Chapters 50 and 53 of the pseudo-Isaiah remained; which contain many phrases so aptly descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, and so closely knit up with our earliest devotional associations, that they were the very last link of my chain that snapt.  Still, I could not conceal from myself, that no exactness in this prophecy, however singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of Hezekiah’s prophets.  There must be some explanation; and if I did not see it, that must probably arise from prejudice and habit.—­In order therefore to gain freshness, I resolved to peruse the entire prophecy of the pseudo-Isaiah in Lowth’s version, from ch. xl. onward, at a single sitting.

This prophet writes from Babylon, and has his vision full of the approaching restoration of his people by Cyrus, whom he addresses by name.  In ch. xliii. he introduces to us an eminent and “chosen servant of God,” whom he invests with all the evangelical virtues, and declares that he is to be a light to the Gentiles.  In ch. xliv. (v. 1—­also v. 21) he is named as “Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen.”  The appellations recur in xlv. 4:  and in a far more striking passage, xlix. 1-12, which is eminently Messianic to the Christian ear, except that in v. 3, the speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel.  The same speaker continues in ch. l., which is equally Messianic in sound.  In ch. lii. the prophet speaks of him, (vv. 13-15) but the subject of the chapter is restoration from Babylon; and from this he runs on into the celebrated ch. liii.

It is essential to understand the same “elect servant” all along.  He is many times called Israel, and is often addressed in a tone quite inapplicable to Messiah, viz. as one needing salvation himself; so in ch. xliii.  Yet in ch. xlix. this elect Israel is distinguished from Jacob and Israel at large:  thus there is an entanglement.  Who can be called on to risk his eternal hopes on his skilful unknotting of it?  It appeared however to me most probable, that as our high Churchmen distinguish “mother Church” from the individuals who compose the Church, so the “Israel” of this prophecy is the idealizing of the Jewish Church; which I understood to be a current Jewish interpretation.  The figure perhaps embarrasses us, only because of the male sex attributed to the ideal servant of God; for when “Zion” is spoken of by the same prophet in the same way, no one finds difficulty, or imagines that a female person of superhuman birth and qualities must be intended.

It still remained strange that in Isaiah liii. and Pss. xxii. and lxix. there should be coincidences so close with the sufferings of Jesus:  but I reflected, that I had no proof that the narrative had not been strained by credulity,[6] to bring it into artificial agreement with these imagined predictions of his death.  And herewith my last argument in favour of views for which I once would have laid down my life, seemed to be spent.