It is also easy to explain why the prophets should represent tho king who was to bring in the glorious future times as a son or descendant of David, and why he should sometimes be called by the very name of David. David was the king who, according to the judgment of the prophets as expressed in the historical books, ruled according to the strictest theocratic principles, and performed with the greatest fidelity what Jehovah commanded. See, for example, 1 Kings ix. 5, xiv. 8, xv. 5. Succeeding kings are approved or condemned according as they did or did not resemble David, and conduct themselves like David, their father. In a word, David was regarded as the model theocratic ruler, the promoter and extender of the religion of Jehovah. See 1 Kings xv. 4; 2 Kings viii. 19, xix. 34. The prophets, therefore, who lived under the kings, were naturally led to expect, as the head of the pure theocracy in the future glorious Messianic times, a king, a descendant of David; as it were, David himself arisen in one of his posterity. Besides, the family of David had always been the reigning family at Jerusalem; so that, if David had been less eminent than he was, still one of his descendants must have been represented as the Messiah, when once the Messiah was regarded as a temporal king.

In a similar way is to be explained the prediction in Micah v. 2, that Bethlehem should be honored as the source from which the Messiah should come forth. Bethlehem was the family seat of the race of David, 1 Sam. xvii. 12, and consequently whoever looked for a king of the race of David would represent him as about to come from Bethlehem. To say that he was to originate in Bethlehem, was the same thing as to say that he would proceed from the family of David.

In regard to the attributes or character of the Messiah, as conceived of by the prophets, they are what constituted the prophetic ideal of a perfect Hebrew king. He was to be strong and mighty, wise and pious, righteous and merciful. See Is. ix. 6, &c., xi. 2, 3, &c.; Jer. xxiii. 5; Mic. v.3; Zech. xii. 3. By some, the Messiah has been supposed to be represented by the prophets as a supernatural being, or even as the Supreme Being. This opinion has been generally rejected by the best scholars of all denominations. The passages which have been supposed to favor this view are Is. ix. 6; Dan. vii. 13; Mal. iii. 1; Jer. xxiii. 5; and a few others of

less note. For a refutation of this view, see my notes on the passages, and especially an article of mine in the Christian Examiner for January, 1836.

The extent of the dominion of the Messiah, the work which he was to perform, the time of his coming, and the duration of his reign, are implied in what has been said, pp. xxvi. et seq., concerning the predicted Messianic times. The Messiah was to be the head of the Jewish nation and the world, in the glorious condition which he had introduced. In reference to the two classes of predictions relating to the Messianic times, viz. those purely religious, relating to the establishment and extension of true religion, or the worship and service of Jehovah among men, and those in which a political element was included, the Messiah was to be God's representative and instrument in the accomplishment of both. He was to be the founder of the universal spiritual kingdom of God, and, at the same time, of the political dominion and temporal prosperity and glory of the Jewish nation, as above described, pp. xxvi. et seq.

Respecting the time of the coming of the Messiah, as understood by the prophets, the remarks hold good which were made, p. xxv., respecting the predicted time of the glorious future condition of the Jewish nation. So far as the prophets indicate any opinion respecting the time of the Messiah's coming, they seem to have ex pected that he would come after certain great national judgments, which they supposed would take place either in their own day, or in no distant period from it. See Is. viii.—ix. 6. Some of the prophets seem to have supposed that the Messiah would come after a return of the Jews from exile. See Mic. iv., v.; Jer. xxiii. 5-8; Ezek. xxxvii. 21-25; Zech. vi. 12, 13, compared with iii. 8. They evidently had no uniform expectation on the subject. Each expected it at no distant period in his own future.

We have thus seen that all the prophets whose writings we have examined, with the exception of Malachi, whose language is too ambiguous to authorize a confident opinion, represent the Messiah as the temporal king of the Jewish nation.

But is there no other instrumentality mentioned by any prophet, by which the glorious future period of the Jewish nation and of the world was to be introduced? It appears to me that there is; namely, that described by an unknown prophet, the

greatest of all the Jewish prophets, who lived near the close of the exile at Babylon, and wrote the composition included in Is. xl.-lxvi. His prediction, fairly interpreted in its connection, and by his own use of language, indicates that by the "Servant of Jehovah," who should introduce the glorious future condition of the Jewish nation, and in some degree of the world, he had in view not an individual Messiah, but a collective body, the Jewish church, the better part of the Jewish nation, the true Israel, i. e. the Jewish nation considered as the true and faithful servant of Jehovah.

