He says, "That the Spirit of
the Lord was upon HIM"--Isaiah--"because the Lord had appointed HIM
to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted,
and deliverance to the captives, to preach the acceptable year of the
Lord." Isaiah must have spoken truly about himself. He could not
have meant to tell a falsehood, to say a thing was true of himself
which was only true of Jesus, who did not come till 800 years
afterwards. And he did speak the truth: you cannot read his
prophecies without seeing that the Spirit of the Lord was indeed upon
him; that the words which he spoke must have comforted all those who
were sorrowing for their sins and the sins of the nation in their
time. We know, for a fact, that his prophecies came true; that the
Jewish captives were delivered and brought back out of Judaea to
Jerusalem again, and that Jerusalem was rebuilt as Isaiah prophesied,
and the Jewish nation raised to far greater holiness, and prosperity,
and happiness than it had ever been in before. And yet 800 years
afterwards the Lord took those very same words to Himself, and said,
that HE fulfilled them. He read them aloud once in a Jewish
synagogue, out of the book of the prophet Isaiah; and then told the
congregation, "This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.
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