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Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah

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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8069]
                Most recently updated: August 18, 2012

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8069

Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Michelle Shephard and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE: ISAIAH AND JEREMIAH ***




Produced by Charles Franks, Michelle Shephard and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE


ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ISAIAH AND JEREMIAH




EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

ISAIAH

_Chaps. I to XLVIII_




CONTENTS

THE GREAT SUIT: JEHOVAH _versus_ JUDAH (Isaiah i. 1-9; 16-20)

THE STUPIDITY OF GODLESSNESS (Isaiah i. 3)

WHAT SIN DOES TO MEN (Isaiah i. 30-31)

THE PERPETUAL PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE (Isaiah iv. 5)

A PROPHET'S WOES (Isaiah v. 8-30)

VISION AND SERVICE (Isaiah vi. 1-13)

THE EMPTY THRONE FILLED (Isaiah vi. 1)

A SERAPH'S WINGS (Isaiah vi. 2)

THE MAKING OF A PROPHET (Isaiah vi. 5)

SHILOAH AND EUPHRATES (Isaiah viii. 6, 7)

THE KINGDOM AND THE KING (Isaiah ix. 2-7)

LIGHT OR FIRE? (Isaiah x. 17)

THE SUCKER FROM THE FELLED OAK (Isaiah xi. 1-10)

THE WELL-SPRING OF SALVATION (Isaiah xii. 3)

THE HARVEST OF A GODLESS LIFE (Isaiah xvii. 10, 11)

'IN THIS MOUNTAIN' (Isaiah xxv. 6-8)

THE FEAST ON THE SACRIFICE (Isaiah xxv. 6)

THE VEIL OVER ALL NATIONS (Isaiah xxv. 7)

THE SONG OF TWO CITIES (Isaiah xxvi. 1-10)

OUR STRONG CITY (Isaiah xxvi. 1-2)

THE INHABITANT OF THE ROCK (Isaiah xxvi. 3-4)

THE GRASP THAT BRINGS PEACE (Isaiah xxvii. 5)

THE JUDGMENT OF DRUNKARDS AND MOCKERS (Isaiah xxviii. 1-13)

A CROWN OF PRIDE OR A CROWN OF GLORY (Isaiah xxviii 3-5)

MAN'S CROWN AND GOD'S (Isaiah lxii 3)

THE FOUNDATION OF GOD (Isaiah xxviii. 16)

GOD'S STRANGE WORK (Isaiah xxviii. 21)

THE HUSBANDMAN AND HIS OPERATIONS (Isaiah xxviii. 23-29)

'QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE' (Isaiah xxx. 15)

GOD'S WAITING AND MAN'S (Isaiah xxx. 18)

THREE PICTURES OF ONE REALITY (Isaiah xxxi. 5)

THE LORD'S FURNACE (Isaiah xxxi. 9)

THE HIDING-PLACE (Isaiah xxxii. 2)

HOW TO DWELL IN THE FIRE OF GOD (Isaiah xxxiii. 14, 15; I John iv. 16)

THE FORTRESS OF THE FAITHFUL (Isaiah xxxiii. 16)

THE RIVERS OF GOD (Isaiah xxxiii. 21)

JUDGE, LAWGIVER, KING (Isaiah xxxiii. 22)

MIRACLES OF HEALING (Isaiah xxxv. 5-6)

MIRAGE OR LAKE (Isaiah xxxv. 6-7)

THE KING'S HIGHWAY (Isaiah xxxv. 8-9)

WHAT LIFE'S JOURNEY MAY BE (Isaiah xxxv. 9-10)

THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH (Isaiah xxxvii 14-21; 33-38)

WHERE TO CARRY TROUBLES (Isaiah xxxvii. 14)

GREAT VOICES FROM HEAVEN (Isaiah xl. 1-10)

O THOU THAT BRINGEST GOOD TIDINGS (Isaiah xl. 9)

'HAVE YE NOT? HAST THOU NOT' (Isaiah xl. 2; 28)

UNFAILING STARS AND FAINTING MEN (Isaiah xl. 26; 29)

THE SECRET OF IMMORTAL YOUTH (Isaiah xl. 30, 31)

CHRIST THE ARRESTER OF INCIPIENT EVIL AND THE NOURISHER OF INCIPIENT
GOOD (Isaiah xlii. 3, 4)

THE BLIND MAN'S GUIDE (Isaiah xlii. 16)

THY NAME: MY NAME (Isaiah xliii, 1; 7)

JACOB--ISRAEL--JESHURUN (Isaiah xliv. 1, 2)

FEEDING ON ASHES (Isaiah xliv. 20)

WRITING BLOTTED OUT AND MIST MELTED (Isaiah xliv. 22)

HIDDEN AND REVEALED (Isaiah xlv. 15, 19)

A RIGHTEOUSNESS NEAR AND A SWIFT SALVATION (Isaiah xlv. 12, 13)

A RIVER OF PEACE AND WAVES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (Isaiah xlviii. 18)




THE GREAT SUIT: JEHOVAH _VERSUS_ JUDAH

'The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah
and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings
of Judah. I Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath
spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have
rebelled against Me. 3. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his
master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
4. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,
children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away
backward. 5. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more
and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6. From
the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it;
but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been
closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. 7. Your
country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land,
strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown
by strangers. 8. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a
vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. 9.
Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we
should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto
Gomorrah.... 16. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your
doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; 17. Learn to do well;
seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for
the widow. 18. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow: though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19. If ye be willing
and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. 20. But if ye refuse
and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the
Lord hath spoken it.'--ISAIAH 1,1-9; 16-20.


The first bars of the great overture to Isaiah's great oratorio are
here sounded. These first chapters give out the themes which run
through all the rest of his prophecies. Like most introductions, they
were probably written last, when the prophet collected and arranged his
life's labours. The text deals with the three great thoughts, the
_leit-motifs_ that are sounded over and over again in the prophet's
message.

First comes the great indictment (vs. 2-4). A true prophet's words are
of universal application, even when they are most specially addressed
to a particular audience. Just because this indictment was so true of
Judah, is it true of all men, for it is not concerned with details
peculiar to a long-past period and state of society, but with the broad
generalities common to us all. As another great teacher in Old
Testament times said, 'I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or
thy burnt-offerings, to have been continually before me.' Isaiah has
nothing to say about ritual or ceremonial omissions, which to him were
but surface matters after all, but he sets in blazing light the
foundation facts of Judah's (and every man's) distorted relation to
God. And how lovingly, as well as sternly, God speaks through him! That
divine lament which heralds the searching indictment is not unworthy to
be the very words of the Almighty Lover of all men, sorrowing over His
prodigal and fugitive sons. Nor is its deep truth less than its
tenderness. For is not man's sin blackest when seen against the bright
background of God's fatherly love? True, the fatherhood that Isaiah
knew referred to God's relation to the nation rather than to the
individual, but the great truth which is perfectly revealed by the
Perfect Son was in part shown to the prophet. The east was bright with
the unrisen sun, and the tinted clouds that hovered above the place of
its rising seemed as if yearning to open and let him through. Man's
neglect of God's benefits puts him below the animals that 'know' the
hand that feeds and governs them. Some men think it a token of superior
'culture' and advanced views to throw off allegiance to God. It is a
token that they have less intelligence than their dog.

There is something very beautiful and pathetic in the fact that Judah
is not directly addressed, but that verses 2-4 are a divine soliloquy.
They might rather be called a father's lament than an indictment. The
forsaken father is, as it were, sadly brooding over his erring child's
sins, which are his father's sorrows and his own miseries. In verse 4
the black catalogue of the prodigal's doings begins on the surface with
what we call 'moral' delinquencies, and then digs deeper to disclose
the root of these in what we call 'religious' relations perverted. The
two are inseparably united, for no man who is wrong with God can be
right with duty or with men. Notice, too, how one word flashes into
clearness the sad truth of universal experience--that 'iniquity,'
however it may delude us into fancying that by it we throw off the
burden of conscience and duty, piles heavier weights on our backs. The
doer of iniquity is 'laden with iniquity.' Notice, too, how the awful
entail of evil from parents to children is adduced--shall we say as
aggravating, or as lessening, the guilt of each generation? Isaiah's
contemporaries are 'a seed of evil-doers,' spring from such, and in
their turn are 'children that are corrupters.' The fatal bias becomes
stronger as it passes down. Heredity is a fact, whether you call it
original sin or not.

But the bitter fountain of all evil lies in distorted relations to God.
'They have forsaken the Lord'; that is why they 'do corruptly.' They
have 'despised the Holy One of Israel'; that is why they are 'laden
with iniquity.' Alienated hearts separate from Him. To forsake Him is
to despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may
have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And
this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of
man. Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not
suppose that it suggested that supreme revelation of man's misery and
God's love?

After the indictment comes the sentence (vs. 5-8). Perhaps 'sentence'
is not altogether accurate, for these verses do not so much decree a
future as describe a present, and the deep tone of pitying wonder
sounds through them as they tell of the bitter harvest sown by sin. The
penetrating question, 'Why will ye be still stricken, that ye revolt
more and more?' brings out the solemn truth that all which men gain by
rebellion against God is chastisement. The ox that 'kicks against the
pricks' only makes its own hocks bleed. We aim at some imagined good,
and we get--blows. No rational answer to that stern 'Why?' is possible.
Every sin is an act of unreason, essentially an absurdity. The
consequences of Judah's sin are first darkly drawn under the metaphor
of a man desperately wounded in some fight, and far away from
physicians or nurses, and then the metaphor is interpreted by the plain
facts of hostile invasion, flaming cities, devastated fields. It
destroys the coherence of the verses to take the gruesome picture of
the wounded man as a description of men's sins; it is plainly a
description of the consequences of their sins. In accordance with the
Old Testament point of view, Isaiah deals with national calamities as
the punishment of national sins. He does not touch on the far worse
results of individual sins on individual character. But while we are
not to ignore his doctrine that nations are individual entities, and
that 'righteousness exalteth a nation' in our days as well as in his,
the Christian form of his teaching is that men lay waste their own
lives and wound their own souls by every sin. The fugitive son comes
down to be a swine-herd, and cannot get enough even of the swine's food
to stay his hunger.

The note of pity sounds very clearly in the pathetic description of the
deserted 'daughter of Zion.' Jerusalem stands forlorn and defenceless,
like a frail booth in a vineyard, hastily run up with boughs, and open
to fierce sunshine or howling winds. Once 'beautiful for situation, the
joy of the whole earth,... the city of the great King'--and now!

Verse 9 breaks the solemn flow of the divine Voice, but breaks it as it
desires to be broken. For in it hearts made soft and penitent by the
Voice, breathe out lowly acknowledgment of widespread sin, and see
God's mercy in the continuance of 'a very small remnant' of still
faithful ones. There is a little island not yet submerged by the sea of
iniquity, and it is to Him, not to themselves, that the 'holy seed' owe
their being kept from following the multitude to do evil. What a
smiting comparison for the national pride that is--'as Sodom,' 'like
unto Gomorrah'!

After the sentence comes pardon. Verses 16 and 17 properly belong to
the paragraph omitted from the text, and close the stern special word
to the 'rulers' which, in its severe tone, contrasts so strongly with
the wounded love and grieved pity of the preceding verses. Moral
amendment is demanded of these high-placed sinners and false guides. It
is John the Baptist's message in an earlier form, and it clears the way
for the evangelical message. Repentance and cleansing of life come
first.

But these stern requirements, if taken alone, kindle despair. 'Wash
you, make you clean'--easy to say, plainly necessary, and as plainly
hopelessly above my reach. If that is all that a prophet has to say to
me, he may as well say nothing. For what is the use of saying 'Arise
and walk' to the man who has been lame from his mother's womb? How can
a foul body be washed clean by filthy hands? Ancient or modern
preachers of a self-wrought-out morality exhort to impossibilities, and
unless they follow their preaching of an unattainable ideal as Isaiah
followed his, they are doomed to waste their words. He cried, 'Make you
clean,' but he immediately went on to point to One who could make
clean, could turn scarlet into snowy white, crimson into the lustrous
purity of the unstained fleeces of sheep in green pastures. The
assurance of God's forgiveness which deals with guilt, and of God's
cleansing which deals with inclination and habit, must be the
foundation of our cleansing ourselves from filthiness of flesh and
spirit. The call to repentance needs the promise of pardon and divine
help to purifying in order to become a gospel. And the call to
'repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,' is
what we all, who are 'laden with iniquity,' and have forsaken the Lord,
need, if ever we are to cease to do evil and learn to do well.

