said that when the Saviour died there is the irresistible evidence