The second part, depicting the Saviour’s suffering, death and triumph, begins with a noble chorus, ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ after which the alto sings one of the most expressively beautiful arias ever written, ‘He was despised.’ When Mrs. Cibber sang this aria at the first performance in Dublin, the Reverend Mr. Delany, friend of Dean Swift, who cherished a prejudice against all public singers, was so transported by the pathos of the music that he rapturously exclaimed: ‘Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven.’ It is followed by the dramatically expressive choruses, ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs,’ ‘And with His stripes’ and ‘All we, like sheep, have gone astray,’ the last closing with a stately chorale, ‘And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ One of the most effective choruses in this part is the joyous ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates,’ but the real climax of the part, and indeed of the whole work, is the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, of such wondrous power and sustained beauty that everything after it must of necessity take on something of the nature of an anticlimax. The short third part forms, as it were, a Credo, as expressed by the great soprano aria, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ The work closes with two of Handel’s finest choruses--‘Worthy is the Lamb,’ of great dignity and nobility, and the triumphant ‘Amen’ fugue, overpowering in its majestic sweep of contrapuntal movement. Speaking of the impression that this deeply religious epic has always produced on audiences in every country, Mr. F. J. Crowest, in ‘The Great Tone Poets,’ exclaims: ‘Where is the prelate who can move our souls as they are moved by Handel’s "Messiah"?’ And what can be added to such praise? VII