As with one thunder-clap the prophecy closes, pealing forth the eternal
alternative set before every soul of man. Willing obedience to our
Father God secures all good, the full satisfaction of our else hungry
and ravenous desires. To refuse and rebel is to condemn ourselves to
destruction. And no man can avert that consequence, or break the
necessary connection between goodness and blessedness, 'for the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it,' and what He speaks stands fast for ever
and ever.




THE STUPIDITY OF GODLESSNESS

'The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel
doth not know, My people doth not consider.'--ISAIAH i. 3.


This is primarily an indictment against Israel, but it touches us all.
'Doth not know' _i.e._ has no familiar acquaintance with; 'doth not
consider,' _i.e._ frivolously ignores, never meditates on.

I. This is a common attitude of mind towards God.

Blank indifference towards Him is far more frequent than conscious
hostility. Take a hundred men at random as they hurry through the
streets, and how many of them would have to acknowledge that no thought
of God had crossed their minds for days or months? So far as they are
concerned, either in regard to their thoughts or actions, He _is_ 'a
superfluous hypothesis.' Most men are not conscious of rebellion
against Him, and to charge them with it does not rouse conscience, but
they cannot but plead guilty to this indictment, 'God is not in all
their thoughts.'

II. This attitude is strange and unnatural.

That a man should be able to forget God, and live as if there were no
such Being, is strange. It is one instance of that awful power of
ignoring the most important subjects, of which every life affords so
many and tragic instances. It seems as if we had above us an opium sky
which rains down soporifics, go that we are fast asleep to all that it
most concerns us to wake to. But still stranger is it that, having that
power of attending or not attending to subjects, we should so commonly
exercise it on _this_ subject. For, as the ox that knows the hand that
feeds him, and the ass that makes for his 'master's crib' where he is
sure of fodder and straw, might teach us, the stupidest brute has sense
enough to recognise who is kind to him, or has authority over him, and
where he can find what he needs. The godless man descends below the
animals' level. And to ignore Him is intensely stupid. But it is worse
than foolish, for

III. This attitude is voluntary and criminal.

Though there is not conscious hostility in it, the root of it is a
sub-conscious sense of discordance with God and of antagonism between
His will and the man's When we are quite sure that we love another, and
that hearts beat in accord and wills go out towards the same things, we
do not need to make efforts to think of that other, but our minds turn
towards him or her as to a home, whenever released from the
holding-back force of necessary occupations. If we love God, and have
our will set to do His will, our thoughts will fly to Him, 'as doves to
their windows.'

It is fed by preoccupation of thought with other things. We have but a
certain limited amount of energy of thought or attention, and if we
waste it, as much as most of us do, on 'things seen and temporal,'
there is none left for the unseen realities and the God who is
'eternal, invisible.' It is often reinforced by theoretical
uncertainty, sometimes real, often largely unreal. But after all, the
true basis of it is, what Paul gives as its cause, 'they did not _like_
to retain God in their knowledge.'

The criminality of this indifference! It is heartlessly ungrateful.
Dogs lick the hand that feeds them; ox and ass in their dull way
recognise something almost like obligation arising from benefits and
care. No ingratitude is meaner and baser than that of which we are
guilty, if we do not requite Him 'in whose hands our breath is, and
whose are all our ways,' by even one thankful heart-throb or one word
shaped out of the breath that He gives.

IV. This attitude is fatal.

It separates us from God, and separation from Him is the very
definition of Death. A God of whom we never think is all the same to us
as a God who does not exist. Strike God out of a life, and you strike
the sun out of the system, and wrap all in darkness and weltering
chaos. 'This is life eternal, to know Thee'; but if 'Israel doth not
know,' Israel has slain itself.




WHAT SIN DOES TO MEN

'Ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no
water. 31. And the strong shall be as tow, and His work as a spark; and
they shall both burn together, and none shall quench them.'--ISAIAH i.
30-31.


The original reference of these words is to the threatened retribution
for national idolatry, of which 'oaks' and 'gardens' were both seats.
The nation was, as it were, dried up and made inflammable; the idol was
as the 'spark' or the occasion for destruction. But a wider
application, which comes home to us all, is to the fatal results of
sin. These need to be very plainly stated, because of the deceitfulness
of sin, which goes on slaying men by thousands in silence.

                     'That grim wolf with privy paw
                      Daily devours apace.'

I. Sin withers.

We see the picture of a blasted tree in the woods, while all around are
in full leaf, with tiny leaves half developed and all brown at the
edges. The prophet draws another picture, that of a garden not
irrigated, and therefore, in the burning East, given over to barrenness.

Sin makes men fruitless and withered.

It involves separation from God, the source of all fruitfulness (Ps.
i.).

Think of how many pure desires and innocent susceptibilities die out of
a sinful soul. Think of how many capacities for good disappear. Think
of how dry and seared the heart becomes. Think of how conscience is
stifled.

All sin--any sin--does this.

Not only gross, open transgressions, but any piece of godless living
will do it.

Whatever a man does against his conscience--neglect of duty, habitual
unveracity, idleness--in a word, his besetting sin withers him up.

And all the while the evil thing that is drawing his life-blood is
growing like a poisonous, blotched fungus in a wine-cask.

II. Sin makes men inflammable.

'As tow' or tinder.

A subsidiary reference may be intended to the sinful man as easily
catching fire at temptation. But the main thought is that sin makes a
man ready for destruction, 'whose end is to be burned.'

The materials for retribution are laid up in a man's nature by
wrong-doing. The conspirators store the dynamite in a dark cellar.
Conscience and memory are charged with explosives.

If tendencies, habits, and desires become tyrannous by long indulgence
and cannot be indulged, what a fierce fire would rage then!

We have only to suppose a man made to know what is the real moral
character of his actions, and to be unable to give them up, to have
hell.

All this is confirmed by occasional glimpses which men get of
themselves. Our own characters are the true Medusa-head which turns a
man into stone when he sees it.

What, then, are we really doing by our sins? Piling together fuel for
burning.

III. Sin burns up.

'Work as a spark.' The evil deeds brought into contact with the doer
work destruction. That is, if, in a future life or at any time, a man
is brought face to face with his acts, then retribution begins. We
shake off the burden of our actions by want of remembrance. But that
power of ignoring the past may be broken down at any time. Suppose it
happens that in another world it can no longer be exercised, what then?

Evil deeds are the occasion of the divine retribution. They are 'a
spark.' It is they who light the pyre, not God. The prophet here
protests in God's name against the notion that He is to be blamed for
punishing. Men are their own self-tormentors. The sinful man immolates
himself. Like Isaac, he carries the wood and lays the pile for his own
burning.

Christ severs the connection between us and our evil. He restores
beauty and freshness to the blighted tree, planting it as 'by the river
of water,' so that it 'bringeth forth its fruit in its season,' and its
'leaf also doth not wither.'




THE PERPETUAL PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE

'And the Lord will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion, and
over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a
flaming fire by night.'--ISAIAH iv. 5.


The pillar of cloud and fire in the Exodus was one: there are to be as
many pillars as there are 'assemblies' in the new era. Is it straining
the language too much to find significance in that difference? Instead
of the formal unity of the Old Covenant, there is a variety which yet
is a more vital unity. Is there not a hint here of the same lesson that
is taught by the change of the one golden lamp-stand into the seven,
which are a better unity because Jesus Christ walks among them?

The heart of this promise, thus cast into the form of ancient
experiences, but with significant variations, is that of true communion
with God.

That communion makes those who have it glorious.

That communion supplies unfailing guidance.

A man in close fellowship with God will have wonderful flashes of
sagacity, even about small practical matters. The gleam of the pillar
will illumine conscience, and shine on many difficult, dark places. The
'simplicity' of a saintly soul will often see deeper into puzzling
contingencies than the vulpine craftiness of the 'prudent.' The darker
the night, the brighter the guidance.

That communion gives a defence.

The pillar came between Egypt and Israel, and kept the foe off the
timid crowd of slaves. Whatever forms our enemies take, fellowship with
God will invest us with a defence as protean as our perils. The same
cloud is represented in the context as being 'a pavilion for a shadow
in the heat, and for a refuge and for a covert from storm and from
rain.'




A PROPHET'S WOES

'Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till
there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the
earth! 9. In mine ears said the Lord of hosts, Of a truth many houses
shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant. 10. Yea,
ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer
shall yield an ephah. 11. Woe unto them that rise up early in the
morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until night,
till wine inflame them! 12. And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and
pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but they regard not the work of
the Lord, neither consider the operation of His hands. 13. Therefore my
people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and
their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with
thirst. 14. Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth
without measure: and their glory and their multitude, and their pomp,
and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. 15. And the mean man
shall be brought down, and the mighty man shall be humbled, and the
eyes of the lofty shall be humbled: 16. But the Lord of hosts shall be
exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in
righteousness. 17. Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and
the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat. 18. Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart
rope: 19. That say, Let Him make speed, and hasten His work, that we
may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and
come, that we may know it! 20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and
good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that
put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! 21. Woe unto them that are
wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! 22. Woe unto
them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle
strong drink: 23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away
the righteousness of the righteous from him! 24. Therefore as the fire
devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root
shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because
they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word
of the Holy One of Israel. 25. Therefore is the anger of the Lord
kindled against His people, and He hath stretched forth His hand
against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and
their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this His
anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still. 26. And
He will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto
them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed
swiftly: 17. None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall
slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed,
nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: 28. Whose arrows are sharp,
and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like
flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: 29. Their roaring shall be
like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar,
and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall
deliver it. 30. And in that day they shall roar against them like the
roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and
sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.'--ISAIAH v.
8-30.


Drunkenness is, in this text, one of a ring of plague-spots on the body
politic of Judah. The prophet six times proclaims 'woe' as the
inevitable end of these; such 'sickness' is 'unto death' unless
repentance and another course of conduct bring healing. But drunkenness
appears twice in this grim catalogue, and the longest paragraph of
denunciation (vv, 11-17) is devoted to it. Its connection with the
other vices attacked is loose, but it is worth noting that all these
have an inner kinship, and tend to appear together. They are 'all in a
string,' and where a community is cursed with one, the others will not
be far away. They are a knot of serpents intertwined. We touch but
slightly on the other vices denounced by the prophet's burning words,
but we must premise the general observation that the same
uncompromising plainness and boldness in speaking out as to social sins
ought to characterise Christian teachers to-day. The prophet's office
is not extinct in the church.

The first plague-spot is the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and
the selfish withdrawal of its possessors from the life of the
community. In an agricultural society like that of Judah, that clotting
of wealth took the shape of 'land-grabbing,' and of evicting the small
proprietors. We see it in more virulent forms in our great commercial
centres, where the big men often become big by crushing out the little
ones, and denude themselves of responsibility to the community in
proportion as they clothe themselves with wealth. Wherever wealth is
thus congested, and its obligations ignored by selfish indulgence, the
seeds are sown which will spring up one day in 'anarchism.' A man need
not be a prophet to have it whispered in his ear, as Isaiah had, that
the end of selfish capitalism is a convulsion in which 'many houses
shall be desolate,' and many fields barren. England needs the warning
as much as Isaiah's Judah did.

