that the whole of this psalm is the outcry of a brokenhearted monarch. In depicting his lot at a moment of abject despair, David represents himself as overwhelmed by every possible ignominy. Language fails to express his misery: "My tongue cleaveth to my jaws; thou hast brought me into the dust of death; dogs have compassed me," and so on. The condemned criminal is not worse off than he. And he speaks of piercing hands and feet in allusion to the ordinary mode of capital punishment; the only possible outrage left wherewith to insult his fallen majesty.

Of all these prophecies none perhaps is so striking as that contained in Isaiah liii. Here the promised Saviour's character is completely changed-changed too into accordance with the historic portrait of Jesus; and harmonising with the most cherished conceptions of his mission. "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. With his stripes we are healed. Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." The whole seems a perfect foreshadowing of the Christian scheme and its Founder.

With reference to this remarkable passage, Mr. Francis Newman observes, that in the forty-third and following chapters Israel is spoken of as " my servant whom I have chosen," and is represented sometimes, though not consistently, as possessing the Messianic characteristics. Mr. Newman says, "It is essential to understand the same 'elect servant' all along." But he adds that, in chap. xlix. this elect Israel is distinguished from Jacob and Israel at large. From this entanglement the most probable inference seems to be "that as our high-churchmen distinguish 'mother church' from the individuals who compose the church, so the 'Israel' of this prophecy is the idealising

of the Jewish Church; which I understand to be a current Jewish interpretation." 1

There is another light in which this prophecy and others that bring the sufferings of the Messiah into prominence may be viewed. The nation was to pay a severe penalty for its transgressions; "therefore," says Daniel (chap. ix.), "the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him." In Joel (chap. iii.) the misfortunes that are to precede their final deliverance are also foretold. Combined with this belief was the ground conception of atonement common to every people who possessed even the rudiments of a religion. The innocent who was thus to become the propitiatory sacrifice could not be other than "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

It is foreign to my purpose to investigate either the intention or the accomplishment of the numerous prophecies which are supposed to relate to the coming of Christ. I have selected some of the most important as types of the whole. No one attempts to deny that the true Messianic predictions do foretell the appearance of an ideal hero; whose essential functions were to be legal and judicial. The spiritual element in his character, and also his sufferings, are relatively much less insisted upon than his temporal glory. True, he was to unite the entire Hebrew nation under one theocratic faith. But this part of his mission was fully as much political as religious: so a modern sovereign may be regarded as head of the national church as in Russia, or be styled Defender of the Faith as in England. He was to be the instrument in the hands of Jehovah to liberate his peculiar people from their burden of oppression. And according to the sanguineness of the prophet's temper, he was to restore the power of the entire nation with tenfold majesty; or 1 Phases of Faith, chap. vii.

merely preserve the often mentioned "remnant" which appeared likely to be all that would survive it.

Many of the so-called prophecies could have no reference to the Saviour at all. Of such are the 110th Psalm above cited; and Psalm ii., "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." The latter evidently refers to David's son, Solomon. "Kiss the son lest he be angry," should, after the Septuagint, be rendered "seize upon instruction." The reference to the coming of Shiloh, Gen. xlix., which is always looked upon as one of the least ambiguous, is but one instance among many of a misreading consequent upon the obscurity of the original text.1

Whatever interpretation we may put upon these celebrated passages, it is certain that without rejecting their most probable meaning, without perverting common judgment, and without wresting language from its ordinary sense to suit an extraordinary purpose, it is impossible to accept the sense taught by the Christian churches. It may be that the reference to secular and contemporary affairs is admitted: at the same time it may be held that this reference was but of minor importance; that the true bearing of the prophecies was typically signified; and that this was the foreordained occasion of divine revealment. Yet, if the primary meaning was intended by the prophet, if he was altogether unconscious of any latent significance in his utterances, what end can The Septuagint τὰ ἀποκείμενα αὐτῷ presupposes impossible. The ὁ ἀπεσταλμένος οἱ the New Testament, “qui mittendus est" of the Vulgate, presupposes the reading from Lagarde conjectures that it. Others identify it with "Solomon." The verse may mean “until he come

