cies of Isaiah. The fifty-third chapter will immediately occur to every reader. Here the Christian meaning is so clear and so complete, that it has been doubted whether the passage has any other sense than this. Yet it seems to me, that as the language of so many of the Psalms which, in its fulness, is applicable only to Christ, had yet a subordinate and human meaning referring to some lower persons and events; such is likewise the case with most, if not all, of the prophecies of the Book of Isaiah. The latter part of Isaiah, however, from the fortieth chapter to the end, deserves a more particular consideration, because it seems one of the most complete exemplifications of St. Peter's statement, where he describes the Prophets as “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." It is precisely with regard to the time of the fulfilment of his prophecies, that we may conceive the Prophet to have been most left to his own impressions. All the things of which he speaks are connected in his mind with the immediate event which is the nearest object in his view, namely, the return of Israel from captivity in Babylon. But the language which he uses goes to such a high measure of blessing, that he may well have doubted whether there was not some greater deliverance behind than that which more immediately engrossed his attention. In this case, then, the human and historical meaning of the words of the prophecy may have appeared insufficient even to their human author. Even he may have felt that his language required a higher fulfilment than that deliverance of Israel from the power of Babylon, to which, according to the usual economy of prophecy, his predictions were in their form and outward construction limited. Still it cannot be denied that the first and obvious subject of the whole prophecy, is the return of Israel from his cap tivity in Babylon. The point, so to speak, from which the whole picture is taken, is the period of the captivity. From thence the Prophet looks forward to the deliverance and return of Israel, to the utter overthrow of his conqueror; and then when the enemy should be put down, and Israel restored to his own land, his after state should be more worthy of his title of God's chosen people; his portion should be one of greater holiness, and therefore of greater prosperity and happiness than he had ever before known. In the midst of this view one distinct particular object presents itself to the Prophet's mind ;— an Israel, so to speak, within Israel,-a servant of God afflicted like the people of God, and destined like them to be finally delivered and triumphant; but differing from the people of God in this, that whereas their suffering was the consequence of their own sin, his was not so: he suffered not only with them, but for them,-innocent himself, but bearing in his own. person the iniquities of the people. In what degree the prophet had here a distinct image before his mind, it is impossible for us to know; whether he thought of any individual prophet, or rather personified the whole prophetic order; representing their faithful remonstrances with their countrymen, their sharing the common exile and captivity, and their greater authority hereafter in the restored Israel, under the image of one single man disregarded at first by the people, suffering for their fault only, and in their behalf, and at length rewarded with the highest success and glory. As Israel was to the rest of the world, long a disregarded witness to God's truth, innocent as far as other nations were concerned, yet suffering at their hands, and his sufferings designed by God to work out good both for them and for himself,-such exactly was the relation in which the Prophet, or the order of Prophets, described in the fifty-second and fifty-third chapters, was to stand towards Israel itself. Now the actual evil, for the comfort of which this prospect of the future was vouchsafed, was, it should be remembered, the captivity in Babylon; and therefore the whole tone of the prophecy bears in its obvious form upon the relief of this evil; that is, on the destruction of Babylon, and on the restoration and prosperity of Israel. But if God's people have any worse enemy than Babylon, any worse captivity than that in Mesopotamia, any better home than that of Jerusalem in Palestine, then the full language of comfort and of hope will relate to this worse enemy, to this more grievous captivity, to this better and dearer country. Accordingly, while the return of Israel to his own land, and the greater honours paid outwardly at least to God's Prophets, was a fulfilment of more than the ordinary hopes which a captive Jew in Babylon could, humanly speaking, have ventured to entertain for his country; yet inasmuch as the Prophet's language, while speaking of the return from Babylon, had risen far higher than the measure of earthly prosperity dealt to any earthly people compassed about with so much sin, so it was provided that this language should find its fulfilment. in a manner that could not be foreseen in the writer's own time; that the real abiding objects of the highest hope and fear should come into the place of such as were merely earthly, local, and temporary; and contrary to the almost proverbial issue of the prophecies of human fraud or folly, the word of promise should be kept not to the ear, but to the hope; not according to the letter of an earthly Israelite's expectation, but according to the spirit of the expectation of an Israelite of God. And then that Prophet or personification of the Prophetic order, who had been described as suffering for the sins of the people, and afterwards exalted with complete triumph, finds in a most extraordinary manner his exact antitype in Him who, though man, was not man merely. The Prophet of the earthly Israel was a man with the sins of our common nature, the imperfect minister of an imperfect church. But the Prophet of the spiritual Israel is the perfect minister of a perfect Church, standing between God and the people not partially, typically, and, in a certain degree, but completely and really. He was, what that Church was to become through Him, entirely holy and without blemish. He suffered for the Church not only as man may suffer for man, by being involved in evils through the fault of another, and by His example awakening in others a spirit of like patience and self-devotion; but in a higher and more complete sense, as suffering for them, the just for the unjust, that they for His sake should be regarded by God as innocent. He Himself, and not the personification of an order which in one generation may be in distress, and in the next may rise to prosperity, but He Himself, after being out off out of the land of the living, was in His own proper person, raised again to taste of His own victory, |