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  WRITINGS OF H P LIDDON
  by H.P. Liddon
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by H.P. Liddon,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 3

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.00. - Liddon, H. P. - Library
    2. S.     Influences of the Holy Spirit
    3. S.     The Old Testament Messianic Hope

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.00. - LIDDON, H. P. - LIBRARY
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Liddon, H. P. - Library S. Influences of the Holy Spirit S. The Old Testament
Messianic Hope


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  CHAPTER 2: S.     INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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Influences of the Holy Spirit The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, out canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth.—John 3:8. Who has not felt the contrast, the almost tragic contrast,
between the high station of the Jewish doctor, member of the Sanhedrin, master
in Israel, and the ignorance of elementary religious truth, as we Christiana
must deem it, which he displayed in this interview with our blest Lord? At first
sight it seems difficult to understand how our Lord could have used the simile
in the text when conversing with an educated and thoughtful man, well conversed
in the history and literature of God’s ancient people; and, indeed, a negative
criticism has availed itself of this and of some other features in the
narrative, in the. interest of the theory that Nicodemus was only a fictitious
type of the higher classes in Jewish society, as they were pictured to itself by
the imagination of the fourth Evangelist. Such a supposition, opposed to
external facts and to all internal probabilities, would hardly have been
entertained, if the critical ingenuity of its author had been seconded by any
spiritual experience. Nicodemas is very far from being a caricature; and our
Lord’s method here, as elsewhere, is to lead on from familiar phrases and the
well-remembered letter to the spirit and realities of religion. The Jewish
schools were acquainted with the expression “a new creature”; but it had long
since become a mere shred of official rhetoric. As applied to a Jewish
proselyte, it scarcely meant more than a change in the outward relations of
religious life. Our Lord told Nicodemus that every man who would see the kingdom
of God which He was founding must undergo a second birth; and Nicodemus, who had
been accustomed to the phrase all his life, could not understand it if it was to
be supposed to mean anything real. “How,” he asks, “can a man be born when he is
old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Our Lord
does not extricate him from this blundering literalism; He repeats His own
original assertion, but in terms which more fully express His meaning: “Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he can
not enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye
must be born again.” Our Lord’s reference to water would not have been
unintelligible to Nicodemus; every one in Judaea knew that the Baptist had
insisted on immersion in water as a symbol of the purification of the soul of
man. Certainly, in connecting “water” with the Spirit and the new birth, our
Lord’s language, glancing at that of the prophet, went very far beyond this. He
could only be fully understood at a later time, when the sacrament of baptism
had been instituted, just as the true sense of His early allusions to His death
could not have been apprehended until after the crucifixion. But Nicodemus, it
is plain, had not yet advanced beyond his original difficulty; he could not
conceive how any second birth was possible, without altogether violating the
course of nature. And our Lord penetrates His thoughts and answers them. He
answers them by pointing to that invisible agent who could achieve, in the
sphere of spiritual and mental life, what the Jewish doctor deemed so impossible
a feat as a second birth. Nature, indeed, contained no force that could compass
such a result; but nature in this, as in other matters, was a shadow of
something beyond itself.

