Morning, March 31
Go To Evening Reading
“With his stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:5
Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman
scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of
the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were inter-twisted every here
and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down
these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the
flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column,
and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman
lictors was probably the most severe of his flagellations. My soul,
stand here and weep over his poor stricken body.
Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears, as he stands
before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the
lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of his own
blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which his stripes have
wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief?
If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection
glowing now within our bosoms.
“See how the patient Jesus stands,
Insulted in his lowest case!
Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands,
And spit in their Creator’s face.
With thorns his temples gor'd and gash'd
Send streams of blood from every part;
His back’s with knotted scourges lash'd.
But sharper scourges tear his heart.”
We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business
calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of
his bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and
at nightfall we will return to commune with him, and sorrow that our
sin should have cost him so dear.