II. There is then one ent or condition of national life,

with which no nation can dispense. A nation must have its eye upon a future, more or less defined, but fairly within the appa- reut scope of its grasp. Hope is the soul of moral vitality; and any man, or society of men, who would live, in the moral sense of life, must be looking forward to something. You will scarcely suspect me, my brethren, of seeking to disparage the great prin- ciple of tradition ;—that principle to which the Christian Church owes her sacred volume itself, no less than her treasure of formu- lated doctrine, and the structural conditions and sacramental sources of her life ;—that principle to which each generation of human society is deeply and inevitably indebted for the accumu- lated social and political experiences of the generations before it. Precious indeed, to every wise man, to every association of true- hearted and generous men, must ever be the inheritance of the past. Yet what is the past without the future? What is memory when unaccompanied by hope? Look at the case of the single soul. Is it not certain that a life of high earnest pur- pose will die outright, if it is permitted to sink into the placid reverie of perpetual retrospect, if the man of action becomes the mere ‘laudator temporis acti’? How is the force of moral life developed and strengthened? Is it not by successive conscious efforts to act and to suffer at the call of duty? Must not any moral life dwindle and fade away if it be not reaching forward to a standard higher, truer, purer, stronger than its own? Will not the struggles, the sacrifices, the self-conquests even of a great character in bygone years, if they now occupy its whole field of vision, only serve to consummate its ruin? As it doat- ingly fondles them in memory, will it not be stiffened by conceit into a moral petrifaction, or consigned by sloth to the successive processes of moral decomposition? Has not the Author of our life so bound up its deepest instincts and yearnings with His own eternity, that no blessings in the past would be blessings to us, if they were utterly unconnected with the future? So it is also in the case of a society. The greatest of all societies among men at this moment is the Church of Jesus Christ. Is she sus- tained only by the deeds and writings of her saints and martyrs in a distant past, or only by her reverent trustful sense of the Divine Presence which blesses her in the actual present? Does me not resolutely pierce the gloom of the future, and confidently ou
74 Nations must have hope in a Future.
reckon upon new struggles and triumphs on earth, and, beyond these, upon a home in Heaven, wherein she will enjoy rest and victory,—a rest that no trouble can disturb, a victory that no reverse can forfeit? Is not the same law familiar to us in this place, as it affects the well-being of a great educational institu- — tion? Here in Oxford we feel that we cannot rest upon the varied efforts and the accumulated credit even of ten centuries. We too have hopes embarked in the years or in the centuries before us; we have duties towards them. We differ, it may be, even radically, among ourselves as to the direction in which to look for our academical future. The hopes of some of us are the fears of others. This project would fain banish from our system whatever proclaims that God had really spoken, and that it is man’s duty and happiness gladly and submissively to wel- come His message; while that scheme would endeavour, if pos- sible, to fashion each one of our intellectual workmen more and more strictly after the type of a believing and fervent Christian. The practical difference is indeed profound ; but we are entirely agreed as to the general necessity for looking forward. On both sides it is understood that an institution which is not struggling upwards towards a higher future, must resign itself to the con- viction that it is already in its decadence, and must expect to die.
Nor is it otherwise with that association of men which we call a nation, the product of race, or the product of circum- stances, the product in any case of a Providential Will, Which welds into a common whole, for the purposes of united action and of reciprocal influence, a larger or smaller number of human beings. A nation must have a future before it; a future which can rebuke its despondency and can direct its enthusiasm; a future for which it will prepare itself; a future which it will aspire to create or to control. Unless it would barter away the vigorous nerve of true patriotism for the feeble pedantry of a soulless archeology, a nation cannot fall back altogether upon the centuries which have flattered its ambition, or which have developed its material well-being. Something it must propose to itself as an object to be compassed in the coming time; some- thing which is as yet beyond it. It will enlarge its frontier ; or it will develope its commercial resources; or it will extend its schemes of colonization ; or it will erect its overgrown colonies into independent and friendly states ; or it will bind the severed sections of a divided race into one gigantic nationality that shall awe, if it do not subdue, the nations around. Or eee its
LECT.
Sosa cecal -
A Future necessary to the Chosen People. 75
attention will be concentrated on the improvement of its social life, and on the details of its internal legislation. It will extend the range of civil privileges; it will broaden the basis of government; it will provide additional encouragements to and safeguards for public morality; it will steadily aim at bettering the condition of the classes who are forced, beyond others, to work and to suffer. Thankful it may well be to the Author of all goodness for the enjoyment of past blessings; but the spirit of a true thankfulness is ever and very nearly allied to the energy of hope. Self-complacent a nation cannot be, unless it would perish. Woe indeed to the country which dares to assume that it has reached its zenith, and that it can achieve or attempt no more!