It was late at night when our Lord had this interview with the Jewish teacher.
At the pauses in conversation, we may conjecture, they heard the wind without as
it moaned along the narrow streets of Jerusalem; and our Lord, as was His wont,
took His creature into His service—the service of spiritual truth. The wind was
a figure of the Spirit. Our Lord would not have used the same word for both. The
wind might teach Nicodemus something of the action of Him who is the real Author
of the new birth of man. And it would do this in two ways more especially. On a
first survey of nature, the wind arrests man’s attention, as an unseen agent
which seems to be moving with entire freedom. “The wind bloweth where it
listeth.” It is fettered by none of those conditions which confine the swiftest
bodies that traverse the surface of the earth; it sweeps on as if independent of
law, rushing hither and thither, as though obeying its own wayward and momentary
impulse. Thus it is an apt figure of a self-determining invisible force; and of
a force which is at times of overmastering power. Sometimes, indeed, its breath
is so gentle, that only a single leaf or blade of grass will at distant
intervals seem to give the faintest token of its action; yet, even thus, it
“bloweth where it listeth.” Sometimes it bursts upon the earth with destructive
violence; nothing can resist its onslaught; the most solid buildings give way;
the stoutest trees bend before it; whatever is frail and delicate can only
escape by the completeness of its submission. Thus, too, it “bloweth where it
listeth.” Beyond anything else that strikes upon the senses of man, it is
suggestive of free supersensuous power; it is an appropriate symbol of an
irruption of the invisible into the world of sense, of the action, so tender or
so imperious, of the divine and eternal Spirit upon the human soul. But the wind
is also an agent about whose proceedings we really know almost nothing. “Thou
hearest the sound thereof”; such is our Lord’s concession to man’s claim to
knowledge. “Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth”; such is
the reserve which He makes in respect of human ignorance. Certainly we do more
than hear the sound of the wind; its presence is obvious to three of the senses.
We feel the chill or the fury of the blast; and, as it sweeps across the ocean,
or the forest, or the field of corn, we see how the blades rise and fall in
graceful curves, and the trees bend, and the waters sink and swell into waves
which are the measure of its strength. But our Lord says, “Thou hearest the
sound thereof.” He would have us test it by the most spiritual of the senses. It
whispers, or it moans, or it roars as it passes us; it has a pathos all its own.
Yet what do we really know about it? “Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth.” Does the wind then obey no rule; is it a mere symbol of
unfettered caprice? Surely not. If, as the psalmist sings, “God bringeth the
winds out of his treasuries,” He acts, we may be sure, here as always, whether
in nature or in grace, by some law, which his own perfections impose upon His
action. He may have given to us of these later times to see a very little deeper
beneath the surface of the natural world than was the case with our fathers.
Perchance we explain the immediate antecedents of the phenomenon; but can we
explain our own explanation? The frontier of our ignorance is removed one stage
farther back; but “the way of the wind” is as fitting an expression for the
mysteries now as it was in the days of Solomon. We know that there is no cave of
Æolus. We know that the wind is the creature of that great Master who works
everywhere and incessantly by rule. But, as the wind still sweeps by us who call
ourselves the children of an age of knowledge, and we endeavor to give our
fullest answer to the question, “Whence it cometh, and whither it goeth?” we
discover that, as the symbol of a spiritual force, of whose presence we are
conscious, while we are unable to determine, with moderate confidence, either
the secret principle or the range of its action, the wind is as full of meaning
still as in the days of Nicodemus. When our Lord has thus pointed to the freedom
and the mysteriousness of the wind, He adds, “So is every one that is born of
the Spirit.” The simile itself would have led us to expect—”So is the Spirit of
God.” The man born of the Spirit would answer not to the wind itself, but to the
sensible effect of the wind. There is a break of correspondence between the
simile and its application. The simile directs attention to the divine Author of
the new birth in man. The words which follow direct attention to the human
subject upon whom the divine agent works. Something similar is observable when
our Lord compares the kingdom of heaven to a merchantman seeking goodly pearls;
the kingdom really corresponds not to the merchantman, but to the pearl of great
price which the merchantman buys. In such cases, we may be sure, the natural
correspondence between a simile and its application is not disturbed without a
motive. And the reason for this disturbance is presumably that the simile is not
adequate to the full purpose of the speaker, who is anxious to teach some larger
truth than its obvious application would suggest. In the case before us, we may
be allowed to suppose, that by His reference to the wind our Lord desired to
convey something more than the real but mysterious agency of the Holy Spirit in
the new birth of man. His language seems designed, not merely to correct the
materialistic narrowness of the Jewish doctor, not merely to answer by
anticipation the doubts of later days as to the spiritual efficacy of His own
sacrament of regeneration, but to picture, in words which should be read to the
end of time, the general work of that divine person whose mission of mercy to
our race was at once the consequence and the completion of His own.

It may be useful to trace the import of our Lord’s simile in three fields of the
action of the holy and eternal Spirit; His creation of a sacred literature, His
guidance of a divine society, and His work upon individual souls.

