The world's

want.

The dream departs.

Never man lived on earth who felt so deeply the world's want of a Saviour from sin as Isaiah felt it. Never man saw so clearly that humanity is helpless and hopeless under the power of evil unless God comes to the rescue. The law's maker must be its keeper. He who cursed sin must come and take it away. A redeeming God, holy and therefore obedient, loving and therefore suffering, faithful and therefore triumphant,- this is the Immanuel who is needed in a world of sin. Isaiah's soul was driven by that need upward and upward on the mount of vision, higher and higher in the divine solitude of inspiration. From that lofty height his voice floated down in songs of glorious cheer to his fellow-men. "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.”1 ye, my people."1 "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her." 2

But what was it that he saw to kindle that

singing hope in his soul? Nothing. He dreamed, but there was really nothing for him to see.

There was no roseate dawn on the far edge of night, no auroral radiance of a virgin-born Prince of Peace, no prophetic gleam of the

glory of a Kinsman Redeemer who should bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, who should be wounded for our transgressions, and by whose stripes we should be healed. When Isaiah thought that he saw the upward-breaking rays of such a brightness, it was but an illusion of sleep. There was no Christ. There was to be no Christ. God never intended it. Man only imagined it. The high and holy One who inhabiteth eternity looked upon the inhabitants of earth, "and he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor."1 But His arm did not bring salvation unto Him, neither did His righteousness sustain Him. The Redeemer never meant to come to Zion. He was too great, too infinite to enter into human life, and be numbered with the transgressors, and bear the sin of many, and make intercession for the transgressors. The very thought of such an advent was folly and presumption.

Isaiah awakes from his dream. Every trace The prophet of the Christ disappears from his vision, blotted desolate. out in the encircling night. What is his mes

sage now ? What song is left on his lips?

A cry of woe and desolation.

66

'They shall

look unto the earth; and behold trouble and

1 Is. lix. 16.

The night descends.

darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness."1 "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear." 2

There is no explanation of the mystery of evil. There is no light upon the future. There is only a shadow resting over all the earth, a shadow hiding the very face of God, — an unbroken shadow falling from the Old Testament without Christ.

II

The Intolerable Light

with Jesus.

It may seem as if it were impossible to take a book filled Christ out of the New Testament without destroying it altogether. So entirely does the personality of Jesus pervade the book, that if He were withdrawn it would fall to pieces, like a tower from which the mortar had been all removed.

divided

from Christ.

But it is not of Jesus as an example of noble Jesus manhood, a teacher of moral truth, a worker of social reform, that I speak. It is of Jesus as the Christ, the divinely anointed redeemer of men, the bringer of salvation from sin. These two aspects of Jesus were, indeed, vitally united in fact. Yet it is possible to separate them in thought. It is conceivable that the New Testament might have reported Jesus to us as a prophet without making any revelation of Him as the Saviour.

Such a conception has already been entertained among men. It has been presented by some teachers, whose literary and historical sense is very imperfect, as an interpretation of what the New Testament actually is. It has been put forward by others, whose scholarship

A new kind of a New Testament.

is better, as a theory of what the New Testament ought to be, and probably would have been, if it had been written in an age free from superstition.

That which is really valuable in the book, we are told, is its picture of a beautiful character, its rules for good conduct, its spirit of piety and virtue, the clear light which it throws upon God and human life and immortality. If it contained only the Sermon on the Mount, it would still be complete and sufficient. The substance of it all could be put into an ethical creed. The essential Jesus is only the teacher and illustrator of a perfect morality. He is the central figure of Christianity not because He did more than man can do, but simply because He did what every man ought to do. All that goes beyond this in the New Testament, - all that refers to Him as the sacrifice for sin, the mediator between God and man, the only begotten Son who came forth from the bosom of the Father, was born and lived, was crucified and died, was buried and rose again, in order to redeem and reconcile the world to God, -- is partly imaginary, and partly superstitious, and wholly unnecessary. A New Testament without Christ in this sense, would be not only possible, but very desirable.