Now Israel as a nation was not withdrawn from the operation of this law, which makes the anticipation of a better future of such vital importance to the common life of a people. Israel indeed had been cradled in an atmosphere of physical and political miracle. Her great lawgiver could point to the event which gave her national existence as to an event unique in human history ®. No subsequent vicissitudes would obliterate the memory of the story which Israel treasured in her inmost memory, the story of the stern Egyptian bondage followed by the triumphant Exodus. How retrospective throughout is the sacred literature of Israel! It is not enough that the great deliverance should be accurately chronicled; it must be expanded, applied, insisted on in each of its many bearings and aspects by the lawgiver who directed and who described it; it must be echoed on from age to age, in the stern expostulations of Prophets and in the plaintive or jubilant songs of Psalmists. Certainly the greater portion of the Old Testament is history. Israel was guided by the contents of her sacred books to live in much grateful reflection upon the past. Certainly, it was often her sin and her condemnation that she practically lost sight of all that had been done for her. Yet if ever it were permissible to forget the future, Israel, it should seem, might have forgotten it. She might have closed her eyes against the dangers which threatened her from beyond the Lebanon, from beyond the Eastern and the Southern desert, from beyond the Western sea, from within her own borders, from the streets and the palaces of her capital. She might have abandoned herself in an
® Deut. iv. 34.
nm]
76 Israel's Future, not secular but religious,
ecstasy of perpetuated triumph to the voices of her poets and to the rolls of her historians. But there was One Who had loved Israel as a child, and had called His infant people out of Egypt, and had endowed it with His Name and His Law, and had so fenced its life around by protective institutions, that, as the ages passed, neither strange manners nor hostile thought should avail to corrupt what He had so bountifully . given to it. Was He forgetful to provide for and to direct that instinct of expectation, without which as a nation it could not live? Had He indeed not thus provided, Israel might have struggled with vain energy after ideals such as were those of the nations around her. She might have spent herself, like the Tyrian or Sidonian merchant, for a large commerce; she might have watched eagerly, and fiercely, like the Cilician pirate or like the wild sons of the desert, for the spoils of adjacent civilizations; she might have essayed to combine, after the Greek pattern, a discreet measure of sensuality with a great activity of the speculative intellect ; she might have fared as did the Babylonian, or the Persian, or the Roman; at least, she might have attempted the estab- lishment of a world-wide tyranny around the throne of a Hebrew Belshazzar or of a Hebrew Nero. Nor is her history altogether free from the disturbing influence of such ideals as were these; we do not forget the brigandage of the days of the Judges, or the imperial state and prowess of Solomon, or the commercial enterprise of Jehoshaphat, or the union of much intellectual activity with low moral effort which marked more than one of the Rabbinical schools. But the life and energy of the nation was not really embarked, at least in its best days, in the pursuit of these objects; their attractive influence was intermittent, transient, accidental. The expectation of Israel was steadily directed towards a future, the lustre of which would in some real sense more than eclipse her glorious past. That future was not sketched by the vain imaginings of popular aspirations; it was unveiled to the mind of the people by a long series of authoritative announcements. These announcements did not merely point to the introduction of a new state of things; they centred very remarkably upon a coming Person. God Himself vouch- safed to satisfy the instinct of hope which sustained the national life of His own chosen people; and Israel lived for the expected
Messiah. But Israel, besides being a civil polity, was a merges LECT.
as required by tts belref in God and sin. 77
she was not merely a nation, she was a Church. In Israel religion was not, as with the peoples of pagan antiquity, a mere attribute or function of the national life. Religion was the very soul and substance of the life of Israel; Israel was a Church encased, embodied in a political constitution. Hence it was that the most truly national aspirations in Israel were her religious aspirations. Even the modern naturalist critics can- not fail to observe, as they read the Hebrew Scriptures, that the mind of Israel was governed by two dominant convictions, the like of which were unknown to any other ancient people. God was the first thought in the mind of Israel. The existence, the presence of One Supreme, Living, Personal Being, Who alone exists necessarily, and of Himself; Who sustains the _ life of all besides Himself; before Whom, all that is not Himself is but a shadow and vanity; from Whose sanctity there streams forth upon the conscience of man that moral law which is the light of human life; and in Whose mercy all men, especially the afflicted, the suffering, the poor, may, if they will, find a gracious and long-suffering Patron,—this was the substance of the first great conviction of the people of Israel. Dependent on that conviction was another. The eye of Israel was not merely opened towards the heavens; it was alive to the facts of the moral human world. Israel was conscious of the presence and power of sin. The ‘healthy sen- suality,’ as Strauss has admiringly termed it, which pervaded the whole fabric of life among the Greeks, had closed up the eye of that gifted race to a perception which was so familiar to the Hebrews. We may trace indeed throughout the best Greek poetry a vein of deep suppressed melancholy®; but the secret
> See Luthardt, Apologetische Vortriige, vorl. vii. note 6. The expression occurs in Schubart’s Leben, ii. 461. Luthardt quotes a very characteristic passage from Goethe (vol, xxx. Winckelmann, Antikes Heidnisches, pp. 10-13) to the same effect: ‘If the modern, at almost every reflection, casts himself into the Infinite, to return at last, if he can, to a limited point; the ancients feel themselves at once, and without further wanderings, at ease only within the limits of this beautiful world. Here were they placed, to this were they called, here their activity has found scope, and their passions objects and nourishment.’ The ‘heathen mind,’ he says, produced ‘such a condition of human existence, a condition intended by nature,’ that ‘both in the moment of highest enjoyment and in that of deepest sacrifice, nay, of ab- solute ruin, we recognise the indestructibly healthy tone of their thought.’ Similarly in Strauss’ Leben Miarklin’s, 1851, p.127, Marklin says, ‘I would with all my heart be a heathen, for here I find truth, nature, greatness.’