I. As, then, we turn over the pages of the Bible, must we not say, “The wind of
heaven bloweth where it listeth”? If we might reverently imagine ourselves
scheming beforehand what kind of a book the Book of God ought to be, how
different would it be from the actual Bible. There would be as many bibles as
there are souls, and they would differ as widely. But in one thing, amid all
their differences, they would probably agree; they would lack the variety, both
in form and substance, of the holy Book which the Church of God places in the
hands of her children. The self-assertion, the scepticism, and the
fastidiousness of our day would meet like the men of the second Roman
triumvirate on that island in the Reno, and would draw up their lists of
proscription. One would condemn the poetry of Scripture as too inexact; another
its history as too largely secular; another its metaphysics as too
transcendental, or as hostile to some fanciful ideal of “simplicity,” or as
likely to quench a purely moral enthusiasm. The archaic history of the
Pentateuch, or the sterner side of the ethics of the psalter, or the
supernaturalism of the histories of Elijah or of Daniel, or the so-called
pessimism of Ecclesiastes, or the alleged secularism of Esther, or the literal
import of the Song of Solomon, would be in turn condemned. Nor could the
apostles hope to escape: St. John would be too mystical in this estimate; St.
James too legal in that; St. Paul too dialectical, or too metaphysical, or too
easily capable of an antinomian interpretation; St. Peter too undecided, as if
balancing between St. Paul and St. James. Our new Bible would probably be
uniform, narrow, symmetrical; it would be entirely made up of poetry, or of
history, or of formal propositions, or of philosophical speculation, or of lists
of moral maxims; it would be modeled after the type of some current writer on
English history, or some popular poet or metaphysician, or some sentimentalist
who abjures history and philosophy alike on principle, or some composer of
well-intentioned religious tracts for general circulation. The inspirations of
heaven would be taken in hand, and instead of a wind blowing where it listeth,
we should have a wind, no doubt, of some kind, rustling earnestly enough along
some very narrow crevices or channels, in obedience to the directions of some
one form of human prejudice, or passion, or fear, or hope. The Bible is like
nature in its immense, its exhaustless variety; like nature, it reflects all the
higher moods of the human soul, because it does much more; because it brings us
face to face with the infinity of the divine life. In the Bible the wind of
heaven pays scant heed to our anticipations or our prejudices; it “bloweth where
it listeth.” It breathes not only in the divine charities of the gospels, not
only in the lyrical sallies of the epistles, not only in the great announcements
scattered here and there in Holy Scripture of the magnificence, or the
compassion, or the benevolence of God; but also in the stern language of the
prophets, in the warnings and lessons of the historical books, in the
revelations of divine justice and of human responsibility which abound in either
Testament. “Where it listeth.” Not only where our sense of literary beauty is
stimulated, as in St. Paul’s picture of charity, by lines which have taken
captive the imagination of the world, not only where feeling and conscience echo
the verdict of authority and the promptings of reverence, but also where this is
not the case; where neither precept nor example stimulates us, and we are left
face to face with historical or ethical material, which appears to us to inspire
no spiritual enthusiasm, or which is highly suggestive of critical difficulty.
Let us be patient; we shall understand, if we will only wait, how these features
of the Bible too are integral parts of a living whole; here, as elsewhere, the
Spirit breathes; in the genealogies of the Chronicles as in the last discourse
in St. John, though with an admitted difference of manner and degree. He
“bloweth where He listeth.” The apostle’s words respecting the Old Testament are
true of the New: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness.” And, “Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for
our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope.”

“But thou hearest the sound thereof, and canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth.” The majesty of Scripture is recognized by man, wherever there
is, I will not say a spiritual faculty, but a natural sense of beauty. The
“sound” of the wind is perceived by the trained ear, by the literary taste, by
the refinement, by the humanity of every generation of educated men. But what
beyond? What of its spiritual source, its spiritual drift and purpose, its
half-concealed but profound unities, its subtle but imperious relations to
conscience? Of these things, so precious to Christians, a purely literary
appreciation of Scripture is generally ignorant; the sacred Book, like the
prophet of the Che-bar, is only “as a very lovely song of one that hath a
pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.” Or again, the “sound
thereof” is heard in the admitted empire of the Bible over millions of hearts
and consciences; an empire the evidences of which strike upon the ear in
countless ways, and which is far too wide and too secure to be affected by the
criticisms that might occasionally seem to threaten it. What is the secret of
this influence of Scripture? Not simply that it is the Book of Revelation; since
it contains a great deal of matter which lay fairly within the reach of man’s
natural faculties. The Word or eternal Reason of God is the Revealer; but
Scripture, whether it is a record of divine revelations or of naturally observed
facts, is, in the belief of the Christian Church, throughout “inspired” by the
Spirit. Inspiration is the word which describes the presence and action of the
Holy Spirit everywhere in Scripture. We know not how our own spirits, hour by
hour, are acted upon by the eternal Spirit, though we do not question the fact:
we content ourselves with recognizing what we can not explain. If we believe
that Scripture is inspired, we know that it is instinct with the presence of Him
whose voice we might hear in every utterance, but of whom we cannot tell whence
He cometh or whither He goeth.

