The Sure Triumph of the Crucified One

“Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.” — Isaiah Hi. 13-15.

Modern Jewish writers refuse to see the Messiah in this passage, but their predecessors were not so blind. The Targum and the ancient Rabbins interpreted it of the Messiah, and indeed all attempts to explain it apart from him are palpable failures. Christian commentators in all ages have seen the Lord Jesus here. How could they do otherwise? To whom else could the prophet have referred? If the Man of Nazareth, the Son of God, be not right visible in these three verses, they are dark as midnight itself. We do not hesitate for a moment in applying every word to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dear brethren, when our Lord ascended on high he gave us this commission “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” Our duty is to obey that command, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear; the commission is unconditional, and is not dependent upon our success. If up to this date, 1875, there had never been a solitary convert through Christian ministry, if the whole of the church of God had hitherto laboured in vain, and the succession of saints had only been kept up by miracle, it would not affect our duty one iota. Our business is to preach the gospel, even to those who are aroused to persecution thereby. We are to sow, whether a harvest follow or not. Success is with God; service belongs to us. I believe, therefore, that true faith, when it is in a healthy condition, will enable us to go plodding on, carefully scattering the seed, even by the wayside and on stony places; yet there is flesh about us all, and faith is not always unalloyed with sight, and consequently we occasionally flag and almost faint if we do not see some present usefulness. This passage may cheer us if we fear that we have spent our strength for naught, for such certainly was the condition of the church of God at the time when this passage was addressed to it. There is a break made in our version between the 52nd and 5ord chapters, but no such break should have been made, and if we read straight on we shall see that these consoling words are meant for mourning workers. We hear even prophets saying, “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the l.ord revealed?” Even the bravest of the prophets lamented that the offence of the cross hindered men from seeing the comeliness of the Messiah. All glorious as he was to the prophets when they beheld his substitutionary griefs, he was not understood by the multitudes who only saw in him a man smitten of God and afflicted, having no beauty that they should desire him. To support them under circumstances so dispiriting there comes in this comfortable word of our text, in which the marred visage and disfigured form of the great servant of the Lord are fully recognised, and yet the voice of the Lord declares that the shame and contempt caused thereby will be temporary, and the ultimate result will be sure; the issue of the great scheme of redemption is by no means uncertain, his cause must prosper, his throne must be established, and the will of the Lord must be done. Let us brace ourselves up this morning with the delightful prospect of the predestinated triumph of the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

In handling our text we shall note, first, that, directing us to the Lord Jesus Christ, it dwells upon the character of his dealings, — “My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high.” Then secondly, it mentions the stumhling-Uock which lies in his way, the great hindrance to the progress of his work: “Many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” Thirdly, we see in the verses before us the certainty of the removal of this hindra7ice: “He shall sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him.” And, fourthly, the manner of its accomplishment. namely, by instruction in the gospel: “For that which had not been told them they shall see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.”

I. The character of our Lord’s dealings. He is called in the text, “3Iy servant,’’ a title as honourable as it is condescending. The Lord Jesus has undertaken in infinite love to become the servant of the Father for our sakes, and he is a servant like unto Moses, who was set over the Lord’s house to manage the affairs of the dispensation. Jesus, though a Son and therefore JiOrd, has deigned to become the great servant of God under the present economy; he conducts the affairs of the household of God, and it is said in the text, and it is to that we have to draw attention, that he deals prvclentli/. He who took upon him the form of a servant acts as a wise servant in everything; and indeed it could not be otherwise, for “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” This prudence was manifest in the days of his ilesh, from his childhood among the doctors in the temple on to his confession before Pontius Pilate. Our Lord was enthusiastic:

there was a fire burning- within him which nothing could quench, he found his meat and drink in doing his Father’s will; but that enthusiasm never carried him into rashness, or forgetfulness of sound reason; he was as wise and prudent as the most cold-hearted calculator could have been. Our Saviour was full of love, and that love made him frank and open-hearted; no frigid reserve kept him at a distance from the people, or shrouded him in a cloud of mystery, he was a man among men, transparent, childlike, “the holy child Jesus”; but for all that he was ever prudent, and “committed himself unto no man, for he knew what was in man.” Too many who aspire to be leaders of the people study policy, craft, and diplomacy, and think it needful to use language as much for the concealment as for the declaration of their thoughts; such men watch their own words till their very soul seems withered within them. The Friend of sinners had not a fraction of that thing about him; and yet he was wiser and more prudent than if diplomacy had been his study from his youth up. You see his wisdom when he baffles his adversaries; they think to entangle him in his speech, but he breaks their snares asunder as with a wave of our hand we sweep cobwebs from our path. You see his wisdom when he deals with his friends: he has many things to say unto them, but he perceives that they cannot l)ear them; he, therefore,- does not overload their intellects, lest undigested truth should breed mischief in their souls. Little by little, like the increasing brightness of the dawn, he lets light into their souls, lest their eyes should utterly fail before the brilliance thereof. He does not send them upon difficult errands at first; he reserves for their riper years and stronger days the sterner tasks and more heroic deeds of daring. As we see his career in the light of the four evangelists, it is distinguished for his prudence, and in that respect “never man spake like this man.”

He who on earth became obedient unto death has now gone into the ghry, but he is still over the house of Grod, conducting its affairs. He deals 2yrude)iflij still. Our fears lead us to judge that the affairs of Christ’s kingdom are going amiss, but we may rest assured that all is well, for the Lord hath put all things under the feet of Jesus, and made him to be head over all things to his church. The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in the hand of Jesus still. We err, but he does not. Nay, the very points wherein we err are overruled by him for the display of his unerring wisdom and consummate skill. The storms and tempests which surround the church serve only to illustrate the wisdom and power of our great Pilot; he has ultimate designs which are not apparent upon the surface, and these he never fails to accomplish.

Brethren, all along through the history of the church the dealings of the Lord Jesus with his people have been very remarkable. The wisdom in them is often deep, and only discoverable by those who seek it out, and yet frequently it sparkles upon the surface like gold in certain lands across the sea. Note how the Lord has made his church learn truth by degrees, and purified her first of one error and then of another. The church has fallen first into one folly and then into another, but her Lord has borne with her and delivered her. Full often he has allowed her to work her folly out, so as to see its result.

and by this process he has stamped out the error effectually, so that it will never gain power again. At the present time the gross folly of uniting with the State is being practically proved before the eyes of al, men, and when it has come to its fulness it will end, never to be revived again. “We wonder sometimes why he allows this or that error to exist, and we ask how it can be that the church should be so despoiled of her purity and weakened in her strength. We wonder that our Lord does not judge the evil and punish it at once, or that he does mot raise up some strong voice to protest against it, and, sending his Holy Spirit therewith, destroy the evil at once. I trow he might, but there is prudence in the withholding of his power. The wise physician iolerates disease until it shall have reached the point at which he can gra])ple with it, so as to eradicate it from the system, so has the good Lord allowed some ills to fester in the midst of his church, that he may ultimately exterminate them. We wish to see great success following all forms of ministry, we would see our missionary societies prosperous to such a degree that a nation should be born in a day; but the Lord withholds success in a great measure, and herein he is dealing prudently. He keeps us back from prosperity, till we have learned that it does not after all arise out of our plans, and schemes, and resources, and energies: he would strip us of pride; he would put us in such a condition that it would be safe to us to give us success, and would be glorious to himself also. Often has a church, like Israel of old, to suffer defeat till it finds out and destroys the Achan who troubles the camp. The church has been foiled and humbled till at last in sheer despair she has fallen upon her face in prayer, and lifted up her heart to the strong for strength, and then her strength has returned, and victory has waited on her banners. As rivers iilter and purify in their running, so does the church in her course become pure through the manifold wisdom of her Lord.

Study the pages of ecclesiastical history, and you will see how Jesus ■Christ has dealt wisely in the raising up of fitting men for all times. I could not suppose a better man for Luther’s age than Luther, yet Luther alone would have been very incomplete for the full service needed had it not been for Calvin, whose calm intellect was the complement of Luther’s fiery soul. You shall not find a better age for Wickliffe to have been born in than the time in which he shone forth as the morning star of the Reformation. God fits the man for the place, and the place for the man; there is an hour for the voice, and a voice for the hour.

Our Lord has done all things well even unto this day, but now, perhaps, we are getting a little tired; it is near two thousand years since he died, and there has been a long talk about its being the end of the six thousand years since creation’s day, and we murmur to each other that the great Sabbath must surely be very near. I am not much in love with this chronological theory, for I think we cannot be very certain that we have not long ago passed beyond the seventh thousand years. It is very questionable to me whether we do not altogether misunderstand the chronology of the Old Testament; certainly nothing is more perplexing than the ancient Hebrew numbering. Still, so the many will have it, and possibly so it is. A portion of the church not only expects the Lord’s second advent, but iets into a state of feverishness about the matter. Surely, say they, ills delays have been very great: why are his chariots so long in coming? Ah, brethren, the Master knows best. It may please him to finish up the present dispensation to-day; if so, he will doubtless deal prudently in so doing: but it may be that myriads of years are yet to elapse before his appearing, and if so there will be wisdom in the delay. Let us leave the matter alone, for while the general fact that he will come is clearly revealed in order to quicken our diligence,. the details are veiled in mystery, since they would only gratify ourcuriosity. If I knew that our Lord would come this evening, I should preach just as I mean to preach; and if I knew he would come during this sermon, I would go on preaching until he did. Christian people ought not be standing with their mouths open, gazing’ up into heaven and wondering what is going to happen; but they should abide with loins girt and lamps burning, rea’ly for his appearing,, whenever it may be. Go straight ahead upon the business your Lord has appointed you, and you need be under no apprehension of beingtaken by surprise. On one occasion I called to see one of our friends,, and I found her whitening the front steps. AVhen she saw me shejumped up and blushingly said, “Oh dear, sir, I am sorry you caught, me like this; I wish I had known you were coming.” “My dear sister,” I said, “I hope that is how the Lord will find me at his. coming — doing my duty.” I should like to be found whitening the steps when the Lord comes, if that were my duty. Steady perseverancein appointed service is far better than prophetical speculation, especially if such speculation leads us to self-conceit and idleness. AYe may rest, assured that the future is safe, for Jesus will deal wisely and come at,, the right time; therefore we may leave all matters in his hands. If the times are dark, it is right they should be; if the times are bright, it is right they should be; I at least cannot change the times, andt herefore my duty is to do the work God has given me to do, whether the times be dark or bright. For all practical purposes it is enough for us. that infinite wisdom is at the helm of affairs; “my servant shall deal prudently.”

Another translation of the passage is “my servant shall have prosperous success.” Let us append that meaning to the other. Prosper II ijwill grow out of our Lord s prudent dealings. The pleasure of the Lord prospers in the hands of Jesus. The gospel will prosper in the thingwhereto God has sent it. The decrees of God will be accomplished; his eternal purposes will be fulfilled. We may desire this or that, and our wish may or may not be granted, but whatsoever the Lord has, a])pointed in his infinite wisdom to be done will come to pass to the last jot and tittle. The blood of Jesus Christ will not miss of its foreseen result in reference to any individual under heaven, and no end that was designed in the eternal plan of redemption shall be left unaccom- •jlished. All along the line the Captain of our salvation will be victorious, and in every point and detail of the entire business the will of the Lord shall be done, and all heaven and earth shall be filled with praise as they see that it is so.

