SERMON LV.

CHRIST A MAN OF SORROWS.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter; and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. ISAIAH LIII. 3—7.

In this chapter, my friends, we have a prophetic description of the character, life and sufferings of our Saviour. So full, so particular, and so clear is this description, so exactly does it correspond with the events which it foretells, that it seems to be a history rather than a prophecy; and had we not the most satisfactory evidence of its being penned some hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, we should be tempted to suspect that it was forged after his death, and that the writer only related the circumstances which he pretended to foretell. In that portion of this remarkable prophecy which has been read as our text, there are several particulars deserving of attention. A few remarks upon each of these particulars will compose the present discourse.

Į. It is here predicted, that Christ should be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That this prediction was literally fulfilled, no one, who has ever read the history of his sufferings, need be told. It may, however, be necessary here to correct a mistake, which has deprived this man of sorrows of much of that sympathy, which his unexampled sufferings would otherwise have excited. It has been supposed by many, that his sufferings were rather apparent than real; or at least, that his abundant consolations, and his knowledge of the happy consequences which would result from his death, rendered his sorrows comparatively light, and almost converted them to joys. But never was supposition more erroneous. Jesus Christ was as truly a man, as either of us, and, as man, he was as really susceptible of grief, as keenly alive to pain and reproach, and as much averse from shame and suffering, as any of the descendants of Adam. As to divine consolations and supports, they were at all times bestowed on him in a very sparing manner, and in the season of his greatest extremity entirely withheld; and though a knowledge of the happy consequences, which would result from his sufferings, rendered him willing to endure them, it did not, in the smallest degree, take off their edge, or render him insensible to pain. No, his sufferings, instead of being less, were incomparably greater than they appeared to be. No finite mind can conceive of their extent; nor was any of the human race ever so well entitled to the appellation of the Man of Sorrows, as the man Christ Jesus. His sufferings began with his birth, and ended but with his life.

In the first place, it must have been exceedingly painful to such a person as Christ, to live in a world like this. He was perfectly holy, harmless, and undefiled. Of course, he could not look on sin, but with the deepest abhorrence. It is that abominable thing which his soul hates. Yet during the whole period of his residence on earth, he was continually surrounded by it, and his feelings were every moment tortured with the hateful sight of human depravity. How much sorrow the sight occasioned him, we may in some measure learn from the bitter complaints which similar causes extorted from David, Jeremiah, and other ancient saints. They describe, in the most striking and pathetic language, the sufferings which they experienced from the prevalency of wickedness around them, and often

wished for death to relieve them from their sufferings. But the sufferings of Christ from this cause were incomparably greater than theirs. He was far more holy than they, his hatred of sin incomparably more intense, and the sight of it proportionably more painful. In consequence of his power of searching the heart, he saw unspeakably more sin in the world, than any mere man could discover. We can discover sin only when it displays itself in words and actions. But he saw all the hidden wickedness of the heart, the depths of that fountain of iniquity, from which all the bitter streams of vice and misery flow. Every man that approached him was transparent to his eye. In his best friends he saw more sin than we can discover in the inost abandoned reprobates. He saw also, in a far clearer light than we can do, the dreadful consequences of sin, the interminable miseries to which it is conducting the sinner; and his feelings of compassion were not blunted by that selfish insensibility which enables us to bear with composure the sight of human distress. On the contrary, he was all sympathy, compassion, and love. He loved others as himself, and therefore felt for the sufferings of others as for his own. If Paul could say, who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? much more might Christ. In this, as well as in a still more important sense, he took upon himself our griefs, and bore our sorrows. As he died for all, so he felt and wept for the sufferings of all. The temporal and eternal calamities of the whole human race, and of every individual among them, all seemed to be collected and laid upon him. He saw at one view the whole mighty aggregate of human guilt and human wretchedness; and his boundless benevolence and compassion made it by sympathy all his own. It has been said by philosophers, that if any man could see all the misery which is daily felt in the world, he would never smile again. We need not wonder then that Christ, who saw and felt it all, never smiled, though he often wept. We may add, that the perfect contrast between the heavens which he had left, and the world into which he came, rendered a residence in the latter peculiarly painful to his feelings. In heaven he had seen nothing but holiness and happiness and love. In this world, on the contrary, he saw little but wickedness and hatred and misery, in ten thousand forms. In heaven he was crowned with glory and