II. The history of the Church of Christ from the days of the apostles has been a
history of spiritual movements. Doubtless it has been a history of much else;
the Church has been the scene of human passions, human speculations, human
errors. But traversing these, He by whom the whole body of the Church is
governed and sanctified, has made His presence felt, not only in the perpetual
proclamation and elucidation of truth, not only in the silent, never-ceasing
sanctification of souls, but also in great upheavals of spiritual life, by which
the conscience of Christians has been quickened, or their hold upon the truths
of redemption and grace made more intelligent and serious, or their lives and
practise restored to something like the ideal of the Gospels. Even in the
apostolic age it was necessary to warn Christians that it was high time to awake
out of sleep; that the night of life was far spent, and the day of eternity was
at hand. And ever since, from generation to generation, there has been a
succession of efforts within the Church to realize more worthily the truth of
the Christian creed, or the ideal of the Christian life. These revivals have
been inspired or led by devoted men who have represented the highest conscience
of Christendom in their day. They may be traced along the line of Christian
history; the Spirit living in the Church has by them attested His presence and
His will; and has recalled lukewarm generations, paralyzed by indifference or
degraded by indulgence, to the true spirit and level of Christian faith and
life. In such movements there is often what seems, at first sight, an element of
caprice. They appear to contemporaries to be onesided, exaggerated, narrow,
fanatical. They are often denounced with a passionate fervor which is so out of
proportion to the reality as to border on the grotesque. They are said to exact
too much of us, or to concede too much. They are too contemplative in their
tendency to be sufficiently practical, or too energetically practical to do
justice to religious thought. They are too exclusively literary and academical,
as being the work of men of books; or they are too popular and insensible to
philosophical considerations, as being the work of men of the people. Or, again,
they are so occupied with controversy as to forget the claims of devotion, or so
engaged in leading-souls to a devout life as to forget the unwelcome but real
necessities of controversy. They are intent on particular moral improvements so
exclusively as to forget what is due to reverence and order; or they are so bent
upon rescuing the Church from chronic slovenliness and indecency in public
worship as to do less than justice to the paramount interests of moral truth.
Sometimes these movements are all feeling; sometimes they are all thought;
sometimes they are, as it seems, all outward energy. In one age they produce a
literature like that of the fourth and fifth centuries; in another they found
orders of men devoted to preaching or to works of mercy, as in the twelfth; in
another they enter the lists, as in the thirteenth century, with a hostile
philosophy; in another they attempt a much-needed reformation of the Church; in
another they pour upon the heathen world a flood of light and warmth from the
heart of Christendom. It is easy, as we survey them, to say that something else
was needed; or that what was done could have been done better or more
completely; or that, had we been there, we should not have been guilty of this
onesidedness, or of that exaggeration. We forget, perhaps, who really was there,
and whose work it is, though often overlaid and thwarted by human weakness and
human passion, that we are really criticizing. If it was seemingly onesided,
excessive or defective, impulsive or sluggish, speculative or practical,
esthetic or experimental, may not this have been so because in His judgment, who
breatheth where He listeth, this particular characteristic was needed for the
Church of that day? All that contemporaries know of such movements is “the sound
thereof”; the names with which they are associated, the controversies which they
precipitate, the hostilities which they rouse or allay, as the case may be. Such
knowledge is superficial enough; of the profound spiritual causes which really
engender them, of the direction in which they are really moving, of the
influence which they are destined permanently to exert upon souls, men know
little or nothing. The accidental symptom is mistaken for the essential
characteristic; the momentary expression of feeling for the inalienable
conviction of certain truth. The day may come, perhaps, when more will be known;
when practise and motive, accident and substance, the lasting and the transient,
will be seen in their true relative proportions; but for the time this can
hardly be. He is passing by, whose way is in the sea, and His paths in the deep
waters, and His footsteps unknown. The Eternal Spirit is passing; and men can
only say, “He bloweth where He listeth.”

