» F. W. RobertBon.
ISAIAH 289
her " ; and when He had bidden the young man to arise, it was " to his mother " that He " delivered him."
And so it was in the more detailed narrative of the raising of Lazarus. Although He thought it needful for God's glory- that the death should not be prevented but suffered, and allowed therefore the sisters to think for two days that He was wanting in His care for them, yet how tender was the feeling shown at each step of that wonderful history ; from the first mention of the " sleep " of His friend to His disciples at a distance, to the grief shown in the meeting and the tears shed at the grave ! That briefest of all sentences, " Jesus wept," how does it carry with it, to all mourners, the assurance of His tender concern for them, who is Himself the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief !
3. He ivas a Man of Sorrows because of His contact with sin. — (1) The daily sins of ordinary life. Many vices were doubt- less practised there, in the Holy Land ; making homes wretched, and doing dishonour to God. The common sins of a fallen nature were daily committed, no doubt, if not in His sight, yet at least in the full view of His omniscient intuition. These things caused Him sorrow.
We know what positive pain it is to a man or a woman of refined and cultivated tastes, to listen to coarse, bad, vulgar language. Apart altogether from any sin in the thing, the polished educated nature recoils from it, shudders at it. Shut up any one of high mental culture and refinement with the vile, the abandoned, the coarse, and every moment of such an association will be a very hell to that person. The words, the acts, the gestures of the vile will positively torture his spirit. Yet all this gives us only the faintest idea of how deeply Christ's soul was pained by man's sin. From morning till night, and from night till morning, everywhere, always, throughout the whole period of His sojourn upon earth, the holy nature of Jesus must have writhed in torture under what He saw and heard. Lot, as his character is drawn for us in the Old Testament, was by no means a perfect man ; yet imperfect though he was, St. Peter says of him that in Sodom he was " vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked " ; (" for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul 19
290 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
from day to day with their unlawful deeds ") — 2 Pet. ii. 8. If this was so with an imperfect and sinful man, what must have been the agonised recoil of Christ's soul from sin, as it met Him, on every side, working, speaking, and acting in men, when He was here on earth ?
(2) There was also the special sin of hypocrisy. He saw religion itself with its very heart eaten out of it in those who professed to be its disciples and even its teachers. It is quite plain that the formalism, the false sanctimoniousness, the utter and absolute hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees, was the thing which caused our Saviour on earth the greatest concern as well as the greatest displeasure. It met Him everywhere. He could not go into the Temple without seeing some sign of it. Perhaps there was a Pharisee saying his prayers ; for a pretence making long prayers, full of boasting and self-parade ; and then going away to devour a widow's substance. Perhaps there was a Scribe teaching the people ; laying down the law, professing (unhappily) to lay down God's law, to the ignorant but respectful knot of men, women, and children around him ; and in all that he taught them there was not one word of truth, not one word of reality, not one idea communicated by which the soul could be nourished. Perhaps, when Christ was teaching, or when He was in the very act of healing, He saw before Him — it happened constantly — some suspicious countenance, some " evil eye" watch- ing His work and lying in wait to accuse. Often the same spirit broke out in open blasphemy. " This man is in concert with the devil. The devil lets Him cast out, that he may be the gainer." The finished work of such men was His betrayal and murder : but the work, in its beginning and in its progress, was harder still for Him to bear ; thwarting His gracious designs, and giving at each turn that most painful impression of being in a hostile presence and watched by a hostile eye.
IT " He was despised and rejected of men." The word translated " men " is a very striking one. It does not occur elsewhere in the prophecy of Isaiah in this exact form ; it occurs only twice in all the Old Testament. There is another familiar word referring to man as man that is repeatedly used ; but this word is exceptional, and refers to men in high places, men of distinction and of influence, men who have the forming of public opinion, and who give the