458 CONTRITION
I have pierced Thee ? " True penitents smite upon their breasts as they behold their Saviour bleeding on the tree. This is genuine contrition.
They " shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitter- ness for his firstborn." The Israelite was specially sensitive con- cerning the death of his offspring. To lose his firstborn was as when a nation loses its prince. To lose his only son was to quench the light of the house. The old man mourns, " I am as good as dead. I am blotted out of the book of the living, for I have now no son to bear my name. The lamp has gone out in my tent, for my son, my only son, my firstborn, has gone down to the gates of the grave ! " The case was hopeless for the future ; none remained to continue his family among those who sit in the gate, and the old man rent his clothes and wept sore.
The prophet could not recollect any mourning which he had ever heard of that was like it, except the lamentation of the people for the death of Josiah. Then all Judah mourned, and Jeremiah wrote sad dirges, and other prophets and poets poured forth their lamentations. Everywhere throughout the land there went up an exceeding great and bitter cry, for the good king had fallen, and there were no princes of like mind to follow him. Alas, poor nation, it was thy last bright hour which saw him ride to the battle; in his death thy star has set! In the valley of Hadadrimmon the lamentation began, but it spread through all the land. The fatal fight of Megiddo was mourned by every woman in Jerusalem. Bravely had Josiah kept his word, and sought to repel the Egyptian invader ; but the hour of Judah's punishment was come and Josiah died. A mourning as sincere and deep comes to us when we perceive that Jesus died for us. Blessed be His name ; the joy that comes of it when we see sin put away by His death turns all the sorrow into joy.
T| The text is one of those prophetic passages which, viewed from whatever standpoint, are luminous with rays of prophetic anticipation. Jehovah speaks. The time cometh when the re- bellious people shall mourn, beholding the pierced One. That piercing became a possible and literal event when the Incarnate Son of Jehovah yielded His body to the nails and to the spear. The evangelist St. John quotes the ancient prediction, " They shall look on him whom they pierced," as having become a fact through the cross on Calvary. His application of the words to Christ
ZECHARIAH xn. 10 459
expresses a prophecy of continued fulfilment in the New Testament age. The words of Zechariah are a Messianic prophecy, and applicable only and wholly to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We see the fulfilment of them commencing in the circumstances of His crucifixion, but continued in a nobler sense after Pentecost, when many of those who had clamoured for His blood, looked back with horror on their deed, and, repenting, were converted. We find the prophecy fulfilled in the mental gaze on Him whom their sins have pierced, which is repeated in the daily conversion of souls, both of Gentile and of Jew. That look is the essence of Christian worship, in the approach to God through Christ the crucified, in the continual memorial of Christ's death at the altar, in the observance of holy Passiontide.1
6. Contrition issues in cleansing. The prophet goes on to pro- mise in the name of God, " In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness." We are delivered from guilt, we are saved from sin, through the grace and Spirit of God. A radical change is wrought within us ; grace " bringeth salvation " ; " what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The blood shed, instead of crying out for vengeance, is found to cry out for pardon to be extended to the guilty ; the place of our deep conviction becomes the scene of our deliverance. The valley of Achor is constituted a door of hope ; inability yields to the triumphant grace of God ; salvation reaches us through the cross.
The propitiation of His blood lies on our part in its humbling, convicting, melting power upon human souls, in the power which it has to make us ashamed, and discontented with our poor quality, with our low level, and to agitate us with strong sighs after nobler being and living. In proportion as He sets us weeping with pungent regret and wistful aspiration, there is a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.
T[ It was from this passage that Cowper got his idea of the guilt-cleansing fountain of Christ's blood ; yet, instead of a fountain
1 G. H. Gwilliam, in The Expository Times, xi. 395.
46o CONTRITION