a title of Messiah: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a BRANCH shall grow out of his roots," Isaiah 11:1 . See also Zechariah 3:8; Zechariah 6:12; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:15 . When Christ is represented as a slender twig, shooting out from the trunk of an old tree lopped to the very root and decayed, and becoming itself a mighty tree, reference is made,

1. To the kingly dignity of Christ, springing up from the decayed house of David;

2. To the exaltation which was to succeed his humbled condition on earth, and to the glory and vigour of his mediatorial reign.