Such selfish wealth leads, among other curses, to indolence and
drunkenness, as the next woe shows. The people described make drinking
the business of their lives, beginning early and sitting late. They
have a varnish of art over their swinishness, and must have music as
well as wine. So, in many a drink-shop in England, a piano or a band
adds to the attractions, and gives a false air of aestheticism to pure
animalism. Isaiah feels the incongruity that music should be so
prostituted, and expresses it by adding to his list of musical
instruments 'and wine' as if he would underscore the degradation of the
great art to be the cupbearer of sots. Such revellers are blind to the
manifest tokens of God's working, and the 'operation of His hands'
excites only the tipsy gaze which sees nothing. That is one of the
curses which dog the drunkard-that he takes no warning from the plain
results of his vice as seen in others. He knows that it means shattered
health, ruined prospects, broken hearts, but nothing rouses him from
his fancy of impunity. High, serious thoughts of God and His government
of the world and of each life are strange to him. His sin compels him
to be godless, if he is not to go mad. But sometimes he wakes to a
moment's sight of realities, and then he is miserable till his next
bout buys fatal forgetfulness.

The prophet forces the end of a drunken nation on the unwilling
attention of the roisterers, in verses 13-17, which throb with
vehemence of warning and gloomy eloquence. What can such a people come
to but destruction? Knowledge must languish, hunger and thirst must
follow. Like some monster's gaping mouth, the pit yawns for them; and,
drawn as by irresistible attraction, the pomp and the wicked, senseless
jollity elide down into it. In the universal catastrophe, one thing
alone stands upright, and is lifted higher, because all else has sunk
so far,-the righteous judgment of the forgotten God. The grim picture
is as true for individuals and their deaths as for a nation and its
decay. And modern nations cannot afford to have this ulcer of
drunkenness draining away their strength any more than Judah could. 'By
the soul only are the nations great and free,' and a people can be
neither where the drink fiend has his way.

Three woes follow which are closely connected. That pronounced on
daring evil-doers, who not only let sin draw them to itself, but go
more than halfway to meet it, needing no temptation, but drawing it to
them eagerly, and scoffing at the merciful warnings of fatal
consequences, comes first. Next is a woe on those who play fast and
loose with plain morality, sophisticating conscience, and sapping the
foundations of law. Such juggling follows sensual indulgence such as
drunkenness, when it becomes habitual and audacious, as in the
preceding woe. Loose or perverted codes of morality generally spring
from bad living, seeking to shelter itself. Vicious principles are an
afterthought to screen vicious practices. The last subject of the
triple woes is self-conceit and pretence to superior illumination. Such
very superior persons are emancipated from the rules which bind the
common herd. They are so very clever that they have far outgrown the
creeping moralities, which may do for old women and children. Do we not
know the sort of people? Have we none of them surviving to-day?

Then Isaiah comes back to his theme of drunkenness, but in a new
connection. It poisons the fountain of justice. There is a world of
indignant contempt in the prophet's scathing picture of those who are
'mighty' and 'men of strength,'-but how is their strength shown? They
can stand any quantity of wine, and can 'mix their drinks,' and yet
look sober! What a noble use to put a good constitution to! These
valiant topers are in authority as judges, and they sell their
judgments to get money for their debauches. We do not see much of such
scandals among us, but yet we have heard of leagues between
liquor-sellers and municipal authorities, which certainly do _not_
'make for righteousness.' When shall we learn and practise the lesson
that Isaiah was reading his countrymen,--that it is fatal to a nation
when the private character of public men is regarded as of no account
in political and civic life? The prophet had no doubt as to what must
be the end of a state of things in which the very courts of law were
honeycombed with corruption, and demoralised by the power of drink. His
tremendous image of a fierce fire raging across a dry prairie, and
burning the grass to its very roots, while the air is stifling with the
thick 'dust' of the conflagration, proclaims the sure fate, sooner or
later, of every community and individual that 'rejects the law of the
Lord of Hosts, and despises the word of the Holy One of Israel.' Change
the name, and the tale is told of us; for it is 'righteousness that
exalteth a nation,' and no single vice drags after it more infallibly
such a multitude of attendant demons as the vice of drunkenness, which
is a crying sin of England to-day.




VISION AND SERVICE

'In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a
throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. 2. Above
it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered
his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did
fly. 3. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the
Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory. 4. And the posts
of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was
filled with smoke. 5. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because
I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. 6.
Then flew one of the seraphims onto me, having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7. And he laid it
upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine
iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 8. Also I heard the voice
of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then
said I, Here am I; send me. 9. And he said, Go, and tell this people,
Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive
not. 10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. 11.
Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be
wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be
utterly desolate, 12. And the Lord have removed men far away, and there
be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. 13. But yet in it shall
be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a tell tree,
and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves:
so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.'--ISAIAH vi. 1-13.


WE may deal with this text as falling into three parts: the vision, its
effect on the prophet, and his commission.

I. The Vision.--'In the year that King Uzziah died' is more than a date
for chronological accuracy. It tells not only when, but why, the vision
was given. The throne of David was empty.

God never empties places in our homes and hearts, or in the nation or
the Church, without being ready to fill them. He sometimes empties them
that He may fill them. Sorrow and loss are meant to prepare us for the
vision of God, and their effect should be to purge the inward eye, that
it may see Him. When the leaves drop from the forest trees we can see
the blue sky which their dense abundance hid. Well for us if the
passing of all that can pass drives us to Him who cannot pass, if the
unchanging God stands out more clear, more near, more dear, because of
change.

As to the substance of this vision, we need not discuss whether, if we
had been there, we should have seen anything. It was doubtless related
to Isaiah's thoughts, for God does not send visions which have no point
of contact in the recipient. However communicated, it was a divine
communication, and a temporary unveiling of an eternal reality. The
form was transient, but Isaiah then saw for a moment 'the things which
are' and always are.

The essential point of the vision is the revelation of Jehovah as king
of Judah. That relation guaranteed defence and demanded obedience. It
was a sure basis of hope, but also a stringent motive to loyalty, and
it had its side of terror as well as of joyfulness. 'You only have I
known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for
all your iniquities.' The place of vision is the heavenly sanctuary of
which the temple was a prophecy. Eminently significant and
characteristic of the whole genius of the Old Testament is the absence
of any description of the divine appearance. The prophet saw things
'which it is not lawful for a man to utter,' and his silence is not
only reverent, but more eloquent than any attempt to put the Ineffable
into words. Even in this act of manifestation God was veiled, and
'_there_ was the hiding of His power.' The train of His robe can be
spoken of, but not the form which it concealed even in revealing it.
Nature is the robe of God. It hides while it discloses, and discloses
while it hides.

The hovering seraphim were in the attitude of service. They are
probably represented as fiery forms, but are spoken of nowhere else in
Scripture. The significance of their attitude has been well given by
Jewish commentators, who say, 'with two he covered his face that he
might not see, and with two he covered his body that he might not be
seen' and we may add, 'with two he stood ready for service, by flight
whithersoever the King would send.' Such awe-stricken reverence, such
humble hiding of self, such alacrity for swift obedience, such flaming
ardours of love and devotion, should be ours. Their song celebrated the
holiness and the glory of Jehovah of hosts. We must ever remember that
the root-meaning of 'holiness' is separation, and that the popular
meaning of moral purity is secondary and derivative. What is
rapturously sung in the threefold invocation of the seraphs is the
infinite exaltation of Jehovah above all creatural conditions,
limitations, and, we may add, conceptions. That separation, of course,
includes purity, as may be seen from the immediate effect of the vision
on the prophet, but the conception is much wider than that. Very
beautifully does the second line of the song re-knit the connection
between Jehovah and this world, so far beneath Him, which the burst of
praise of His holiness seems to sever. The high heaven is a bending
arch; its inaccessible heights ray down sunshine and drop down rain,
and, as in the physical world, every plant grows by Heaven's gift, so
in the world of humanity all wisdom, goodness, and joy are from the
Father of lights. God's 'glory' is the flashing lustre of His
manifested holiness, which fills the earth as the train of the robe
filled the temple. The vibrations of that mighty hymn shook the
'foundations of the threshold' (Rev. Ver.) with its thunderous
harmonies. 'The house was filled with smoke' which, since it was an
effect of the seraph's praise, is best explained as referring to the
fragrant smoke of incense which, as we know, symbolised 'the prayers of
saints.'

II. The effect of the vision on the prophet.--The vision kindled as
with a flash Isaiah's consciousness of sin. He expressed it in regard
to his words rather than his works, partly because in one aspect speech
is even more accurately than act a cast, as it were, of character, and
partly because he could not but feel the difference between the mighty
music that burst from these pure and burning lips and the words that
flowed from and soiled his own. Not only the consciousness of sin, but
the dread of personal evil consequences from the vision of the holy
God, oppressed his heart. We see ourselves when we see God. Once flash
on a heart the thought of God's holiness, and, like an electric
search-light, it discloses flaws which pass unnoticed in dimmer light.
The easy-going Christianity, which is the apology for religion with so
many of us, has no deep sense of sin, because it has no clear vision of
God. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye
seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.'

The next stage in Isaiah's experience is that sin recognised and
confessed is burned away. Cleansing rather than forgiveness is here
emphasised. The latter is, of course, included, but the main point is
the removal of impurity. It is mediated by one of the seraphim, who is
the messenger of God, which is just a symbolical way of saying that God
makes penitents 'partakers of His holiness,' and that nothing less than
a divine communication will make cleansing possible. It is effected by
a live coal. Fire is purifying, and the New Testament has taught us
that the true cleansing fire is that of the Holy Spirit. But that live
coal was taken from the altar. The atoning sacrifice has been offered
there, and our cleansing depends on the efficacy of that sacrifice
being applied to us.

The third stage in the prophet's experience is the readiness for
service which springs up in his purged heart. God seeks for volunteers.
There are no pressed men in His army. The previous experiences made
Isaiah quick to hear God's call, and willing to respond to it by
personal consecration. Take the motive-power of redemption from sin out
of Christianity, and you break its mainspring, so that the clock will
only tick when it is shaken. It is the Christ who died for our sins to
whom men say, 'Command what Thou wilt, and I obey.'

III. The prophet's commission.--He was not sent on his work with any
illusions as to its success, but, on the contrary, he had a clear
premonition that its effect would be to deepen the spiritual deafness
and blindness of the nation. We must remember that in Scripture the
certain effect of divine acts is uniformly regarded as a divine design.
Israel was so sunk in spiritual deadness that the issue of the
prophet's work would only be to immerse the mass of 'this people'
farther in it. To some more susceptible souls his message would be a
true divine voice, rousing them like a trumpet, and that effect was
what God desired; but to the greater number it would deepen their
torpor and increase their condemnation. If men love darkness rather
than light, the coming of the light works only judgment.

Isaiah recoils from the dreary prospect, and feels that this dreadful
hardening cannot be God's ultimate purpose for the nation. So he humbly
and wistfully asks how long it is to last. The answer is twofold, heavy
with a weight of apparently utter ruin in its first part, but
disclosing a faint, far-off gleam of hope on its second. Complete
destruction, and the casting of Israel out from the land, are to come.
But as, though a goodly tree is felled, a stump remains which has vital
force (or _substance_) in it, so, even in the utmost apparent
desperateness of Israel's state, there will be in it 'the holy seed,'
the 'remnant,' the true Israel, from which again the life shall spring,
and stem and branches and waving foliage once more grow up.




THE EMPTY THRONE FILLED

'In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a
throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple.'--ISAIAH
vi. 1.


Uzziah had reigned for fifty-two years, during the greater part of
which he and his people had been brilliantly prosperous. Victorious in
war, he was also successful in the arts of peaceful industry. The later
years of his life were clouded, but on the whole the reign had been a
time of great well-being. His son and successor was a young man of
five-and-twenty; and when he came to the throne ominous war-clouds were
gathering in the North, and threatening to drift to Judah. No wonder
that the prophet, like other thoughtful patriots, was asking himself
what was to come in these anxious days, when the helm was in new hands,
which, perhaps, were not strong enough to hold it. Like a wise man, he
took his thoughts into the sanctuary; and there he understood. As he
brooded, this great vision was disclosed to his inward eye. 'In the
year that King Uzziah died' is a great deal more than a date for
chronological purposes. It tells us not only the _when_, but the _why_,
of the vision. The earthly king was laid in the grave; but the prophet
saw that the true King of Israel was neither the dead Uzziah nor the
young Jotham, but the Lord of hosts. And, seeing that, fears and
forebodings and anxieties and the sense of loss, all vanished; and new
strength came to Isaiah. He went into the temple laden with anxious
thoughts; he came out of it with a springy step and a lightened heart,
and the resolve 'Here am I; send me.' There are some lessons that seem
to me of great importance for the conduct of our daily life which may
be gathered from this remarkable vision, with the remarkable note of
time that is appended to it.