III. Our Lord’s words apply especially to Christian character. There are some
effects of the living power of the Holy Spirit which are invariable. When He
dwells with a Christian soul, He continually speaks in the voice of conscience;
He speaks in the voice of prayer. He produces with the ease of a natural
process, without effort, without the taint of self-consciousness, “love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” Some
of these graces must be found where He makes His home. There is no mistaking the
atmosphere of His presence: in its main features it is the same now as in the
days of the apostles. Just as in natural morality the main elements of
“goodness” do not change; so in religious life, spirituality is, amid great
varieties of detail, yet, in its leading constituent features, the same thing
from one generation to another. But in the life of the individual Christian, or
in that of the Church, there is legitimate room for irregular and exceptional
forms of activity or excellence. Natural society is not strengthened by the
stern repression of all that is peculiar in individual thought or practise; and
this is not less true of spiritual or religious society. From the first, high
forms of Christian excellence have often been associated with unconscious
eccentricity. The eccentricity must fee unconscious, because consciousness of
eccentricity at once reduces it to a form of vanity which is entirely
inconsistent with Christian excellence. How many excellent Christians have been
eccentric, deviating more or less from the conventional type of goodness which
has been recognized by contemporary religious opinion. They pass away, and when
they are gone men do justice to their characters; but while they are still with
us how hard do many of us find it to remember that there may be a higher reason
for their peculiarities than we think. We know not the full purpose of each
saintly life in the designs of Providence; we know not much of the depths and
heights whence it draws its inspirations; we can not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth. Only we know that He whose workmanship it is bloweth where He
listeth; and this naturally leads us to remark the practical interpretation
which the Holy Spirit often puts upon our Lord’s words by selecting as His
chosen workmen those who seem to be least fitted by nature for such high
service. The apostle has told us how in the first age He set Himself to defeat
human anticipations. “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble, are called”; learned academies, powerful connections, gentle blood
did little enough for the gospel in the days when it won its first and greatest
victories. The Holy Spirit, as Nicodemus knew, passed by the varied learning and
high station of the Sanhedrin, and breathed where He listed on the peasants of
Galilee; He breathed on them a power which would shake the world. And thus has
it been again and again in the generations which have followed. When the great
Aquinas was a student of philosophy under Albertus Magnus at Cologne, he was
known among his contemporaries as “the dumb Ox”; so little did they divine what
was to be his place in the theology of Western Christendom. And to those of us
who can look back upon the memories of this University for a quarter of a
century or more, few things appear more remarkable than the surprizes which the
later lives of men constantly afford; sometimes it is a failure of early natural
promise, but more often a rich development of intellectual and practical
capacity where there had seemed to be no promise at all. We can remember,
perhaps, some dull quiet man who seemed to be without a ray of genius, or,
stranger still, without anything interesting or marked in character, but who now
exerts, and most legitimately, the widest influence for good, and whose name is
repeated by thousands with grateful respect. Or we can call to mind another
whose whole mind was given to what was frivolous, or even degrading, and who now
is a leader in everything that elevates and improves his fellows. The secret of
these transfigurations is ever the same. In those days these men did not yet see
their way; they were like travelers through the woods at night, when the sky is
hidden and all things seem to be other than they are.

Since then the sun has risen and all has changed. The creed of the Church of
Christ, in its beauty and its power, has been flashed by the Divine Spirit upon
their hearts and understandings; and they are other men. They have seen that
there is something worth living for in earnest; that God, the soul, the future,
are immense realities, compared with which all else is tame and insignificant.
They have learned something of that personal love of our crucified Lord, which
is itself a moral and religious force of the highest order, and which has
carried them forwards without their knowing it. And what has been will assuredly
repeat itself.


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  CHAPTER 3: S.     THE OLD TESTAMENT MESSIANIC HOPE
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The Old Testament Messianic Hope By H. P. Liddon (1829-1890) The Messianic
belief was interwoven with the deepest life of Israel. The promises which formed
and fed this belief are distributed along nearly the whole range of the Jewish
annals; while the belief rests originally upon sacred traditions which carry us
up to the very cradle of the human family. It is important to inquire whether
this general Messianic belief included any definite convictions respecting the
Being who was its object. In the gradual unfolding of the Messianic doctrine
three stages of development may be noted within the limits of the Hebrew canon,
and a fourth beyond it: The Seed of the Woman; The Kingdom to David Forever;
Messianic Prophecy; and A Jewish Caesar Expected.

I. The “Seed of the Woman” The “seed of the woman” is to bruise the serpent’s
head (Genesis 3:15). With the lapse of years this blessing is narrowed down to
something in store for the posterity of Shem (Genesis 9:26), and subsequently
for the descendants of Abraham (Genesis 22:18). In Abraham’s seed all the
families of the earth are to be blessed.