The passage which at once arrests attention among the utterances of this great unknown prophet is Is. lii. 13 – liii., of which the following is a careful translation.

"Behold, my servant shall prosper;

He shall be lifted up, and set on high, and greatly exalted.

As many were amazed at the sight of him,

So disfigured and scarcely human was his visage,

And so unlike that of a man was his form,

So shall he cause many nations to exult on account of him;

Kings shall shut their mouths before him.

For what had never been told them shall they see,

And what they never heard shall they perceive.

"Who hath believed our report,

And to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a tender plant;

Like a sucker from a dry soil;

He had no form nor comeliness, that we should look upon him,

Nor beauty, that we should take pleasure in him.

He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows, and acquainted with disease;

As one from whom men hide their faces,

He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

But he bore our diseases,

And carried our pains,

And we esteemed him stricken from above,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions;

He was bruised for our iniquities;

For our peace was the chastisement upon him,
And by his stripes are we healed.
All we like sheep were going astray;
We turned every one to his own way,

And Jehovah laid upon him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed that was already afflicted,
Yet he opened not his mouth;

As a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,

He opened not his mouth.

By oppression and punishment he was taken away,

And who in his generation would consider

That he was cut off from the land of the living,

That for the transgression of my people he was smitten?

His grave was appointed with the wicked,

And with the rich man was his sepulchre,
Although he had done no injustice,

And there was no deceit in his mouth.

It pleased Jehovah severely to bruise him;

But when he has made his life a sacrifice for sin,

He shall see posterity; he shall prolong his days,

And the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand.

Free from his sorrows, he shall see and be satisfied;

By his knowledge shall my righteous servant lead many to righteousness, And he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I give him his portion with the mighty,

And with heroes shall he divide the spoil,

Because he poured out his soul unto death,
And was numbered with transgressors;
Because he bore the sin of many,

And made intercession for transgressors."

This passage is a very remarkable one, whatever instrumentality may be denoted by the "Servant of Jehovah." For it sets forth in a clear and emphatic manner the moral good and the general happiness which the writer conceived to be produced by the sufferings of the righteous. The resemblance, in some particulars, of the fortunes, character, and work of the Servant of God to those of our Saviour, is so striking that no one can fail to be impressed by it. The great body of Christians have been in the habit of regarding the passage as a miraculous prediction of the sufferings, death, and burial of Jesus of Nazareth. Any individual would be reluctant to oppose the general voice, were it not for the fact, that, owing to unfounded principles of interpretation, hundreds of passages in the Old Testament have from the earliest times with equal confidence been applied to Christ, which no wellinformed interpreter can now apply to him in the sense which

was in the mind of the writer. On many accounts the passage deserves a very careful consideration.

In view of the passages which I have heretofore quoted fron the Prophets, as descriptive of the coming and office of the Messiah, there arises at once a difficulty in the way of applying to him this remarkable description of the Servant of God. The difficulty is in accounting for the fact, that in every other passage in which the Messiah is introduced he is represented as prosperous, mighty, victorious, and that in this passage alone he should be represented as a sufferer. How remarkable that, if the prophets had regarded the Messiah as a sufferer, not one of them should have alluded to so important a circumstance, except the writer of this single passage! It is still more remarkable, when we consider that the very work of the Servant of God is represented in this description as in a considerable degree accomplished by his sufferings. Compare the passage, for instance, with the first prediction of the Messiah in Is. ix. 6. Here we find that, after a description of the great national distress, the writer goes on to say that it shall not continue. "For unto us a child is born," &c. Not a word is said here of the Messianic king's being in distress. Everything is of an opposite character, from his very birth. The same is true of every other prophetic description of the Messiah. This consideration cannot but raise a presumption against the common interpretation of the term Servant of Jehovah in ch. liii. It is not absolutely conclusive, because it might be said that the author of the passage entertained a different view from the rest of the prophets.

Perhaps it may be asked whether there is any actual inconsistency between the passage under consideration relating to the sufferings of the Servant of God, and the prophetic descriptions of the Messiah as a prosperous and triumphant temporal king. There certainly is no inconsistency in the representation that a monarch is at one time in adversity, and at another in prosperity. History informs us of many monarchs who have arrived at royalty by the path of trial, persecution, and suffering of various kinds. This was the case with David, from whom the prophets borrow some traits in their delineations of the Messiah. They might, therefore, have conceived of the Messiah as having arrived at the