In consequence of this the text tells us the Lord shall he exalted and extolled. How well he deserves to be. exalted and extolled for his matchless prudence! Too highly he cannot be esteemed. At the present time you will say the name of Christ is not honoured; but wait awhile, and he shall be very high. His name is even now more honoured than in former days, when it was the jest of the nations. The prudent plans which the Lord has adopted are surely working out the growth of his kingdom, and will certainly result in bringing to the front his name, and person, and teaching. Perhaps you think that certain doctrines are hindrances to the success of the gospel: you know not what you say. In the end it shall be seen that every part of his teachings, and procedure, and every act of his life, and all his government in providence were so wisely ordered, that as a whole they secured in the best and speediest manner the exalting and extolling of his holy name. The star of Jesus rises higher every hour; the twilight of Calvary brightens towards millennial day. He was despised and rejected of men, but now tens of thousands adore him; and, according to the omnipotent promise of the Father, to him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord. The Spirit of God is at work glorifying Jesus, and providence is bending all its forces to the same end. In heaven Jesus is exalted and extolled; in his church he is very high; and even in the world itself his name is a word of power already, and destined to be supreme in ages to come. Thus much, then, upon the character of Messiah’s dealings.

II. Now let us view the Stumbling Block in the way of our Lord. It is his cross, which to Jew and Greek is ever a hindrance. As if the prophet saw him in vision, he cries out, “As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.” When he was here, his personal position and condition and appearance were very much against the spread of his kingdom. He was the son of a carpenter, he wore the smock-frock of a peasant, he associated with publicans and sinners. Is he the Son of David? We looked for a great prince; we hoped for another Solomon. Is this he? Therefore the Jews rejected the meek and lowly prince of the house of David, and, alas, they persist in their rejection of his claims.

To-day he has risen from the grave and gone into his glory, but the ottence of the cross has not ceased, for upon his gospel there remains the image of his marred visage, and therefore men despise it. The preaching of the cross is foolishness to many. The main doctrine of the gospel concerns Jesus crucified, — Jesus, the Son of God, put to an ignominious death, because for our sakes he was numbered with the transgressors, and bore the sin of many. Men will tell you they could believe Christianity if it were not for the atonement; that is to say, if Jesus will come down from the cross, modern scoffers will believe in him, just as the ancient ones tauntingly promised to do; but of the gospel we may say that atoning blood is the pledge thereof, and if you leave out the substitutionary work of Christ from it, there is no gospel left. It is a body without a soul. This, then, seems to be the impediment to the spread of the Redeemer’s kingdom: — he himself with his marred visage, and his gospel with a visage equally uncomely in the eyes of carnal men.

The practical part of the gospel is equally a stumbling-block to ungodly men, for when men inquire what they must do to be saved, they are told that they must receive the gospel as little children, that they must repent of sin, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Very humbling precepts for human self-sufficiency! And after they are saved, if they inquire what they should do, the precepts are not those which commend themselves to proud, hectoring human nature — for they are such as these — “Be kindly affectioned one to another,” “forgiving one another and forbearing one another even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” To the world which loves conquerors, and blasts of trumpets, and chaplets of laurel, this kind of teaching has a marred visage, and an uncomely form.

Then, what seems even more humbling, the Lord Jesus Christ in his prudent dealing not only brings before us a gospel offensive, because of the doctrine of atonement, and offensive in its practical precepts, but he sends this gospel among us by men who are neither great nor noble, nor even among the wise of this world. The proud say, “AVe would submit ourselves to men of master-minds, but we cannot endure these foolish ones. Send us philosophers and orators combined, let men overcome us by cogent arguments, let them master us by words whose splendour shall dazzle our intellects.” Instead of which the Lord sends a man who talks humbly, plainly, and perhaps even coarsely. Very simple is what he says: “Believe and live; Christ in your stead suffered for you, trust him:” he says this and little more. Is not this the fool’s gospel? Is it not worthy to be called the foolisluiess of preaching? “Men do not like this, it is an oifence to their dignity. They would hear Cassar if he would officiate in his purple, but they cannot endure Peter preaching in his fisherman’s coat. They will hear a pope in his sumptuous array, or a cardinal in his red hat, and they would not object to listen to a well-trained dialectician of the schools, or an orator from the forum; but they are indignant at the man who disdains the excellency of speech, and styles the wisdom of this world folly. How can the gospel spread by such means? How, indeed, unless the Lord be with it, using human weakness to display the power of his grace?

Worse still, if worse can be, the people who become converted and follow the Saviour are generally of the poorer sort, and lightly esteemed. “Have any of the rulers believed?” is still the question. With what scorn do your literary men speak of professed Christians! Have you ever seen the sneer upon the face of your “advanced thought” gentleman, and of the far-gone school of infidels, when they speak of the old women and the semi-idiots who listen to the pious platitudes of evangelical doctrines? They know how to despise us if they know nothing else! But is such scorn worthy of men? It is only another version of the old sneer of the Pharisees when they said, “Hearest thou what these say?” and pointed to the boys and the rabble, who shouted, “Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Contempt has always followed at the heels of Jesus, and it always will till the day of his glory. If the great ones of the earth despise the Lord Jesus, on their own heads be their blood; to him it is a glory rather than a shame that “the poor have the gospel preached to them.” He is the people’s Christ of R-hom it was written of old, — “I have exalted one chosen out of the people.” He rejoices to be called a leader and commander of the people, and he is glad that “the common people hear him gladly.” But here stands the head and front of the difficulty, — the cross, which is the soul of Christianity, is also its stumbling block.

If any here are offended with Christ because of his cross, I beg them to dismiss the prejudice. Should it lead any man to doubt the Saviour or withhold his heart from him because he comes with a visage marred with sorrow? If he came to teach us to be unhappy and to prescribe to us rules for increasing misery, we might be excused if we shunned his teaching; but if he comes bearing the grief himself that we may not bear it, and if those lines of agony were wrought in his countenance because he carried our griefs and our sorrows, they ought to be to us the most attractive of all beauties. I reckon that the scar across the warrior’s face, which he gained in defending his country, is no disfigurement to him; it is a beauty spot. If my brother had in saving my life lost an arm or received a hideous wound, he would be all the more beautiful in my esteem; certainly I could not shun him on that account. The wounds of Jesus are precious jewels which should charm our eyes, eloquent mouths which should win our hearts. Be attracted by him, all of you! Hide not your faces from him! Look on him and live and love. That crown of thorns has far more true glory about it than any crown of gold; those hands pierced and nailed it should be your delight to kiss; before that once sorrowing person you should bow with joyful alacrity. Jesus, thou marred One, thy cross, instead of being a stumbling-block to us is the glory of our faith.

That the gospel is spoken very plainly and that God blesses very simple people ought not to offend anybody. Ought it not rather to make us hopeful for the conversion of men because God may so largely bless commonplace instruments. Ought the conversion of the poor and the illiterate to be any offence to us? It shows a want of humanity; it looks as if pride had dried up the milk of human kindness in us, if we can grudge to those who have so little of this present world the priceless boons of another.

III. The certainty of the removal of this stumbling BLOCK and the spread of Christ’s kingdom. As his face was marred, so surely “shall he sprinkle many nations;” by which we understand, first, that the doctrines of the gospel are to fall in a copious shower over all lands. Jesus shall by his speech which drops as the dew and distils as the rain, sprinkle not the Jews only, but the Gentile nations everywhere. Thy brethren abhorred thee, 0 Imraanuel! they despised thee, 0 ilau of Nazareth! but all lands shall hear of thee, and feel thee coming down like showers upon the mown grass. The dusky tribes afar off, and the dwellers in the land of the setting sun shall hear thy doctrine, and shall drink it in as the fleece of wool sucks up dew. Thou shalt sprinkle many nations with thy gracious word.

This sprinkling we must interpret according to the jMosaic. ceremonies, and you know there was a sprinkling with blood, to set forth pardon of sin. and a sprinkling with water to set forth purification IVom i.liv power of sin. Jesus Christ with

“The water and the blood
From his riven side which flowed,”

has sprinkled not only many men but many nations, and the day will come when all nations shall feel the blessed drops which are scattered from his hands, and know them to be “of sin the double cure,” cleansing transgressors both from its guilt and power.

Dr. Kitto explains the passage by an Oriental custom. He says that kings when they invited their subjects to great festivals would employ persons to sprinkle with perfnnie all who arrived, as they passed the palace gate. I scarcely think that that is the meaning of the text, but at any rate it supplies an iihistration of it. Jesus invites men of all nations to come to the gos])el feast, and as they enter he casts upon them the sweet perfumes of his love and grace, so that they are fragrant before the Lord. There were no perfumes for thee, 0 Jesus, upon Calvary! Vinegar and gall were all they could afford thee; but now, since thou hast gone to heaven thou dost provide perfumes for multitudes of the sons of men, and nations north and south and east and west are refreshed with the delicious showers of fragrance which through the gospel fall upon them.

The text, then, claims for Jesus Christ that the influence of his grace and the power of his work shall be extended over many nations, and shall have power not over the common people only, but over their leaders and rulers. “The kings shall shut their mouths at him;” they shall have no word to say against him; they shall be so subdued by the majesty of his power that they shall silently pay him reverence, and prostrate themselves before his throne. Kings, mark you. I am always glad to hear of noblemen being converted, though I am by no means inclined to flatter the great, or to think more of one man’s soul than of another’s. I am glad, however, to hear of the salvation of peers and princes, for it iialicates the wide spread of the gospel when all classes are affected by it, and when those who usually stand aloof yield themselves to its power. “Kings shall shut their mouths at him.” This promise has not been fulfilled yet. There are those who think that the Biblical prophecies are pretty nearly accomplished, and that we are passing into a new dispensation. Well, I dare not dogmatise, but I dare question most of the talk I hear nowadays about the future. Scores of prophecies are not yet fulfilled. Kings have not shut their mouths at him yet: they have mostly opened their mouths wide against him, and reviled and blasphemed him and persecuted his saints. There must be brighter days to come for this poor world yet, when even princes shall humbly obey our Lord. The more I study the Bible, the more sure I am of two things which I cannot reconcile; first, that Christ will come at such an hour as men look not for him, and may come now; and secondly, that the gospel is to be preached in all nations, and that “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord.” I do not know which of the two things I am surest of; neither do I know how to reconcile them; but they are both m the AVord, and in due time they will be reconciled by history itself. 2p

Assuredly the day will come when the mightiest prince shall count it. his highest honour to have his name enrolled as a member of the church of Christ. “Yea, all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him.” The little handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains is yet to increase till the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon. “They shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord; for all shall know him from the least to the greatest.”

We look for this, and come it will. 0 thorn-crowned King of Calvary, kings shall’ be thy courtiers yet!

