There is a double character of suffering besides atoning work, which Christ has entered into and which others can feel. The sufferings arising from active love in the world, and the sorrow arising from the sense of chastenings in respect of sin, and these mixed with the pressure of Satan's power on the soul, and the terror of foreseen wrath. In the former we suffer with Christ as privilege, in the latter we suffer for our folly and under God's hand, but Christ has entered into it. He sympathizes with us. But all this is distinct from suffering instead of us, so as to save us from the suffering, undergoing God's wrath that we might not. In atonement He suffers for us; in service we suffer with Him; in our distresses about sin and agony of mind He felt with us. We shall see that the Lord Himself and the teaching of the Gospels clearly distinguish the sufferings of Christ during His ministry here, and His closing sufferings, and these last (even though taking place at the same time) from His atoning work. As soon as the Lord was baptized by John, the Holy Ghost came upon Him and He entered on His public ministry; but as a first and introductory step to it, He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He overcame, the strong man was bound, and He proceeded to spoil his goods: He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. Let it be possession, sickness, death: all and every fruit of the power of the enemy disappeared before His word. He went through sorrow—reproach from man, He took their burdens upon Himself. I have no doubt that Christ never healed a sick man without bearing in His spirit and heart the burden of it, as the fruit and power of evil; but all this was the activity of His love. Himself bare our infirmities and carried our sicknesses. This is said, remark, when He healed them. Bearing our griefs and sorrows and delivering us from them by power is not bearing our sin itself under the wrath of God.
But, further, Satan was not with Him in the way of direct temptation during the course of His ministry.
We read in Luke, “And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.” But at the close of His life He could say, “henceforth I will not talk much with you, for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me,” &c. Here a distinct change takes place again as to the position of the Lord in respect of the presence of Satan. Hence He could say to those who came from the chief priests afterward, But this is your hour and the power of darkness. Previously He had sat daily with them in the temple and they had laid no hands on Him; but this (terrible word for these unhappy men!) was their hour and the power of darkness. He that had the power of death was busy there with the Lord, nor did He withdraw Himself from the trial. His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, and he who had the power of darkness brought it all to bear upon His soul; but even hero He could look for His disciples to watch with Him. They could be sifted as wheat, though their only resource, as that hour came on with real power, was to flee, or they entered into the temptation; (at least then when they knew not the power of the Holy Ghost working in them, for they should follow Christ afterward, as He told Peter at least). This difference of His own position the Lord marks to them very clearly. “When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? and they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his scrip, and he that hath no sword, let Him sell his garment and buy one; for I say unto you that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors, for the things concerning me have an end.”
Now all was changed. Before, He had protected them by His divine power, by which He wrought in the world. Now, while His divine person was ever the same, and His power in itself unchangeable, He was to be rejected and suffer. The glory would come, but first He must suffer many things, and be rejected of that generation. This He taught specially to His disciples from the time of Peter's confession of Him as Son of the living God from the transfiguration onward, and in His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Not that He was suffering these things then: His hour, we read in John, was not yet come; but He taught them that He must. (See Matt. 16:21; 17:12: “shall suffer,” —μέλλει πάσχειν,—and verse 22 of the same chapter. Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22). And it is the more remarkable because it is then He charges His disciples to tell no man He was the Christ, saying “the Son of man must suffer.” He was giving up, practically, His ministry of the circumcision for the truth of God, the witness of Jehovah Messiah, and about to enter on another, the sufferings of the Son of man. It will be remarked that it is on the suggestion of this title also to His spirit by the coming up of the Greeks, in John 12., that His cross and death rise up at once before His soul. (Compare Psa. 2 and the use made of Psa. 8 by the apostle in Heb. 2).
