Excerpt from The Biblical Illustrator, or Anecdotes, Similes, Emblems, Illustrations, Vol. 3: Expository, Scientific, Geographical, Historical, and Homiletic, Gathered From a Wide Range of Home and Foreign Literature, on the Verses of the Bible; Isaiah Parents, Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business 1 till the hour when, on the cross, He cried, It is finished, He was always 'obedient to the will of God. 4. In that obedience, He was persevering through all trials. He sa s that He did not turn away back. Having commenced the work of saving men, e went through with it. IV. Behold the messrah As the peerless sufferer. (ver. It has been asked, Did God really die? No; for God cannot die, yet He who died was God so, if there be a confusion in your mind, it is the confusion of Holy Scripture itself, for we read, Feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased With His own blood. In addition to the pain, we are asked, in this verse, to notice particularly the contempt which the Saviour endured. The plucking of His hair was a proof of the malicious contempt of His enemies, yet they went still further, and did spit in His face. Spitting was regarded by Orientals, and, I suppose, by all of us, as the most contemptuous thing which one man could do to another; yet the vile soldiers gathered round Him, and spat upon Him. I must point out the beautiful touch of voluntariness here: I hid not my face. Our Saviour did not turn away, or seek to escape. If He had wished to do so, He could readily have done it. Conclu sion Notice three combinations which the verses of m text will make. (1) Verses 2 and 6. Those verses together show the full ability of hrist to save. Here we have God and the Sufi'erer. (2) Verses 4 and 5. Here you have the Teacher and the Servant, and the two together make up this truth - that Christ teaches us, not with words only, but with His life. What a wonderful Teacher He is, who Himself learned the lessons which He would have us learn! (3) Now put the whole text together, and I think the result will be - at least to God's people - that they will say, This God shall be our Godzfor ever and ever and it shall be our delight to do His bidding at all times. It is a high honour to serve God and Christ is God. It is a great thing to be the servant of a wise teacher and Christ has the tongue of the learned. It is a very sweet thing to walk in the steps of a perfect Exemplar and Christ is that. And, last and best of all, it is delightful to live for Him who suf fered and died on our behalf. H. Spurgeon.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.