our lord's trial and execution.
Isai. liii. 8. He ivas taken from prison and from judgment : and who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of the land of the living : for the transgression of my peojjle ivas he stricken.
IT has been generally thought, especially among heathen writers, that if virtue could be set before the eyes of men, and exhibited by some pattern of per- fect excellence, it would conciliate the esteem of all, and be held in universal admiration. But Socrates entertained a very different opinion : he thought that if any person possessed of perfect virtue were to ap- pear in the world, his conduct would form so striking a contrast to that of all around him, that he would be hated, despised, and persecuted, and at last be put to death ; because the world could not endure the tacit, but keen reproofs, which such an example must con- tinually administer. Experience proves that the opinion of this great philosopher was founded in a just estimate of human nature. Such a light did come into the world : " it shined in darkness ; and the darkness comprehended it not :" the workers of iniquity hated the light, and endeavoured to extin- guish it, though their malicious attempts served but to make it burn with brighter lustre. The Lord
Jesus was none other than virtue itself incarnate ; and his enemies abundantly justified the opinion of Socrates ; for they combined against him, and treated him with unexampled cruelty, and slew him. The extreme injustice of their conduct towards him is strongly marked in the words before us ; which, on account of their intricacy, we shall explain, and, as replete with useful instruction, we shall improve.
I. To explain them —
Commentators have differed much in their inter- pretation of the former clauses of the text ; some referring them to the exaltation of Christ, and others to his humiliation. According to the former, they import that God would raise him from the dead, and give him an inexpressible weight of glory, together with an innumerable seed, who should, as it were, be born to him. But we very much prefer the inter- pretation that refers them to the trial and execution of our Lord : for, in this view, they form an evident connexion between his behaviour under the indig- nities offered hima, and his burial in the grave of a rich manb. A learned prelate0 translates them thus; " He was taken off by an oppressive judgment ; and his manner of life who would declare ?" According to this view of the words, they particularly specify the injustice, which, under a legal form, should be exercised towards him, and the want of that, which was, in every court of justice, the privilege of pri- soners, the liberty of calling witnesses to testify on his behalf. Our Lord himself refers to that custom in his answer to the high-priest d; "I spake openly to the world : and in secret have I said nothing : why askest thou me ? Ask them which heard me, what I have said to them : behold, they know what I said." St. Paul also, when before Festus and Agrippa, complained that his adversaries withheld from him the testimony, which their knowledge of him qualified them to give : " My manner of life from my youth know all the Jews, who knew me
a ver. 7. b ver. 9. c Bishop Lowth. d John xviii. 20, 21.
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from the beginning (if they would testify) that after the straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee6." A further confirmation of this sense of the words arises from the manner in which they are cited by an inspired writer : St. Luke, quoting the very passage before us, says, " In his humiliation his judgment was taken away ;" and, " who shall declare his gene- ration1'?" Now though the latter words are the same as in the text, yet the former vary considerably from it ; and seem to determine this to be the true scope of the whole ; namely, that the most common rights of justice should be denied to our Lord at the time of his trial.