But to return to our immediate point. He tells them that He was about to suffer. We have seen that the prince of this world was to come. Satan entered into Judas, and it was the hour of His enemies and the power of darkness. This He spoke at the time He met the band from the chief priests, at the close of Gethsemane. Here there was a distinctly announced and openly declared change that took place in the character of the Lord's service and suffering—His position. It is not His service as Prince of life, though He ever was this, and proved it, spoiling the goods of His vanquished enemy—The prince of this world cometh.” It is the power of darkness, and His undergoing it in agony for our sakes;—His soul sorrowful, even unto death; the whole power on His own soul of the enemy, as having the power of death: still this was yet in communion and supplication with His Father about it, and heard of Him. And here we have the most distinct and definite revelation from His own lips that He was not yet drinking the cup which His Father gave Him to drink. He prays that He might not drink it, that if it were possible the cup might pass from Him, but that if not unless He drank it, His submission to His Father's will was perfect. Here, doubtless, His soul enters in the deepest way into what it was that He had to drink—it was sorrowful, even unto death, but being in an agony (conflict) He prayed more earnestly. He was heard. He did not take the cup from man's hand, nor from Satan's hand, though both were there to press Him down, and all His weakness felt as man; but He goes through the thought of that, and death itself, in heard supplication with Him who was able to save Him from it, and takes the cup in perfect peace, as to man and Satan's power of darkness, from His Father's hand, and offers Himself freely, that none that the Father had given Him might be lost. (See John 18:4-11). The Father had given Him the cup to drink. He does not draw back from it, but freely offers Himself for us. Had He not done so in blessed obedience, He had only to walk away before His prostrate pursuers, or have demanded legions of angels to free Him from their power. But how should the scriptures have been fulfilled? But on the cross all is finished God forsakes Him, and all the wrath of God poured out on Him who knew no sin, but was made sin for us—on One who in His fully-tried life knew no sin. If any there had been, or any had been possible, the time for consciousness of it had been then. Every trial which could have drawn it out, if it had been there to be conscious of, had reached its full height, but the spotless offering on which no yoke had been, He who offered Himself without spot to God, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He made His soul an offering for sin, as it is said in the passage of Isaiah, referred to by the Lord Himself; (Luke 22:37), as that which was yet to come, “and he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sins of many.”
And now, before I go further, I ask, Is not His death presented in Scripture as that by which redemption was wrought; His precious blood as its efficacious means? Have we not redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins? Is it not by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot? Is it not declared that without shedding of blood there is no remission? Let the reader take the 9th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall allow myself to quote here in full. It is well worth all human authority, be they of what age they may. “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover, he sprinkled likewise with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others: for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment; so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.” (Ver. 11-28.)
Let the reader remark that “without shedding of blood there is no remission” —the declaration that He must often have suffered if He was to offer Himself often, as the high priest with the blood of others, but that it was once, in the end of the world, He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” Let him turn to chapter x., where, in contrast with daily ministrations, “this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down.” Was the way into the holiest to be opened? It was through the rent veil, that is to say, His flesh. Indeed, if we examine the value of the death of Christ, what do we find attached to it in scripture?
Do I need redemption? We have redemption through His blood, an eternal redemption, for neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, he is entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
Do I need forgiveness? That redemption which I have through His blood is the forgiveness of sins -yea, without shedding of blood is no remission.
Do I need peace? He has made peace through the blood of His cross.
Do I need reconciliation with God? Though we were sinners, yet now hath He reconciled us by the body of His flesh through death, to present us holy and unblameable, and unreproveable in God's sight. When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.
Do I desire to be dead to sin and have the flesh crucified with its affections and lusts? I am crucified with Christ. Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed; for in that He died, He died unto sin once, and in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. This is my deliverance also from the charge and burthen of the law which has dominion over a man as long as he lives.
Do I feel the need of propitiation? Christ is set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood. The need of justification? I am justified by His blood.
Would I have a part with Christ? He must die, for except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: if it die it brings forth much fruit.
Hence, unto what am I baptized as the public expression of my faith? As many of us as are baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death; for what indeed has broken down the middle wall of partition and let in the Gentiles, slaying the enmity and reconciling Jew and Gentile in one body to God? The Cross. How have we boldness to enter into the holiest? By the blood of Jesus, by that new and living way which He has consecrated for us through the veil, that is His flesh; for till that was rent the Holy Ghost signified by it that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest Hence it was a lifted-up Christ that was the attractive point for all. “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.”
In the power of what was the great Shepherd of the sheep brought again from the dead? Through the blood of the everlasting covenant.
How was the curse of the law taken away from those who were under it? By Christ's being made a curse for them, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.
How are we washed from our sins? He has loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, for His blood cleanseth from all sin.
If I would be delivered from the world, it is by the cross, by which the world is crucified to me and I unto the world.