IV. Let us consider the manner of its accomplishment. How will it come to pass? Will there be a new machinery? Will the world be converted, and the kings be made to shut their mouths by some new mode of operation? I do not think so. Will the saints take the sword one day? Will it be accomplished by that wonderful implement of civilisation, a gun-boat? Shall we convert the Hottentots by gunpowder? We have had a little trial of these carnal weapons, and some admire the success, but they may live to lament it. The Prince of Peace bids us put the sword into its scaljbard; his weapons, like his kingdom, are not carnal, No, the way which has been from the beginning of the dispensation will last to its close. I believe that this battle is to be fought out on the line upon which it began. It pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. To conceive that oui- Lord will end the present mode of warfare, as though it were admitted that evil could not be conquered by the use of instrumentality, is to my mind to do him gi-eat dishonour. To me it is plain that, as he has chosen to magnify his power by using feeble instruments, he will continue to do so till the victory is won. He has never yet relinquished his work so as to give the enemy an opportunity of claiming a victory. To change weapons is to lay one’s self open to the charge of being unable to conquer with those first used; but it is not so with our Lord. The very same grain of mustard which is now so small is yet to become a tree with far-spreading branches, the leaven is yet to leaven the whole lump. The last harvest will be the result of sowing by men and not by some miraculous agency. The dividing of the people at last will be made from the contents of one and the same gospel drag-net, which we are bound to use till the heavens be no more.

According to this passage, these kings and nations are first of all to hear. “Faith coming by hearing.” They are to hear something new. Well, brethren, if they are to hear, we must preach and teach, so that our clear line of duty is to go on spreading the gospel. Jesus Christ would have his servants preach and teach the gospel. Are you doing it? Go on doing it, brother, in the power of the Holy Ghost, whatever comes. Have you not done it? Begin to do so now, as one of Christ’s servants, and pray for divine help. Do you say you cannot do it? You can. You are hiding your talent in a napkin; take it out, thou unfaithful servant, lest thy Lord come and judge thee! But you cannot teach many? Who said you could? Teach one. Oh, but you cannot preach? Who said preach? Teach; teach somehow. Cause the people to know the story of the cross. But you cannot teach kings.

you say. AVhy need you? Teach servants and children; only do spread Uie gospel. The world is to be won to Christ, if itp be ever won at all, by hearing the glad tidings of a dying Saviour’s love, and how can they hear without a preacher, and how can they preach except they be sent? Christ sends you, for he says, “Let him that heareth say ‘Come.’” In the power of that commission say at once,

“Now will I tell to sinners round
What a dear Saviour I have found,
Point them to his redeeming blood
And say, Behold the way to God.’’

These people appear not only to have heard, but to have seen. “That which had not been told them shall they see.” This seeing is not with their bodily eyes but by the perceptions of their minds. Faith comes by the soul perceiving what the gospel means. We cannot believe in that which we do not perceive. Therefore we must go on telling people the gospel till they see what the gospel is. Many men will never know the gospel till they have been told it a thousand times, and you must keep on telling it to them till you get to that thousandth time. “What do you mean by that?” say you. I mean this, that it must be line upon line and precept upon precept, almost to the exhaustion of patience, a mother’s prayers, a teacher’s anxieties, providences, sicknesses, twitches of conscience, ministries of all sorts, and many pleadings, and it is only at the last stroke that the word will be achieved, though all the other efforts will have contributed towards it. Go on, dear brother, go on, and teach Jesus Christ till the people see him. That sight will come upon a sudden. How many times have I heard the young convert say, “I knew all about this before, sir; I have heard it many times, but I could not see it; now I do see it.” Oh, how it makes a man shut his mouth at Christ in humble silence, when he perceives at last that his marred visage and suffering form were tokens of divine love, and that by such sorrows sin is purged away. Would to God you all saw him now.

After they had seen, it appears from the text that they considered, “That which they had not heard shall they consider.” This is how men are saved: they hear the gospel, they catch the meaning of it, and then they consider it. Let us pray, dear friends, that God would set unconverted people considering. If we can but get them to think, we have great hopes of them. If any of you here have never yielded to Jesus Christ, I would ask you to hear or read about him; spend this afternoon in carefully reading one of the gospels; turn to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John, and read the story of his passion, and ask God to let you see what it all means; and when you do see it, turn it all over in your minds. Think of it. Think how wonderful it is that God should become man to suffer in your stead. See if it be reasonable to disbelieve it or right to refuse to love the Saviour. There are a thousand reasons why you should rush into his arms and say, “Incarnate Deity, how can I resist thee? Bleeding Omnipotence, how dare I doubt thee? Immortal love, crucified for my sins, I yield myself to thee! I would be thy servant for ever.”

It is clear that those people, when they had seen and considered

596 prRTROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPIT.

silently, accepted the Lord as their Lord, for they shut their mouths at him; they ceased from all opposition; they quietly resigned their wills, and paid allegiance to the great King of kings. Brothers and sisters, we want to see this done for Christ now by hundreds here. There is a great religions stir just now, and we desire that this church, and all the churches abroad, should use the favourable breeze. You know how in harvest time the farmer gets all the men he can to work, and they toil on through long hours. I have seen them work in i; briskly beneath the bright moonlight to get in the wheat. This is our harvest time, and we must get our sheaves in. The Lord has much corn, and it needs to be garnered; I pray you make long hours and work hard for Jesus, and let the subject expounded this morning inspirit you therein. The success of the gospel is in no jeopardy whatever. Jesus must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. If the devil can persuade you that Christ is going to give up the war, or is going to fight it out on another line, and dispense with your efforts, you will soon grow idle. You will fintl an excuse for laziness in some supposed conversion of the world by miracle, or some other wonderful affair. You will say the Lord is coming, and the war wid all be over at once, and there is no need of your fighting it out now. Do not believe it. Our Commander is able to fight it through on this line; in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, by the power of the Eternal Spirit, we are bound to keep right on till this world yields before God. You remember the American general who, when the nation was eager for speedy victory, said he did not know when that would come, but that he would keep on pegging away. That is what we are bound to do; to keep on “pegging away.” No gunner may leave his gun, no subaltern may disperse his band, no officer may suggest a retreat. Brethren, Popery must fall, Mahommedanism must come down, and all the idol gods must be broken, and cast to the moles and to the bats. It looks a task too gigantic, but the bare arm of God — only think of that — his sleeve rolled up, omnipotence itself made bare, — hat cannot it accomplish? Stand back, devils! when God’s bare arm comes into the fight, you will all run like dogs, for you know your Master. Stand back, heresies and schisms, evils and delusions; you will all disappear, for the Christ of God is mightier than you. Oh, believe it. Do not be downhearted and dispirited, do not ran to new schemes and fancies and interpretations of prophecy. Go and preach Jesus Christ unto all the nations. Go and spread abroad the Saviour’s blessed name, for he is the world’s only hope. The cross is the banner of our victory. God help us to look to it ourselves, and then to hold it up before the eyes of others, till our Lord shall come upon his throne. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon — Isaiah lii.

Hymus feom “Our Own Hymn Book” — 72, 418, 352.

A SIMPLE REMEDY.

Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, September 1st, 1872, by
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NKVVINGTON.

“With his stripes we are healed.” — Isaiah liii. 5.

Ever since the fall, healing has been the chief necessity of manhood. There was no physician in Paradise, but outside that blissful enclosure professors of the healing art have been precious as the gold of Ophir. Even in Eden itself there grew the herbs which should in after days yield medicine for the body of man. Before sin came into the world, and disease, which is the consequence of it, God had created plants of potent efficacy to soothe pain, and wrestle with disease. Blessed be his name, while thus mindful of the body, he had not forgotten the direr sicknesses of the soul; but he has raised up for us a plant of renown, yielding a balm far more eflf’e’tual than that of Gilead. This he had done before the plague of sin had yet infected us. Christ Jesus, the true medicine of the sons of men, was ordained of old to heal the sicknesses of his people.

Everywhere, at this present hour, we meet with some form or other of sickness; no place, however healthful, is free from cases of disease. As for moral disease, it is all around us, and we are thankful to add that the remedy is everywhere within reach. The Beloved Physician has prepared a healing medicine which can be reached by all classes, which is available in every climate, at every hour, under every circumstance, and elfiictua! m every case wherever it is received. Of that medicine we shall speak this morning, praying that we may have God’s help in so doing.

It is a great mercy for us who have to preach, as well as for you who have to hear, that the gospel healing is so very sim.ple; our text describes it — “With his stripes we are healed.” These six words contain the marrow of the gospel, and yet scarcely one of them contains a second syllable. They are words for plain people, and in them there is no affectation of mystery or straining after the profound. I looked the other day into old Culpepper’s Herbal. It contains a marvellous collection of No. 1,UG8.

wonderful remedies. Had this old herbalist’s perscriptions been universally followed, there would not long have been any left to prescribe for; the astrological herbalist would soon have extirpated both sickness and mankind. Many of his receipts contain from twelve to twenty different drugs, each one needing to be prepared in a peculiar manner; I think I once counted forty diiferent ingredients in one single draught. Very different are these receipts, with their elaboration of preparation, from the Biblical prescriptions which effectually healed the sick — such as these: “Take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil,” or that other one: “Gro and wash in Jordan seven times;” or that other: “Take up thy bed and walk.” One cannot but admire the simplicity of truth, while falsho.id conceals her deformities with a thousand trickeries. If you would see Calpepper’s Herbal carried out in spiritual things, go and buy a Directory for the carrying on of the Ritualistic services of the Church of England, or the Church of Rome. You shall find there innumerable rules as to when you shall bow, and to what quarter of the heavens you shall look: when you shall stand up, and when you shall kneel: when you shall dress in black, in white, in blue, or in violet: how you shall pray, and what you shall pray, a collect being appointed for to-day, and another for to-morrow. On the other hand, it you would know the true way of having your souls healed, go to the AVord of God, and study such a text as this: “With his stripes we are healed.” In the one case all is mysterious, in the other all is simple and clear. Quackery cannot live without mystery, show, ceremony, and pretence. But the truth is as plain as a pikestaff, legible as though it were written on the br(^ad heavens, and so simple that a babe may comprehend it. “With his stripes we are healed,” I saw in Paris, years figo, a public vendor of quack medicines, and an extraordinary personage he was. He came riding into the market-place with a fine chariot drawn by horses, richly comparisoned, while a trumpet was sounded before him. This mighty healer of all diseases made his appearance clothed in a coat of as many colours as that of Joseph, and on his head was a helmet adorned with variegated plumes. He delivered himself of a jargon which might be French, which might also be Latin, or might be nonsense, for no one in the crowd could understand it. With a little persuasion the natives bought his medicines, persuaded that so great and wise a man could surely cure them. Truly, this is one reason why there is an adoption in the Romish Church of the Latin tongue, and why in many other churches there is an affectation of a theological jargon which nobody can comprehend, and which would not be of any use to them if they did compiehend it; the whole is designed to delude the multitude. To what purpose are fine speeches in the gosjiel ministry. Sicknesses are not healed by eloquence. It was an ill day in which rhetoric crept into the church of God, and men attempted to make the gospel a subject fur oratory. The gospel wants no human eloquence to recommend it. It stands most securely when without a buttress. Like beauty, it is most adorned when unadorned the most. The native charms of the gospel suffice to commend it to those who have spiritual eyes, and those who are blind will not admire it, deck it as we may. I shall, therefore, content my.self this morning with declaring the gospel to you in the plainest possible language, without any atteinpis at excellency of Bpeech. I know it to be the gospel of God; I know it will save you if you receive it; it has saved me; it has saved thousands more. I shall put it before you in plain, unvarnished language. I beseech you to receive it; and I pray that God’s Holy Spirit may lead you so to do.