Now, before I pass on, let me remind you, in a word, of that apparently
audacious commentary upon this great vision, which the Evangelist John
gives us: 'These things said Esaias, when he had beheld _His_ glory and
spake of _Him_.' Then the Christ is the manifest Jehovah; is the King
of Glory. Then the vision which was but a transitory revelation is the
revelation of an eternal reality, and 'the vision splendid' does not
'fade but brightens, into the light of common day'; when instead of
being flashed only on the inward eye of a prophet, it is made flesh and
walks amongst us, and lives our life, and dies our death. Our eyes have
seen the King in as true a reality, and in better fashion, than ever
Isaiah did amid the sanctities of the Temple. And the eyes that have
seen only the near foreground, the cultivated valleys, and the homes of
men, are raised, and lo! the long line of glittering peaks, calm,
silent, pure. Who will look at the valleys when the Himalayas stand
out, and the veil is drawn aside?

I. Let me say a word or two about the ministration of loss and sorrow
in preparing for the vision.

It was when 'King Uzziah died' that the prophet 'saw the Lord sitting
upon the throne.' If the Throne of Israel had not been empty, he would
not have seen the throned God in the heavens. And so it is with all our
losses, with all our sorrows, with all our disappointments, with all
our pains; they have a mission to reveal to us the throned God. The
possession of the things that are taken away from us, the joys which
our sorrows smite into dust, have the same mission, and the highest
purpose of every good, of every blessing, of every possession, of every
gladness, of all love--the highest mission is to lead us to Him. But,
just as men will frost a window, so that the light may come in but the
sight cannot go out, so by our own fault and misuse of the good things
which are meant to lead us up to, and to show us, God, we frost and
darken the window so that we cannot see what it is meant to show us.
And then a mighty and merciful hand shivers the painted glass into
fragments, because it has been dimming 'the white radiance of
Eternity.' And though the casement may look gaunt, and the edges of the
broken glass may cut and wound, yet the view is unimpeded. When the
gifts that we have misused are withdrawn, we can see the heaven that
they too often hide from us. When the leaves drop there is a wider
prospect. When the great tree is fallen there is opened a view of the
blue above. When the night falls the stars sparkle. When other props
are struck away we can lean our whole weight upon God. When Uzziah dies
the King becomes visible.

Is that what our sorrows, our pains, losses, disappointments do for us?
Well for those to whom loss is gain, because it puts them in possession
of the enduring riches! Well for those to whom the passing of all that
can pass is a means of revealing Him who 'is the same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever'! The message to us of all these our pains and
griefs is 'Come up hither.' In them all our Father is saying to us,
'Seek ye My face.' Well for those who answer, 'Thy face, Lord, will I
seek. Hide not Thy face far from me.'

Let us take care that we do not waste our griefs and sorrows. They
absorb us sometimes with vain regrets. They jaundice and embitter us
sometimes with rebellious thoughts. They often break the springs of
activity and of interest in others, and of sympathy with others. But
their true intention is to draw back the thin curtain, and to show us
'the things that are,' the realities of the throned God, the skirts
that fill the Temple, the hovering seraphim, and the coal from the
altar that purges.

II. Let me suggest how our text shows us the compensation that is given
for all losses.

As I have pointed out already, the thought conveyed to the prophet by
this vision was not only the general one, of God's sovereign rule, but
the special one of His rule over and for, and His protection of, the
orphan kingdom which had lost its king. The vision took the special
shape that the moment required. It was because the earthly king was
dead that the living, heavenly King was revealed.

So there is just suggested by it this general thought, that the
consciousness of God's presence and work for us takes in each heart the
precise shape that its momentary necessities and circumstances require.
That infinite fulness is of such a nature as that it will assume any
form for which the weakness and the need of the dependent creature
call. Like the one force which scientists now are beginning to think
underlies all the various manifestations of energy in nature, whether
they be named light, heat, motion, electricity, chemical action, or
gravitation, the one same vision of the throned God, manifest in Jesus
Christ, is protean. Here it flames as light, there burns as heat, there
flashes as electricity; here as gravitation holds the atoms together,
there as chemical energy separated and decomposes them; here results in
motion, there in rest; but is the one force. And so the one God will
become everything and anything that every man, and each man, requires.
He shapes himself according to our need. The water of life does not
disdain to take the form imposed upon it by the vessel into which it is
poured. The Jews used to say that the manna in the wilderness tasted to
each man as each man desired. And the God, who comes to us all, comes
to us each in the shape that we need; just as He came to Isaiah in the
manifestation of His _kingly_ power, because the throne of Judah was
vacated.

So when our hearts are sore with loss, the New Testament Manifestation
of the King, even Jesus Christ, comes to us and says, 'The same is my
mother and sister and brother,' and His sweet love compensates for the
love that can die, and that has died. When losses come to us He draws
near, as durable riches and righteousness. In all our pains He is our
anodyne, and in all our griefs He brings the comfort; He is all in all,
and each withdrawn gift is compensated, or will be compensated, to each
in Him.

So, dear friends, let us learn God's purpose in emptying hearts and
chairs and homes. He empties them that He may fill them with Himself.
He takes us, if I might so say, into the darkness, as travellers to the
south are to-day passing through Alpine tunnels, in order that He may
bring us out into the land where 'God Himself is sun and moon,' and
where there are ampler ether and brighter constellations than in these
lands where we dwell. He means that, when Uzziah dies, our hearts shall
see the King. And for all mourners, for all tortured hearts, for all
from whom stays have been stricken and resources withdrawn, the old
word is true: 'Lord shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.'

Let me recall to you what I have already insisted on more than once,
that the perfecting of this vision is in the historical fact of the
Incarnate Son. Jesus Christ shows us God. Jesus Christ is the King of
Glory. If we will go to Him, and fix our eyes and hearts on Him, then
losses may come, and we shall be none the poorer; death may unclasp our
hands from dear hands, but He will close a dearer one round the hand
that is groping for a stay; and nothing can betaken away but He will
more than fill the gap it leaves by His own sweet presence. If our eyes
behold the King, if we are like John the Seer in his rocky Patmos, and
see the Christ in His glory and royalty, then He will lay His hands on
us and say, 'Fear not! Weep not; I am the First and the Last,' and
forebodings, and fears, and sense of loss will all be changed into
trustfulness and patient submission. 'Seeing Him, who is invisible,' we
shall be able to endure and to toil, until the time when the vision of
earth is perfected by the beholding of heaven. Blessed are they who
with purged eyes see, and with yielding hearts obey, the heavenly
vision, and turn to the King and offer themselves for any service He
may require, saying, 'Here am I; send me.'




A SERAPH'S WINGS

'With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet,
and with twain he did fly.'--ISAIAH vi. 2.


This is the only mention in Scripture of the seraphim. I do not need to
enter upon the much-debated, and in some respects interesting, question
as to whether these are to be taken as identical with the cherubim, or
as to whether they are altogether imaginary and symbolical beings, nor
as to whether they are identical with the angels, or part of their
hierarchy. All that may be left on one side. I would only notice,
before I deal with the specific words of my text, the significance of
the name. It means 'the flaming' or 'burning ones,' and so the
attendants of the divine glory in the heavens, whether they be real or
imaginary beings, are represented as flashing with splendour, as full
of swift energy, like a flame of fire, as glowing with fervid love, as
blazing with enthusiasm. That is the type of the highest creatural
being, which stands closest to God. There is no ice in His presence,
and the nearer we get to Him in truth, the more we shall glow and burn.
Cold religion is a contradiction in terms, though, alas, it is a
reality in professors.

And so with that explanation, and putting aside all these other
questions, let us gather up some, at least, of the lessons as to the
essentials of worship, and try to grasp the prophecy of the heavenly
state, given us in these words.


I. The Wings of Reverence.

He covered his face, or _they_ covered _their_ faces, lest they should
see. As a man brought suddenly into the sunlight, especially if out of
a darkened chamber, by an instinctive action shades his eyes with his
hand, so these burning creatures, confronted with the still more fervid
and fiery light of the divine nature, fold one pair of their great
white pinions over their shining faces, even whilst they cry 'Holy!
Holy! Holy! is the Lord God Almighty!'

And does not that teach us the incapacity of the highest creature, with
the purest vision, to gaze undazzled into the shining light of God? I,
for my part, do not believe that any conceivable extension of creatural
faculties, or any conceivable hallowing of creatural natures, can make
the creature able to gaze upon God. I know that it is often said that
the joy of the future life for men is what the theologians call 'the
beatific vision,' in which there shall be direct sight of God, using
that word in its highest sense, as applied to the perceptions of the
spirit, and not of the sense. But I do not think the Bible teaches us
that. It does teach us 'We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as
He is.' But who is the 'Him'? Jesus Christ. And, in my belief, Jesus
Christ will, to all eternity, be the medium of manifesting God, and
there will remain, to all eternity, the incapacity which clogs
creatures in time--' No man hath seen God at any time, nor _can_ see
Him.'

But my text, whilst it thus suggests solemn thoughts of a Light that
cannot be looked at with undazzled eyes, does also suggest to us by
contrast the possibility of far feebler-sighted and more sinful
creatures than these symbolical seraphs coming into a Presence in which
God shall be manifest to them; and they will need no veil drawn by
themselves across their eyes. God has veiled Himself, that 'we, with
unveiled faces, beholding His glory, may be changed into the same
image.' So the seraph, with his white wings folded before his eyes, may
at once stand to us as a parallel and a contrast to what the Christian
may expect. We, _we_ can see Jesus, with no incapacity except such as
may be swept away by His grace and our will. And direct vision of the
whole Christ is the heaven of heaven, even as the partial vision of the
partially perceived Christ is the sweetest sweetness of a life on earth.

There is no need for us to draw any screen between our happy eyes and
the Face in which we 'behold the glory as of the only Begotten of the
Father.' All the tempering that the divine lustre needed has been done
by Him who veils His glory with the veil of Christ's flesh, and therein
does away the need for any veil that we can draw.

But, beyond that, there is another consideration that I should like to
suggest, as taught us by the use of this first pair of the six wings,
and that is the absolute need for the lowliest reverence in our worship
of God. It is strange, but true, I am afraid, that the Christian danger
is to weaken the sense of the majesty and splendour and separation of
God from His creatures. And all that is good in the Christian
revelation may be so abused as that there shall come, what I am sure
does in effect sometimes come, a terrible lack of due reverence in our
so-called worship. What does that lofty chorus of 'Holy! Holy! Holy!'
that burst from those immortal lips mean but the declaration that God
is high above, and separate from, all limitations and imperfections of
creatures? And we Christians, who hear it re-echoed in the very last
Book of Scripture by the four-and-twenty elders who represent redeemed
humanity, have need to take heed that we do not lose our reverence in
our confidence, and that we do not part with godly fear in our filial
love. If one looks at a congregation of professing Christians engaged
in their worship, does not one feel and see that there is often a
carelessness and shallowness, a want of realisation of the majesty and
sanctity and tremendousness of that Father to whom we draw near?
Brethren, if a seraph hides his face, surely it becomes us to see to it
that, since we worship a God who is a consuming fire,' we serve Him
with far deeper 'reverence and godly fear' than ordinarily mark our
devotions.


