employing them was simply, that the Scriptures, which could not be broken, predicted his suffering and death: "how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ?" And again, in ver. 56, he anticipates the conclusion, which his enemies might draw to his prejudice from his utter humiliation, by the repeated declaration, that he is not without sufficient power to withstand them, but gives himself willingly into their hands, that the predictions of the Scriptures concerning his sufferings and death may be fulfilled.' In Luke xviii. 31, during his last journey to Jerusalem, Christ announces to the apostles, that everything which the prophets have foretold respecting his suffering and death is now about to be fulfilled. According to Luke xxii. 22, "the Son of Man goeth as it was determined," i. e. in accordance with the predetermination of God, as declared in the pro-" phecies of the Old Testament. In Luke xxii. 37, the Saviour says that the prophecies relating to his sufferings are about to be fulfilled, and that, in direct agreement with prophecy, he must be reckoned among the transgressors (compare Mark xv. 28). In Luke xxiv. 25-27, where Christ is addressing the two disciples, who are on their way to Emmaus, overwhelmed with grief and amazement at his death, he says to them, 0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory He then expounds to them the principal prophecies of the Old Testament, relating to himself, and especially those in which his sufferings are foretold. In Luke xxiv. 44-46, he says to the apostles, after his resurrection, that what he told them before his death, namely, that all the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning himself must be fulfilled, has now taken place. Upon this he opens their understanding that they may understand the Scriptures, makes known to them, as he had also done before his death, the

2

1 That the words, "all this was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled," belong to Christ and not to the Evangelist, is evident from Mark xiv. 49, "but the Scriptures must be fulfilled.”

2 Vid. Matt. xvi. 21, "from that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and scribes, and be killed." The Lord proved the

necessity for his sufferings and death from the prophecies of the Old Testament, which could not remain unfulfilled, without imperilling the honour of the God that cannot lie. That this is the meaning of d (Bengel, quia

meaning of those passages, in which the suffering and death of the Messiah are foretold, and says to them, "thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day." In Acts iii. 18, Peter says, "those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled." Precisely the same sentiment is expressed in 1 Pet. i. 11, the spirit of Christ in the prophets foretold the sufferings, which would be endured by Christ, and the glory that would follow. In Acts xvii. 3, Paul is said to have reasoned in the synagogue at Thessalonica, adducing from the Scriptures of the Old Testament the proofs that Christ must suffer and rise from the dead; and it is very evident from Acts xxvi. 22, 23, that this was his usual method of instruction, that he was accustomed to draw from the writings of the prophets the proof that the Messiah was aτós, capable of suffering, and that instead of suffering being opposed to his nature, as the Jews maintained, it was rather a necessity of his nature. In 1 Cor. xv. 3 Paul distinctly affirms, that one of the leading points, in which he had instructed the Corinthians, was that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And according to Acts vii. 35, Philip interpreted the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah as a prophecy of the sufferings and atonement of Christ.

At the same time it is possible to deny, with a certain plausibility, that any of these passages have the force of proof. In general it must be admitted that Tholuck is correct, when he says, "The typical view of the Old Testament has far greater predominance in the discourses of the Redeemer than is generally admitted. He regards the Old Testament, with its institutions and history and in certain of its utterances, as pre-eminently typical." A characteristic specimen of this typical mode of treatment we find in Mark ix. 13: "But I say unto you that Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him," where the history of Elias is regarded simply as prophetic of John the Baptist. In addition

prædictum erat), is evident from the parallel passages, chap. xxvi. 54—56, Luke xxiv. 25, and others. The prophecy, again, was under a still higher law of necessity.

1 Das Alte Testament im Neuen Testamente, Ed. iii. p. 28.

to this, among the single passages, which are referred to the suffering Christ, there are several, in which indisputably there is not a direct and exclusive allusion to the Messiah. Compare, for example, the reference to Psalm lxix. 22, in Matt. xxvii. 34, Mark xv. 23, and John xix. 28, where the Lord is represented as saying, "I thirst," in order that this passage from the Psalms might be fulfilled, although it does not refer directly to him, but to the righteous sufferer in general. See, also, John xiii. 18, where the Lord treats the 41st Psalm, the subject of which is also the righteous sufferer, as a prophecy of the treachery of Judas, because the general idea embodied in the Psalm necessarily embraced this particular fact. Such an admission, however, appears to take away the right to maintain, that the Lord and his apostles regarded the passages quoted, as containing direct Messianic utterances. Moreover, we find Moses mentioned along with the prophets in Luke xxiv. 27, and Acts xxvi. 22, 23, and it is universally admitted that in the former there is no direct announcement of a suffering Christ. Lastly, not only the sufferings and death, but the resurrection of Christ is also traced to the writings of the prophets, in which no direct allusion to that event can be found.