Coming at once to our text, we observe, first, that these are sad words: ‘With his stripes we are healed”; we remark, seiondly, that these are glad words; and, then, we shall notice, thirdly, that these are very suggestive words.

I. These are sad words. They are part of a mournfal piece of music, which might be called “the Eequiem of the Messiah.” Hear ye its solemn notes: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But 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.” Do you not feel that the song so softly plaintive has touched your heart to pity, and moistened your eye with tears. “With his stripes we are healed.” This is not the brine of woe, but yet it is salt with sorrow. The sun is not eclipsed, but it shines through a cloud. No one reads the inner sense of these words without feeling grief of souL This is caused by the fact, that the words imply the existence of disease, and speak of great suffering connected with the remedy,

I say these are sad words, because they imply disease. “With his stripes we are healed.” This “we,” comprehends within itself all the saints, and hence it is clear that all the saints needed healing. Those who are to-day before the throne of God, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, were once defiled as the lepers who were shut out of the camp of Israel. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, David, Elijah, Hezekiah, Daniel, — all these were once sick of the accursed malady of sin. All the excellent of the earth among us now, who have been saved by sovereign grace, were once heirs of wrath even as others; as surely shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin as the rest of mankind. There is a confession here, by implication, of all who are washed in the blood of Jesus, that they needed washing; of all who are healed by his stripes, that they were sore sick with sin. This confession is true, every child of God will join in it, and he that knows himself best will make it with greatest emphasis. We were so diseased, that nothing could have restored us but the precious blood of our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is a dread fact that sin has infected the entire family of man. We are all sinful, smful through and through, corrupt with evil passions and depraved desires. Our fathers were fallen men, and so are we, and so will our children be. The putting of bitter for eweet, and of sweet for bitter, of darkness for light, and light for darkness, is engendered in us all. “Every one of them is gone back; they are altogether become filthy, there is none that doeth good, no not one.”

Oh, m- urnful, miserable fact — in a fair world, “where every prospect pleases,” beneath a glorious sky where stars peer down upon us like the eyes of God, man lives a rebel to his God, a traitor to the truth, an enemy of good, a slave of evil. He who was made to rule the world rules not himself. Fashioned for wisdom, he drivels like a fool i ordained ibr immortality, he labours for the whq of sin, which is death. Sin has dimmed his eye, hardened his heart, uncrowned his hfad, weakened his strength, filled him with putrifying sores, and left liiia naked to his shame.

The disease of sin is of the most loathsome character. Supposing it possible for every man to have had the leprosy, and yet for no man to have had sin, that would have been no calamity at all compared with that of our becoming sinful. If it could so have happened that we could have been deprived of our most useful faculties, and yet had remained innocent, that would have been a small catastrophe compared with this depiaviug of our nature by sin. To inoculate the parent stock with evil was the great desiga of Satan, for he knew that this would work the worst conceivable ill to God”s creatures. Hell itself is not more horrible than sin. No vision ghastly and grim can ever be so terrible to the spiritual eye as the hideous, loathsome thing called sin. Remember that this dread evil is in us all We are at this day, every one of us, by nature only fit to be burned up with the abominations of the universe. If we think we are better than that we do not know ourselves. It is a part of the infatuation of evil that its victims pride themselves upon their excellence. Our infernal pride makes ua cover our leprous foreheads with the silver veil of self-deception. Like a foul bog covered over with greenest moss, our nature hides its rottenness beneath a film of suppositious righteousness.

And, brethren, while sin is loathsome before God at the present time, it will lead to the most deadly result in due season. There is not a man, or woman among us that can escape the damnation of hell apart from the healing virtue of the Saviour’s atoniu’;,’ sacrifice. No, not one. Yon lovely little girl is defiled in heart, all)eit t;hat as yet nothing worse than childish folly is discoverable; leave but that little mind to its own devices, and the fair child will become an arch-transgressor. Yonder most amiable youth, although no blasphemous word has ever blackened his lip, and no lustful th ught has yet inflamed his eye, must yet be born agnin, or he may wander into foulest ways; and yonder most moral tradesman, though he has as yet done justice to his fellow men, will perish if he be not saved by the grace of God through Christ Jesus. Sin dwelleth in us, and will be deadly in the case of every one among us, without a solitary exception, unless we accept the remedy which God has provided.

Ah, dear fi-iends, this disease is none the better because we do not feel it. It is all the worse. It is one of the worst symptoms in some diseases, when men become incapable of feeling. It is dreadful when the delirious sick man cries out “I am well enough; I will leave this bed; I will go to my business.” Hear how he raves; must we not put him under restraint? The louder his boasts of health the more sad the delirious patient’s condition. When ignorance is known and felt it is not dense, but he who knows nothing, and yet fancies that he knows everything, is ignorant indeed.

Sin is also a very painful disease when it is known and felt. Whea the Spirit of God leads a man to see the sin which is really in himself,, then how he changes his note. Oh, children of God, have you forgotten, how acutely sin made you smart? Those black days of conviction! — my

60ul hath them still in remembrance, remembering the wormwood and the gall. The period of my conviction of sin is burnt into my memory as with a red-hot iron: its wounds are cured, but the scars remain. A& Habakkuk has well put it, “When I heard, my belly trembled, my li[)s quivered at the voice, rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself.” Oh, ’tis a burden, this load of sin, a burden which might crush an angel down to hell. There I stood, and seemed like another staggering Atlas, bearing up a world of sin upon these shoulders, and fearing every moment lest I should be crushed into the abyss and justly lost for ever. Only let a man once feel sin for half-an-hour, really feel its tortures, and T warrant you he would prefer to dwell in a pit of snakes than to live with his sins. Remember that cry of David, “My sin is ever before me;” he speaks as though it haunted him. He shut his eyes but he still saw its hideous shape; he sought his bed, but like a nightmare it weighed upon his breast; he rose, and it rose: with him; he tried to shake it off” among the haunts of men, in business and in pleasure, but like a blood-sucking vampire it clung to him. Sin was ever before him, as though it were painted on his eye-balls, the glass of his soul’s window was stained with it. He sought his closet but could not shut it out, he sat alone but it sat with him; he slept, but it cursed his dreams. His memory it burdened, his imagination it lit up with lurid flame, his judgment it armed with a ten-thonged whip, his expectations it shrouded in midnight gloom. A man needs no worse hell than his own sin, and an awakened conscience. Let this be instead of racks and whips of burning wire. Conscience once aroused will find in sin the worm undying, the unquenchable fire, and the bottomless pit. Though God himself will punish sin, yet it is a wolf which tears its own flesh, a viper which turns its envenomed fang upon itself. Peradventure many of you may reply, “But we do not feel this!” True, because you have contrived for the present to give sedatives to conscience. I pity you because you are not aware of the truth. I see how it is with you. Yon think your money making, or spending your days pleasantly, or your performance of your daily labour, is all you need consider; but if you were not deceived by sin you would know better; you would understand that you are God’s creatures and that God did not make you to live for yourselves. Which among you builds a house and does not intend either to live in it or gain something by the letting of it? And do you think God made you without designing to glorify himself in you? Oh, men and women, did your Creator make you that you might live only for yourselves, and make your bellies your gods? l)o you dream that you may miss the end of your being, and not have it required at your hands? Will he suffer you to rob him of your service, and wink at your rebellion, and treat it as if it were nothing? It shall not be so, as ye will find to your cost. Oh, may you be taught now the evil of sin. Spirit of God, it is thine office to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; do thine office now, for none will apply for healing till they feel the smart, none will look to the stripes of Jesus till they feel the wounds of sin. When sin is bitter, Christ is sweet; but only then. Wliea death threatens, then do men fly to Christ for life. No man ever love a

Christ till he loathes himself; no man ever cares for Jesns till he comes to see that out of Jesus he is a lost, ruined, and undone soul. Oh, may God grant that the sorrowful part of these words may ring in your ears till you mourn your grievous sin.

But there is a second sorrow in the verse, and that is sorrow for the suffering ly tvhich we are healed. “With his stripes we are healed.” I find that the word here used is in the singular, and not as the translation would lead you to suppose. I hardly know how to translate the word fully. It is read by some as “weal,” “bruise,” or “wound,” meaning the mark or print of blows on the skin; but Alexander says the word denotes the tumour raised in flesh by scourging. It is elsewhere translated “blueness,” “hurt,” and “spots,” and evidently refers to the black and blue marks of the scourge. The use of a singular noun may have been intended to set forth that our Lord was as it were reduced to a mass of bruising, and was made one great bruise. By the Buffering which that condition indicated we are saved.

Our text alludes partly to the sufferings of his body, but much more to the agonies of his soul. The body of our Lord and Saviour was bruised. Scourging under the Jewish law was always moderate; there was a pause made at a point which mercy had appointed. Thirty-nine stripes were all that could be given. But our Lord was not beaten according to the Jewish law; he was scourged by Pilate, and the scourging of the Romans was peculiarly brutal. They stopped not at the forty stripes save one, they smote at random, according to their own will. The Saviour endured a scourging which was intended to be a substitute for death, — “I will scourge him and release him,” said Pilate, — but instead of its being a substitute for death it became a prelude to it. Probably most men would prefer to die rather than to be scourged after the Roman fashion, and might be wise in making such a choice. Sinews of oxen were intertwisted with knuckle bones of sheep, and these were armed with small slivers of bone, so that every stroke gashed the flesh deeply, and caused fearful wounds and tearings; as saith the prophet, “the ploughers made deep furrows.” Our Saviour’s back was ploughed and furrowed deeply in the day of his scourging. Now you may look at the person ot Jesus, your substitute and sacrifice, covered with livid bruises by human cruelty, and say, “With his stripes we are healed.”

But you must not stop there and think that flesh wounds were all his stripes, for our Lord bore more terrible stripes in his soul. He was smitten in his heart each day of his life. He had to suffer the ills of providence. Being a man he had sympathy with us in all those stripes which are the inheritance of Adam’s sons; he felt the stripes of poverty, stripes of weariness, stripes of sickness, stripes of heaviness, stripes of bereavement; above all others, he was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Moreover, he had to run the gauntlet of all mankind. Stripes fell upon our Saviour from all sorts of men, for every man’s sin laid a stroke upon his shoulder. When he was here on earth, if he saw men sin, that smote him; if he heard them speak a wrong word, that smote him; having sinned, we have been hardened by sin; but he was pure and perfect, and it was a bruise to him to come into contact with ‘sin. You know how his adversaries called him a drunken man and a p

wine-bibber; how they said he had a devil, and was mad. Thus they were all striking him; each man laying on his blow with all his might. Worse than all, he was wounded in the house of his friends. Was any blow equal to that which Judas lay upon thnse shoulders? And next to that, could anything surpass in pain the blows which Peter gave when he said, “I knovr not the man I” There was a cruel process in the English navy, in which men were made to run the gauntlet all along the ship, with sailors on each side, each man being bound to give a stroke to the poor victim as he ran along. Our Saviour’s life was a running of the gauntlet between his enemies and his friends, who all struck him, one here and another there. By those sorrowful and shameful stripes we this day are healed.