Already within this bright but indefinite prospect of deliverance and blessing
we begin to discern the advent of a personal Deliverer. Paul argues, in
accordance with the Jewish interpretation, that “the seed” is here a personal
Messiah (Galatians 3:16); the singular form of the word denoting His
individuality. The characteristics of this personal Messiah emerge gradually in
successive predictions. The dying Jacob looks forward to a Shiloh as One to whom
rightfully belongs regal and legislative authority (Genesis 49:10), and to whom
the obedient nations will be gathered. Balaam sings of the Star that will come
out of Jacob and the Scepter that will rise out of Israel (Numbers 24:17). This
manifestly points to the glory and power of a higher Royalty than David. Moses
(Deuteronomy 18:18-19) foretells a Prophet who would in a later age be raised up
from among the Israelites, like unto himself. This Prophet accordingly was to be
the Lawgiver, the Teacher, the Ruler, the Deliverer of Israel.

II. Kingdom to David Forever The second stage of the Messianic doctrine centers
in the reigns of David and Solomon. The promise of a kingdom to David and to his
house forever (2 Samuel 7:16) could not be fulfilled by any mere continuation of
his dynasty on the throne of Jerusalem. It implied, as both David and Solomon
saw, some superhuman Royalty. The messianic psalms present us with a series of
pictures of this Royalty, each illustrating a distinct aspect of its dignity,
while all either imply or assert the divinity of the King. In Psalms 2:1-12, for
instance, Messiah is associated with the Lord of Israel as His anointed Son.
Messiah’s inheritance is to include all heathendom; His Sonship is not merely
theocratic or ethical, but divine. All who trust in Him are blessed; all who
incur His wrath must perish with a sharp and swift destruction. This psalm is
quoted from in the first recorded prayer of the church (Acts 4:25-26), again in
Paul’s sermon at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:33), and also in the argument which
opens the Epistle of the Hebrews (Hebrews 1:5; cf. Romans 1:4).

Psalms 45:1-17 is a picture of the peaceful and glorious union of the King
Messiah with His mystical bride, the church of redeemed humanity. Messiah is
introduced as a divine King reigning among men. His form is of more than human
beauty; His lips overflow with grace; God has blessed Him forever, and has
anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows.

Messiah Is Also Directly Addressed as God

He is viewed as seated upon an everlasting throne. Neither of these psalms can
be adapted without exegetical violence to the circumstances of Solomon, or to
any other king of ancient Israel; and the New Testament interprets them as
picturing the royal triumph of the one true King, Messiah (Hebrews 1:8). In
Psalms 72:1-20 the character and extent of this messianic sovereignty are more
distinctly pictured. The new kingdom reaches “from sea to sea, and from the
river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalms 72:8). It reaches from each frontier
of the Promised Land to the remotest regions of the known world in the opposite
quarter. At the feet of its mighty Monarch all who are most inaccessible to the
arms or to the influence of Israel hasten to tender their voluntary submission.
The wild sons of the desert, the merchants of Tarshish in the then-distant
Spain, the islanders of the Mediterranean, the Arab chiefs, the wealthy Nubians,
are foremost in proffering their homage and fealty.

All Kings to Bow Down to Him But all kings are at last to fall down in
submission before the Ruler of the new kingdom; all nations are to do Him
service. His empire is to be coextensive with the world: it is also to be
co-enduring with time. His empire is to be spiritual; it is to confer peace on
the world, by righteousness. The King will Himself secure righteous judgment,
salvation, deliverance, and redemption to His subjects. The needy, the
afflicted, the friendless will be the special objects of His tender care. His
Name will endure forever; and men shall be blessed in Him to the end of time.
This King is immortal; He is also all-knowing and all-mighty. “Omniscience alone
can hear the cry of every human heart; Omnipotence alone can bring deliverance
to every human sufferer.”

David’s Son Is David’s Lord In Psalms 110:1, David describes his great
descendant Messiah as his “Lord” (cf. Matthew 22:44). Messiah is sitting on the
right hand of Jehovah as the Partner of His dignity. He is to reign until His
enemies are made His footstool; He is Ruler now, even among His unsubdued
opponents. In the day of His power, His people offer themselves willingly to His
service. They are clad not in earthly armor, but “in the beauties of holiness.”
Messiah is Priest as well as King—an everlasting Priest of that older order
which had been honored by the father of the faithful. The Son of David is
David’s Lord because He is God; the Lord of David is David’s Son because He is
God Incarnate.

