Now all this parallel between Jesus of Nazareth and the Servant of the Lord is unmistakable enough, even in this mere outline; but the details of the Gospel narrative and the language of the Evangelists still more emphasize it. Christ's herald hailed Him with words which gather up the essence of Isa. liii.: _Behold the Lamb of God_. He read His own commission from ch. lxi.: _The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me_. To describe His first labours among the people, His disciples again used words from ch. liii.: _Himself bare our sicknesses_. To paint His manner of working in face of opposition they quoted the whole passage from ch. xlii.: _Behold My Servant ... He shall not strive._ The name Servant was often upon His own lips in presenting Himself: _Behold, I am among you as one that serveth_. When His office of prophecy passed into martyrdom, He predicted for Himself the treatment which is detailed in ch. l.,--the _smiting_, _plucking_ and _spitting_: and in time, by Jew and Gentile, this treatment was inflicted on Him to the very letter.[167] As to His consciousness in fulfilling something more than a martyrdom, and alone among the martyrs of Israel offering by His death an expiation for His people's sins, His own words are frequent and clear enough to form a counterpart to ch. liii. With them before us, we cannot doubt that He felt Himself to be the One of whom the people in that chapter speak, as standing over against them all, sinless, and yet bearing their sins. But on the night on which He was betrayed, while just upon the threshold of this extreme and unique form of service, into which it has been given to no soul of man, that ever lived, to be conscious of following Him--as if anxious that His disciples should not be so overwhelmed by the awful part in which they could not imitate Him as to forget the countless other ways in which they were called to fulfil His serving spirit--_He took a towel and girded Himself, and when He had washed their feet, He said unto them, If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet_--thereby illustrating what is so plainly set forth in our prophecy, that short of the expiation, of which only One in His sinlessness has felt the obligation, and short of the martyrdom, which it has been given to but few of His people to share with Him, there are a thousand humble forms rising out of the needs of everyday life, in which men are called to employ towards one another the gentle and self-forgetful methods of the true Servant of God. With the four Gospels in existence, no one doubts or can doubt that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled the cry, _Behold My Servant_. With Him it ceased to be a mere ideal, and took its place as the greatest achievement in history.