Satan, too, stru; k at him. I think I see the Arch-fiend ascend from the pit with haste, and, lifting himself upon his dragon wings, come forward to strike the Saviour, daring to inflict upon his soul the accursed temptations of hell. He smote him in the desert, and in the garden, till beneath that smiting great drops of blood crimsoned his face. But this was nothing, compared with the fact that he was smitten of God. Oh, what a word is that! If God were to lay his finger on anyone of us this morning, only his finger, we should be struck with sickness, paralysis, aye, and death. Then think of God smiting! God must smite sin wherever he sees it; it is just that he should do so; it is as much an essential part of God’s nature that he should crush sin, as that he should love, for, indeed, it is only love in another form that makes him hate that which is evil. So when he saw our sin laid upon his Son, he smote him with the blows of a cruel One, till beneath that smiting his Son cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me “? He was bearing in that moment all the crushing blows of that great sword of vengeance, of which we read in the prophets — “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord.”

Put these things all together as best you can, for I lack words with which fitly to describe these bruises from the ills of life; bruises from, friends and foes, stripes from Satan, and smitings from God, and surely it is the most sorrowful story that ever was told.

“O king of grief! (a title strange, yet true;

To thee, of all kings, only due.)
0 king of wounds! how shall I grieve for thee

Who in all grief outrunnest me?
Shall I weep blood? why, thou hast wept such store,

That all thy body was one sore.
Shall I be scourged, flouted, boxed, sold?

‘Tis but to tell the tale is told;
My God, my God, who dost thou part from me,

Was such a grief as cannot be.”

One needs to be a Niobe, a dripping well of tears, to mourn the chief among ten thousand made the chief of sufferers. That the ever blessed One should suffer I That the Lord of life should bleed 1 The r.Dgels worship him, and yet Jehovah smote him! He is so fair, that nothing else is beautiful to any eye that has once gazed upon him, and yet they spit in his face and mar his lovely countenance with cruel blows of brutal fists! He is all tenderness, but they are all cruelty! He is harmless as a lamb, he never thoujiht nor spoke a thing of wrong to mortal man, but yet they strike him as though he were a fierce beast of prej’, fit only to be bruised to death. He is all love, and, when they smite him worst, he doth but pray for them, yet smite they still! No curses drop from those dear lips, but words of pity only, and of sweet intercession, follow each blow, yet still they wound, and buffet, and blaspheme! Oh, grief, far deeper than the sea I Oh. woe immeasural’le! They smite him for whom they ought to have gladly died, him for whom the noble army of martyrs counted it all joy to lender up their lives. They despitefully entreat him who came on errands of pure mercy and disinterested grace. Oh, cruel whips and cruel hands, and yet more cruel hearts, of wicked men! Surely we should never read such words as these without feeling that they call for sorrow — sorrow, which if mingled with spiritual repentance, will be a fit anointing for his burial, or, at least, a bath in which to w’ash away the blood stains from his dear, and most pure flesh.

IJ. Next — and may the Spirit of God help us with fresh power — THESE ARE GLAD WORDS. “With his Stripes we are healed,” They are glad words, first, because they spealc of limling. “AVe are healed.” Understand these words, Oh, beloved, of that virtual healing which was given you in the day when Jesus Christ died upon the Cross. In the moment when Christ yiehled up the ghost, all his elect might have said, and said with truth, “We are healed;” for, from that moment their sins were put away; a full atonement was made for all the chosen. Christ had laid down his life for his sheep; he had redeemed his saints from among men; the ranscm price was fully paid; for sin a complete expiation was made; the redeemed were clear. Let us this morning walk up and down with perfect peace and confidence, for from the day when Jesus died we were perfectly clear before the judgment seat of God. “With his stripes we are healed,” or rather “we were healed,” for the words are in the past in the original Hebrew. “With his stripes we were healed.” My sins, they ceased to be, centuries ago; my debts, my Saviour paid them before I was born, and nailed up the receipted bill to his Crnss, and I can see it there. The handwriting of ordinances that was contrary to us, he took it away and nailed it to his Cross. I can see it, and while I read the long list of my sins — oh, how long, what a roll it wanted to contain them, — yet I see at the bottom, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” It matters not how long that roll was; the debt is all discharged. I am acquitted before God, and so is every believer in Jesus. Every soul that rests in Jesus was at the time wdien Jesus died, there and then absolved before the sacred judgment seat. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” is a fit challenge to ring forth from the Cross where atonement was finished.

But, dear friends, there is an actual application of the great expiation to us when by faith we receive it individually, and it is that also which is intended here. To as many as have believed in Jesus, his stripes have given the healing of forgiveness of sin, and, moreover, it has conquered the deadly power of sin. Sin no longer hath dominion over them, tor they are not under the law but under grace. Nothing evei

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delivers a man from the power of sin like a sight of the suffering Saviour. [ have heard of a man who had lived a dissolute life, who could never be reflaimed from it by any means, but at last, when he saw his mother sicken and die from grief at his ways, the thought that she had died becfiuse of his sins touched his heart, and made him repent of his ungodliness. If there was such elficacy to cause repentance, in that form of suffering, much m.ore is there when we come to see Jesus die in our stead. Then our heart melts with love to him; then hatred of sin takes possession of the soul; and the reigning power of evil is therefore destroyed. Christ’s stripes have healed us of all love of sin. Faith in the Crucified One has healed our eyes; once they were blind, for “when we saw him, there was no beauty that we should desire him.” K“ow, since we have seen his stripes, we see all beauties unite in his adorable person. I know, beloved, if you have put your trust in the sufferings of Jesus, you think him to be the most pi’ecious of beings, you see a loveliness in him which all heaven’s angels could not rival. The stripes of Immanuel have also healed our hearts. “We hid as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not,” but now our hearts delight in him, and we turn Our faces towards him as the flowers look to the sun. We only wish that w’e could see him face to face. And he has healed our feet, too, for they were prone to evil; note the verse that follows our text, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” A sight of his stripes has brought us back; and, charmed by the disinterested love which suiTered in our stead, we follow the yreat bishop and shepherd of our souls, and desire never again to wander from his commands. From head to foot his stripes have bound up our wounds, and mollified them with ointment. He forgiveth all our iniquities, he healefch all our diseases. Beloved, if you would be cured of any sin, however spreading its infection, fly to Jesus’ wounds. This is the only way to be rid of the palsy of fear, the fever of lust, the sore blains of remorse, or the leprosy of iniquity; his stripes are the only specific for transgression.

J^feii have tried to overcome their passions by the contemplation of death, but they have failed to bury sin in the grave; they have striven to subdue the rage of lust within their nature by meditating upon hell, but that has only rendered the heart hard and callous to love’s appeals. He who once believingly beholds the mystery of Christ suffering for him, shakes off the viper of sin into the fire which consumed the great sacrifice. Where falls the blood of the atonement, sin’s hand is palsied, its grasp is relaxed, its sceptre falls, it vacates the throne of the heart; and the spirit of grace, and truth, and love, and righteousness, occupies the royal seat.

I may be addressing some this morning who despair of being saved. Behold Christ smarting in your stead, and you will never despair again. If Jesus bore the transgressors’ punishment there is every room for hope. Peradventure your disease is love of the world and a fear of man; You dare not become a Christian because men would laugh at you.. If you could hear the scourges fall upon the Saviour’s back, you would henceforth say, “Did he suffer thus for me? I will never be ashamed of him again,” and instead of shunning the fight you would seek out (JOG METEOPOLITAN TABEENACLE PULPIT.

the thick of the fray. ““With his stripes we are healed.” It is a universal medicine. There is no disease by which your soul can be afflicted, hut an application of the blue bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul. Are you ambitious? This will bring you down. Are you desponding? This will lift you up. Are you hot with passion? This will cool you. Are you chill with indolence? This will stimulate you. The Cross! the Cross! the Cross of Christ! what power dwells in it! Full sure if even for Satan that Cross had been set up on earth, it would have lifted him from hell to heaven! But it is not for him; it is, howeve for the vilest of the sons of men; and there are no sons of men so corrupt that the Cross of Christ cannot purge them of all evil. Bear ye this gospel into Africa, where superstitious sorcery holds men’s minds in thraldom, it will uplift before all eyes the charter of Afric’s liberty; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand’s, liberated from her chains, when she shall see a Crucified Saviour. Bear ye the Cross amongst the Brahmins or among the Soodras of Hindostan, preach the Cross amongst a race of men who boast their wisdom; and they shall become ignorant in their own esteem but truly wise before the Lord, when they shall see the light that streams from Immanuel’s wounds. Even Oriental cunning and lasciviousness are thus healed.

Do not tell me that we ought mainly to preach Christ exalted. I will preach my Lord upon the throne and delight therein, but the great remedy for ruined manhocd is not Christ in glory, but Christ in shame and death. We know some who select Christ’s Second Advent as their one great theme, and we would not silence them; yet do they err. The second coming is a glorious hope for saints, but there is no cure in it for sinners; to them the coming of the Lord is darkness and not light; but Christ smitten for our sins, there is the star which breaks the sinner’s midnight. I know if I preached Christ on the throne many proud hearts would have him; but, Oh, sirs, ye must have Christ on the Cross before ye can knolf him on the throne. Ye must bow before the Crucified, ye must trust a dying Saviour, or else if ye pretend to honour him by the glories which are to come, ye do but belie him, and ye know him not. To the Cross, to the Cross, to the Cross! write that upon the sign-posts of the road to the city of refuge! Fly there, ye guilty ones, as to the only sanctuary for the sinful, for “with his stripes we are healed.” There is joy in this.

There is another joy in the text — ^o?/ in the honour which it Irings to Christ. The stripes, let us lament them; the healing, let us rejoice therein; and then, the physician, let us honour him. “With his stripes we are healed.” Jesus Christ works real cures. “We are healed, effectually healed. “We were healed when we first believed, we are healed still. Abiding cure we have, for still to his wounds we fly. An eternal cure have we, for never man was healed by Christ and then relapsed and died. “With his stripes we are healed,” by nothing else; by no mixture of something else with those stripes; not by priestcraft, not by sacraments, not by our own prayers, not by our own good works. ““With his stripes we aie healed,” — healed of all sin of every kind, of sins past, of sins present, and sins to come; we are healed, completely healed of all, and that in a moment; not through long years of waiting and of gradually growing better, but “With his stripes we are healed,” completely healed, even now. Blessed be his name. Now, child of God, if thon wouldst give glory to God, declare that thou art healed this morning. Be not always saying, “I hope I am saved.” The man who says he hopes he is cured does not greatly recommemi the physician; but the man who knows he is, he is the man who brings him honour. Let us speak positively: we can do so. Let us speak out in the face of all mankind, and not be ashamed. Let us say, “As surely as we were diseased, so surely are we healed through the stripes of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let us give Jesus all glory, let us magnify him to the utmost.

