being made righteous from their sins, and this shall eventuate in such victory and glory and joy for the Servant as shall more than compensate him for all his sorrows. III. We must not dismiss the term "Servant" without recurring to the point that this is the one messianic term that is best fitted to stand as representative. What is true of the term "Servant " in its messianic use is typically true of the other terms that have the same signification. For this reason let us ask here, in regard to the Servant, two or three questions which we shall have to repeat, later, in regard to the whole body of messianic prediction. It is no reason against this procedure that we thus catch a glimpse of certain still distant goals toward which our study is moving. Who is the Servant spoken of in these Isaiah chapters? A certain interpretation replies that the Servant clearly is the people of Israel, and therefore Two one pretations is not Jesus of Nazareth. It is Israel, this sided interinterpretation affirms, whom Yahaweh chose, separated from the peoples, led through a career of mingled suffering and victory, set for a light to the nations, and made to be, in very important senses, the world's redeemer. It is Israel whose mission of good to mankind has so largely resulted from his sufferings, from his being scattered among the peoples, and subjected to undeserved contempt and ill treatment. This is not an ignoble interpretation, and it agrees with most of the facts as we have been studying them. But it does not, unless supplemented by something else, account for some of the personal experiences attributed to the Servant, nor for the degree of the exaltation ascribed to him. This interpretation is contradicted by another which affirms that the Servant is Jesus Christ, and therefore is not Israel. This view fully accounts for the personal terms, the exaltation of the Servant, his being sometimes separate from Israel and in relations with Israel, and the wonderfully minute identity between the characteristics and experiences of Jesus and those of the Servant; but it necessitates a dreadful amount of difficult explanation when it is called upon to account for the passages which explicitly declare that the Servant is Israel. terpretation The truth is, that both interpretations are correct in what they affirm, and incorrect in what they deny. If The true in- the Servant is Israel, that does not prove that the Servant is not Christ. If he is Israel, then he is Israel thought of as the promise-people, Israel in all the fulness of his mission to the world, and not in some relatively narrow and circumscribed portion of it. The prophet was dealing with what he regarded as the eternally operative promise of Yahaweh. He is speaking constantly of the future of Israel the Servant, though of course not to the exclusion of the past or the present. He holds that the promise has been fulfilling in the past, is at present in process of fulfilment, and will continue to be fulfilled in the future, without limit of time. He holds this as an article of religious doctrine, independent of any power which he may possess of miraculously foretelling the future. The statements he makes concerning Israel the Servant do not terminate their effect with the Israel of his own time. By their very terms they look forward. They apply especially to any future portion of Israel's history which shall be especially the manifestation of God's purpose toward mankind through Israel. They so apply if the prophet had a definite knowledge as to the events in which the manifestation would be made; and equally they so apply if his knowledge of the coming events was vague-merely a conviction that Yahaweh would somehow accomplish the word he had spoken. It follows that there is no contradiction between the statement that the Servant is Israel and the statement that the servant is Jesus Christ, provided Jesus Christ is the most significant fact in the history of Israel as the people of the promise; and this Christianity claims that he is. ness of the term This may be variantly stated. The prophetic use of the term "Servant" has such a character of universalness that really it might be applied to any Universalperson of any race or time, provided he is characteristically the agent of the divine "Servant" purpose for mankind. It might be applied to the personified aggregate of all such persons, or to any lesser aggregate. In the Old Testament, as a matter of fact, it denotes Israel regarded as such an aggregate. It might be properly applied to any Israelite who is in this respect typical, and it is so applied to Moses and Caleb and David and others, though perhaps not in all cases in its full meaning. In particular, the Servant might be any priest or prophet or other public man, brought into such relations with Yahaweh that he is the representative of the Israel of his generation. If the New Testament writers are correct in regarding Jesus as preeminently the representative Israelite, as the antitype of all types, then they are correct in applying directly to him what the prophets say concerning Israel the Servant. It will help to give us a steady grasp of these facts if we take a glance forward to our own times, and the fulfilment now in progress of the things that are said concerning the Servant. Israel the Servant is now in very important senses the light of the nations, ast the prophet said he would be. His being so A glimpse of the later consists in three things, and it is a mistake fulfilments to omit any one of the three from our consideration. First, the promise-people is in a unique degree a blessing to mankind if we consider only what Israel the race has accomplished and is accomplishing in business and commerce and governmental administration and learning and literature and art. If Israel's contributions of this kind to the civilization of the twentieth century could be suddenly obliterated, the world of mankind would come to a standstill. Second, the work of the promise-people for mankind is being wrought in what the religion of Israel and its daughter religions, Christianity and Islam, are accomplishing. And third, these two great things become insignificant when compared with the person and work of Jesus, provided Jesus is the Son of God that we Christians believe him to be. The career of Israel the Servant includes all the beneficent things. that God has wrought through him, including God's supreme manifestation through him in the person of Christ the Lord. Defining thus, we Christians should accept, instead of rejecting, the statement that in all the instances Isaiah's Servant of Yahaweh is Israel. CHAPTER XIII MESSIANIC TERMS. THE KINGDOM AND ITS ANOINTED KING IN the last chapter we studied the term the "Servant" as being the most nearly representative among the special terms created by the teaching of the promisedoctrine in Israel. We now take up the pair of terms which are on the whole the most significant. The fact that the kingdom and the Messiah are cognate terms, that they go together, is better understood now among Christians than it was a generation ago. So far as words are concerned, the Messiah is simply the anointed king of the kingdom. Conspicuous in the New Testament is this "kingdom of God," this "kingdom of heaven," with its sphere of operations in the present world of men, but extending into the world to come. In this kingdom the Christ is the royal judge both here and hereafter. Three topics especially claim our attention: first, the Old Testament presentation concerning the kingdom; second, its presentation concerning the king, the Anointed one, the Messiah; third, the eschatological trend of the doctrine of the kingdom and the king. I. First, the doctrine of the kingdom is a part of the promise-doctrine of the Old Testament. In the record for the times of the patriarchs the kingdom is not at all in the foreground. It only comes in incidentally that kings shall descend from Abraham, |