° See the beautiful passage quoted from Lasaulx, Abhandlung iiber den ay der (dipus-sage, p. 10, by Luthardt, ubi supra, note 7. Cf. also Ir
78 A Deliverer from sin suggested by the Ritual,
of this subtle, of this inextinguishable sadness was unknown to the accomplished artists who gave to it an involuntary ex- pression, and who lavished their choicest resources upon the oft-repeated effort to veil it beneath the bright and graceful drapery of a versatile light-heartedness peculiarly their own. But the Jew knew that sin was the secret of human sorrow. He could not forget sin if he would; for before his eyes, the importunate existence and the destructive force of sin were inexorably pictured in the ritual. He witnessed daily sacrifices for sin; he witnessed the sacrifice of sacrifices which was offered on the Day of Atonement, and by which the ‘nation of religion,’ impersonated in its High Priest, solemnly laid its sins upon the sacrificial victim, and bore the blood of atonement into the Presence-chamber of God. Then the moral law sounded in his ears; he knew that he had not obeyed it. If the Jew could not be sure that the blood of bulls and goats really effected his reconciliation with God; if his own prophets told him that moral obedience was more precious in God’s sight than sacrificial oblations; if the ritual, interpreted as it was by the Decalogue, created yearnings within him which it could not satisfy, and deepened a sense of pollution which of itself it could not relieve ; yet at least the Jew could not ignore sin, or think lightly of it, or essay to gild it over with the levities of raillery. He could not screen from his sight its native blackness, and justify it to himself by a philosophical theory which should represent it as inevitable, or as being something else than what it is. The ritual forced sin in upon his daily thoughts; the ritual inflicted it upon his imagination as being a terrible and present fact ; and so it entered into and coloured his whole conception alike of national and of individual life. Thus was it that this sense of sin moulded all true Jewish hopes, all earnest Jewish antici- pations of the national future. A future which promised political victory or deliverance, but which offered no relief to the sense of sin, would have failed to meet the better aspirations, and to cheer the real heart of a people which, amid whatever unfaithfulness to its measure of light, yet had a true knowledge of God, and was keenly alive to the fact and to the effects of moral evil. And He Who, by His earlier revelations, had Him- self made the moral needs of Israel so deep, and had bidden the
Dollinger, Heid. und Jud. bk. v. pt. 1, § 2; Abp. Trench, Huls. Lectures,
ed. 3, p. 305; also Comp. Il. xvii. 446; Od. xi. 489, xviii. 130; Eurip.
Hippol. 190, Med, 1224, Fragm. No. 454, 808. [ LECT,
—s.
first period of Messianic prophecy. 79
hopes of Israel rise so high, vouchsafed to meet the one, and to offer a plenary satisfaction to the other, in the doctrine of an expected Messiah.
It is then a shallow misapprehension which represents the Messianic belief as a sort of outlying prejudice or superstition, incidental to the later thought of Israel, and to which Chris- tianity has attributed an exaggerated importance, that it may the better find a basis in Jewish history for the Person of its Founder. The Messianic belief was in truth interwoven with the deepest life of the people. The promises which formed and fed this belief are distributed along nearly the whole range of the Jewish annals; while the belief rests originally upon sacred traditions, which carry us up to the very cradle of the human family, although they are preserved in the sacred Hebrew Books. It is of importance to inquire whether this general Messianic belief included any definite convictions respecting the personal rank of the Being Who was its object.
In the gradual unfolding of the Messianic doctrine, three stages of development may be noted within the limits of the Hebrew Canon, and a fourth beyond it. (a) Of these the first appears to end with Moses. The Protevangelium contains a broad indeterminate prediction of a victory of humanity4 over the Evil Principle that had seduced man to his fall. The ‘Seed of the woman’ is to bruise the serpent’s head®. With the lapse of years this blessing, at first so general and indefinite, is nar- rowed down to something in store for the posterity of Shem‘, and subsequently for the descendants of Abrahams. In Abra- ham’s Seed all the families of the earth are to be blessed. Already within this bright but generally indefinite prospect of deliverance and blessing, we begin to discern the advent of a Personal Deliverer. St. Paul argues, in accordance with the Jewish interpretation, that ‘the Seed’ is here a personal Mes- siahh; the singular form of the word denoting His individu- ality, while its collective force suggests the representative
ἃ So two of the Targums, which nevertheless refer the fulfilment of the promise to the days of the King Messiah. The singular form of the col- lective noun would here, as in Gen, xxii. 18, have been intended to suggest an individual descendant.
© Gen. iii. 15; cf. Rom. xvi. 20; Gal.iv. 4; Heb. ii.14; 1 St. Johniii. 8.
