people who drew all their strength to die from Him. I do not venture
to bring a theory, but I press upon you the fact, He bears the sins of
the world, and in that awful load are yours and mine.

There is the other truth here, as clearly, and perhaps more directly,
meant by the selection of the expression in my text, that the
Sin-bearer not only carries, but carries _away_, the burden that is
laid upon Him. Perhaps there may be a reference--in addition to the
other sources of the figure which I have indicated as existing in
ritual, and prophecy, and history--there may be a reference in the
words to yet another of the eloquent symbols of that ancient system
which enshrined truths that were not peculiar to any people, but were
the property of humanity. You remember, no doubt, the singular
ceremonial connected with the scapegoat, and many of you will recall
the wonderful embodiment of it given by the Christian genius of a
modern painter. The sins of the nation were symbolically laid upon its
head, and it was carried out to the edge of the wilderness and driven
forth to wander alone, bearing away upon itself into the darkness and
solitude--far from man and far from God--the whole burden of the
nation's sins. Jesus Christ takes away the sin which He bears, and
there is, as I believe, only one way by which individuals, or society,
or the world at large, can thoroughly get rid of the guilt and penal
consequences and of the dominion of sin, and that is, by beholding the
Lamb of God that takes upon Himself, that He may carry away out of
sight, the sin of the world. So much, then, for the first thought that
I wish to suggest to you.

II. Now let me ask you to look with me at a second thought, that such
a world's Sin-bearer is the world's deepest need.