II. The Wings of Humility.

'With twain he covered his feet.' The less comely and inferior parts of
that fiery corporeity were veiled lest they should be seen by the Eyes
that see all things. The wings made no screen that hid the seraph's
feet from the eye of God, but it was the instinctive lowly sense of
unworthiness that folded them across the feet, even though they, too,
burned as a furnace. The nearer we get to God, the more we shall be
aware of our limitations and unworthiness, and it is because that
vision of the Lord sitting on 'His throne, high and lifted up,' with
the thrilling sense of His glory filling the holy temple of the
universe, does not burn before us that we can conceit ourselves to have
anything worth pluming ourselves upon. Once lift the curtain, once let
my eye be flooded with the sight of God, and away goes all my
self-conceit, and all my fancied superiority above others. One little
molehill is pretty nearly the same height as another, if you measure
them both against the top of the Himalayas, that lie in the background,
with their glittering peaks of snow. 'Star differeth from star in
glory' in a winter's night, but when the great sun swims into the sky,
they all vanish together. If you and I saw God burning before us, as
Isaiah saw Him, we should veil ourselves, and lose all that which so
often veils Him from us--the fancy that we are anything when we are
nothing. And the nearer we get to God, and the purer we are, the more
shall we be keenly conscious of our imperfections and our sins. 'If I
say I am perfect,' said Job in his wise way, 'this also should prove me
perverse.' Consciousness of sin is the continual accompaniment of
growth in holiness. 'The heavens are not pure in His sight, and He
chargeth His angels with folly.' Everything looks black beside that
sovereign whiteness. Get God into your lives, and you will see that the
feet need to be washed, and you will cry, 'Lord! not my feet only, but
my hands and my head!'


III. Lastly-The Wings for Service.

'With twain he did fly.' That is the emblem of joyous, buoyant,
unhindered motion. It is strongly, sadly contrary to the toilsome
limitations of us heavy creatures who have no wings, but can at best
run on His service, and often find it hard to 'walk with patience in
the way that is set before us.' But--service with wings, or service
with lame feet, it matters not. Whosoever, beholding God, has found
need to hide his face from that Light even whilst he comes into the
Light, and to veil his feet from the all-seeing Eye, will also feel
impulses to go forth in His service. For the perfection of worship is
neither the consciousness of my own insufficiency, nor the humble
recognition of His glory, nor the great voice of praise that thrilled
from those immortal lips, but it is the doing of His will in daily
life. Some people say the service of man is the service of God. Yes,
when it is service of man, done for God's sake, it is so, and only
then. The old motto, 'Work is worship,' may preach a great truth or a
most dangerous error. But there is no possibility of error or danger in
maintaining this: that the climax and crown of all worship, whether for
us footsore servants upon earth, or for these winged attendants on the
throne of the King in the heavens, is activity in obedience. And that
is what is set before us here.

Now, dear brethren, we, as Christians, have a far higher motive for
service than the seraphs had. We have been redeemed, and the spirit of
the old Psalm should animate all our obedience: 'O Lord, truly I am Thy
servant.' Why? The next clause tells us: 'Thou hast loosed my bonds.'
The seraphs could not say that, and therefore our obedience, our
activity in doing the will of the Father in heaven, should be more
buoyant, more joyful, more swift, more unrestricted than even theirs.

The seraphim were winged for service even while they stood above the
throne and pealed forth their thunderous praise which shook the Temple.
May we not discern in that a hint of the blessed blending of two modes
of worship which will be perfectly united in heaven, and which we
should aim at harmonising even on earth? 'His servants serve Him and
see His face.' There is possible, even on earth, some foretaste of the
perfection of that heavenly state in which no worship in service shall
interfere with the worship in contemplation. Mary, sitting at Christ's
feet, and Martha, busy in providing for His comfort, may be, to a large
extent, united in us even here, and will be perfectly so hereafter,
when the practical and the contemplative, the worship of noble
aspiration, of heart-filling gazing, and that of active service shall
be indissolubly blended.

The seraphs sang 'Holy! Holy! Holy!' but they, and all the hosts of
heaven, learn a new song from the experience of earth, and redeemed men
are the chorus-leaders of the perfected and eternal worship of the
heavens. For we read that it is the four-and-twenty elders who begin
the song and sing to the Lamb that redeemed them by His blood, and that
the living creatures and all the hosts of the angels to that song can
but say 'Amen!'




THE MAKING OF A PROPHET

'Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.'--ISAIAH vi. 5.


In previous pages we have seen how Isaiah's vision of Jehovah throned
in the Temple, 'high and lifted up,' derived significance from the time
of its occurrence. It was 'in the year that' the earthly King 'died'
that the heavenly King was revealed. The passing of the transient
prepared the way for the revelation of the Eternal, and the revelation
of the Eternal more than compensated for the passing of the transient.
But strengthening and calming as these thoughts are, they by no means
exhaust the purpose of the vision, nor do they describe all its effects
on the recipient. These were, first and immediately, the consciousness
of unworthiness and sin, expressed in the words that I have taken for
my text. Then came the touch of the 'live coal from the altar,' laid on
the unclean lips by the seraph; and on that followed willing surrender
for a perilous service.

These three stages flowing from the vision of God, recognition of sin,
experience of purging, abandonment to obedience and service, must be
repeated in us all, if we are to live worthy lives. There may be much
that is beautiful and elevating and noble without these; but unless in
some measure we pass through the prophet's experience, we shall fail to
reach the highest possibilities of beauty and of service that open
before us. So I wish to consider, very simply, these three stages in my
remarks now.

I. If we see _God_ we shall see our _sin_.

There came on the prophet, as in a flash, the two convictions, one
which he learned from the song of the seraphs, ringing in music through
the Temple, and one which rose up, like an answering note from the
voice of conscience within. They sang 'Holy! holy! holy! Lord God
Almighty.' And what was the response to that, in the prophet's
heart?--'I am unclean.' Each major note has a corresponding minor, and
the triumphant doxology of the seraph wakes in the hearer's conscience
the lowly confession of personal unlikeness to the holiness of God. It
was not joy that sprang in Isaiah's heart when he saw the throned King,
and heard the proclamation of His name. It was not reverence merely
that bowed his head in the dust, but it was the awakened consciousness,
'Thou art holy; and now that I understand, in some measure, what Thy
holiness means, I look on myself and I say, "unclean! unclean!"'

The prophet's confession assumes a form which may strike us as somewhat
singular. Why is it that he speaks of 'unclean lips,' rather than of an
unclean heart? I suppose partly because, in a very deep sense, a man's
words are more accurately a cast, as it were, from a man's character
than even his actions, and partly because the immediate occasion of his
confession was the words of the seraphim, and he could not but contrast
what came burning from their pure lips with what had trickled from, and
soiled, his own.

But, however expressed, the consciousness of personal unlikeness to the
holiness of God is the first result, and the instantaneous result, of
any real apprehension of that holiness, and of any true vision of Him.
Like some search-light flung from a ship over the darkling waters,
revealing the dark doings of the enemy away out yonder in the night,
the thought of God and His holiness streaming in upon a man's soul, if
it does so in any adequate measure, is sure to disclose the heaving
waters and the skulking foes that are busy in the dark.

But it was not only the consciousness of sinfulness and antagonism that
woke up instantaneously in response to that vision of the holy God. It
was likewise a shrinking apprehension of personal evil from contact of
God's light with Isaiah's darkness. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of
the Lord? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.' What is to
become, then, of the man that has neither the one nor the other? The
experience of all the world witnesses that whenever there comes, in
reality, or in a man's conceptions or fancy, the contact of the
supernatural, as it is called, with the natural, there is a shrinking,
a sense of eerieness, an apprehension of vague possibilities of evil.
The sleeping snake that is coiled in every soul stirs and begins to
heave in its bulk, and wake, when the thought of a holy God comes into
the heart. Now, I do not suppose that consciousness of sin is the whole
explanation of that universal human feeling, but I am very sure it is
an element in it, and I suspect that if there were no sin, there would
be no shrinking.

At all events, be that as it may, these are the two thoughts that,
involuntarily and spontaneously and immediately, sprang in this man's
heart when his purged eyes saw the King on His throne. He did not leap
up with gladness at the vision. Its consolatory and its strengthening
aspects were not the first that impinged upon his eye, or upon his
consciousness, but the first thing was an instinctive recoil, 'Woe is
me; I am undone.' Now, brethren, I venture to think that one main
difference between shallow religion and real is to be found here, that
the dim, far-off vision, if we may venture to call it so, which serves
the most of us for a sight of God, leaves us quite complacent, and with
very slight and superficial conceptions of our own evil, and that if
once we saw, in so far as it is possible for humanity to-day to see,
God as He is, and heard in the depths of our hearts that 'Holy! holy!
holy!' from the burning seraphim, the easy-going, self-satisfied
judgment of ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly
impossible; and would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of
God. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,' said Job, 'but
now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust
and ashes.' A hearsay God and a self-complacent beholder--a God really
seen, and a man down in the dust before Him! Has that vision ever
blazed in on you? And if it has, has not the light shown you the
seaminess of much in which a dimmer light detects no flaws or stains?
Thank God if, having seen Him, you see yourselves. If you have not
felt, 'I am unclean and undone,' depend upon it, your knowledge of God
is faint and dim, and He is rather One heard of from the lips of others
than realised in your own experience.

II. Again, note the second stage here, in the education of a soul for
service--the sin, recognised and repented, is burned away.

'Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it
upon my mouth, and said, Lo! this hath touched thy lips; and thine
iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.'

Now, I would notice as to this stage of the process, first, that Isaiah
singularly passes beyond all the old ritual in which he had been
brought up, and recognises another kind of cleansing than that which it
embodied. He had got beyond the ritual to what the ritual meant. We
have passed beyond the ritual, too, by another process; and, though I
would by no means read full, plain, articulate Christian thought into
the vision of Isaiah--which would be an anachronism, and unfaithful to
the gradual historical development of the idea and means of
redemption--yet I cannot help pointing to the fact that, even although
this vision is located as seen in the Temple, there is not a single
reference (except that passing allusion to the altar) to the ritual of
the Temple, but the cleansing comes in another fashion altogether.

But far more important than that thought is the human condition that is
required ere this cleansing can be realised. 'I am a man of unclean
lips.' 'I am undone!' It was because that conviction and confession
sprang in the prophet's consciousness that the seraph winged his way
with the purifying fire in his hands. Which being translated is just
this: faith alone will not bring cleansing. There must go with it what
we call, in our Christian phraseology, repentance, which is but the
recognition of my own antagonism to the holiness of God, and the
resolve to turn my back on my own past self. Now, it seems to me that a
great deal of what is called, and in a sense is, Evangelical teaching,
fails to represent the full counsel of God, in the matter of man's
redemption, because it puts a one-sided emphasis on faith, and slurs
over the accompanying idea of repentance. And I am here to say that a
trust in Jesus Christ, which is unaccompanied by a profound penitent
consciousness and abhorrence of one's own sins, and a resolve to turn
away from them for the time to come, is not a faith which will bring
either pardon or cleansing. We do not need to have less said about
trust; we need to have a great deal more said about repentance. You
have to learn what it is to say, 'I abhor myself'; you have to learn
what it is to say, 'I will turn right round, and leave all that past
behind me; and go in the opposite direction'; or the faith which you
say you are exercising will neither save nor cleanse your souls nor
your lives.

Again, note that we have here set forth most strikingly the other great
truth that, side by side, and as closely synchronous as the flash and
the peal, as soon as the consciousness of sin and the aversion from it
spring in a man's heart, the seraph's wings are set in motion. Remember
that beautiful old story in the historical books, of how the erring
king, brought to sanity and repentance by Nathan's apologue, put all
his acknowledgments in these words, 'I have sinned against the Lord';
and how the confession was not out of his lips, nor had died in its
vibration in the atmosphere, before the prophet, with divine authority,
replied with equal brevity and completeness, and as if the two sayings
were parts of one sentence, '_And_ the Lord hath made to pass the
iniquity of thy sin.' That is all. Simultaneous are the two things. To
confess is to be forgiven, and the moment that the consciousness of sin
rises in the heart, that moment does the heavenly messenger come to
still and soothe.

