The significance of the first clause of my text, 'the Lamb of God,' is
deplorably weakened if it is taken to mean only, or mainly, that Jesus
Christ, in the sweetness of His human nature, is gentle and meek and
patient and innocent and pure. It _does_ mean all that, thank God! But
it was no mere description of Christ's disposition which John the
Baptist conceived himself to be uttering, as is clear by the words
that follow in the next clause. His reason for selecting (under divine
guidance, as I believe) that image of 'the Lamb of God,' went a great
deal deeper than anything in the temper of the Person of whom he was
speaking. Many streams of ancient prophecy and ritual converge upon
this emblem, and if we want to understand what is meant by the
designation 'the Lamb of God,' we must not content ourselves with the
sentimentalisms which some superficial teachers have supposed to
exhaust the significance of the expression; but we must submit to be
led back by John, who was the summing up of all the ancient
Revelation, to the sources in that Revelation from which he drew this
metaphor.

First and chiefest of these, as I take it, are the words which no Jew
ever doubted referred to the Messiah, until after He had come, and the
Rabbis would not believe in Him, and so were bound to hunt up another
interpretation--I mean the great words in the prophecy which, I
suppose, is familiar to most of us, where there are found two
representations, one, 'He was led as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'; and
the other, still more germane to the purpose of my text, 'the Lord
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.... By His knowledge shall He
justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.' John the Baptist,
looking back through the ages to that ancient prophetic utterance,