opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before his shearers is dumb, yea, he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken ?' And they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, although he had done no wrong, neither was deceit in his mouth.

"But it was Jehovah's purpose to bruise him; he made him sick. If he should lay down his soul an offering for guilt, he would see a [his] seed, would prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah would prosper in his hand. From the travail of his soul shall he see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant make many righteous, and he shall bear the burden of their guilt. Therefore will I set him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

1

Almost all trouble that is mended on earth, almost all guilt whose effects on the sinner and on others are done away, is removed through the effort or toil or suffering of someone besides the sinner. All life suggests the vicarious principle, the atone-of Suffering. ment which all men, and, most of all, the

The Divine

Efficiency

noblest, pay for each other. Suffering for others, atonement, are thoughts which rise from all conceptions of noble-hearted toil.

All peoples have had high thoughts of beneficent effort. It was disclosed to Israel in exile, that the inner working efficiency of such effort lay in loving willingness to suffer. Not in the deed accomplished, the great victory won, the wise law promulgated, the just judgment decreed, the widow's wrong righted, the starving brother fed, the 'Is. lii, 13-liii.

enemy's ass delivered from the pit,-not in these acts themselves lay the efficient principle of that service which was eternally righteous and efficient in the redeeming purposes of God. It lay in love, in willingness to suffer, —a loving willingness which here on earth, so long as men shall sin, cannot but find need to realize itself in palpable suffering and self-sacrifice, even in martyrdom.

men.

With Israel, man's love of man had the highest motive and the highest sanction in God's love of man, and man's love of God reflecting it. Even as God acts towards his creatures shall man strive to act towards Him. But God is high above, and needs nothing; man must show his love and righteousness, which primarily are a reflex and a recognition of God's ways, by Godlike acts towards Israel conceived all human righteousness as a doing of Jehovah's commands; and Jehovah's commands to men were chords of his own nature. He was loving towards men;' men should be loving towards each other. And if with enlightened, exiled Israel, man's highest service of Jehovah lay in loving willingness to suffer and in actual suffering, was Jehovah to be thought to have demanded of man anything of which his own nature was not capable and even might not undergo? "In the image of God created he him." The highest service of Jehovah's perfect servant lay in suffering; he poured out his soul unto death. Had not Immanuel-God-with-us -suffered himself, and in his land? Was not the Messiah-King, in his more fully disclosed personality, to be meek and lowly, qualities which are capacities of suffering patiently if needs be, although there was to be no more suffering when he came ? Israel's highest thought of beings on earth-and she had no clear thought of life some other how or where—was of beings who suffered or could suffer. Moreover, highest love, the pure desire

1 At least towards Israel; and the thought of Jehovah's loving care of all men was beginning in Isaiah and Jeremiah. See Jer. xlviii, 47; Is. xix, 23-25; xlix, 6. 2 Ib., vii, 15; viii, 7, 8.

of the beloved's good, entails suffering in the lover when the loved one comes to ill. What ill so sore as sin? And what love so deep as Jehovah's? How could Jehovah not suffer when men sinned? Yes, he who longs to be gracious,' suffers for his people when they sin and reap the fruits: “In all his people's affliction he was afflicted.''' And, with the passion of God, Jehovah struggles for his people: "I have been still and refrained myself; now I will cry out like a travailing woman, I will pant and gasp together."

And finally, the crowning likeness between Jehovah and his Servant: both love, both suffer, and both redeem. Jehovah is mighty to deliver from captivity. Israel's iniquity obstructs his redeeming purpose. But the purpose of God will not be thwarted; it will surely effect righteousness through the punishment of the guilty, and the suffering even of those who need no repentance. To cause righteousness to increase is part of Jehovah's creative function. As a servant to work with him, he chooses Israel, then a better part, then a perfect one. And by perfect service here on earth, perfect wisdom, perfect righteousness, and love's offering perfected in suffering— perfect atonement corresponding to Jehovah's passionate redemptive purpose-the servant works with Jehovah, bears the burden of iniquity, lays down his soul an offering for guilt, makes many righteous.