But these reasons are not conclusive. If it must be admitted, that, according to the representations of Jesus, all the types point to his sufferings; the same feature must have characterised the direct Messianic prophecies, in which the figure is so fully carried out, and the Lord and his apostles must therefore have found certain distinct passages in which the announcement was made. ¿

At the same time, such is the confidence and emphasis, with which the Old Testament is appealed to as asserting the sufferings of Christ, that we must not stop at the types alone; but on the contrary there must be the germ of a direct prediction of a suffering Messiah, around which the rest are simply grouped.

The result already obtained is confirmed by an examination 1 The quotations from Ps. xxii. are not so thoroughly in point as others, since there is a direct Messianic element in the Psalm, though not an exclusive reference to the Messiah, (compare my commentary on the Psalms, vol. ii.). There is a complete analogy, however, in Acts i. 16-20, where Peter finds the fate of Judas predicted in Ps. Ixix. and cix., two Psalms in which allusion is made, not specially and primarily to Judas, but to the righteous sufferer and his enemies.

of the particular passages, which are cited in the New Testament as pointing to a suffering Messiah. Among these there are several, such as Is. liii., Zech ix., xi., xii., and xiii., which, judging from internal evidence, refer directly and exclusively to Christ.

As a question of fact, the resurrection is positively predicted in all the passages, which speak of the glory of Christ subsequently to his sufferings, such for example as Is. liii. and others. In Acts xxvi. 23 Paul points expressly to the resurrection as necessarily following from the prediction of Isaiah (xlii. 6, 7), that he was to be a light to Israel and the Gentiles.

At all events, the impression made by the declarations of the Lord and his apostles ought to be of such a nature, as to deter any one from denying at the outset the existence of any predictions of the suffering Christ in the Old Testament, to produce a readiness and willingness to admit their existence wherever they present themselves to an unprejudiced mind, and to lead to a complete renunciation of the thought, that they are a priori impossible, or even at all improbable.

The rationalistic view, however, is not only at variance with the authority of the Lord and his apostles, but may be quite as strongly resisted on internal grounds.

In the first place, it is impossible to overlook the fact, that the Old Testament throughout is based upon the supposition of a suffering and atoning Christ.

And here the first thing which presents itself is the teaching of the Old Testament, with reference to the innate depravity of man. If "every imagination and disposition of the heart of men is only evil continually" (Gen. vi. 5; compare viii. 21),—if the prevalence of sin upon the earth is such as we find described in Ps. xiv. and lviii. 3-5, where it is expressly intimated that the corruption of man is of so fearful a character, because it rests upon original sin, "the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. They have poison like the poison of a serpent, like a deaf adder he stops his ear. She hearkeneth not to the voice of the charmer, charming never so wisely ;"-then it is impossible to imagine anything else than that, if the Messiah came as the perfectly righteous man, as the pure manifestation of the divine upon

earth, he would inevitably experience a powerful opposition from human wickedness, and pass through the midst of conflict and suffering. It is a fact of permanent importance in this respect that, at the very threshhold of the sacred history, we are met by the opposition between Cain and Abel, which issues in the death of the latter. From Cain and Abel we ascend the more directly to the fall, on account of the evident connection in which the two are placed in the book of Genesis. The doctrine of the fall would not be treated in so serious a manner, as an unprejudiced examination of Gen. ii. and iii. shows it to be, if the career of the Messiah had been regarded as without exception a joyful one. Moreover, the sufferings which the men of God had to endure in the earliest times, from human wickedness, led to a very different conclusion. And if Moses describes the result of his own personal experience, in such terms as these, “ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you" (Deut. ix. 24), and again in Deut. xxxi. 21 sqq., " I know their mind, which they have even this day Behold, while I am yet alive with you, ye rebel against the Lord, and how much more after my death?" what must be the opposition endured by the Messiah at the hands of sinners!

It is also a point of peculiar importance that the wickedness of man does not stand alone, but that, according to the representation contained in the very first chapters of the sacred Scriptures, it rests upon a Satanic background. Is it conceivable that he who bears the name of Satan, the adversary, from his opposition to the righteous, should leave the righteous one, in the strict sense of the word, unopposed? The book of Job constitutes an indirect prophecy of the suffering Christ. "The history of Job," as I have already stated in my discourse on the book of Job, p. 36,"contains a typical representation of the Messiah in his sufferings, and the glory that follows. The ardent desire of Satan to destroy the "much opposed one," against whom he raises up enemies on every side, should be particularly noticed. For if the faulty and meagre righteousness of Job excited such hatred on the part of Satan, how must he burn with malignity against the truly righteous one."

1 This is the meaning of the name Job.

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