The fourth Servant Song of Isaiah, included in our text, preaches itself. Remarkably, it provides the prophecy, biography, and epilogue of Jesus of Nazareth. We will not engage here in the arguments of higher criticism which raise sophisticated questions as to whether Isaiah was speaking of an actual person, or of Israel as a whole, or of one yet to come. We consign those arguments to the scholars whose devotion to research leads them to search out those kinds of things. We shall proceed, rather, under the assumption that our text parallels the gospels in general and the crucifixion in particular.

It is Friday of the last week. The wheel of history grinds unsteadily toward the event which shall forever divide the calendar into B.C. and A.D. Attention is centered upon the broken figure of …