Another passage claims a reverent attention — "If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (John vi, 51). He is the bread; and he will give the bread. If his presence on earth were the expected food, it was given already ; but would he speak of " drinking his blood" (ver. 53), which can only refer to the dead? It is on the cross that he will afford this food to his disciples. We grant that this whole passage has occasioned as much disputing among Christian commentators as it did among the Jews who heard it; and for the same reason — for the hardness of the saying. But there stands the saying; and no can- did person can refuse to see a reference in it to the death of him that speaks.
In that discourse, which has well been called the praj-er of consecration offered by our High-priest, there is another passage which cannot be alleged as evidence to one who thinks that any word applied by Jesus to his disciples and himself must bear in both cases pre- cisely the same sense, but which is really pertinent to this inquiry — "Sanctify them through thy truth: tin- word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth" (John xvii, 17-19). The word ayid'Ciiv, "sanctify," "consecrate," is used in the Sept. for the offering of sacrifice (I^ev. xxii, 2) and for the dedication of a man to the divine service (Numb. iii, 15). Here the present tense, "I consecrate," used in a discourse in which our Lord says he is " no more
in the world," is conclusive against the interpretation " I dedicate my life to thee ;" for life is over. No self- dedication, except that by death, can now be spoken of as present. " I dedicate myself to thee, in my death, that these may be a people consecrated to thee;" such is the great thought in this sublime passage, which suits well with his other declaration that the blood of his sacrifice sprinkles them for a new covenant with God. To the great majority of expositors from Chrys- ostom and Cyril the doctrine of reconciliation through the death of Jesus is asserted in these verses.
The Redeemer has already described himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (John X, 11, 17, 18), taking care to distinguish his death from that of one who dies against his will in striving to compass some other aim — " Therefore doth my Fa- ther love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again."
Other passages that relate to his death will occur to the memory of any Bible reader. The corn of wheat that dies in the ground to bear much fruit (John x, 24) is explained by his own words elsewhere, where lie says that he came " to minister, and to give his life a ran- som for many" (Matt, xx, 28).
4. Thus, then, speaks Jesus of himself. What say his witnesses of him? "Behold the Lamb of God," sa}'s the Baptist, "which taketh awa)- the sin of the world" (John i, 20). Commentators differ about the allusion implied in that name. But take anj- one of their opinions, and a sacrifice is implied. Is it the pas- chal lamb that is referred to? Is it the lamb of the daily sacrifice? Either way the death of the victim is brought before us. But the allusion, in all jjrobabil- ity, is to the well-known prophecy of Isaiah (ch. liii), to the Lamb brought to the slaughter, who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. See this passage discussed fully in the notes of Meyer, Lange {BibeUrerke), and Al- ford. The reference to the paschal lamb finds favor with Grotius and others; the reference to Isaiah is ap- proved by Chrysostom and many others. The taking- away of sin (ol'ptu') of the Baptist, and the bearing it (fiptiv, Sept.) of Isaiah, have one meaning and answer to the Hebrew word X'w'3. To take the sins on him- self is to remove them from the sinners ; and how can this be through his death except in the way of expia- tion by that death itself?
5. The af>ostles, after the resurrection, preach no mor- al system, but a belief in and love of Christ, the cruci- fied and risen Lord, through whom, if they repent, men shall obtain salvation. This was Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii) ; and he appealed boldlv to the prophets on the ground of an expectation of a suffering Messiah (iii, 18). Philip traced out for the eunuch, in that picture of suffering holiness in the well- known chapter of Isaiah, the lineaments of Jesus of Nazareth (Acts viii; Isa. liii). The first sermon to a Gentile household proclaimed Christ slain and risen, and added "that through his name whosoever believ- eth in him shall receive remission of sins" (Acts x), Paul at Antioch preaches "a Saviour Jesus" (xiii, 23); " through this Man is preached unto you the forgive- ness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses" (ver. 38, 39). At Thessalonica all that we learn of this apostle's preaching is " that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto j'ou, is Christ" (xvii, 3). Before Agrippa he declared tliat he had preached always "that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead" (xxvi, 23) ; and it was this declaration that con- vinced his royal hearer that he was a crazed fanatic. The account of the first founding of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles is concise and fragmentary; and