III. Messianic Prophecy The third period extends from the reign of Uzziah to the
close of the Hebrew Canon in Malachi. Here messianic prophecy expands into the
fullest details respecting Messiah’s human life, and mounts to the highest
assertions of His divinity. Isaiah is the richest mine of messianic prophecy in
the Old Testament. Messiah, especially designated as “the Servant of God,” is
the central figure in the prophecies of Isaiah. Both in Isaiah and in Jeremiah
the titles of Messiah are often and pointedly expressive of His true humanity.
He is the Branch of the Lord (Isaiah 4:2); He is the Rod out of the stem of
Jesse (Isaiah 11:1); He is the Branch or Sprout of David (Jeremiah 23:5;
Jeremiah 33:15; Zechariah 3:8; Zechariah 6:12).

He is called by God from His mother’s womb (Isaiah 49:1); God has put His Spirit
upon Him (Isaiah 42:1). He is anointed to preach good tidings to the meek, to
bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive (Isaiah 61:1). He
is a Prophet whose work is greater than that of any prophet of Israel. Not
merely will He come as a Redeemer to them that turn from transgression in Jacob
(Isaiah 59:20; Isaiah 49:6), He is also given as a Light to the Gentiles, as the
Salvation of God unto the end of the earth. Such is His spiritual power as
Prophet and Legislator that He will write the law of the Lord, not upon tables
of stone, but on the heart and conscience of the true Israel. In Zechariah He is
an enthroned Priest, but it is the kingly glory of Messiah which predominates
throughout the prophetic representations of this period, and in which His
superhuman nature is most distinctly suggested. According to Jeremiah the Branch
of Righteousness, who is to be raised up among the posterity of David, is a King
who will reign and prosper and execute judgment and justice in the earth.
According to Isaiah this expected King, the Root of Jesse, “will stand for an
ensign of the people.” The Rallying–Point of the World’s Hopes

He will be the true center of its government: “Kings will see and arise, princes
also will worship…kings will shut their mouths at Him” (Isaiah 52:15).
Righteousness, equity, justice, and faithfulness will mark His administration.
He will not judge after the sight of His eyes, nor reprove after the hearing of
His ears. Instead, He will rely upon the infallibility of a perfect moral
insight. Beneath the shadow of His throne all that is by nature savage, proud,
and cruel among the sons of men will learn the habits of tenderness, humility,
and love. “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and
a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6-8). “The earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

Daniel is taught that at the “anointing of the Most Holy”–after a defined period
–God will “finish the transgressions,” and “make an end of sins,” and “make
reconciliation for iniquity,” and “bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel
9:24).

Zechariah, too, especially points out the moral and spiritual characteristics of
the reign of King Messiah. The founder of an eastern dynasty must ordinarily
wade through blood and slaughter to the steps of his throne, and must maintain
his authority by force. But the daughter of Jerusalem beholds her King coming,
“just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass.” The King “speaks
peace unto the heathen”; the “battlebow is broken”; and yet His dominion extends
“from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah
9:9-10). The Suffering Messiah

If Messiah reigns in Psalms 45:1-17 and Psalms 72:1-20, in harsh and apparent
utter contrast He suffers hugely in Psalms 22:1-31. His anguish has been
described in even greater detail by Isaiah. Both writers, however, confidently
treat the deepest humiliations and woes as the prelude to assured victory. The
psalmist passes from excruciating details of the crucifixion to a declaration
that by these sufferings the heathen will he converted, and all the kindreds of
the Gentiles will be brought to adore the true God (Psalms 22:1-21). The prophet
describes the Servant of God as “despised and rejected of men” (Isaiah 53:1-12).
He bears our infirmities and carries our sorrows; His wounds are due to our
transgressions; His stripes have a healing virtue for us. His sufferings and
death are a trespass-offering; on Him is laid the iniquity of all. “His visage
is so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” Like a
lamb, innocent, defenseless, dumb, He is led forth to the slaughter. “He is cut
off from the land of the living.”