I see now in vision a company of men gathering herbs along the slopes of the Seven Hills of Rome; with mystic rites they cull those ancient plants, whose noxious influence once drugged our fathers into deadly slumbers. They are compounding again the cup of Rome’s ancient sorcery, and saying: ‘• Here is the universal medicine! the great Catholic remedy.” I see them pouring their Belhidonna, Monkshood, and deadly Henbane, into the great pot for ever sinnnering on the Papal hearth. Think you the nations are to be healed by this accursed amalgam? Will not the end be as in the days of the prophets, when one gathered wild gourds, and they cried out, “there is death in the pot?” Ay, indeed, so it will be, even though Oxford and Canterbury set their seal upon the patent medicine. Come, ye brave sons of protesting fathers! Come and overturn this witches’ caldron, and spill it back into the hell for which alone it is fit. Pity that even old Tiber’s tawny flood should be poisoned with it, or bear its deadly mixture to that sea across which once sailed the apostolic barque. The wine of Rome’s abominations is now imported into this island, and distributed in a thousand towns and villages by your own national clergy, and all classes and conditions of men are being made drunk therewith. Ye lovers of your race, and of your God, stop the traflic,. and proclaim around the Popish caldron, “There is no healing there.” No healing plants ever grew upon the Seven Hills of Rome, nor jire the roots improved in virtue if transplanted to Canterbury, or the city oa the Isis. There is one divine remedy, and only one. It is no mixture.. Receive ye it and live — “With his stripes we are healed.” No sprinkling can wash out sin, no confirmation can confer grace, no masses can propitiate God. Your hope must be in Jesus, Jesus smitten, Jesus bruised, Jesus slain, Jesus the Substitute for sinners.. Whosoever believes in him is healed, but all other hopes are a lie from top to bottom. Of sacramentarianism, I will say that its Alpha is a lie, and its Omega is a lie, it is false as the devil who devised it; but Christ, and only Christ, is the true Physician of souls, and his stripes the only remedy. Oh, for a trumpet to sound this through every town of England! through every city of Europe! Oh, to preach this in the Colosseum! or better still from the pulpit of St. Peter’s! — “With his stripes we are healed.” Away, away ye deceivers, with your mixtures and compounds: away ye proud sons of men with your boastings of what ye feel, and think, and do, and what ye intend and vow. “With his stripes we are healed.” A crucified Saviour is the sole and only hope of a sinful world.

III. Xou-, I said this is a very suggestive text, but I shall not give you the suggestions, for time has failed me, except to say that whenever a man is I’lealed through the stripes of Jesus, the instincts of his nature should make him say, “I will spend the strength I have, as a healed man, for him who healed me.” Every stripe on the back of Christ cries to me, “Thou art not thine own; thou art bought with a price.” What say you to this — you who p.rofess to be healed? Will you live to liini? Will you not say, “For me to live is Christ. I desire now, having been healed through his precious blood, to spend and be spent in his service.” Oh, if you all were brought to this it would be a grand day for London, — if we had a thousand men who would preach nothing but Christ, and live nothing but Christ, what would the world see? A thousand? Nay, give us but a dozen men on fire with the love of Jesus, and if they would preach Christ out and out, and “through and through, and nothing else, the world would know a change before long. We should hear a<iain the cry, “The men that turn the world upside down have come hither also.” Nothing beneath the sun is so mighty as the gospel. Believe me, there is nothing so wise as Christ, and nothing so potent over human hearts as the Cross. Vain are the dreams of intellect, and the boasts of culture. Give me the Cross and keep your fineries.

You will know this when you come to die, beloved. You will find nothing able to cheer your departing moments but the Saviour on the bloody tree. When the man is panting for existence, and the breath is hard to fetch, and the spirit faces eternity, you want no priest, no dead creed, no gaucy oratory, no sacraments, no dreams; you will demand certainties, verities, divine realities; and where find you them but in the divine Substitute? Here is a rock to put your foot on, here are the rod and the staff of God himself to comfort you. Then nothing will seem more admirable than the simple truth that God became man and suffered in man’s stead, and that God has promised that whosoever believeth in his Son shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

Beloved, if you know that Jesus has healed you, serve him, by telling others about the healing medicine. Whisper it in the ear of one; tell it in your houses to the twos; preach it, if you can, to the hundreds and thousands; print it in the papers; write it with your pen; spread it through every nook and corner of the land. Tell it to your children; tell it to your servants; leave none around you ignorant of it. Hang it up everywhere in letters of boldest type. “With his stripes we are healed.” Oh, sound it! sound it! sound it loud as the trump of doom! and make men’s ears to hear it, whether they will or no! The Lord bless you with this healing. Amen.

rCRT.TONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SeRMON — Mark XV. 1 — 39:

Isaiah liiL
r

INDIVIDUAL SIN LAID ON JESUS.

pennon

Deliveeed on Lord’s-day Morning, April 10th, 1870, bi
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“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.” — Isaiah liii. 6.

I THINK I addressed you from this text four years ago,* but I feel quite safe in returniug to it, for we shall never exhaust it; it is a verse so wealthy in meaning, that if I had during the whole four years dilated upon it every Sabbath, it would be my fault if the theme were stale. On this occasion I desire mainly to draw attention to a part of the text upon which little was said on the former occasion. The vine is the same, but we shall gather clusters from a bough ungleaned before. The jewels are the same, but we will place them in another light and view them from another angle. May God grant that some who derived no comfort from our former word may be led to find peace and salvation in Christ this morning. The Lord in his infinite mercy grant it may be so.

I shall first lye a general expo if ion of the text; then in the second place, shall dwell upon the special doctrine which I wish to teach; and then, thirdly, we shall draw from that special doctrine a special lesson.

I. First, we will give a general exposition of the text. “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.”

The text naturally breaks itself up into these three heads — is a confession general to all penitents, “All we like sheep have gone astray;” a personal confession lieculiar to each one, “We have turned every one to his own way;” and then, the august doctrine of substitution, which is the very soul and spirit of the entire gospel, “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Our exposition, then, begins with the confession which is universal to all penitents — it is acknowledged here by the persons speaking, who call themselves “all ive” — that they all had, like sheep, broken the hedge of God’s law, forsaken their good and ever blessed Shepherd, and wandered into paths perilous and pernicious. A comparison is here used, audits use shows that the confession was a thoughtful one, and not a matter of careless form. Man is here compared to a beast, for sin brings out the

* “Sin Laid on Jesus,” No. G9i, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.

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animal part of us, and while holiness allies us to angels, sin degrades us to brutes. “We are not likened to one of the more noble and intelligent animals, but to a silly sheep. All sin is folly, all sinners are fools. Sheep are dishonoured by the comparison here used, for with all their silliness they have never been known to rush into the fire after having felt the flame. You will observe that the creature selected for comparison is one that cannot live without care and attention. There is no such thing as a wild sheep. There could not long be sheep unless they were tended and cared for by a shepherd. The creature’s happiness, its safety, and very existence, all depend upon its being under a nurture and care far above its own. Yet for all that, the sheep strays from the shepherd. Man’s happiness lies in being under the direction of the Lord, in being obedient to God, in being in communion with God, and departure from God is death to all his highest interests, destruction to all his best prospects; yet for all that, as the sheep goeth astray, even so doth man.

The sheep is a creature exceedingly quick-witted upon the one matter of going astray. If there be but one gap in the hedge the sheep will find it out. If there be but one possibility out of five hundred that by any means the flock shall wander, one of the flock will be quite certain to discover that possibility, and all its companions will avail themselves of it. So is it with man. He is quick of understanding for evil things. God made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions, the inventions being all to destroy his own uprightness, and to do despite to the law of God. But that very creature which is so quick-witted to wander is the least likely of all animals to return. The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass knows its master’s crib; even the swine that will wander by day will return to the trough by night, and the dog will scent out his master over many a league, but not so the sheep. Sharp as it is to discover opportunities for going astray, it seems to be bereft of all wit or will to come back to the fold. And such is man — wise to do evil, but foolish towards that which is good. With a hundred eyes, like Argus, he searches out opportunities for sinning; but, like Bartimeus, he is stone blind as to repentance and return to God.

The sheep goes astray, it is said, all the more frequently when it is most dangerous for it to do so; propensities to stray seem to be developed in the very proportion in which they ought to be subdued. Whereas in our own land a sheep might wander with some safety, it wanders less than it will do in the Oriental plains, where for it to go astray is to run risks from leopards and wolves. Those very men who ought to be most careful, and who are placed in positions where it is best for them to be scrupulous, are those who are most prone to follow after evil, and with heedless carelessness to leave the way of truth.

The sheep goes astray ungratefully. It owes everything to the shepherd, and yet forsakes the hand that feeds it and heals its diseases. The sheep goes” astray repeatedly. If restored to-day it may not stray to-day if it cannot, but it will to morrow if it can. The sheep wanders further and further, from bad to worse. It is not content with the distance it has reached, it will go yet greater lengths; there is no limit to its wandering except its weakness. See ye not your own selves, ray brethren, as in a mirror? From him that has blessed you you have mDIVIDUAL Sm LAID ON JESUS. 611

gone astray; to him you owe your all, and yet from him you continually depart. Your sins are not occasional, they are constant, and your wanderings are not slight, but you wander further and further, and were it not for restraining grace which has prevented your footsteps you would have wandered even now to the utmost extremities of guilt, and utterly destroyed your souls.

“All we like sheep have gone astray.” What, is there not one faithful soul? Alas! No! “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Search the ranks of the blessed in heaven, and there is not one saint before the throne who will boast that when on earth he never sinned. Search the church of God below, and there is not one, however closely he walks with God, but must confess that he has erred and strayed from God’s ways like a lost sheep. Yain is the man who refuses to confess this, for his hypocrisy or his pride, whichever may be the cause of such a nonconfession, proves that he is not one of God’s chosen, for the chosen of God unanimously, mournfully, but heartily take up this cry, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” A general confession, then, is uttered in our text.

This confession by the mass is backed up by a personal acknowledgment from each one, “We have turned every one to his own way.” Sin is general but yet special; all are sinners, but each one is a sinner with an emphasis. No man has of himself turned to God’s way, but in every case each one has chosen “his own way.” The very gist of sin lies in our setting up our own way in opposition to the way and will of God. We have all done so, we have all aspired to be our own masters, we have all desired to follow our own inclinations, and have not submitted ourselves to the will of God. The text implies that each man has his own peculiarity and speciality of sin; all diseased, but not oil precisely with the same form of disease. It is well, my brethren, if each of us in examining himself has found out what is his own peculiar transgression, for it is well to know what evil weeds flourish most readily in the soil of our heart, what wild beast that is most native to the forests of our soul. Many have felt that their peculiar sin was so remarkably evil and so surpassingly vile, that it separated them altogether from the common rank of sinners. They felt that their iniquities were unique, and like lone peaks lifted themselves defiantly towards the pure heavens of God, provoking the fiercest thunderbolts of wrath. Such persons have almost been driven to despair under the belief that they were peculiarly great sinners, as Paul puts it, the very chief of sinners. I should not wonder if this feeling which each one imagines to be peculiar to himself may have come over very many of us, and the shadow of despair may for awhile have fallen upon very many of us, for it is no unusual thing for an awakened conscience to feel its own sinfulness to be above measure and parallel, the worst that has ever defiled mankind.

