REDEMPTION. 325
Censures our thoughts, the just man he prefers,
And, impious, calls himself the Son of God.
Come, let us make him prove his words, for should
He be the Son of God, God will defend,
And safe deliver him from all his foes.
Him with outrage and torture we will prove,
His meekness search, severe his patience try;
Let us condemn him to most cruel death,
And find what credit to his words is due.
If we the Shepherd strike, the sheep will fly.'
' So did the Gentiles rage, the Jews devise;
Princes and people stand against the Christ,
And e'en his own familiar friends reject;
Those, who his bread ate, at his table sat,
Lift up their heel against him and supplant;
For thirty pieces sell, the price of him,
Whom Jeremias saw of Israel priced.
Shame cloaks his face, reproaches dim his eye,
And he becomes a stranger to his own,
An alien to the sons his mother bore.'
Had your Messias aught resembling this?
He, whom you say, was bruised and buffetted,
Whose face with scars disgraceful was deform'd,
His back with whips, his bleeding brow with thorns?
Then listen to the words Isaias sang
'A tender plant he grew from thirsty ground,
Of comeliness bereft, of beauty void,
Despised, abject, and but light esteem' d,
A Man of sorrows, and acquaint with grief,
Deem'd as a leper, struck by hand of God.
Thus he for man's iniquities was bruised,
Wounded for sin, chastised, and fill'd with sores.
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