Yet the prophet pauses at His grave to note that He “shall see of the travail of
His soul, and shall be satisfied,” that God “will divide Him a portion with the
great,” and that He will Himself “divide the spoil with the strong.” And all
this is to follow “because He hath poured out His soul unto death.” His death is
the destined instrument whereby He will achieve His mediatorial reign of glory.

He Is Identified with the Father In Isaiah’s great prophecy, the “Son” who is
given to Israel receives a fourfold name: He is a Wonder-Counselor, or
Wonderful, above all earthly beings; He possesses a nature which man cannot
fathom, and He thus shares and unfolds the divine Mind. He is the Father of the
everlasting age or of eternity. He is the Prince of Peace. Above all, He is
expressly named the Mighty God. Jeremiah calls Him Jehovah Tsidkenu, as Isaiah
had called Him Emmanuel. Micah speaks of His eternal pre-existence as Isaiah had
spoken of His endless reign. Daniel predicts that His dominion is an everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away. Zechariah terms Him the Fellow or Equal of
the Lord of Hosts, and refers to His incarnation and still more clearly to His
passion as being that of Jehovah Himself. Haggai implies His divinity by
foretelling that His presence will make the glory of the second Temple greater
than the glory of the first. Malachi points to Him as the Angel of the Covenant,
as Jehovah whom Israel was seeking, and who would suddenly come to His temple,
as the Sun of Righteousness. A Messiah Divine as Well as Human

Read this language as a whole; read it by the light of the great doctrine which
it attests, and which in turn illuminates it, the doctrine of a Messiah, divine
as well as human. All is natural, consistent, full of point and meaning. But
divorce it from that doctrine in obedience to a foregone and arbitrary dictum of
negative criticism which insists that Jesus Christ shall be banished at any cost
from the scroll of prophecy—then how full of difficulties does such language
become, how overstrained and exaggerated, how insipid and disappointing!

IV. A Jewish Caesar Expected The last stage of the Messianic doctrine begins
only after the close of the Hebrew Canon. The messianic hope gradually became
degraded among the masses of the people. They dwelt more and more eagerly upon
the pictures of His worldwide conquest and imperial sway, and they construed
those promises of coming triumph in the most earthly and secular sense—they
looked for a Jewish Alexander or for a Jewish Caesar. Doubtless there were
saints like the aged Simeon, whose eyes longed sore for the divine Christ
foretold in the great age of Hebrew prophecy. But generally speaking, the piety
of the enslaved Jew had become little else than a wrong-headed patriotism. The
people who were willing to hail Jesus as King Messiah and to conduct Him in
royal pomp to the gates of the holy city had so lost sight of the real eminence
which messiahship involved that when He claimed to be God they endeavored to
stone Him for blasphemy. This claim of His was in fact the “crime” for which
their leaders persecuted Him to death. Even the apostles at first looked mainly,
or only, for a temporal prince. The Jews Reject their Messiah When Jesus Christ
presented Himself to the Jewish people He did not condescend to sanction the
misbelief of the time. He professed to be the fulfillment at last of the ancient
prophecies. Yet when, in the fullness of time He came, that He might satisfy the
desire of the nations, He was rejected by a stiff-necked generation because He
was true to the highest and brightest anticipations of His Advent. Jesus of
Nazareth claimed to be the divine Messiah of David and of Isaiah and therefore
He died upon the cross to achieve the spiritual redemption of humanity, not the
political enfranchisement of Palestine. The Lord Our God Is One Lord

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,” was the fundamental law of the
Jewish belief and polity. How copious are the warnings against the surrounding
idolatries in the Jewish Scriptures! Yet this fundamental truth does but throw
into sharper outline those suggestions of personal distinctions in the
Godhead—those successive predictions of a Messiah personally distinct from
Jehovah, yet also the Savior of men, the Lord and Ruler of all, the Judge of the
nations, Almighty, Everlasting, indeed, One whom prophecy designates as God. The
Old Testament was in truth entrusted with a double charge: besides teaching
explicitly the creed of Sinai, it was designed to teach implicitly a fuller
revelation, and to prepare men for the creed of the day of Pentecost.

Predictions that Cannot Be Denied No amount of captious ingenuity will destroy
the substantial fact that the leading features of cur Lord’s human manifestation
were announced to the world some centuries before He actually came among us.
With His hand upon the Jewish Canon, Jesus Christ could look opponents or
disciples in the face and bid them: “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think
ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me.”

Adapted from The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, H.P. Liddon.
Pickering & Inglis LTD. London, n.d.


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