£ Gen. ix. 26. & Ibid. xxii. 18.
h Gal. iii. 16. See the Rabbinical authorities quoted by Wetstein, in loc. On the objection raised from the collective force of σπέρμα, cf, Bishop Ellicott, in loc,
w |
80 Second period of Messianic prophecy.
character of His Human Nature. The characteristics of this personal Messiah emerge gradually in successive predictions. The dying Jacob looks forward to a Shiloh as One to Whom of right belongs the regal and legislative authorityi, and to Whom the obedient nations will be gathered. Balaam sings of the Star That will come out of Jacob and the Sceptre That will rise out of Israelk. This is something more than an anticipation of the reign of David: it manifestly points to the glory and power of a Higher Royalty. Moses! foretells a Prophet Who would in a later age be raised up from among the Israelites, like unto him- self. This Prophet accordingly was to be the Lawgiver, the Teacher, the Ruler, the Deliverer of Israel. If the prophetic order at large is included in this prediction™, it is only as being personified in the Last and the Greatest of the Prophets, in the One Prophet Who was to reveal perfectly the mind of God, and Whose words were to be implicitly obeyed. During this primary period we do not find explicit assertions of the Divinity of Messiah. But in that predicted victory over the Evil One; in that blessing which is to be shed on all the families of the earth ; in that rightful sway over the gathered peoples; in the absolute and perfect teaching of that Prophet Who is to be like the great Lawgiver while yet He transcends him,—must we not trace a predicted destiny which reaches higher than the known limits of the highest human energy? Is not this early prophetic lan- guage only redeemed from the imputation of exaggeration or vagueness, by the point and justification which are secured to it through the more explicit disclosures of a succeeding age?
(8) The second stage of the Messianic doctrine centres in the reigns of David and Solomon. The form of the prophecy here as elsewhere is suggested by the period at which it is uttered. When mankind was limited to a single family, the Hope of the future had lain in the seed of the woman: the Patriarchal age had looked forward to a descendant of Abraham ; the Mosaic to a Prophet and a Legislator. In like manner the age of the
1 Gen. xlix. 10. On the reading mw see Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 252. The sense given in the text is supported by Targum Onkelos, Jerusalem Targum, the Syr. and Arab. versions, possibly by those of Aquila and Symmachus (but see Field, Orig. Hexapl. tom. i. p. 70); while LXX, ἕως ἂν ἔλθῃ τὰ ἀποκειμένα αὐτῷ, Vulg. ‘donec veniat Qui mittendus est.’
® Num. xxiv.17. See J. H. Willemeri Diss, in Thesaur, Theol. Philolog., p. 362.
1 Deut. xviii. 18, 19; see Hengstenberg’s Christologie des A. T. vol. i, p. 90; Acts iii, 22, vil. 37; St. Johni. 21, vi. 14, xii. 48, 49.
τὰ Cf, Deut, xviii. 15. εὖ [ LECT.
Witness of the Messianic Psalms. 81
Jewish monarchy in its bloom of youth and prowess, was bidden fix its eye upon an Ideal David Who was to be the King of the future of the world. Not that the colouring or form of the prophetic announcement lowered its scope to the level of a Jewish or of a human monarchy. The promise of a kingdom to David and to his house for ever, a promise on which, we know, the great Psalmist rested at the hour of his death®, could not be fulfilled by any mere continuation of his dynasty on the throne of Jerusalem. It implied, as both David and Solomon saw, some Superhuman Royalty. Of this Royalty the Messianic Psalms present us with a series of pictures, each of which illustrates a distinct aspect of its dignity, while all either imply or assert the Divinity of the King. In the second Psalm, for - instance, Messiah is associated with the Lord of Israel as His Anointed SonP, while against the authority of Both the heathen nations are rising in rebellion4. Messiah’s inheritance is to in- clude all heathendomt; His Sonship is not merely theocratic or ethical, but Divines. All who trust in Him are blessed; all who incur His wrath must perish with a sharp and swift de- structiont, In the first recorded prayer of the Church of
n 2 Sam. vii. 16 (Ps. Ixxxix. 36, 37; St. John xii. 34). ‘From David's address to God, after receiving the message by Nathan, it is plain that David understood the Son promised to be the Messiah in Whom his house was to be established for ever. But the words which seem most expressive of this are in this verse now rendered very unintelligibly ‘and is this the manner of man?” whereas the words D7N7 nn nxn literally signify ‘and this is (or must be) the law of the man, or of the Adam,” i.e. this promise must relate to the law, or ordinance, made by God to Adam concerning the Seed of the woman, the Man, or the Second Adam, as the Messiah is ex- pressly called by St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 45-47.’—Kennicott, Remarks on the Old Testament, p. 115. He confirms this interpretation by comparing 1 Chron, xvii. 17 with Rom. v. 14.
© 2 Sam. xxiii. 5.
