He was face to face with a mystery-the mystery of mysteries and the problem of problems. Man's instinct for justice demands that the bad should suffer and the righteous should escape. The course of this world is ordered otherwise. "He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good," and it would sometimes seem as if the vials of His wrath were poured out alike upon the just and on the unjust. In some of the Psalms, and more especially in the Book of Job, the problem is raised but hardly answered. But there is one place in the Old Testament where it is faced, and a profounder answer is suggested-the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. Our Lord's answers to Satan at the Temptation, His reply to John's question "Art Thou He that should come?" His answer to the High Priest, and the cry on the Cross show that at all great crises in His life His mind instinctively found a natural expression in Scriptural phrase. Especially familiar to Him was the Book of Isaiah. At times He quotes it directly, more often His own language is coloured by its phrasing. Can we believe that His thoughts did not recur to it in such a crisis ?1

"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. . . . When His life shall make an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant make many righteous: and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong: because He poured out His soul unto

1 He expressly quotes Is. liii. 12 (Lk. xxii. 37), and Xúтpov árтì TOXXŵr (Mk. x. 45) is probably reminiscent of πολλούς . . . ἀνθ' ὧν παρεδόθη in the same verse.

death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (Is. liii. 5-6, 10-12).

There is no sufficient evidence that this passage had ever hitherto been interpreted of the Messiah. The thoughts of the Prophet himself would appear to have been directed mainly to the problem of the purpose of the suffering and oppression of Israel, or of the righteous element in Israel, symbolically spoken of as "the Servant of the Lord." But the words of genius, or, shall we say, of inspiration, have always an eternal application far wider than the actual occasion of their original utterance. The Prophet's solution is profoundly true over a far wider field. Prosperity and suffering in this world are not proportionate to desert, yet it is by the labours and the suffering, not only of the great idealists, martyrs, and reformers whose names are known to fame, but equally of the great multitude of humble, quiet, honest toilers; it is by constant sacrifice to the call of duty, or to the love of family and friend, and by these alone that the effects of human ignorance and guilt are mitigated, and the very existence as well as the progress of the race made possible.

"His life shall make an offering for sin" (R.V. marg.), “He shall bear their iniquities." The words are suggested by the ritual of the Temple sacrifice. The unique distinction of the long line of Hebrew prophets is their protest against the crude external ideas of sacrifice universal in early religions. "Behold to obey is better than sacrifice," "I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs," "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Yet it was a deep and sound instinct that still kept alive the reformed sacrificial system of the second Temple, burdensome, trivial, and superstitious though so much of it seems to us. Penitence and obedience, indeed, are the only sacrifice that has value in the sight of God, but how little of

this can each one offer, even for the sins he clearly recognises? And what of the sins to which his hardened conscience is insensitive, what of the sin of the community-that atmosphere of false ideals and evil customs which enters insensibly into our inmost being? Something more than individual penitence for the sins which the individual knows as such is wanted, something that shall avail to "take away the sins of the people," something that shall set a different standard, start a fresh tradition, create a new power.1

It has been seen already how in regard both to the law of conduct, and to the eschatological hope, our Lord went back behind contemporary ideas to the prophets of old in such a way as to unite the quintessential elements of both. The last act of His life was to do the same for the third of the chief features of the old religion-the Atoning Sacrifice.

The Prophet had written that the ideal Servant of the Lord was to suffer and to die, to "bear the sin of many." And who, we may conceive the Master asking, should act as the ideal Servant of the Lord if not the Christ the Son of God? Already He had rejected the Satanic offer of all the kingdoms of the earth, for the part of a hungry, homeless teacher. The foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man, designate the Monarch of Futurity, has not where to lay His head. He had taught "Blessed are ye poor,' "Blessed are ye when men persecute you. One act, one lesson more was left.

"And Jesus called them to Him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you but whosoever would become great among you, shall be your minister: and whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to

1 Cf. Essay VI. p. 294, p. 285.

minister, and to give His life a ransom for many (Mark x. 42 ff.). Not enough was it to have proclaimed the new ideal in penetrating phrase, not enough to have lived a life of service and self-denial. Of him who was to be the supreme agent in the regeneration of mankind, the supreme sacrifice of all is asked. From such an act there goes forth power. One thing more is lacking ere humanity is redeemed from the miseries of this present life. Before the Kingdom of God can appear, a price must be paid-and the price is the life of the King.

The future is now clear. The Servant of the Lord whom Isaiah told of, was by his suffering and death to bring about redemption, and to him a triumph beyond the grave, glorious and complete, is promised. To the Son of Man is predicted a coming with the clouds of heaven. Both prophecies are to be realised through one act. That He may return in glory He must first depart in suffering and shame. Standing, therefore, before the High Priest, mocked, deserted, helpless, marked down for death, He can confidently answer the question "Art Thou the Christ the Son of the Blessed?" with a triumphant reference to Daniel's prophecy, “I am, and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven (Mark xiv. 62).

A few hours later hanging on the Cross He uttered the cry "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And after nineteen centuries the end that He proclaimed so near has not yet come. There is matter for reflection here.

THE RESURRECTION

Years before the belief in a life beyond the grave, at least for the righteous, had been taught by Jewish Psalmist and Apocalyptist, by Greek philosophers, by many of the Sages and Prophets of the East. If we

may suppose that there is anything of justice or benevolence in the Power which upholds the Universe, the startling contrast between merit and reward so often seen in this world seems almost to compel the belief that our present life is but the porch to a wider and more glorious edifice. To a similar conclusion we are led by the reflection that even the noblest lives on earth, lives seemingly on the road to a perfection which would be a worthy end and crown to the toil and moil of all their efforts, and (if we may say so) of all God's efforts, break off, so far as this world is concerned, before that end is reached. Those again who, like the psalmists and the saints, have felt themselves to be, at any rate in supreme moments, in spiritual communion with the Divine, have always felt the confidence that to this communion death could not be an interruption-rather would it remove a barrier. Lastly, all who believe that there is a dignity and worth in any individual life, which constitutes it a thing of permanent and intrinsic value, must see that its extinction would be an irreparable loss to the totality of existence. "Ye are of more value than many sparrows," and the loss of a single soul is the detriment of God. It was a thought like this on which the Master Himself based His argument for a resurrection, "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob"-a God in whose sight the individual is of worth is not the God of the dead but of the living." No one who really believes in a Divine Providence at all, least of all one who believes in a Heavenly Father such as our Lord spoke of, can believe that the life of Jesus ended upon the Cross.

Much in this Universe in which we live seems to reveal a great creative mind; much in the history of mankind, much in the experience of each individual points to "a divinity which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." But there are things that seem to point the other way. And in moments when our