If the love of Christ constrains me towards men in the thought of the terror of the Lord, how is it so? Because I thus judge, if One died for all then were all dead, and they that live should live not to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again. Hence the apostle knew no man after the flesh—no, not even Christ. All was a new creation. If I would live in divine power, it is always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in my mortal body. If He would institute a special remembrance to call Him to mind, it was a broken body and a shed blood. It is not less a Lamb as it were slain that is found in the throne.
All was love no doubt, but do I want to learn it? Hereby we know it that He laid down His life for us, and that even of God in that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for our sins. It is to the sprinkling of that precious blood of Christ that we are sanctified, and to obedience; and through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once (contrasted with the many Jewish sacrifices), sanctified and perfected forever, so that there is no more offering for sin, for having offered one sacrifice for sins He is set down forever at the right hand of God. For He should not offer Himself often, as the high priest entered into the holy place once every year with the blood of others; for then must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world; but now once in the end of the world He hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; for as it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Do I desire, therefore, my conscience purged? It is through the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God. For it is by means of death that there is the redemption of the transgressions -which were under the first covenant, and in that view He became Mediator. Indeed, a testament could have no force while the testator lived.
Do I seek the destruction of the power of Satan? It is through death that He destroyed [the power of] him that had the power of death.
What do I find to be the central object of Christ's coming—the groundwork of His glory as man? We see Him made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that He by the grace of God might taste death for every man And even the purifying and reconciling all things in heaven and earth depends on this. (Heb. 9:23; Col. 1:20.)
Would He sanctify even the Jewish people to Himself? It must be by His blood, suffering, rejected, without the gate. No remission for us—no privileges of the new covenant for us, nor establishing of it with them, without this blood—redemption is not without it. The living sinner as such cannot be presented to God, nor a living Christ offer that by which the sinner must draw nigh. The veil remains unrent, the conscience unpurged, the propitiation unaccomplished. God forbore with the Old Testament saints, and has shown His righteousness in doing so now—a righteousness now declared in that propitiatory set forth through faith in Christ's blood. It is alleged, indeed, that He came to do God's will in taking the place of the sacrifices, and that His obedience during life is available in expiation; but we read, “by the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
It is alleged that His living obedience had the same legal character as His death. Is it the same thing, then, to obey the law with unfeigned heart, so as to be perfectly acceptable to God personally, and to bear its curse for others under the wrath and judgment of God? Is it possible that Christians, who know what the need of their own souls as sinners is, can use such reasoning?
Having thus proposed the blessed value of Christ's death from Scripture, and leaving it to its own force without comment, allow me to go yet a little further into the elements and character of His sufferings as available for us, so that we may the more fully appreciate His grace Man may be looked at morally in three conditions; first, as a sinner under condemnation; secondly, as a saint through grace, partaker of the divine nature, and of the Holy Ghost as his force; and, thirdly, as suffering, though awakened, quickened, and upright in desire, under the exercises of a soul learning, when a sinner, the difference of good and evil under divine government in the presence of God, not fully known in grace and redemption, whose judgment of sin is before his eyes, exposed to all the advantage that Satan can take of him in such a state, such suffering, for example, as is seen in the case of Job. Christ has passed through all these kinds of suffering, only the last of course as Himself a perfect being to learn it for others; I need not say that He was perfect in all. But what met the first condition, that of a sinner under condemnation, He went through as actually bearing sin, and so enduring wrath vicariously for others, that they never might have it to endure. The second He was truly in Himself, nay our leader in that path. To the first of these conditions, our being under judgment and condemnation for sin, Christ's death upon the cross is the divine answer in expiation. All that God was in His nature, He was necessarily against sin; for though He were love, love has no place in wrath against sin, and the withdrawal of the sense of it, consciousness in the soul of the privation of God, is the most dreadful of all sufferings, the most terrible horror to him who knows it; and Christ knew it infinitely. But God's divine majesty, His holiness, His righteousness, His truth, all in their very nature bore against Christ as made sin for us. All that God was, was against sin, and Christ was made sin. No comfort of love enfeebled wrath there. Never was the obedient Christ so precious, but His soul was to be made an offering for sin, and to bear it judicially before God. At the end of the three hours of darkness, this is expressed by the Lord in the words of Psa. 