P Ps. ii. 7. See J. Frischmuthi Dissert. de Messia Dei Filio ad Ps. ii. in Thesaur. Theol.-Philolog. p. 571. ΠΗ 2,
‘ Ps. ii. 8,9. Cf. St. Aug. cont. Faustum Man. xiii. 7: ‘Dabo Tibi gentes hereditatem Tuam .. Quod genti Judeorum in qua regnavit David non esse concessum, Christi autem nomine longe lateque omnes gentes occu- pante, nemo dubitat esse completum.’ ΕΒ. ΤΠ, ἡ,
* Ps. ii. 12. See Dr. Pusey’s note on St. Jerome’s rendering of 72 172, Daniel the Prophet, p. 478, note 2; ‘It seems to me that St. Jerome pre- ferred the rendering ‘‘the Son,” since he adopted it where he could explain it [viz. in the brief commentary], but gave way to prejudice in rendering ‘‘adore purely.”’ Cf. also Replies to Essays and Reviews, p. 98. Also Delitzsch Psalmen, i. p. 15, note. ‘Dass 72 den Artikel nicht vertriict, dient auch im Hebr. éfter die Indetermination ad amplificandum (5. Flei- scher zu Zamachschari’s Gold. Halsbindern Anm., 2. S. 1. f.) indem sie
11 ] : 8
82 Divine Royalty of Messiah in the Psalms.
Christ¥, in St. Paul’s sermon at Antioch of PisidiaY, in the argument which opens the Epistle to the Hebrews, this Psalm is quoted in such senses, that if we had no Rabbinical text- books at hand, we could not doubt the belief of the Jewish Church respecting ity. The forty-fifth Psalm is a picture of the peaceful and glorious union of the King Messiah with His mystical bride, the Church of redeemed humanity. Messiah is introduced as a Divine King reigning among men. His form is of more than human beauty; His lips overflow with grace; God has blessed Him for ever, and has anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows. But Messiah is also directly addressed as God; He is seated upon an everlasting throne 2. Neither of these Psalms can be adapted without exegetical vio- lence to the circumstances of Solomon or of any other king of
durch die in ihr liegende Unbegrenztheit die Einbildungskraft zur Vergris- serung des so ausgedriickten Begriffs auffordert. Ein arab. Ausleger wiirde an u. St.erkliren: ‘Kiisset einen Sohn, und was fiir einen Sohn!”’ See J. H. Willemeri de Osculo Filii ad Ps. ii. Diss, in Thesaur. Theol.-Philolog., p. 582.
4 Acts iv. 25,26. v Ibid. xiii. 33. x Heb. i. 5; cf. Rom. i. 4.
Υ The Chaldee Targum refers this Psalm to the Messiah. So the Bereshith Rabba Aben-Ezra, D. Kimchi, Talm. Tr. Succah. fol. 52, &c. The in- terpretation was changed with a view to avoiding the pressure of the Chris- tian arguments. ‘Our masters,’ says R. Solomon Jarchi, ‘have expounded {this Psalm] of King Messiah; but, according to the letter, and for furnish- ing answer to the Minim [i.e. the Christian “ heretics’’], it is better to interpret it of David himself.’ Quoted by Pearson on art. 2, notes; Chandler, Defence of Christianity, p. 212; Pocock, Porta Mosis, note, p. 307. See too Dr. Pye Smith, Messiah, vol. i. p. 197.
% Dr. Pusey observes that of those who have endeavoured to evade the literal sense of the words addressed to King Messiah (ver. 6), ‘Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,’ ‘no one who thought he could so construct the sentence that the word H/ohim need not designate the being addressed, doubted that Hlohim sign‘fied God; and no one who thought that he could make out for the word Elohim any other meaning than that of ‘God,” doubted that it designated the being addressed. A right instinct prevented each class from doing more violence to grammar or to idiom than he needed, in order to escape the truth which he disliked. If people thought that they might paraphrase ‘Thy throne, O Judge” or “ Prince,” or “image of God,” or ‘‘who art as a God to Pharaoh,” they hesitated not to render with us “Thy throne is for ever and ever.” If men think that they may assume such an idiom as ‘‘Thy throne of God”? meaning “Thy Divine throne,” or “Thy throne is God”? meaning “Thy throne is the throne of God,” they doubt not that Elohim means purely and simply God. ... If people could persuade themselves that the words were a parenthetic address to God, no one would hesitate to own their meaning to be ‘‘ Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” Daniel the Prophet, pp. 470, 471, and note 8. Rev. v. 13. Cf. Delitzsch in loc.
i [ uxcr.