honor and majesty, and surrounded by throngs of admiring, adoring angels. On earth, he found himself plunged in poverty, wretchedness and contempt, and surrounded by malignant, implacable enemies. My friends, think of a prince, educated with care and tenderness in his father's court, where he heard nothing but sounds of pleasure and praise, and saw nothing but scenes of honor and magnificence, sent unattended to labor ast a slave in a rebellious province, where himself and his father were hated and despised; think of a person of the most delicate and refined taste, going from the bosom of his family and the magnificent abodes of a polished city, to spend his life in the filthy huts of the most degraded and barbarous savages, and compelled daily to witness the disgusting scenes of cruelty and brutality which are there exhibited; think of a man endowed with the tenderest sensibility, compelled to live on a field of battle, among the corpses of the dead and the groans of the dying, or shut up for years in a madhouse with wretched maniacs, where nothing was to be heard but the burst of infuriated passions, the wild laugh of madness, and the shrieks and ravings of despair. Think of these instances, and you will have some conception, though but a faint one, of the scenes which this world presented to our Saviour, of the contrast between it and the heaven he left, of the sorrows which imbittered every moment of his earthly existence, and of the love which induced him voluntarily to submit to such sorrows.

Another circumstance which contributed to render our Saviour a man of sorrows, and his life a life of grief, was the reception he met with from those whom he came to save. Had they received him with that gratitude and respect which he deserved, and permitted him to rescue them from their miseries, it would have been some alleviation of his sorrows. But even this alleviation was in a great measure denied him. Some few, indeed, received him with affection and respect, though even they often grieved him by their unkindness and unbelief; but by far the greater part of his countrymen he was treated with the utmost cruelty and contempt. Many of them would not allow him even to remove their bodily diseases, and still greater numbers were unwilling that he should save them from their sins. Now to a noble, ingenuous mind, nothing is so cutting, so torturing as such conduct. To see himself despised, slandered and perse

cuted with implacable malice, by the very beings whom he was laboring to save; to see all his endeavors to save them, frustrated by their own incorrigible folly and wickedness; to see them by rejecting him filling up to the brim their cup of criminality and wrath, and sinking into eternal perdition within reach of his vainly-offered hand,-to see this, must have been distressing indeed. Yet this Christ saw. Thus he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself; and how deeply it affected him, we may infer from the fact, that though his own sufferings never wrung from him a tear, he once and again wept in the bitterness of his soul over rebellious Jerusalem, exclaiming, O that thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes!

Another circumstance that threw a shade of gloom and melancholy over our Saviour's life, was his clear view, and constant anticipation of the dreadful agonies in which it was to terminate. He was not ignorant, as we happily are, of the miseries which were before him. He could not hope, as we do, when wretched to day, to be happier to-morrow. Every night, when he lay down to rest, the scourge, the crown of thorns, and the cross, were present to his mind; and on these dreadful objects he every morning opened his eyes, and every morning saw them nearer than before. Every day was to him like the day of his death, of such a death too, as no one ever suffered before or since. How deeply the prospect affected him, is evident from his own language: I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

Such, my friends, are the circumstances which prove that our Saviour was, during life, a man of sorrows. Of the sorrows of his death we shall say nothing. The bitter agonies of that never-to-be-forgotten hour, the torturing scourge, the lacerating nails, and the racking cross we shall pass in silence. Nor shall we now bring into view the tenfold horrors which overwhelmed his soul, rendering it exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. These we have often attempted to describe to you, though here description must always fail. Enough has been said to show the justice of that exclamation which the prophet utters in the person of Christ: Behold and see, all ye that pass by, if there be any sorrow like my sorrow. Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to pity, but there was none; for comforters, but I found none.