As this speciality of sin happens to be the point to which I desire to call your attention, as I wish to show that the atoning sacrifice of Christ not only applies to sin in the general, since “all we like sheep have gone astray,” but applies to sin in the special, for “we have turned every one to his own way” — I pass it over slightly now, and introduce you further in the exposition of the text, to what I called the amjusl doctrine of the substitution of Christ, “The Lord hath laid OB him the iniquity of us all.”

We have seen the confession of sin made by the mass, we lightly touched the peculiar confession made by each awakened individual, put all these together and you see a mass of sin — did I say you see it? It is a mass of sin too great to be beheld by the human understanding, an enormous load of iniquity against God. What is to be done with the oflFenders? The only thing that can be done with them, in the ordinary rule of justice, is to punish them for their oflFences; and that punishment must be such as was threatened, indignation, wrath, destruction death. That God should punish sin is not a matter of caprice with him; it was not with him an alternative as to whether he might or might not punish sin. We speak always with holy awe when we speak of anything concerninij: him, but with reverence we say it was not pos-ible that God should wink at the iniquity of man; it was not possible that he should treat it with indifPerence. His attribute of justice, which is as undoubtedly a part of his glory as his attribute of love, required that sin should be punished. Moreover, as God had been pleased to make a moral universe to be governed by laws, there would be an end of all government if the breaking of law involved no penalty whatever. If, after the great King of all the earth had promulgated a law, with certain penalties annexed to the breach of it, he did not cause those penalties to be exacted, there would be an end to the whole system of his government, the foundations would be removed; and if the foundations be removed what shall the righteous do? It is infinitely benevolent of God, I will venture to say, to cast evil men into hell. If that be thought to be a hard and strange statement, I reply that inasmuch as there is sin in the world, it is no benevolence to tolerate so great an evil; it is the highest benevolence to do all that can be done to restrain the horrible pest. It would be far from benevolent for our government to throw wide the doors of all the jails, to abolish the office of the judge, to suffer every thief and every offender of every kind to go unpunished; instead of mercy it would be cruelty; it might be mercy to the offending, but it would be intolerable injustice towards the upright and inoffensive. God’s very benevolence demands that the detestable rebellion of sin against his supreme authority should be put down with a firm hand, that men may not flatter themselves that they can do evil and yet go unpunished. The necessities of moral government require that sin must be punished. The effeminate and sentimental talkers of this boastful age represent God as though he had no attribute but that of gentleness, no virtue but that of indifference to evil; but the God of the Bible is glorious in holiness, he will by no means spare the guilty, at his bar every transgression is meted out its just recompense of reward. Even in the New Testament, wherein stands that golden sentence, “God is love,” his other attributes are by no means cast into the shade. Read the burning words of Peter, or James, or Jude, and see how the God of Sabaoth abhorreth evil! As the God who must do right, the Lord cannot shut his eyes to the iniquities of man; he must visit transgression with its punishment. He has done it, has done it terribly, and he will do it; even to all eternity he will show himself the God that hateth iniquity and sin.

I.li)iVll)UAL SIN LAID UN JE8US. 613 ’

What, then, is to become of man? “All we like sheep have gone astray;” sin must be piinislied; what, then, can become of us? Infinite love has devised the expedient of representation and substitution. I call it an expedient, for we can only use the language of men. You remember, brethren, that you and I fell originally from our first estate by no act of our own, we all of us fell in the first Adam’s transgression. Now, had we fallen individually and personally, in the first place, apart from another, it may be that our fall would have been hopeless, like the fall of the apostate angels, who having sinned one by one and not representatively, are reserved in chains of darkness for ever under the condemnation and wrath of God; but inasmuch as the first fountain of evil came to us through our parent, Adam, there remained for God a loophole through which his divine love might enter without violation” of justice. The principle of representation wrecked us, the principle of representation rescues us. Jesus Christ the Son of God becomes a man and re-heads the race, becomes the second Adam, obeys the law of God, bears the penalty of sin, and now stands as the Head of all those who are in him: and who are these but such as repent of sin and put their trust in him? These get out of the old headship of the first Adam wherein they fell, and through the atoning sacrifice are cleansed from all personal guilt, brought into union with the second Adam, and stand again in him, abiding for ever in acceptance and felicity. See, then, how it is that God has been pleased to deliver his people. It has been through carrying out a principle with which the very system of the universe commenced, namely, that of representation. I repeat it, had we been always and altogether separate units, there might have been no possibility of our salvation; but though every man sins separately, and the second clause of our text confesses that fact, yet we all sin in connection with others. For instance, who shall deny that each man receives propensities to sin from his parents, and that we transmit peculiarities of sin to our own children? “We stand in connection with race, and there are sins of races peculiar to races and to nationalities. We are never put on a probation of entire separation; we always stand in connection with others, and God has availed himself of this which I called a loophole to bring in salvation for us, by virtue of our union with another man, who is also more than man, the Son of God and yet the son of Mary, the Infinite who once became an infant, the Eternal who lived, and bled, and died as the representative of all who put their trust in him.

Now you will say, perhaps, that still, albeit this might have been at the bottom of the whole system of moral government, you do not quite see the justice of it. The reply to that remark is this, if God sees the justice of it you oujiht to be content with it. He it was against whom every sin was aimed, and if he pleased to gather up the whole bundle of the sin of his people, and say to his beloved Son, “I will visit thee for all these,” and if Jesus our representative joyously consented to bear our sins as our representative, who are you and who am I that we should enter any caveat against what God the infinitely just One consents to accept? Tne text does not say that our sins were laid on Christ Jesus by accident, but “ike Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” We sing sometimes, “I lay my sins on Jesus;” that is a very sweet act of faith, bat at the bottom of it there is another laying, namely, that act in which it pleased the Lord to lay our sins on Jesus, for apart from the Lord’s doing it our sins could never have been transferred to the Redeemer. The Lord is so just, that we dare not think of examining his vei’dicts, so infinitely pure and holy, that what he does we accept as being necessarily right; and inasmuch as we derive such blessed results from the divine plan of substitution, far be it from us to raise any question concerning it. Jesus was accepted as the natural substitute and representative of all those who trust him, and all the sin of these was laid on him, so that they were freed from guilt. Jesus was regarded as if all these sins were his sins, was punished as if these were his sins, was put to shame, forsaken of God, and delivered to death as if he had been a sinner; and thus through divine grace those who actually committed the sins are permitted to go free. They have satisfied justice through the sufferings of their substitute. Beloved brethren, the most fit person to be a substitute for us was Christ Jesus; and why? Because he had been pleased to take us his people into union with himself. If he was our head, and he had made us to be members of his body, who more fit to suffer for the body than the head? If he had, and Scripture tells us so, entered into a mysterious conjugal union with us, who more fit to suffer for the spouse than her husband? Christ is man, hence his fitness and adaptation to be a substitute for man. The creature that sins must be the creature that suffers; man breaks God’s law, and man must honour it. As by man came death, by man also must come the resurrection from the dead, and Jesus Christ was undoubtedly man of the substance of his mother. He was fit to be our substitute because he was a pure man. He had no offence in him; neither Satan, nor the more searching eye of God could find any evil in him; he was under no obligation to the law except as he put himself under the law; he owed nothing to the great moral Governor until he voluntarily became a subject of his moral government on our behalf. Hence, being without obligation himself, having no debts of his own, he was fit to take upon himself our liabilities; and as he was under no obligations for himself, he was a fitting one to become under obligations for us. Moreover, he did all this voluntarily, and his fitness much lies here. If a substitute should be dragged to death for us unwillingly, if such could be the case, an injustice would be perpetrated in the very act, but Jesus Christ taking up his cross, and going forth willingly to suffer for us, proved his fitness to redeem us. Once more, his being God as well as man, gave him the strength to suffer, gave him the power to stoop. If he had not been so lofty as to be fellow with the eternal God, he. would not have stooped so low as to redeem us, but —

“From the highest throne in glory
To the cross of deepest woe,”

was such a descent that there was an infinite merit in it; when he stooped, even to the grave itself, there was an infinite merit by which justice was satisfied, the law was vindicated, and those for whom he died were effectually saved.

I do not want to proceed to the other point until every one here has, got the thought, and grasped it, and received it; we have gone astray

INDIVIDUAL SIN LAID ON JESUS. gy

but the strayings of as many of us as believe were laid on Christ; we have each chosen our own way of sin, but those sins are not ours now, they are laid on our great Substitute if we are trusting in him; he has paid to the utmost farthing all the debt of those sins, has borne the fulness of divine wrath, and there is no wrath against us. Just as the bullock was laid on the altar to be burnt, God’s wrath came like consuming fire and burnt the bullock, and there was no fire left; so when the wrath of God fell on Christ, it consumed him, and there was no fire left, no wrath left, it spent itself. God has no anger against a soul that believes in Jesus, neither has that soul any sin, for its sin has been laid on Christ, and it cannot be in two places at once: Christ has carried it, and the sin has ceased to be — and the believing soul though in itself as black as hell, is now as bright as Christ himself when he w<is transfigured, for Christ has finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness. Thus we conclude our general exposition of the verse.

II. I now desire for a short time, but with all the earnestness of my soul, to dwell on the special doctrixe taught in the central clause of the text — “We have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Each man and each woman, from a natural difference of constitution, from the variations in education, and from the diversities of circumstances, has sinned somewhat differently from every other. Two brothers educated by the same parents will yet display diversities of transgression. No man treads exactly in the same footsteps as another, and some take roads which, though equally wrong, are diametrically opposite. One turns to the right hand, and another to the left, both equally renouncing the onward path. Now, the glory of the text that I want to bring out is this, that if thou believest in Jesus Christ, this special sin of thine was laid on him, as well as all those thine other sins, in which thou standest on an equality with thy fellow men. There was a publican, he had been a common, gross offender, rough and harsh to his brother Jews, in demanding an inordinate tax; he was a man of low habits, indulging in drunkenness, unchastity, and other defilements, yet when that publican went up to the house of God and said, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” the atonement just met the publicaa’s iniquity, and exactly took away the publican’s transgression. But, on the other hand, there was a Pharisee, the opposite of the publican, proud and self-righteous, not submitting himself to the righteousness of God, but considering himself to be in all things better than other men, yet you will remember that when he fell from off’ his horse as he was riding to Damascus, and heard a voice that said, “Why persecutest thou me?” that very same Pharisee said, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” for there was in Christ precisely that which met the Pharisee’s sin. In our Lord’s day there were Sadducees, too — that is, men who said there is neither angel nor spirit, infidels, sceptics, free-thinkers, your Broad Church sinners. Now, these men neither went into coarse transgression with the publican nor into superstition with the Pharisee, but they had their direct antagonism to the truth of God, and I doubt not cases occurred to prove that in the pardoning blood of Christ the Sadducee’s case was met. No matter in what peculiar direction any one of the Lord’s sheep has gone astray, the Lord has laid that particukr straying upon the Saviour. I want to speak now so as to fetch forth some individuals here this morning. It may be that one here to-day is saying, “I Binned against an early Christian training; no one ever had a better mother or a tenderer father; I knew the Word of God, like Timothy, from my youth; but I did despite to all this teaching, and sinned, with what aggravation of infamy I sinned against the clearest light!” Brother, thy sin is very great, but the Lord hath laid on Jesus thine iniquity. Look thou to the cross, and see it laid there. “xly,” saith another, “but I have had the strivings of God’s Spirit; in addition to an early Christian education, I have sat under an earnest gospel ministry; I have often been impressed; I have been driven to my chamber to pray, but I have quenched the holy emotions, and have continued in sin.” 0 guilty one, the Lord has laid on his dear Son thine iniquity. Canst thou look to Jesus now and trust Christ, “The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”? Then this offence of thine against the Holy Ghost is put away. “But,” saith another, “I am conscious of having had naturally a remarkable tenderness of spirit; from my early childhood 1 knew right from wrong, and when I sinned it cost me much trouble to sin; I have had to wound my conscience before I could speak an ill word, or commit an evil action.” Ah! my brethren, that is a very condemning thing to sin against a tender conscience. It is a great boon, and in this age a very unusual boon, to have

much sensitiveness and delicacy of moral constitution, and if you have violated it, it is certainly a great transgression, but though “we have turned every one to his own way, the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Let no despairing thouiht come upon thee as though this sin were unpardonable. “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Look thou, now, by faith to Jesus, and thou shalt find that thy sin is blotted out.