Pee ττ υγεανσξοεσννον οἷν
Divine Royalty of Messiah in the Psalms. 83
ancient Israel; and the New Testament interprets the picture of the Royal Epithalamium, no less than that of the Royal triumph over the insurgent heathen, of the one true King Messiah®. In another Psalm the character and extent of this Messianic Sovereignty are more distinctly pictured », Solomon, when at the height of his power, sketches a Superhuman King, ruling an empire which in its character and in its compass altogether transcends his own. The extremest boundaries of the kingdom of Israel melt away before the gaze of the Psalmist. The new kingdom reaches ‘from sea to sea, and from the flood unto the world’s end” It reaches from each frontier of the Promised Land, to the remotest regions of the known world, in the opposite quarter. From the Mediterranean it extends to the ocean that washes the shores of Eastern Asia; from the Euphrates to the utmost West. At the feet of its mighty Monarch, all who are most inaccessible to the arms or to the influence of Israel hasten to tender their voluntary submission. The wild sons of the desert 4, the merchants of Tarshish in the then distant Spain®, the islanders of the Mediterraneanf, the Arab chiefs’, the wealthy Nubiansh, are foremost in proffering their homage and fealty. But all kings are at last to fall down in submission before the Ruler of the new kingdom; all nations are to do Him servicei, His empire is to be co-extensive with the world: it is also to be co-enduring with time*. His empire is to be spiritual; it is to confer peace on the world, but by righteousness!, The King will Himself secure righteous judg- ment ™, salvation 4, deliverance 9, redemption P, to His subjects. The needy, the afflicted, the friendless, will be the especial objects of His tender.care4. His appearance in the world will be like the descent of ‘the rain upon the mown grass’; the true life of man seems to have been killed out, but it is yet capable of being restored by Him. He Himself, it is hinted, will be out of sight; but His Name will endure for ever; His Name will ‘propagate ®;’? and men shall be blessed in Him, to the end of time. This King is immortal; He is also all-knowing and all- mighty. ‘Omniscience alone can hear the cry of every human
® Heb. i. 8. oO Ps, xxi. © Thid. ver. 8. ἃ Pg, lxxii, 9, ΟΞ. 6 Ibid. ver. 10. £ Thid. & Tbid. h Tbid. sap. ! Tbid. ver. 11. © Ibid. ver. 17. 1 Thid. ver. 3. δι Tbid. vers. 2, 4. ἢ Jbid. vers. 4, 13. 9 Ibid. ver. 12. P Tbid. ver. 14. 4 Thid. vers. 12, 13. τ Ibid. ver. 6; cf. 2 Sam. xxiii. 4. * Ps, Ixxii. 17. - ἐ Tbid. | G2
84 Third period of Messianic prophecy.
heart ; Omnipotence alone can bring deliverance to every human sufferer ἃ Look at one more representation of this Royalty, that to which our Lord Himself referred, in dealing with his Jewish adversaries*. David describes his Great Descendant Messiah as his ‘Lordy.’ Messiah is sitting on the right hand of Jehovah, as the partner of His dignity. Messiah reigns upon a throne which impiety alone could assign to any human monarch ; He is to reign until His enemies are made His footstool 2; He is ruler now, even among His unsubdued opponents*. In the day of His power, His people offer themselves willingly to His service; they are clad not in earthly armour, but ‘in the beauties of holiness >.’ Messiah is Priest as well as King¢; He is an everlasting Priest of that older order which had been honoured by the father of the faithful. Who is this everlasting Priest, this resistless King, reigning thus amid His enemies and commanding the inmost hearts of His servants? He is David’s Descendant ; the Pharisees knew that truth. But He is also David’s Lord. How could He be both, if He was merely human? The belief of Christendom can alone answer the question which our Lord addressed to the Pharisees. The Son of David is David’s Lord, because He is God; the Lord of David is David’s Son, because He is God Incarnate 4,
(y) These are but samples of that rich store of Messianic prophecy which belongs to the second or Davidie period, and much more of which has an important bearing on our present subject. The third period extends from the reign of Uzziah to the close of the Hebrew Canon in Malachi. Here Messianic prophecy reaches its climax: it expands into the fullest par- ticularity of detail respecting Messiah’s Human life; it mounts to the highest assertions of His Divinity. Isaiah is the richest mine of Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament®, Messiah,
ἃ Daniel the Prophet, p. 479.
x St. Matt. xxii. 41-45; Ps. ex. 1. ΤΎΡΟΣ I. 5 Thid.
emis. cx: 2. > Ibid. ver. 3. © Thid. ver. 4.
4 On Ps. cx. see Pusey on Daniel, p. 466, sqq. Delitzsch, Psalmen ii, Ρ. 639. Martini, Pugio Fidei, p. iii. c. 3, sqq. For evidence of later Jewish attempts to parry the Christian argument by interpreting the psalm of Hezekiah, see St. Just. Mart. Dial. cum Tryph. 33, 83; Tertull. adv. Marcion, v. 9: of Zerubbabel, St. Chrysos. Expos. in Ps. cix.