The

Israel was always practical and rational. In the whole compass of her religion, which included ethics, the sanction of every act, the reason of its worth, lay in its effect, which should be to the doer pros- Sanction of perity or a nearer approach to God. Such Righteoussanction formed part of her highest Messianic ness. thought as well as of the preparatory inferences which, through her history, she had been drawing from her experience. And the conception of the sanction lifted itself up, keeping to the level of the righteous act, 1 Is. xxx, 18. 3 Ib., xlii, 14.

2 Ib., lxiii, 9.

Ib., lix.

as Messianic thought held onward toward perfecting the conception of Jehovah's service.

From the first, there was the thought of prosperity following obedience to Jehovah. This was the blessing' attached to Jehovah's service, which is repeated with renewed emphasis and enlarged detail in the successive utterances of the law: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all peoples. This is the outline, and the earliest code more fully expresses the blessing thus: "If ye will serve Jehovah your God, he will bless thy bread and thy water, and I will remove sickness from thy midst. There shall not be one failing of her young or barren in the land; the number of thy days will I fulfil. My terror will I send before thee, and I will discomfort all the people among whom you will come. And I will make thy boundary from the Red Sea even to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the river. For I will give into your hand the inhabitants of the land, and thou wilt drive them from thy presence." Deuteronomy and Leviticus enlarge upon this promised blessing, and apply it more to the condition of a settled community. The corresponding curse is expressed at length in the song of Moses' and elsewhere in Deuteronomy and Leviticus."

Although these blessings in the main are promises of earthly prosperity, and the curses threaten earthly misery, it would be improper to apply to them the term "temporal" in the sense of transient. For the promised prosperity was thought to last as long as Israel would

1 See Deut. xi, 26; and cf. Gen. xii, 1-3; xiii, 14-18; xv, 4, 5; xvii, 1-8; xxii, 15-18; xxviii, 13-16; xxxv, 9-12; Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, chap. iii.

Ex. xix, 5.

3 Ib., xxiii, 25-31. Trans. from Briggs, ib., p. 115.

4 Deut. xxviii, 3-13; Lev. xxvi, 3-12.

5 Deut. xxxii, 20–42.

6 Ib., xxviii; Lev. xxvi; see Briggs, ib., chap. iv.

observe Jehovah's law; and all blessings and curses necessarily related to earthly life among a people without clear conception of another. Sheol's recesses were too dim to afford a vista of reward and retribution there; moreover, this curse and blessing, which at first applied to the present and mortal existence of Israel in the Promised Land, formed the basis of the tumultuous thoughts of a final day of judgment, which came to the prophets.' And perhaps, for this same reason of the incompleteness of the conception of a spiritual life after death, in prophetic pictures of the Judgment Day and Messianic bliss, there is a certain mingling of the simple earthly with conditions hardly to be materially realized on earth.

The Last Judgment.

Israel had come to conceive her entire history as a series of judgments from Jehovah on her backslidings. It was quite in the course of her thought to think that a last judgment, a final discrimination, should usher in the Messianic time. Israel's restoration to Jerusalem formed a feature of this new beginning; and as she perceived more clearly Jehovah's purpose in her restoration, the conception of the Judgment Day broadened to include all nations; to all should like justice be applied, and from out of all peoples, those who turned to Jehovah should be saved.

The

The external features, the symbolic setting of Jehovah's day and the time following are familiar. prophet Joel gives perhaps the general prototype of subsequent pictures.' But not all prophecies of the Messianic day give the same prominence to the same features. In outline these features are: A regeneration of nature; the earth shall freely give forth food; all enmities of the brute creation, and between animals and man, shall cease;' a righteous regeneration and restoration of Israel

1 Briggs, ib., p. 117.

'Joel ii, 28-iii. But not all scholars think Joel pre-exilic. Another early type is Isaiah ii, 1–4; Micah iv, 1-5.

3 * Joel iii, 18; Amos ix, 13–15; Hos. ii, 21-23; Is. xi, 6–9; Is. xxxv.