Still further, notice how the cleansing comes as a divine gift. It is
purifying, much more than pardon, that is set forth in the symbolical
incident before us. The seraph is the divine messenger, and he brings a
coal from the altar, and lays that upon the prophet's lips, which is
but the symbolical way of saying that the man who is conscious of his
own evil will find in himself a blessed despair of being his own
healer, and that he has to turn to the divine source, the vision of
which has kindled the consciousness, to find there that which will take
away the evil. The Lord is 'He that healeth us.'

But, further, the cleansing is by fire. By which, as I suppose, in the
present context, and at Isaiah's stage of religious knowledge and
experience, we are to understand that great thought that God burns away
our sins, as you put a piece of foul clay into the fire, and the stain
melts from the surface like a dissipating cloud as the heat finds its
way into the substance. 'He will baptize with the Holy Ghost and with
fire'--a fire that quickens. A new impulse will be granted, which will
become the life of the sinful man's life, and will emancipate him from
the power of his own darkness and evil.

Now, let us remember that _we_ have the fulness of all that was
shadowed to the prophet in this vision, and that the reality of every
one of these emblems is gathered together--if I may so say--not with
confusion, but with abundance and opulence in Jesus Christ Himself. Is
He not the seraph? Is He not Himself the burning coal? Is He not the
altar from which it is taken? All that is needed to make the foulest
clean is given in Christ's great work. Brethren, we shall never
understand the deepest secret of Christ and of Christianity until we
learn and hold fast by the conviction that the central work of Jesus is
to deal with man's sin; and that whatever else Christianity is, it is
first and foremost God's way of redeeming the world, and making it
possible for the unholy to dwell with His holy self.

III. Lastly, and only a word, the third stage here is--the purged
spirit is ready for service.

God did not bid the prophet go on His mission till the prophet had
voluntarily accepted the mission. He said, 'Who will go for us?' He
wants no pressed men in His army. He does not work with reluctant
servants. There is, first, the yielding of the will, and then there is
the enduement with the privilege of service. The prophet, having passed
through the preceding experiences, had thereby received a quick ear to
hear God's calling for volunteers. And we shall not hear Him asking
'Who will go?' unless we have, in our measure, passed through similar
experiences. It will be a test of having done so, of our having been
purged from our evil, if, when other people think that it is only Eli
speaking, we know that it is the Lord that has called us, and say,
'Here am I.'

For such experiences as I have been describing do influence the will,
and mould the heart, and make it a delight to do God's commandments,
and to execute His purpose, and to be the ministers of His great Word.
Some of us are willing to say that we have learned God's holiness; that
we have seen and confessed our sins; that we have received pardon and
cleansing. Have these experiences made you ready for any service? Have
they made your will flexible--made you dethrone yourself, and enthrone
the King whom the prophet saw? If they have, they are genuine; if they
have not, they are not. Submission of will; glorying in being the
instrument of the divine purpose; ears sharpened to catch His lowest
whisper; eyes that, like those of a dog fixed on his master, watch for
the faintest indication from his guiding eye--these are the infallible
tests and signs of having had lips and heart touched with the live coal
that burns away our uncleanness.

So, friends, would that I could flash upon every conscience that
vision! But you can do so for yourselves. Let me beseech you to bring
yourselves honestly into that solemn light of the character of God, and
to ask yourselves, 'How can two walk together except they be agreed?'
Do not put away such thoughts with any shallow, easy-going talk about
how God is good and will not be hard upon a poor fellow that has tried
to do his best. God is good; God is love. But divine goodness and love
cannot find a way by which the unclean shall dwell with the clean. What
then? This then--Jesus Christ has come. We may be made clean if we
trust in Him, and forsake our sins. He will touch the heart and lips
with the fire of His own Spirit, and then it will be possible to dwell
with the everlasting burnings of that flaming fire which is a holy God.
Blessed are they that have seen the vision; blessed they that have felt
it disclosing their own sins; blessed they whose hearts have been
purged. Blessed most of all they who, educated and trained through
these experiences, have taken this as the motto of their lives, 'Here
am I; send me.'




SHILOAH AND EUPHRATES

Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly
... the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and
many.' ISAIAH viii. 6, 7.


The kingdom of Judah was threatened with a great danger in an alliance
between Israel and Damascus. The cowardly King Ahaz, instead of
listening to Isaiah's strong assurances and relying on the help of God,
made what he thought a master-stroke of policy in invoking the help of
the formidable Assyrian power. That ambitious military monarchy was
eager to find an excuse for meddling in the politics of Syria, and
nothing loath, marched an army down on the backs of the invaders, which
very soon compelled them to hasten to Judah in order to defend their
own land. But, as is always the case, the help invoked was his ruin.
Like all conquering powers, once having got its foot inside the door,
Assyria soon followed bodily. First Damascus and Israel were ravaged
and subdued, and then Judah. That kingdom only purchased the privilege
of being devoured last. Like the Spaniards in Mexico, the Saxons in
England, the English in a hundred Indian territories, the allies that
came to help remained to conquer, and Judah fell, as we all know.

This is the simple original application of these words. They are a
declaration that in seeking for help from others Judah was forsaking
God, and that the helper would become ruler, and the ruler an
oppressive tyrant.

The waters of Shiloah that go softly stand as an emblem of the Davidic
monarchy as God meant it to be, and, since that monarchy was itself a
prophecy, they therefore represent the kingdom of God or the Messianic
King. The 'waters strong and many' are those of the Euphrates, which
swells and overflows and carries havoc, and are taken as the emblem of
the wasting sweep of the Assyrian king, whose capital stood on its
banks.

But while thus there is a plain piece of political history in the
words, they are also the statement of general principles which apply to
every individual soul and its relations to the kingdom, the gentle
kingdom, of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.


I. The Gentle Kingdom.

That little brooklet slipping quietly along; what a striking image of
the Kingdom of Jesus Christ!

It suggests the character of the King, the 'meek and lowly in heart.'
It suggests the manner of His rule as wielded in gentleness and
exercising no compulsion but that of love. It suggests the blessed
results of His reign under the image of the fertility, freshness, and
beauty which spring up wherever 'the river cometh.' That kingdom we are
all summoned to enter.


II. The Rejection of the Kingdom.

Strange and awful fact that men do turn away from it and Him.

In what does rejection consist?

In not trusting in His power to help and deliver.

In seeking help from other sources. This rejection is often unconscious
on the part of men who are guilty of it.


III. The Allies who are preferred to the gentle King.

The crowd of worldly things.

What is to be noticed is that at first the preference seems to answer
and be all right.


IV. The Allies becoming Tyrants.

The swift Euphrates in spate. That is what the rejecters have chosen
for themselves. Better to have lived by Shiloah than to have built
their houses by the side of such a raging stream. Mark how this is a
divine retribution indeed, but a natural process too.

(a) If Christ does not rule us, a mob of tyrants will.

Our own passions. Our own evil habits. The fascinating sins around us.

(b) They soon cease to seem helpers, and become tyrants.

How quickly the pleasure of sin disappears--like some bird that loses
its gay plumage as it grows old.

How stern becomes the necessity to obey; how great the difficulty of
breaking off evil habits! So a man becomes the slave of his own lusts,
of his indulged tastes, which rise above all restraints and carry away
all before them, like the Euphrates in flood. Fertility is turned to
barrenness; a foul deposit of mud overlays the soil; houses on the sand
are washed away; corpses float on the tawny wave. The soul that rejects
Christ's gentle sway is harried and laid waste by a mob of base-born
tyrants. We have to make our choice--either Christ or these; either a
service which is freedom, or an apparent freedom which is slavery;
either a worship which exalts, or a worship which embrutes. 'If the Son
make you free, ye shall be free indeed.'

'There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.' It
is peaceful to pitch our tents beside its calm flow, whereon shall go
no hostile fleets, and whence we shall but pass to the city above, in
the midst of the street whereof the 'river of water of life, clear as
crystal, proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.'




THE KINGDOM AND THE KING

'The people that walked in darkness hare seen a great light: they that
dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light
shined. 3. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy:
they joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men
rejoice when they divide the spoil. 4. For Thou hast broken the yoke of
His burden, and the staff of His shoulder, the rod of His oppressor, as
in the day of Midian. 5. For every battle of the warrior is with
confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with
burning and fuel of fire. 6. For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son
is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace. 7. Of the increase of His government and
peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon His
kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with
justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts
will perform this.'--ISAIAH ix. 2-7.


The darker the cloud, the brighter is the rainbow. This prophecy has
for its historical background the calamitous reign of the weak and
wicked Ahaz, during which the heart of the nation was bowed, like a
forest before the blast, by the dread of foreign invasion and conquest.
The prophet predicts a day of gloom and anguish, and then, out of the
midst of his threatenings, bursts this glorious vision, sudden as
sunrise. With consummate poetic art, the consequences of Messiah's rule
are set forth before He Himself is brought into view.

I. Image is heaped on image to tell the blessedness of that reign (vs.
2-5). Each trait of the glowing description is appropriate to the
condition of Israel under Ahaz; but each has a meaning far beyond that
limited application. Isaiah may, or may not, have been aware of 'what'
or 'what time' his words portrayed in their deepest, that is, their
true meaning, but if we believe in supernatural prediction which,
though it may have found its point of attachment in the circumstances
of the present, was none the less the voice of the Spirit of God, we
shall not make, as is often done now, the prophet's construction of his
words the rule for their interpretation. What the prophecy was
discerned to point to by its utterer or his contemporaries, is one
thing; quite another is what God meant by it.

First we have the picture of the nation groping in a darkness that
might be felt, the emblem of ignorance, sin, and sorrow, and inhabiting
a land over which, like a pall, death cast its shadow. On that dismal
gloom shines all at once a 'great light,' the emblem of knowledge,
purity, and joy. The daily mercy of the dawn has a gospel in it to a
heart that believes in God; for it proclaims the divine will that all
who sit in darkness shall be enlightened, and that every night but
prepares the way for the freshness and stir of a new morning. The great
prophecy of these verses in its indefiniteness goes far beyond its
immediate occasion in the state of Judah under Ahaz. As surely as the
dawn floods all lands, so surely shall all who walk in darkness see the
great light; and wherever is a 'land of the shadow of death,' there
shall the light shine. It is 'the light of the world.'

Verse 3 gives another phase of blessing. Israel is conceived of as
dwindled in number by deportation and war. But the process of
depopulation is arrested and reversed, and numerical increase, which is
always a prominent feature in Messianic predictions, is predicted. That
increase follows the dawning of the light, for men will flock to the
'brightness of its rising.' _We_ know that the increase comes from the
attractive power of the Cross, drawing men of many tongues to it; and
we have a right to bring the interpretation, which the world's history
gives, into our understanding of the prophecy. That enlarged nation is
to have abounding joy.

Undoubtedly, the rendering 'To it thou hast increased the joy' is
correct, as that of the Authorized Version (based upon the Hebrew text)
is clearly one of several cases in which the partial similarity in
spelling and identity in sound of the Hebrew words for 'not' and 'to
it,' have led to a mistaken reading. The joy is described in words
which dance and sing, like the gladness of which they tell. The mirth
of the harvest-field, when labour is crowned with success, and the
sterner joy of the victors as they part the booty, with which mingles
the consciousness of foes overcome and dangers averted, are blended in
this gladness. We have the joy of reaping a harvest of which we have
not sowed the seed. Christ has done that; we have but to enjoy the
results of His toil. We have to divide the spoil of a victory which we
have not won. He has bound the strong man, and we share the benefits of
His overcoming the world.

That last image of conquerors dividing the spoil leads naturally to the
picture in verse 4 of emancipation from bondage, as the result of a
victory like Gideon's with his handful. Who the Gideon of this new
triumph is, the prophet will not yet say. The 'yoke of his burden' and
'the rod of his oppressor' recall Egypt and the taskmasters.