9 With reference to the modern theory (Renan, Vie de Jésus, p. 37, &c. ἄς.) of a ‘later Isaiah,’ or ‘Great Unknown,’ living at the time of the Babylonish Captivity, and the assumed author of Is. xl.-Ixvi., it may suffice to refer to Dean Payne Smith’s valuable volume of University Sermons on the subject. When it is taken for granted on ἃ priori grounds a bond
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Anticipations of Messiah in the prophets. 85
especially designated as ‘the Servant of God,’ is the central figure in the prophecies of Isaiah. Both in Isaiah and in Jeremiah, the titles of Messiah are often and pointedly ex- pressive of His true Humanity. He is the Fruit of the earth!; He is the Rod out of the stem of Jesse&; He is the Branch or Sprout of David, the Zemach}, He is called by God from His mother’s wombi; God has put His Spirit upon Himj. He is anointed to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive*. He is a Prophet; His work is greater than that of any prophet of Israel. Not merely will He come as a Redeemer to them that turn from transgression in Jacob], and to restore the preserved of Israel™; He is also given as a Light to the Gentiles, as the Salvation of God unto the end of the earth2, Such is His Spiritual Power as Prophet and Legislator that He will write the law of the Lord, not upon tables of stone, but on the heart and conscience of the true Israel. In Zechariah as in David He is an enthroned Priest P, but it is the Kingly glory of Messiah which predominates throughout the prophetic repre- sentations of this period 4, and in which His Superhuman Nature is most distinctly suggested. According to Jeremiah, the Branch
Jideprediction of strictly future events is impossible, the Bible predictions must either be resolved into the far-sighted anticipations of genius, or, if their accuracy is too detailed to admit of this explanation, they must be treated as being only historical accounts of the events referred to, thrown with whatever design into the form of prophecy. The predictions respecting Cyrus in the latter part of Isaiah are too explicit to be reasonably regarded as the results of natural foresight; hence the modern assumption of a ‘later Isaiah’ as their real author. ‘Supposing this assumption,’ says Bishop Ollivant, ‘to be true, this later Isaiah was not only a deceiver, but also a witness to his own fraud; for he constantly appeals to prophetic power as a test of truth, making it, and specifically the prediction respecting the deliverance of the Jews by Cyrus, an evidence of the foreknowledge of Jehovah, as distin- guished from the nothingness of heathen idols. And yet we are to suppose that when this fraud was first palmed upon the Jewish nation, they were so simple as not to have perceived that out of his own mouth this false prophet was condemned !’—Charge of Bishop of Llandaff, 1866, p. 99, note Ὁ. Comp. Delitzsch, Der Prophet Jesaia, p. 23, and his discussion of the question in the introduction to chapters xl-lxvi, Sinith’s Dict. Bible,
art. ‘Isaiah.’ fl sacivie 2. ΕἸ α σι i. bh Jer, xxiii, 5; xxxiii. 15, Zech. iii. 8, vi. 12. 1 Tsa, xlix. 1. J Ibid. xii. 1. & ΤΌ, χε 1, Ὁ Ibid. lix. 20; cf. xii. 3. GLEE, χισ, Ὁ: Ὁ Thbid.
9 Jer. xxxi, 31-35. SeeJ. Frischmuthi de Fodere Novo ad Jer. xxxi. Dis. in Thesaur. Theol.-Philolog. p. 855, 860. Ρ Zech νἱ. 13. 4 See Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24; Hos. iii. 5, &e.
5]
86 Divine Royalty of Messiah in the prophets.
οὗ Righteousness, who is to be raised up among the posterity of David, is a King who will reign and prosper and execute judg- ment and justice in the earth’. According to Isaiah, this expected King, the Root of Jesse, ‘will stand for an ensign of the people;’ the Gentiles will seek Him; He will be the rallying-point of the world’s hopes, the true centre of its govern- ment 83, ‘Kings will see and arise, princes also will worship t;’ in deep religious awe, ‘kings will shut their mouths at Him ἃν, Righteousness, equity, swift justice, strict faithfulness, will mark His administration’; He will not be dependent like a human magistrate upon the evidence of His senses; He will not judge after the sight of His eyes, nor reprove after the hearing of His ears¥ ; He will rely upon the infallibility ofa perfect moral insight. Beneath the shadow of His throne, all that is by nature savage, proud, and eruel among the sons of men will iearn the habits of tenderness, humility, and love *. ‘The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; and a little child shall lead them.’ The reign of moral light ¥, of spiritual graces, of innocence, of simplicity, will succeed to the reign of physical and brute force2, The old sources of moral danger will become harmless through His protecting presence and blessing ; ‘the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den® ;’ and in the end ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea».’ Daniel is taught that at the ‘anointing of the Most Holy’—after a defined period—God will ‘finish the transgressions,’ and ‘make an end of sins,’ and ‘make reconciliation for iniquity,*and ‘bring in everlasting righteousness ©¢.’ Zechariah too especially points out the moral and spiritual characteristics of the reign of King Messiah. The founder of an eastern dynasty must ordinarily wade through blood and slaughter to the steps of his throne, and must maintain his authority by force. But the daughter of Jerusalem beholds her King coming to her, ‘Just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass.’ ‘ The chariots are cut off from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem ; the King ‘speaks peace unto the heathen; the ‘battle-bow is broken ;’
© Jer. xxiii. Β΄, xxx. 8, 9. ® Isa, xi. 10. * Ibid. xlix. 7. a Tsa. lii. 15. Υ Ibid, xi. 4, δ. Ὑ Ibid. ver. 3. x Ibid. vers. 6-8, ¥ Ibid. Ix. 1, 2, 19, 20. ® Ibid. Ixv. τό. ® Ibid. xi. 8, > Ibid. ver. 9. © Danek, 24.
