hid not his face from shame and spitting'." With these lights let me go and search for the Mesi,iah. Where shall I find him? I go into the hi^l -priest's palace: I descend into the hall among the servants ; there I see the indignities offered to the despised Nazarene : I behold him smitten on the face with sticks, as well as with the palms of their hands'^: I see the inhuman wretches spitting in his face ; whilst he endur;:.^ all his sufferings with invincible patience. There, therefore, I recognize the Messiah, the Saviour of the world ; and fall- ing down before him, I exclaim with Thomas, " My Lord, and my God! "]
In this history we behold, as in a glass,
1. How Christ is yet treated by an ungodly world —
[It is not any longer in the power of any to offer him the same personal insults that are recorded in the text: but as they who live in sin are said to " crucify the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame," so may they with equal justice be said to "spit in his face and buffet him:" and, while they imagine that he neither regards nor notices their impieties, they do in fact repeat the blasphemies of those who smote him, and say, " Prophesy unto us, thou Christ ; Who is he that smote thee?" Let then the indignation which we feel against that blasphemous and inhuman rabble, be turned against ourselves: for, as often as we have violated his laws, and encouraged our- selves with hopes of impunity in sin, we have renewed the transactions of that awful day: and we have even more need to humble ourselves than they, inasmuch as we have professed to acknowledge him as our Saviour, whereas they really thought him an impostor, who deserved all that they inflicted on him.]
2. How his disciples must expect to be treated —
[" The servant must not expect to be above his Lord : if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, much more will they those of his household." Indeed, as in the case be- fore us, the very name by which God himself has designated them is used against them in a way of profane derision, and made a term of the most malignant reproach. We appeal to all, whether the children of God are not continually called in Scripture " the elect:" yet is there not in the whole language one single term that is so offensive to the world at large, or that is used with more bitter sarcasm than this. Yes ; this is regarded precisely as the terms " Christ and Prophet" were by those persecutors of our Lord : and the same idea of presump- tion and hypocrisy is now attached to those who claim the
c Isai. 1. 6. See also our Lord's own prophecy, Luke xviii. 32. d Beza justly translates tppcnTirrar bacilUs ceciderunt. And this marks the acconiplishnicnt of Micah's prophecy.