There may be one in this place who says, “Sir, I committed a sin under certain remarkable circumstances which I would not, could not, mention, but the remembrance of that one sin rankles in my soul at this hour; if I had not deliberately and with malice aforethought, not having the fear of God before mine eyes, chosen that sin, there might have been hope, but that sin like a millstone is about my neck and will sink me for ever and ever.” Hark thee, soul, canst thou see Christ on the cross? Wilt thou now confide in him? If so, though thy sin be as scarlet it shall be as wool, though it be red like crimson it shall be as snow. I know not what thy sin may hare been, but if it were murder itself, if thou wouldst now trust the Son of God thy sin should vanish quite away from thee, and thou shouldst be clean, clean every whit, before the all-seeing eye of eternal justice. 0 that thou wouldst believe, and this should be true to thee. ‘• Nay,” cries another, “but mine has been a life of peculiarly gross sin; I would not have my character unmasked before this congregation on any account.” Consider then, my friend, what it will be to have it published before a greater congregation, before the entire universe? “Ah,” sayest thou, “I fear my condemnation is certain, for my transgressions have not been those of thought merely, but of act; the members of my body have been the

INDIVIDUAL SIN LAID ON JESUS. fitigr.

instruments of uncleanness.” Listen, I pray thee, “All manner of sin and of iniquity shall be forgiven unto men.” There is no sin so black, save only one, but it may find forgiveness; ay, and without exception, there is no sin that is possible to man but what it shall be forgiven to any man who comes to Christ, and with simple trust doth cast himself on him. Thine extreme evil was laid on Christ; though thou hast turned unto thine own way, yet this too was laid on him.

Do I not hear here and there in the congregation hearts sighing out, “He does not strike my case yet; mine has not been gross sin, but I have hardened my heart; I used to feel at one time; I had great drawings towards the Lord Jesus, but I gave him up; I have backslidden, I have from time to time rejected gospel invitations, until now at last the Lord has sworn in his wrath that I shall not enter into his rest; my transgressions have gone over my head like overflowing waters, I sink in them as in deep mire where there is no standing.” Ay, but soul, I must bring thee back to the text. Thou hast turned to thine own way, but, if thou believest, the Lord hath laid on Jesus even this iniquity also; if thou wilt trust him, thy hardenings of heart shall now be forgiven thee. Thou art not too late, the gate of mercy still stands open wide; if thou trustest in Jesus this iniquity shall be blotted out, “Alas!” saith another, “but I have been a hypocrite; I have come to the Lord’s-table, and yet I have never had an interest in Christ; I have been baptised, but yet I never had true faith,” “Well, now, I will say this to end all matters — if thou hast perpetrated all the sins that ever were committed by men or devils, if thou hast defiled thyself with all the blackness that could be raked out of the lowermost kennels of hell, if thou hast spoken the most damnable blasphemies and followed the most outrageous vices, j’et Jesus Christ is an infinite Saviour, and nothing can exceed the merit of his precious blood. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanseth us fi’om all sin,” •Canst thou believe this? Canst thou do Christ the honour to believe this, and come and ci’ouch at the feet that once were pierced? Ah! man, thou shalt find mercy now, and thou shalt clap thine hands and say, “He hath blotted out my sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud mine iniquities.”

I am afraid I do not convey to you the pleasure of my own soul in turning over this thought, but it has charmed me beyond measure. Here were Lot’s sins, scandalous sins, I cannot mention them, they were very different from David’s sins. Black sins, scarlet sins, were those of David, but David’s sins are not at all like those of Manasseh; the sins of Manasseh were not the same as those of Peter — Peter sinned in quite a different track; and the woman that was a sinner, you could not liken her to Peter, neither -if you look to her character could you «et her side by side with Lydia; nor if you think of Lydia, can you see her without discovering a great divergence between her and the Philippian jailer. They are all alike, they have all gone astray, but they are all different, they have turned every one to his own way; but here is the blessed gathering up of them all, the Lord hath made to meet on the Redeemer, as in a common focus, the iniquity of all these; and up yonder Magdalena’s song joins sweetly with that of the woman who was a sinner, and Lydia, chaste, but yet needing pardon, sings side by side with Bathsheba and Rahab; while David takes up the strain with Samson and with Gideon, and these with Abraham and with Isaac, all differently sinners, but the atonement meeting every case. We always think that man a quack who advertises a medicine as healing every disease, but when you come to the great gospel medicine, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, you have there in very deed what the old doctors used to call a cathoUcon a universal medicine which meets every case in its distinctness, and puts away sin in all its separateness of guilt as if it were made for that sin, and for that sin alone.

III. My time has gone, and therefore I must close with this, a

SPECIAL DUTY ARISING OUT OF THE SPECIAL DOCTRINE.

My dear brother, if in my discourse I have at all described you, or if not having described you, I have yet from that very reason indicated you as an indescribable, look thou to Christ and find mercy, and then ever afterwards make it a rule with thy soul, that as thou hast been a special sinner thou wilt have special love and special gratitude, and do thy Lord special service. Oh! if it takes twenty times the grace to save me that it does another, then I will render to my Saviour twenty times the love and twenty times the service. If I am an out-of-the-way straying sheep, peculiarly and specially black, defiled and disgraced, then if he loves me I will go upon this rule, that having had much forgiven I will love much.

Brethren and sisters, I wish you did feel, I wish I did feel, more and more the peculiarity of the weight of our personal sin, for I am sure it is the way to drive us into manliness of Christian service. If you perform homage to Christ as one of a crowd, you do but little, and that little badly. For eminent service you need to get away from the crowd, and serve the Lord personally by yourself, and as an individual. Get alone, I mean in a sense of obligation, separate yourself, as if you were a marked man, and must serve Jesus Christ in a marked way. The separation of pride is detestable, but individuality of service is admirable. Those who stand steadily in the rank and file do well, but those who step forward to lead the forlorn hope do better. 0 for more Davids to come forth and say, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” 0 that the Christian church had more self-sacrificing men, like old Curtius, who, when there is a chasm to fill up, leap into it, and feel it an honour to be swallowed up for Christ’s sake and the truth’s sake. 0 for many a Christian Scfevola, who, like the Roman hero, will hold his hand in the fire if need be, and flinch not, feeling that all suffering were little to bear for one who bled for us. We want more consecrated men. May God raise them up; and he will if you who feel your special sinnership find special mercy, and then render to God special returns.

It has struck me that we want more and more in the pulpit, and in

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the pew, individuality in our Christian experience and service. You see we are all individuals in sinning, we have turned every one to his own way, and yet many Christian people want to have their experience modelled after the example of some one else. They do not like to grow like God’s trees in the forest, with their gnarled roots and twisted boughs; they want to be clipped like Dutch trees into one uniform stiffness. “Why, you lose the beauty of Christianity when you lose the individuality of Christians. In preaching and Sunday - school teaching, and everything else, the tendency is to go too much in ruts and grooves; one might fancy that men and women were made by machinery like pens at Birmingham, all of a sort. We would have every man in grace as individual as he was in sin. We need the originality of saintly life as well as of sinnership. It were well if a Christian man would step out of the beaten track and carry out his individuality, and be what God especially meant him to be. Brethren, there is a part of this world which can never get a blessing except through you. Christ has power over all flesh, and he has given his servants power over their little portions of that great mass. All the ministers that ever lived cannot bring to Christ those souls whom God has ordained that I shall be the means of turning to Christ; and neither I nor my brethren, preach as we may, can bring to Christ the man whom God has ordained to save through yonder obscure village local preacher who is now standing on a log on the village green, or holding forth in a wooden shed in the backwoods of America. There is a place for every man, and the way for every man to find that out is to be himself and nobody else; as he used to be himself when he was a sinner, so let him be himself now he has become a saint, and follow out, under God’s guidance, the movements of his own individualities, the singularities of his own nature. Tush, about planing ofi” your angles and getting rid of the points God has made in you distinct from other men. It will never do. You lose of Christianity the very beauty and excellence if you do this. Your fine critics would have Rowland Hill preach like Thomas Chalmers; Rowland Hill must never utter a witticism in the pulpit, yet he could not be Rowland Hill if he did not; he must, therefore, be transmogrified into some one else, for these superfine gentlemen will not allow that Rowland Hill as Rowland Hill can honour God. Wisdom will be justiSe’i of all her children. Whether you speak with the learning of Apollos, or with the eloquence of a. Paul, or with the blunt homeliness of a Cephas, the Lord will get to himself honour, if you speak sincerely; and it is not for Paul to mimic Cephas, nor for Cephas to ape Apollos. As we have turned every one to his own way, and our peculiar sin has been laid on Christ, so let each believer now in his own way, under the direction of Christ, seek to serve his Lord and Master.

My great practical lesson from it is this. You are always seeinsr new inventions in the world, men are evermore bringing out some new system or scheme; we tunnel the earth, we split the clouds, we speak by lifihtning, we ride on the wings of the wind, but in the Christian church how few inventors we have! Robert Raikes invented the Sundny School, John Pounds invented Ragged Schools; have we come to the end of gracious ingenuity? Oh, if we loved Christ better, every man would invent something, he would have a mode of action growing out of his own peculiar capacities; he would feel that God meant to meet a case by him that would never be met by anybody else. Men are all alive about this world, and all asleep about the world to come. I would urge you each to have a mission, to espouse a work, to obtain a calling. Ask God not to put you into the Sunday School as a matter of mere providence, but as a matter of special ordination; and if you are ordained to be a Sunday-school teacher, ask him to put you into some particular class, not as by an accident, but as a special sphere for your special character and taste, and mode of thought, and manner of action. Follow out as God the Holy Spirit shall help you, the promptings of the divine life that God has put within you, and as you served Satan with all your individuality, even so serve him upon whom the Lord of old did lay your iniquity. The Lord bless you for Christ’s sake.

PoETiON OF Scripture read before Sermon — Isaiah liiL