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The result, and that to the end of time and indeed for an endless eternity of unmingled grace for us, has been already touched on, and I will advert to it again in connection with remarkable facts as to the expressions of the Lord Himself. Here the Lord suffered that not one drop of what He took might remain for us. It had been everlasting misery and ruin for us—His own divine perfection in love went through it without one ray of comfort from God or man. All other sorrows pressed Him onward with accumulating power to this and merged in it, in that darkness which hid all but the wrath He was enduring from God. Judges had been heartlessly unrighteous, and washed their hands of such an One and His matters—the chief priests, who should intercede for the infirm, cry for cruel death upon the guiltless—the friends on whom His heart ought to have been able to count (and He looked for comforters, and would have had the most favored of them watch with Him), actually forsake and deny Him; and the unfaithfulness of a friend is bitterer than the assault of an enemy. But all this was the proof of the power of one who exercised unlimited dominion (save so far as grace delivered) over, and had his rights through sin and the power of death over, him whom the Lord came to deliver; and it was his hour and the power of darkness. All he can do he does; but it only led the Lord through conflict, of which I will speak just now, in willing offering of Himself, letting His own go their way, to the last scene when, deprived of all human comfort, He was to accomplish the work of propitiation, alone with God judging sin—that scene which stands alone, which no eye can fathom (though, blessed be God, we truly know its meaning) but His who knows Divine wrath against sin as God alone knows it. Bulls of Bashan were there, dogs with no shame of heart, but only to drive the sufferer to seek for succor where He was to learn in all its utter depth for us what it was to be forsaken of God—an hour passed forever with divine and eternal glory for fruit. He even could say, so great was the infinite and truly divine value of that hour and work, “therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.”
But willingly as I expatiate on this blessed, yet most solemn, subject, I must leave it and turn to another and brighter, yet to us humbling character of the Lord's sufferings—those which He endured as the Holy One glorifying God, when the reproaches of those that reproached God fell on Him. This went on up to His death. They flowed from His declaring righteousness in the great congregation; from His perfectly manifesting God amongst men, who had no relish for the light, so that for His love He had hatred. I do not enlarge upon this simply because I apprehend it can offer no difficulty to my reader. In our little and imperfect measure, we have our share in this kind of suffering. It is our privilege as saints. “To you it is given.... not only to believe on him, but to suffer for his sake.” “If we suffer with him, we shall reign with him.” “To do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” Quotations could be multiplied to show how we are thus called to suffer as He suffered, as Paul speaks of his filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ, for His body's sake, the Church. In the measure in which we manifest Christ as He manifested His Father, in our walk and testimony, we shall suffer for it as He suffered, and His consolations will abound—a meat to eat which the flesh knows not of. He could thank His Father when He had most sorrowfully and justly to reproach the world.
But I now come to the third character of trial in which man stands, which requires a little more attention—that which is not the fruit of holy witness in the world, (though it may in a certain way accompany it,) nor the enduring the wrath of God in condemnation, which for us would be everlasting misery, but the fruit of sin under the government of God in this world, and connected with the power of Satan in it. That which, as used of God, is the means of our learning the difference between good and evil, whether in terror before the knowledge of redemption, or even by various exercises though in an altogether different state of soul after we know it, for God continues even then His instructive government, founded on His immutable judgment of good and evil; that which in terror brings righteousness, though not without hope, before us, or when redemption is known and divine righteousness is our state, ministers co practical holiness of life and judgment, according to the divine nature of which we are made partakers. If we take the case of the remnant of the Jews in the latter day we shall more readily understand this, though it is in principle the case of thousands of upright souls under the law, and a principle on which God has acted from the beginning of man's failure. The sentence of death, of sorrow on the woman, were judgments pronounced upon sin, as part of the display of God's government in this world, not in themselves everlasting condemnation and separation from God because of the holiness of His nature. That power of death and its terrors over the mind Satan wields. (Heb. 2:14.) Here it is that the thought of God's righteous judgment against sin, and the pains of death, and the power of Satan, unite in their pressure upon the soul. So when a soul is convinced of sin, and practically under the law, (that is, the requirements of God's righteousness on living man,) the judgment of God is feared, the terrors of the Almighty can drink up the spirit; God thus teaches a man what he is, what he is worth in this solemn question between Satan and God, the power of evil and of good. See the case of Job; God sustains man in grace and the sense of integrity, so that he clings to dependence on God, come what will; yet judgment is feared, God's holiness and righteousness pressed on the spirit weighed down with the sense of sin, the power of death as ending nature's hope and