ISAIAH ^^2>
No offering of my own I have, ^
Nor works my faith to prove; I can but give the gifts He gave,
And plead His love for love.
And so beside the Silent Sea
I wait the muffled oar ; No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air; I only know T cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.^
4. Should not Christ's method be the method of all who are Christ's ? " Send them away," we say ; " Give ye them to eat," He answers. " Wilt thou that we call down fire to consume them?" we ask; He answers, "Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of."
IT A mere plodding boy was above all others encouraged by Arnold, At Waleham he had once got out of patience and spoken sharply to a pupil of this kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, " Why do you speak angrily, Sir ? Indeed I am doing the best that T can," Years afterwards he used to tell the story to his children, and said, " I never felt so much ashamed in my life — that look and that speech I have never forgotten," 2
Judge not ; tne workings of his brain And of his heart thou canst not see ;
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain. In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well-won field, Where thou would'st only faint and yield.
The look, the air, that frets thy sight,
May be a token that below The soul has closed in deadly fight,
With some infernal fiery foe Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee shuddering on thy face !
18
* J. G, Whittier, "The Eternal Goodness. ' Stanley, Arnold of Rughy,
^74 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
The fall thou darest to despise — • May be the Angel's slackened hand
Has suffered it, that he may rise And take a firmer surer stand ; Or, trusting less, to earthly things, May henceforth learn to use his wings.
And judge none lost ; but wait, and see,
With hopeful pity, not disdain ; The depth of the abyss may be
The measure of the height of pain And love and glory that may raise
The soul to God in after days ! *
* A. Proctor.
A Man of Sorrows.
Literature.
Alexander (J. A,), The Gospel of Jesus Christ, 446.
Alexander (S. A.), The Mind of Ch/rist, 45.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women, and Children, 5tli Ser., 379.
Fallowes (J. P.), The King's Fountain, 193.
Fillingham (R. C), Sermons by a Suspended Vicar, 20.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year, Holy Week, 11)2.
Macleod (D.), Sunday Home Service, 33.
Nicholson (M.), Redeeming the Time, 252.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, v, 161.
Robertson (F. W.), The Human Race, 1.
Sanderson (T.), Unfulfilled Designs, 45.
Selby (T. G.), The God of the Patriarchs, 273.
Shepherd (A.), Men in the Making, 190.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Taberncbcle Pulpit, xix. No. 1099.
Vaughan (C. J.), Family Prayer and Sermon Book, i. 271.
Christian World Pulpit, xxvii. 53 (Davies) ; xxxv. 109 (Rogers) ; Iv. 394
(Lang) ; Ix. 180 (Cadman) ; Ixxi. 145 (Campbell). Church of England Pulpit, xl. 29 (Reid). Churchman's Pulpit, Good Friday, 13 (Alsop). Clergyman's Magazine, new Ser., vii. (Yonard). Expository Tim^s, vi. 377 (Ford). Homiletic Review, xxv. 230 (Parkhurst). Preacher's Magazine, i. 126 (Vaughan); vi. 237 (Brewin)j xii 142
(Brewin).
A Man of Sorrows.
He was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief : and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. — liii. 3.
There is not a verse of this chapter of Isaiah at which one might not very well begin, as S. Philip the Evangelist once did to the eunuch, and preach the whole doctrine of Christ crucified. As it was in the counsels of Almighty God, that His Blessed Son should endure for our behalf all the various afflictions which we have deserved, so this famous prophecy touches, one after another, the several sorrows which He endured. It speaks of His intense bodily pain. " He was wounded for our transgres- sions, he was bruised for our iniquities." It speaks again of the grievous oppression, the wrong, injustice, undeserved ill-usage, which He had to sustain. " He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He openeth not His mouth ; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." And here, in the beginning of the prophecy, mention is particularly made of that which was the root of all the rest, and which many persons would feel as the bitterest of all — His being despised and scorned. " He shall grow up before " God " as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : He hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ; and we hid as it were our faces from Him ; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."