"did no sin, 1md in whose mouth no guile was found;" he was the innocent, the pure the just, the righteous One. ' III. THE DIVINE AOOOUNT OF IT. "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows ••• he was wounded for our transgressions," etc. But is it credible or is it e,·en possible that the innocent One would or could suffer for us the guilty ones? Why not? Being such a One as he is-the pitiful, compassionate, mi.gnauimous One, it is exactly what we might expect he would do. 1. involuntarily, we are continually bearing one another's griefs. One sins and another suffers, beneath every sky and from generation to generation. 2. Voluntcwily we suffer in one another's stead. The father willingly ~uffers and strives that his son may not endure all the threatened consequences of his guilty folly; the mother eagerly endures greatest privations that her daughter may be spared the dishonour which is her due; the friend gladly shares, halves the trouble, the anxiety, the loss, into which his old companion has fallen. Just as men are magnanimous and noble-minded, so do they carry the sorrows of their fellows, so are they willingly wounded and bruised for the transgressions of their kindred and their friends. And if we, being evil, will do this, how much more our Father who is in heaven! if we, whose thoughts and ways are so compar.1tirnly low, how much more he ,~hose thoughts and whose ways are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth! It is just the very thing we should look for from the heavenly Father. IV. THE PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. That we should, by a living faith in the Divine Redeemer, avail onrselves of the work be wrought when he suffered for us. Otherwise we shall not know the peace and rest of heart which he came to secure us.-C. Ver. 6.-Departure and distance from God. These words, though very pictorial and poetical, indicate with great clearness the cardinal truths of religion and even of Chris- tianity, and they express for us the thought and feeling common to e.11 devout spirits. We see in them- L TEE HOME WHENCE WE HAVE DEPARTED. It is not stated, but it is clearly implied, that the fold or home wheuce we have gone astray is. 1. That of God, our Creator, our Father, our Divine Friend; it is that where he dwells, where he rules, where he sheds the sunshine of his presence and favour. 2. It is that of righteousness ; of gratitude, of love, of reverence, of obedience, of submission. 3. It is that of peace; of spiritual order, rest, joy. IL THE DIFFERENT PATHS WE HAVE PURSUED. "We have turned every one to his own way." Sinful error takes many directions. Sometimes it wanders into unbelief and denial; sometimes ioto rebeUiousness of spirit, disdainful rejection of Di vino claim; at other times into a sinful indulgence, in one or other of its various forms; or age.in into e. guilty negligence and unconcern, or a criminal procrastination of sacred duty; or yet again into a hollo"' and worthless/or11wlism, which has the show of piety without the substance of it. But in these various paths of sin there is one thing which is commou to all, viz. the setting up of the human will against the will of God. Every one of us has gone his own way. We have "followed the devices a.ad desires of our owe. hearts." We have determinately set our own inclination against the will of God. And herein we have- III. THE GUILT WHICH WE HA VE ALL INCURRED. "All we . . . have gone astray." Some men have wandered farther away from God than others; some have gone in an opposite direction to that of others; but all men have guiltily preferred their own way to the home and the fold of God. All have forsaken and disregarded and grieved him. And thus all have sinned; all, without exception; not only those who have fallen into gross and most shameful enormities, but they also who have kept to the proprieties of outward behaviour, and have observed the decencies and requirements of the religious life ;-all have withheld from God what is his due, and reserved. to themselves what was not theirs to keep. IV. THE PROVISION GoD JJAB MADE FOB OUB RETURN. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." This does not signify that Jesus Christ bore t,he penalty due to all human sin-a part of that penalty it was absolutely impossible that the Innocent One should bear. It means that the redemptive work he wrought, and wrought by his 1ubmission to &0rrow and dea~h, avails for ency child of Dlall who ce. LIii, 1-12.] '!'HE BOOK OF '!'HE PROPHET IS.A.IAH. 307
will accept it; it meane that in Christ is forgiveness of sin, acceptance with God, entrance into life eternal to every one who humbly but heartily receives him as Saviour and Lord.-C.