leading to judgment is there, and Satan uses it to drive to despair, to destroy faith and break the spirit of man away from depending on God and believing in His love. Without the atonement, there could be no answer in grace to this state, because we have deserved condemnation, and if new life be there which clings to God, yet this very life gives the sense of God's holiness, which brings judgment on the soul conscious of sin. When the full work of grace in redemption is learned, the soul obtains a peace only the more solid, and indeed only thereby really solid, that it has passed through these exercises by which sin is known, by which God's judgment of it is before the soul by His own convincing work, and Satan's effort spent and resulting only in bringing us to the answer which atonement gives, and thus his power over us destroyed and gone forever. But though the answer to and deliverance from this state is the full and perfect redemption wrought by Christ, by which we are wholly taken out of the state in which we stood accused and liable to judgment, and transferred into the position of the second Adam before God, of Him who is now gone to His Father and our Father, His God and our God, there is positive and direct grace in the exercise itself. For, besides this deliverance and salvation by which our miserable case is met, there is a real learning of the difference of good and evil before God -learned, I admit, more blessedly when redemption is known and we are in possession of perfect good in grace, so that evil is thus judged, and we are delivered from its deceits; but still, profitably learned in the knowledge of our wretchedness, guilt, sin, powerlessness against evil, even when we would what is good, and the solemnity of the question involved in the salvation of the soul, where the claims and power of Satan through sin, in which we have listened to and subjected ourselves to him, and the righteous nature and title of God, are brought to issue in a soul, subjected to sin on one side, and quickened to own God's title and delight in His nature and so judge its own evil on the other; and that in the presence of the righteous judgment of God. Now before obtaining the peace acquired by the knowledge of redemption Christ sustains, encourages, relieves by times the soul in this state, but not so as to hinder its learning this deep and solemn lesson which has its fruit in eternity; nor so as to prevent its finding its only resource in the redemption He has accomplished.
But in the case of the remnant of Israel in the latter days, we find these exercises of heart and spirit gone through in circumstances where the government of God is historically developed as to a people sinful under law, yet renewed and quickened of God, so that the desires and consciousness of uprightness are there. The circumstances are, with more complete development, the continuation of those in which the Jews were in the time of our Lord, only that antichrist is manifested, the body of the people are given up to unbelief and the unbridled influence of Satan-seven devils, worse than the old spirit of idolatry, but along with it, are entered into them. In a word, it is the time of Satan's power, the power of darkness, of the oppression of the Gentiles, of the same Roman beast. In the midst of this, the remnant find themselves, on the one side, conscious of the nation's guilt under the law, and of their filling up of their sins, so that wrath was come upon them, the just vengeance of God; yet they feel this because they are renewed and quickened; and the Jehovah they have sinned against is their only hope. Yet how difficult to trust God for help in difficulties in which we find ourselves under His hand by our shining against Him! Without atonement, they could not be dealt with in grace. The goat of atonement had been offered so that God could deal with them about their sins for their good, sustain their faith, yet make them feel the weight of their sins, and the darkness they had brought themselves into; and, at the same time, say, “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and seeth no light? let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay himself on his God.” But the true Aaron had not come forth, so that Israel's sins should be, in administrative application, sent away on the scape goat into the land not inhabited.
Now here the judgment of God against them, the sense of guilt under a broken law and national unfaithfulness, the full power of Satan and the darkness it brings-all rest on the spirit of the people; yet, though smitten in the place of dragons, there is integrity of heart, earnest desires after the law, and after God Himself and His worship, and trust in Him as their only resource. Thus the full judgment of evil is wrought in them, in hope of goodness and mercy prophetically revealed. Who is to furnish thoughts; feelings; faith, hope, which can be known to be acceptable and a sustaining ground of faith till they look on Him whom they have pierced and find peace? The answer to this question, as well as the ground-work of atonement, is found in Christ. All this exercise Christ entered into so as to be able to help them. “This poor man cried” — “God has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,” and that, when He had been really forsaken of God, the real ground of hope for the people. When He was on this earth, the power of Gentile evil, with no fear of God before their eyes, was there; the apostate wickedness of the priestly rulers of Israel who would have no king but Caesar, and who called for the blood of their King to be on them and their children-the power of Satan and darkness was there; the judgment of God standing out in all its truthfulness and terror, not one godly man left; the guilt of Israel under a broken law and in the rejection of Jehovah and their King—of the Anointed as of the Lord, pressed upon the spirit of any intelligent saint, if such there were, as in the last days.