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Messiah ts to win the world by Hrs sufferings. 87 |
and yet His dominion extends ‘from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth ἃ,
In harsh and utter contrast, as it seems, to this represen- tation of Messiah as a Jewish King, the moral conqueror and ruler of the world, there is another representation of Him which belongs to the Davidic period as well as to that of Isaiah. Messiah had been typified in David persecuted by Saul and humbled by Absalom, no less truly than He had been typified in Solomon surrounded by all the glory of his imperial court. If Messiah reigns in the forty-fifth or in the seventy-second Psalms, He suffers, nay He is pre-eminent among the suffering, in the twenty-second. We might suppose that the suffering Just One who is described by David, reaches the climax of anguish ; but the portrait of an archetypal Sorrow has been even more minutely touched by the hand of Isaiah. In both writers, how- ever, the deepest humiliations and woes are confidently treated as the prelude to an assured victory. The Psalmist passes, from what is little less than an elaborate programme of the historical] circumstances of the Crucifixion, to an announcement that by these unexampled sufferings the heathen will be converted, and all the kindreds of the Gentiles will be brought to adore the true Gode,. The Prophet describes the Seivant of God as ‘despised and rejected of menf;’ His sorrows are viewed with general satisfaction ; they are accounted a just punishment for His own supposed crimes*, Yet in reality He bears our in- firmities, and carries our sorrows; His wounds are due to our transgressions; His stripes have a healing virtue for usi. His sufferings and death are a trespass-offeringj; on Him is laid the iniquity of allk. If in Isaiah the inner meaning of the tragedy is more fully insisted on, the picture itself is not less vivid than that of the Psalter. The suffering Servant stands before His judges; ‘His Visage is so marred more than any man, and His Form more than the sons of men!;’ like a lamb ™, innocent, defenceless, dumb, He is led forth to the slaughter; ‘He is cut off from the land of the living®.’ Yet the Prophet
ἃ Zech. ix. 9, 10. J. Frischmuthi, De Messid Rege Sionis Diss. in Thesaur. Theol.-Philolog. p. 1016.
9 Ps, xxii. 1-21, and 27. Phillips, on Ps. xxii., argues that the Messianic sense is ‘the true and only true’ sense of it. See J. Frischmuthi, De Messie manuum et pedum perforatione ad Ps, xxii. 17, Diss. in Thesaur, Theol.-Philolog., p. 611.
ΕΥΤρα, 1.5. ® Ibid. ver. 4. h Thid. ! Tbid. ver. 5. J Ibid. ver. 12. © Ibid. ver. 6. ι Tbid. lit, 14. m Ibid. liii. 7, » Ibid, ver. 8.
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88 Sivucficance of the theory of a double Messiah.
pauses at His grave to note that He ‘shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied °,’ that God ‘will divide Him a portion with the great,’ and that He will Himself‘ divide the spoil with the strong. And all this is to follow ‘because He hath poured out His soul unto deathP,’ His death is to be the con- dition of His victory; His death is the destined instrument whereby He will achieve His mediatorial reign of glory.
Place yourselves, brethren, by an effort of intellectual sym- pathy in the position of the men who heard this language while its historical fulfilment, so familiar to us Christians, was as yet future. How self-contradictory must it have appeared to them, how inexplicable, how full of paradox! How strong must have been the temptation to anticipate that invention of a double Messiah, to which the later Jewish doctors had recourse, that they might escape the manifest cogency of the Christian argument9. That our Lord should actually have submitted Himself to the laws and agencies of disgrace and discomfiture, and should have turned His deepest humiliation into the very weapon of His victory, is not the least among the evidences of His Divine power and mission. And the prophecy which so paradoxically dared to say that He would in such fashion both suffer and reign, assuredly and implicitly contained within itself another and a higher truth. Such majestic control over the ordinary con- ditions of failure betokened something more than an extraor- dinary man, something not less than a distinctly Superhuman Personality. Taken in connection with the redemptive powers, the world-wide sway, the spiritual, heart-controlling teaching, so distinctly ascribed to Him, this prediction that the Christ would die, and would convert the whole world by death, pre- pares us for the most explicit statements of the prophets respecting His Person. It is no surprise to a mind which has dwelt steadily on the destiny which prophecy thus assigns to Messiah, that Isaiah and Zechariah should speak of Him as Divine. We will not lay stress upon the fact, that in
© 158. 117], 11. P Ibid. ver. 12. Compare also Isa. Ixiii. 1.
4 See Hengstenberg’s account of the Jewish interpretations of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12, Christolog. vol. ii. pp. 310-319 (Clarke’s trans.), and ‘The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah according to the Jewish Interpreters: by ‘Driver and Neubauer, with Introduction by E. B. Pusey, D.D. Oxford end Leipzig, 1876.2 Dr. Payne Smith on Isaiah, p.172. The theory of a second Messiah was elaborated later than the second century, but before the fifth, Pusey, Univ. Serm. p. 144. [
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Divinity ascribed in terms to the Messiah. 8g
Isaiah the Redeemer of Israel and of men is constantly asserted to be the Creatort, Who by Himself will save His people’. Significant as such language is as to the bent of the Divine Mind, it is not properly Messianic. But in that great pro- phecy t, the full and true sense of which is so happily suggested to us by its place in the Church services for Christmas Day, the ‘Son’ who is given to Israel receives a fourfold Name. He is a Wonder-Counsellor, or Wonderful, above all earthly beings ; He possesses a Nature which man cannot fathom; and He thus shares and unfolds the Divine Mind, He is the Father of the Everlasting Age or of Eternity’. He is the Prince of Peace. Above all, He is expressly named, the Mighty God ΚΓ. Conformably with this Jeremiah calls Him Jehovah Tsidkenu ¥,
Σ᾿ lsa, Σὶν. δ: ΧΙ 12.012} 17.
* Ibid. xlv. 21-24; Hos. i. 7: ef. Rom. xiv. 11; Phil. ii. 10; Isa.