Verse 5 gives the reason for the deliverance of the slaves; namely, the
utter destruction of the armour and weapons of their enemy. The Revised
Version is right in its rendering, though it may be doubtful whether
its margin is not better than its text, since not only are 'boot' and
'booted' as probable renderings of the doubtful words as 'armour' and
'armed man,' but the picture of the warrior striding into battle with
his heavy boots is more graphic than the more generalised description
in the Revised Version's text. In any case, the whole accoutrements of
the oppressor are heaped into a pile and set on fire; and, as they
blaze up, the freed slaves exult in their liberty. The blood-drenched
cloaks have been stripped from the corpses and tossed on the heap, and,
saturated as they are, they burn. So complete is the victory that even
the weapons of the conquered are destroyed. Our conquering King has
been manifested, that He might annihilate the powers by which evil
holds us bound. His victory is not by halves. 'He taketh from him all
his armour wherein he trusted.'

II. Now we are ready to ask, And who is to do all this? The guarantee
for its accomplishment is the person of the conquering Messiah. The
hopes of Israel did not, and those of the world do not, rest on
tendencies, principles, laws of progress, advance of civilisation, or
the like abstractions or impersonalities, but on a living Person, in
whom all principles which make for righteousness and blessedness for
individuals and communities are incarnated, and whose vital action
works perpetually in mankind.

In this prophecy the prophet is plainly speaking greater things than he
knew. We do not get to the meaning if we only ask ourselves what did he
understand by his words, or what did his hearers gather from them? They
and he would gather the certainty of the coming of Messiah with
wondrous attributes of power and divine gifts, by whose reign light,
gladness, liberty would belong to the oppressed nation. But the depth
of the prophecy needed the history of the Incarnation for its
disclosure. If this is not a God-given prediction of the entrance into
human form of the divine, it is something very like miraculous that,
somehow or other, words should have been spoken, without any such
reference, which fit so closely to the supernatural fact of Christ's
incarnation.

The many attempts to translate verse 6 so as to get rid of the
application of 'Mighty God,' 'Everlasting Father,' to Messiah, cannot
here be enumerated or adequately discussed. I must be content with
pointing out the significance of the august fourfold name of the victor
King. It seems best to take the two first titles as a compound name,
and so to recognise four such compounds.

There is a certain connection between the first and second of these
which respectively lay stress on wisdom of plan and victorious energy
of accomplishment, while the third and fourth are also connected, in
that the former gathers into one great and tender name what Messiah is
to His people, and the latter points to the character of His dominion
throughout the whole earth. 'A wonder of a counsellor,' as the words
may be rendered, not only suggests His giving wholesome direction to
His people, but, still more, the mystery of the wisdom which guides His
plans. Truly, Jesus purposes wonders in the depth of His redeeming
design. He intends to do great things, and to reach them by a road
which none would have imagined. The counsel to save a world, and that
by dying for it, is the miracle of miracles. 'Who hath been His
counsellor in that overwhelming wonder?' He needs no teacher; He is
Himself the teacher of all truth. All may have His direction, and they
who follow it will not walk in darkness.

'The mighty God.' Chapter x. 21 absolutely forbids taking this as
anything lower than the divine name. The prophet conceives of Messiah
as the earthly representative of divinity, as having God with and in
Him as no other man has. We are not to force upon the prophet the full
new Testament doctrine of the oneness of the incarnate Word with the
Father, which would be an anachronism. But we are not to fall into the
opposite error, and refuse to see in these words, so startling from the
lips of a rigid monotheist, a real prophecy of a divine Messiah, dimly
as the utterer may have perceived the figure which he painted. Note,
too, that the word 'mighty' implies victorious energy in battle. It is
often applied to human heroes, and here carries warlike connotations,
kindred with the previous picture of conflict and victory. Thus
strength as of God, and, in some profound way, strength which is
divine, will be the hand obeying the brain that counsels wonder, and
all His plans shall be effected by it.

But these are not all His qualities. He is 'the Father of Eternity'--a
name in which tender care and immortal life are marvellously blended.
This King will be in reality what, in old days, monarchs often called
themselves and seldom were,--the Father of His people, with all the
attributes of that sacred name, such as guidance, love, providing for
His children's wants. Nor can Christians forget that Jesus is the
source of life to them, and that the name has thus a deeper meaning.
Further, He is possessed of eternity. If He is so closely related to
God as the former name implies, that predicate is not wonderful. Dying
men need and have an undying Christ. He is 'the same yesterday, and
to-day, and for ever.'

The whole series of names culminates in 'the Prince of Peace,' which He
is by virtue of the characteristics expressed in the foregoing names.
The name pierces to the heart of Christ's work. For the individual He
brings peace with God, peace in the else discordant inner nature, peace
amid storms of calamity--the peace of submission, of fellowship with
God, of self-control, of received forgiveness and sanctifying. For
nations and civic communities He brings peace which will one day hush
the tumult of war, and burn chariots and all warlike implements in the
fire. The vision tarries, because Christ's followers have not been true
to their Master's mission, but it comes, though its march is slow. We
can hasten its arrival.

Verses 7 and 8 declare the perpetuity of Messiah's kingdom, His Davidic
descent, and those characteristics of His reign, which guarantee its
perpetuity. 'Judgment' which He exercises, and 'righteousness' which He
both exercises and bestows, are the pillars on which His throne stands;
and these are eternal, and it never will totter nor sink, as earthly
thrones must do. The very life-blood of prophecy, as of religion, is
the conviction that righteousness outlasts sin, and will survive 'the
wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.'

The great guarantee for these glowing anticipations is that the 'zeal
of the Lord of hosts' will accomplish them. _Zeal_, or rather
_jealousy_, is love stirred to action by opposition. It tolerates no
unfaithfulness in the object of its love, and flames up against all
antagonism to the object. 'He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of
Mine eye.' So the subjects of that Messiah may be sure that a wall of
fire is round about them, which to foes without is terror and
destruction, and to dwellers within its circuit glows with lambent
light, and rays out beneficent warmth.




LIGHT OR FIRE?

'And the Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a
flame: and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one
day.'--ISAIAH x. 17.


With grand poetry the prophet pictures the Assyrian power as a forest
consumed like thistles and briers by the fire of God. The text suggests
solemn truths about the divine Nature and its manifestations.

I. The Essential Character of God.

Light and Holiness are substantially parallel. Light symbolises purity,
but also knowledge and joy. Holiness is Separation from Creatures, but
chiefly from their Evils.

II. The Different Attitudes which Men assume to that Character.

'Light of _Israel_': '_His_ Holy One.'

God becomes ours, and we have an interest in that radiant Personality
if we choose to claim it by faith, love, and obedience. We are free to
accept God as ours or to reject Him.

III. The Opposite Aspects which that Character accordingly assumes.

(a) The self-same divine Character has two effects according to the
character of the beholder.

To those who respond to God's love it is--heaven. To those who are
indifferent or alienated it may be pain, and will harm them if they see
it and do not yield to it.

God's holiness is not retributive justice but moral perfectness, which
to a good man will be joy, and to a bad man, intolerable.

The light which is gladsome to a healthy eye is agony to a diseased one.

(b) All the manifestations and operations of that divine Character have
a twofold aspect. Christ is either a stone of stumbling or a sure
foundation. Men are either the better or the worse for Him. The Gospel
is the savour of life unto life or of death unto death. The tremendous
'either--or.' The Cross rejected harms the moral nature, hardens
conscience, deepens condemnation.

All divine operations are necessarily on the side of God's lovers and
against those who love Him not. They are contrary to Him, therefore He
is so to them. 'With the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward.'

The final Judgment will be either rapture or despair, like the coming
of a bridegroom, or the fiery rain that burnt up Sodom.

The very dew of Heavenly Bliss would be corroding poison to a godless
spirit.




THE SUCKER FROM THE FELLED OAK

'And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a
Branch shall grow out of his roots: 2. And the Spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of
counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;
3. And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord:
and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove
after the hearing of his ears: 4. But with righteousness shall he judge
the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he
shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of
his lips shall he slay the wicked. 5. And righteousness shall be the
girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 6. The
wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. 7. And the cow and the bear shall
feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat
straw like the ox. 8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of
the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's
den. 9. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for
the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters
cover the sea. 10. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,
which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles
seek: and his rest shall be glorious.'--ISAIAH xi. 1-10.


The hopeless fall of Assyria is magnificently pictured in the close of
chapter x., as the felling of the cedars of Lebanon by the axe swung by
Jehovah's own hand. A cedar once cut down puts out no new shoots; and
so the Assyrian power, when it falls, will fall for ever. The metaphor
is carried on with surpassing beauty in the first part of this
prophecy, which contrasts the indestructible vitality of the Davidic
monarchy with the irremediable destruction fated for its formidable
antagonist. The one is a cedar, the stump of which rots slowly, but
never recovers. The other is an oak, which, every woodman knows, will
put out new growth from the 'stool.' But instead of a crowd of little
suckers, the prophet sees but one shoot, and that rising to more than
the original height and fruitfulness of the tree. The prophecy is
distinctly that of One Person, in whom the Davidic monarchy is
concentrated, and all its decadence more than recovered.

Isaiah does not bring the rise of the Messiah into chronological
connection with the fall of Assyria; for he contemplates a period of
decay for the Israelitish monarchy, and it was the very burden of his
message as to Assyria that it should pass away without harming that
monarchy. The contrast is not intended to suggest continuity in time.
The period of fulfilment is entirely undetermined.

The first point in the prophecy is the descent of the Messiah from the
royal stock. That is more than Isaiah's previous Messianic prophecies
had told. He is to come at a time when the fortunes of David's house
were at their worst. There is to be nothing left but the stump of the
tree, and out of it is to come a 'shoot,' slender and insignificant,
and in strange contrast with the girth of the truncated bole, stately
even in its mutilation. We do not talk of a growth from the stump as
being a 'branch'; and 'sprout' would better convey Isaiah's meaning.
From the top of the stump, a shoot; from the roots half buried in the
ground, an outgrowth,--these two images mean but one person, a
descendant of David, coming at a time of humiliation and obscurity. But
this lowly shoot will 'bear fruit,' which presupposes its growth.

The King-Messiah thus brought on the scene is then described in regard
to His character (v. 2), the nature of His rule (vs. 3-5), the
universal harmony and peace which He will diffuse through nature (vs.
6-9), and the gathering of all mankind under His dominion. There is
much in the prophetic ideal of the Messiah which finds no place in this
prophecy. The gentler aspects of His reign are not here, nor the deeper
characteristics of His 'spirit,' nor the chiefest blessings in His
gift. The suffering Messiah is not yet the theme of the prophet.

The main point as to the character of the Messiah which this prophecy
sets forth is that, whatever He was to be, He was to be by reason of
the resting on Him of the Spirit of Jehovah. The directness, fulness,
and continuousness of His inspiration are emphatically proclaimed in
that word 'shall rest,' which can scarcely fail to recall John's
witness, 'I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven;
and it abode upon Him.' The humanity on which the Divine Spirit
uninterruptedly abides, ungrieved and unrestrained, must be free from
the stains which so often drive that heavenly visitant from our
breasts. The white-breasted Dove of God cannot brood over foulness.
There has never been but one manhood capable of receiving and retaining
the whole fulness of the Spirit of God.

The gifts of that Spirit, which become qualities of the Messiah in whom
He dwells, are arranged (if we may use so cold a word) in three pairs;
so that, if we include the introductory designation, we have a
sevenfold characterisation of the Spirit, recalling the seven lamps
before the throne and the seven eyes of the Lamb in the Apocalypse, and
symbolising by the number the completeness and sacredness of that
inspiration. The resulting character of the Messiah is a fair picture
of one who realises the very ideal of a strong and righteous ruler of
men. 'Wisdom and understanding' refer mainly to the clearness of
intellectual and moral insight; 'counsel and might,' to the qualities
which give sound practical direction and vigour to follow, and carry
through, the decisions of practical wisdom; while 'the knowledge and
fear of the Lord' define religion by its two parts of acquaintance with
God founded on love, and reverential awe which prompts to obedience.
The fulfilment, and far more than fulfilment, of this ideal is in
Jesus, in whom were 'hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' to
whom no circumstances of difficulty ever brought the shadow of
perplexity, who always saw clearly before Him the path to tread, and
had always 'might' to tread it, however rough, who lived all His days
in unbroken fellowship with the Father and in lowly obedience.