1 Whether the reader be acquainted or not with the Hebrew character, the subjoined commentary by a well-known authority will enable him to see how much depends upon the "points" before spoken of: and what simple beginnings may end in perverted doctrine. "The facts about Shiloh are these: the Samaritan is the ȧókeraι of

equally שִׁי לוֹ for שילה

But (שילהה for שילה) a sup- to Shiloh שֶׁלּוֹ ,.Aquila and Symm., i.c

posed contraction of is, which is of course an impossible etymology.

the text is probably corrupt."

these prophecies be deemed to serve? We are told repeatedly in the New Testament, that such and such an event came to pass "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord." Mr. Matthew Arnold boldly avers, "It can hardly be gainsaid, that, to a delicate and penetrating criticism, it has long been manifest that the chief literal fulfilment by Christ of things said by the prophets was the fulfilment such as would naturally be given by one who nourished his spirit on the prophets, and on living and acting their words." If the prediction bear the same sort of relation to its accomplishment as this bears to the prediction-should each, that is to say, depend on the support of the other, the method is curiously roundabout. That the prophecy was designed to strengthen miraculously the effect of its subsequent fulfilment, seems but an impertinent hypothesis, when the incomparably stronger measure of direct miracle was resorted to. The supplementary recourse to either support would appear to imply the inadequacy of both.

Nor is this all that can be urged against the proof from prophecy. We found the greatest of the prophets wrathfully inveighing against the belief in propitiatory sacrifice. According to them "a broken and contrite heart," a purer life, was the only acceptable offering to God. If they were inspired, what becomes of (the repudiated) sacrifice as a type of our redemption? Are we not forced to think that these prophets were men in advance of their age, the natural products of progressing civilisation; and that they sought to replace savage life, with its savage rites, by exalting religious sentiment, and by raising the morality of the nation to a higher level? If this be the true view, sad indeed is the irony of Fate. For the noblest of the Hebrew race was put to death for daring to stamp out their soul-killing ritualism; while his disciples, imbued with ancient paganism, still clung to the efficacy of blood

1 Literature and Dogma, p. 114.

:

spilling and for nineteen centuries Christians have treasured, as the most sacred of truths, a superstition to which the whole tenor of their Master's life gave the lie.

Of the remaining portions of the Old Testament the most valuable, as it seems to me, are some of the Psalms, for their great devotional beauty; and the book of Job, as a dramatic poem, expressive of the perpetual struggle of suffering humanity with the unfathomable mystery of existence. The Song of Solomon is probably what Bossuet thought it, an epithalamium on the occasion of the king's marriage with an Egyptian princess. Naturally the advocates of symbolism describe it as the love of the Church to Christ. "The description of the prince's daughter" is to be taken as an apostrophe to "the graces of the Church." Yet surely Hafiz, the "sugar lip," never wrote love-song if this be not one. Even were it what is claimed, we must still be inclined to think with Rabbi Wogue: "Be the intentions of the poet and the elevation of his religious conceptions ever so lofty, be the beauty of the sense hidden under the external form what it may, that form, with its temerity and its pitfalls, is always there. An allegory sustained from end to end, and which never reveals its intention or true application in any corner of the work, runs great risk of being misunderstood, at all events by common people, since its utility is effaced by its ineptitude, the end of edification is missed, and those even who revere the work as holy may misprise it as inopportune." Indeed symbolism is always a two-edged instrument, apt enough to wound its user. What else happens to the rationalist who would persuade us that Christ only swooned upon the cross? So Origen tells us it could not be literally meant that Satan showed all the kingdoms of the earth to Jesus, because a bodily eye could not take them in. So, too, for propriety's sake, Justin Martyr transforms the Shunammite Abishag into heavenly wisdom; and Lot's

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