* Thomas Parnell.
ISAIAH 335
Now it needs nothing more than the strength and the wisdom and the patience of the earthly shepherd to restore the straying sheep. But although my Shepherd is God over all, He cannot lead me back by His patience and His wisdom and His strength alone. Something more is required : something momentous, inexplicable, poignant. He must put Himself into my place. He must charge Himself with my sin. He must die my death. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
1. The Lord. — Who finds for me a rescuer ? Who provides me with a Saviour ? It is the Lord. It is God the Father and God the Judge. It is He whose commandments I have broken, and whose sentence I have incurred. Not, however, without the fullest consent of Jesus, did God assign Him a task so sorrowful and a burden so heavy. The Shepherd's delights were with the foolish and wilful sheep, whom he could not bless without passing through the furnace and the flood. Ah ! there is no God like mine. God is Love — God the Father and God the Son ; and between the affection of these two I dare not discriminate.^
IF Eemember that although the text speaks of that burden as being laid upon Him by the Lord, we are not to suppose that, therefore, it was not assumed by Him by His own loving volition. He bore our sins because He would. The Lord laid them upon Him ; therefore the sacrifice appointed by God is accepted of God ; but He chose to suffer, and He willed to die, because He loved thee, and me, and every soul of sinful men. There is the secret of the power of the Gospel.*
2. On Him. — The words, " The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all " are a foreshadowing of the death of Jesus. The man who uttered them was thinking of life. He knew that many righteous had suffered for the unrighteous. Probably he was patiently suffering for others. The whole chapter is the heart -utterance of one who bears the sins of others, who feels the guilt of his fellow-men. Human experience is revealed in these immortal, soul-subduing words. They reveal an eternal principle, and only Jesus expressed it fully in His life and on the Cross.
^ A. Smellie, In the Secret Place, p. 317. ^ A. Maclaren, Paul's Prayers, p. 177.
336 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
There is nothing unreal in this idea of redemption ; it brings the Cross into the movement of the world. Vicarious suffering has been working for good from the beginning. You are familiar with this thought. The Old Testament is full of substitution.
The weak suffvr for the strong in the lower grades of life. In the struggle for existence the weakest give place to the strongest. This is always going on. The best survive, and so the quality is raised. Now, does not this involve a kind of suffering ? That the many perish for the few to survive, seems 80 awful a process.
Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
That is Tennyson's note of despair, but he was truer to the spirit when he said —
That nothing walks with aimless feet.
Out of the loss and suffering there is gain and progress. Let us go a step higher.
The strong suffer for the weak. — The birds look after their young. Savage beasts defend their offspring, and risk their lives in defence. When we come to mankind, there is a greater demand made upon the love of the parents. We come into existence dependent for years upon the help of others. The strong cherish, guide, and support the weak. Professor Drummond has made this beautifully clear in his Ascent of Man, showing how there has always been going on a struggle not only for life, but for the life of others.
Then there is the highest kind of sufifering. TA« innocent suffer for the guilty, the Just for the unjust ; and this was fully revealed in the Cross. The evil that men do lives after them, said Shakespeare. Very true, but that is not all. Evil done afflicts the righteous now. It is they who feel the shame of wrong. The pure among the impure, the gentle among the brutal, feel most the shame of impurity and cruelty. Innocent children suffer through the sin of parents, and parents for children. One may bear the disgrace of another. The natural
ISAIAH 337
history of wrong who can trace ? Christ was brought under the same law. " He bore our sins in his own body on to the tree " ; not simply " on the tree," but onward through life unto death. " The Diviue can never be more Divine than that." If that Spirit was not God in man, we may cease to speak or even to dream of God.^
IT The great mystery of the idea of sacrifice, which has been manifested as one united and solemn instinct by all thoughtful and affectionate races since the wide world became peopled, is founded on the secret truths . . . that you cannot save men from death but by facing it for them, nor from sin but by resisting it for them. All the true good and glory even of this world, not to speak of any that is to come, must be bought with our toil and with our tears.2