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lead to fashion and to sentiment. They are the men spoken of here. The prophet, therefore, in these words describes our Lord's relationship to the polite society of His day. So far it is not His relationship with humanity — we have that later on — but with men who occupied the seats of Moses and of the prophets, who were proud of their distinctions but thoughtless of Him who had exalted them, and unmindful of the duty which such distinctions involved. Was it not so ? Who were the men who despised Christ ? Who were those who rejected or "boycotted" Him ? For if that word were classical, it would be the most forcible and effective translation. In what hearts did Christ first of all find contempt ? Who were those who excluded Him from their tables as the poor unlettered peasant of Galilee ? Oh, men in high places, who belonged to the polite society of the day, that had its rules, its etiquette, its conditions of entrance into its privileged circle, men who were proud because high, who lacked insight, but sought to compensate for that by an assurance which only conceit begot.^
(3) There was also the special sin of treachery. " And Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor." Most wonderful indeed is the record of that Divine forbearance, which treated the traitor apostle, through three long years, on terms of friendship, confi- dence, and sympathy. All the miracles were wrought, all the discourses of Christ were uttered, with Judas Iscariot standing in the inner circle. And " Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray Him." Can we think of a trial, of a sorrow, heavier than this : to have in your own household, at your own table, admitted to your confidence, possessed of your secrets, one who is hardening more and more into hostility, and whom you know to be marked out as your eventual betrayer ? This sorrow was Christ's all along. He had a traitor in His camp, an enemy in His bosom.
(4) But His sorrow's crown of sorrow was this, that He was Himself made sin for others. To see sin was sorrow to the Holy One. To see sin ruining men's lives, teaching in God's name, present daily with Him in disguise, was enough to sadden Him. But He was to come closer even than this to it. " He bare," this chapter says, " the sin of many." It is probably in reference to this, that Christ is called a Man of Sorrows. If we wish to
^D. Davies.
292 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
see Him in His sorrow, we must go to Gethsemane and Calvary. It was in Gethsemane that the confession fell from Him, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death." It was on Calvary that the cry was wrung from His lips, " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? " Surely it was neither the fear of death, nor the presence of death, which constituted the point and sting of that grief. It was no mere remembrance of what He had seen of sin upon earth, no mere anticipation of what sin might yet be in its misery and in its consequences, which expressed itself in those bitter words of anguish. Sin was nearer to Him even than the memory or the foreknowledge. It was then lying upon Him : He was bearing it — bearing it for us — tasting death, not for Himself, but (by the grace of God) for every man. The crowning point of the sorrows was the conscious incorporation with the sin.
ii. The Reason of His Sorrow.
1. He was a Man of Sorrows in order to be one of us. Sorrow is a universal fact. It is a fact which is both prominent and arrestive. There is no door at which it does not knock, no portal through which it does not enter, no roof beneath which it does not tarry. Christ Himself trod the Via Dolorosa — the name given to the road which leads from Olivet to Calvary. And for all of us the pathway of life is the pathway of sorrow —
The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
If The task which the master painters of the middle ages for centuries proposed to themselves as the highest aim of art, was to realise on canvas the conception of the Anointed One of God. It was their grand work to paint a Christ. And what they made their business was not to turn off a portrait, but to embody the highest idea which genius could conceive of glorious humanity. If the Italian painter, or if the Spanish painter, produced a form which bore the peculiar national lineaments worn by the humanity in his own climate, so far he had failed. He might have idealised the grandeur of the Italian form, or the grandeur of the Spanish form, but he had not given to men's eyes that grandeur of the human species which belonged to a conception of the Son of Man.
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He had got a portrait for which a nobly formed individual of one nation might have sat, but an individual of no other. He had got the perfection of the Italian or of the Spanish type, but not the perfection of manhood. Now that which the painter aimed at in the outward form, that Christ was in inward character. He was the essence, the sublimation, of humanity. It was a noble endeavour of the Apostle Paul to be all things to all men. To the Gentile he became as a Gentile, that he might gain the Gentiles ; to the Jew as a Jew. But in all this he was acting a single part for a time. He made it his business while the Jew was with him to try to realise the feehngs and enter into the difficulties of a Jew. He laid it upon himself as a Christian duty while he was reasoning with a Gentile to throw himself into the Gentile's position, to try to look at things from his point of view, and even to fancy himself perplexed with his prejudices. But directly he had done with the man he wished to win, he laid aside his part. He was neither Jew nor Gentile, but he was Paul again, with all Paul's personahty, with all Paul's peculiarities. That which Paul was for a time, Christ is for ever. That which Paul was by effort and constraint, Christ is by the very law of His nature. He is all things to all men. He is the countryman of the world. He is the Mediator, not between God and a nation, but between God and man. He was the Jew and the Gentile, and the Greek and the Eoman, all in one. He can sympathise with every man, because He had, as it were, been every man. There is not a natural throb which ever agitated the bosom of humanity that Christ has not felt. The aspirations of loftiest genius and the failure of humblest mediocrity, the bitterness of disappointment and the triumph of success, the privations of the poor man, and the feebleness of cor- poreal agony — Christ knew them all. He came into this world the Son and Heir of the whole race of man.^