The prophet saw not all the wonders of perfect human character which
that indwelling Spirit would bring to realisation in Him; but what he
saw was indispensable to a perfect King, and was, at all events, an arc
of the mighty circle of perfection, which has now been revealed in the
life of Jesus. The possibilities of humanity under the influence of the
Divine Spirit are revealed here no less than the actuality of the
Messiah's character. What Jesus is, He gives it to His subjects to
become by the dwelling in them of the spirit of life which was in Him.

The rule of the King is accordant with His character. It is described
in verses 3-5. The first characteristic named may be understood in
different ways. Accord-to some commentators, who deserve respectful
consideration, it means, 'He shall draw His breath in the fear of
Jehovah'; that is, that that fear has become, as it were, His very
life-breath. But the meaning of 'breathing' is doubtful; and the phrase
seems rather to express, as the Revised Version puts it, 'His delight
shall be in the fear of the Lord.' That might mean that those who fear
Jehovah shall be His delight, and this would free the expression from
any shade of tautology, when compared with the previous clause, and
would afford a natural transition to the description of His rule. It
might, on the other hand, continue the description of His personal
character, and describe the inward cheerfulness of His obedience, like
'I delight to do Thy will.' In any case, the 'fear of the Lord' is
represented as a sweet-smelling fragrance; and, if we adopt the former
explanation, then it is almost a divine characteristic which is here
attributed to the Messiah; for it is God to whom the fear of Him in
men's hearts is 'an odour of a sweet smell.'

Then follow the features of His rule. His unerring judgment pierces
through the seen and heard. That is the quality of a monarch after the
antique pattern, when kings were judges. It does not appear that the
prophet rose to the height of perceiving the divine nature of the
Messiah; but we cannot but remember how far the reality transcends the
prophecy, since He whose 'eyes are as a flame of fire' knows what is in
man, and the earliest prayers of the Church were addressed to Jesus as
'Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men.'

The relation of Messiah to two classes is next set forth. The oppressed
and the meek shall have Him for their defender and avenger,--a striking
contrast to the oppressive monarchs whom Isaiah had seen. We remember
who said 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' 'Blessed are the meek.' The
King Himself has taught us to deepen the meaning of the words of the
prophet, and to find in them the expression of the law of His kingdom
by which its blessings belong to those who know their need and come
with humble hearts. But the same acts which are for the poor are
against the oppressors. The emendation which reads 'tyrant' (_arits_)
for 'earth' (_erets_) brings the two clauses descriptive of the
punitive acts into parallelism, and is probably to be preferred. The
same pillar was light to Israel and darkness to the Egyptians. Christ
is the savour of life unto life and of death unto death. But what is
His instrument of destruction? 'The rod of His mouth' or 'the breath of
His lips.' And who is He whose bare word thus has power to kill and
make alive? Is not this a divine prerogative? and does it not belong in
the fullest sense to Him whose voice rebuked fevers, storms, and
demons, and pierced the dull, cold ear of death? Further,
righteousness, the absolute conformity of character and act to the
standard in the will of God, and faithfulness, the inflexible
constancy, which makes a character consistent with itself, and so
reliable, are represented by a striking figure as being twined together
to make the girdle, which holds the vestments in place, and girds up
the whole frame for effort. This righteous King 'shall not fail nor be
discouraged.' He is to be reckoned on to the uttermost, or, as the New
Testament puts it, He is 'the faithful and true witness.' This is the
strong Son of God, who gathered all His powers together to run with
patience the race set before Him, and to whom all may turn with the
confidence that He is faithful 'as a Son over His own house,' and will
inviolably keep the promise of His word and of His past acts.

We pass from the picture of the character and rule of the King over men
to that fair vision of Paradise regained, which celebrates the
universal restoration of peace between man and the animals. The picture
is not to be taken as a mere allegory, as if 'lions' and 'wolves' and
'snakes' meant bad men; but it falls into line with other hints in
Scripture, which trace the hostility between man and the lower
creatures to sin, and shadow a future when 'the beasts of the field
shall be at peace with thee.' The psalm which sings of man's dominion
over the creatures is to be one day fulfilled; and the Epistle to the
Hebrews teaches that it is already fulfilled in Christ, who will raise
His brethren, for whom He tasted death, to partake in His dominion. The
present order of things is transient; and if earth is to be, as some
shadowy hints seem to suggest, the scene of the future glories of
redeemed humanity, it may be the theatre of a fulfilment of such
visions as this. But we cannot dogmatise on a subject of which we know
so little, nor be sure of the extent to which symbolism enters into
this sweet picture. Enough that there surely comes a time when the King
of men and Lord of nature shall bring back peace between both, and
restore 'the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord.'

Verse 10 begins an entirely new section, which describes the relations
of Messiah's kingdom to the surrounding peoples. The picture preceding
closed with the vision of the earth filled with the knowledge of the
Lord, and this verse proclaims the universality of Messiah's kingdom.
By 'the root of Jesse' is meant, not the root from which Jesse sprang,
but, in accordance with verse 1, the sprout from the house of Jesse.
Just as in that verse the sprout was prophesied of as growing up to be
fruitbearing, so here the lowly sucker shoots to a height which makes
it conspicuous from afar, and becomes, like some tall mast, a sign for
the nations. The contrast between the obscure beginning and the
conspicuous destiny of Messiah is the point of the prophecy. 'I, if I
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.' Strange
elevation for a king is a cross! But it is because He has died for men
that He has the right to reign over them, and that they 'shall seek' to
Him. 'His resting-place shall be glorious.'

The seat of His dominion is also the seat of His repose. The beneficent
activity just described is wielded from a calm, central palace, and
does not break the King's tranquillity. That is a paradox, except to
those who know that Jesus Christ, sitting in undisturbed rest at the
right hand of God, thence works with and for His servants. His repose
is full of active energy; His active energy is full of repose. And that
place of calm abode is 'glorious' or, more emphatically and literally,
'glory. He shall dwell in the blaze of the uncreated glory of God,--a
prediction which is only fulfilled in its true meaning by Christ's
ascension and session at the right hand of God, in the glory which He
had with the Father before the world was, and into which He has borne
that lowly manhood which He drew from the cut-down stem of Jesse.




THE WELL-SPRING OF SALVATION

'Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
ISAIAH xii. 3.


There are two events separated from each other by more than fifteen
hundred years which have a bearing upon this prophecy: the one supplied
the occasion for its utterance, the other claimed to be its
interpretation and its fulfilment. The first of these is that scene
familiar to us all, where the Israelites in the wilderness murmured for
want of water, and the law-giver, being at his wits' end what to do
with his troublesome charges, took his anxieties to God, and got for an
answer the command to take with him the elders of Israel and his
miracle-working rod, and to go to the rock, 'and the Lord shall stand
upon the rock before thee and them, and the water shall flow forth.' It
was not the rock, nor the rod, nor Moses and the elders, but the
presence of God that brought the refreshing draught. And that that
incident was in Isaiah's mind when he wrote our text is very clear to
anybody who will observe that it occurs in the middle of a song of
praise, which corresponds to the Israelites' song at the Red Sea after
the destruction of Pharaoh, and is part of a great prophecy in which he
describes God's future blessings and mercies under images constantly
drawn from the Egyptian bondage and the Exodus in the desert. Now, that
interpretation, or rather that application, of the words of my text,
was very familiar to the Jews long, long before the New Testament was
thought about. For, as many of you will know, there came in the course
of time a number of ceremonies to be added to a feast established by
Moses himself--the Feast of Tabernacles. That was a feast in which the
whole body of the Israelitish people dwelt for a week in leafy booths,
in order to remind them of the time when they were wanderers in the
wilderness; and as is usually the case, the ritual of the celebration
developed a number of additional symbolical observances which were
tacked on to it in the course of centuries. Amongst these there was
this very memorable one: that on each of the days of the Feast of
Tabernacles, at a given point in the ceremonial, the priests went from
the temple, winding down the rocky path on the temple mountain, to the
Pool of Siloam in the valley below, and there in their golden vases
they drew the cool sparkling water, which they bore up, and amidst the
blare of trumpets and the clash of cymbals poured it on the altar,
whilst the people chanted the words of my text, 'With joy shall ye draw
water out of the wells of salvation.'

That ceremonial had been going on for eight hundred years from Isaiah's
time; and once more the period came round when it was to be performed;
and on the seven days of the feast, punctually at the appointed time,
the procession wound down the rocky slopes, drew the water in the
golden vases, bore it up to the temple, and poured it upon the altar;
and on the last great day of the feast, the same ceremonial went on up
to a given point; and just as the last rites of the chant of our text
were dying on the ears, there was a little stir amidst the crowd, which
parted to make way for him, and a youngish man, of mean appearance and
rustic dress, stepped forward, and there, before all the gathered
multitudes and the priests standing with their empty urns, symbol of
the impotence of their system, 'on the last day, that great day of the
feast, Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me
and drink.' Brethren, such a commentary, at such a time, from such a
commentator, may well absolve me from the necessity of enforcing the
evangelistic bearing of the words of my text. And so, then, with that
understanding of the deepest meaning of these words that we have to
look at, I ask you to take them in the simplest possible way, and to
consider three points: the Well of Salvation, the Act of Drawing the
Water, the Gladness of those that draw. 'With _joy_ shall _ye_ draw
water out of the fountains of salvation.'

Now, with regard to the first point, let me remind you to begin with,
that the idea of the word here is not that which we attach to a well,
but that which we attach to a spring. It does not describe the source
of salvation as being a mere reservoir, still less as being a created
or manufactured thing; but there lies in it the deep idea of a source
from which the water wells up by its own inward energy. Then, when we
have got that explanation, and the deep, full, pregnant meaning of the
word salvation as a thing past, a thing present, a thing future, a
thing which negatively delivers a man from all sin and sorrow, and a
thing which positively endows a man with beauty, happiness, and
holiness--when we have got that, then the question next cries aloud for
answer--this well-spring of salvation, is--what? Who? And the first
answer and the last answer is GOD--GOD HIMSELF. It is no mere bit of
drapery of the prophet's imagery, this well-spring of salvation; it is
something much more substantial, much deeper than that. You remember
the old psalm, 'With Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall
we see light'; and what David and John after him called life, Isaiah
and Paul after him calls salvation. And you remember too, no doubt, the
indictment of another of the prophets, laying hold of the same metaphor
in order to point to the folly and the suicide of all godless living:
'My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the
fountain of living waters, and they have hewn out for themselves broken
cisterns.' They were manufactured articles, and because they were made
they could be cracked, but the fountain, because it rises by its own
inherent energy, springing up into everlasting life, is all-sufficient.
God Himself is the well-spring of salvation.

If I had time to enlarge upon this idea, I might remind you how nobly
and blessedly that principle is confirmed when we think of this great
salvation, past, present, and future, negative and positive,
all-sufficient and complete, as having its origin in His deep nature,
as having its process in His own finished work, and as being in its
essence the communication of Himself. That last thing I should like to
say a word or two about. If there is a man or a woman that thinks of
salvation as if it were merely a shutting up of some material hell, or
the dodging round a corner so as to escape some external consequence of
transgression, let him and her hear this: the possession of God is
salvation, that and nothing else. To have Him within me, that is to be
saved; to have His life in His dear Son made the foundation of my life,
to have my whole being penetrated and filled with God, that is the
essence of the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. And because it comes
unmotived, uncaused, self-originated, springing up from the depths of
His own heart; because it is all effected by His own mighty work who
has trodden the winepress alone, and, single-handed, has wrought the
salvation of the race; and because its essence and heart is the
communication of God Himself, and the bestowing upon us the
participation in a divine nature, therefore the depth of the thought,
_God Himself_ is the well-fountain of salvation.

But there is still another step to take. If these things which I have
only just been able to glance at in the most superficial, and perhaps,
therefore, confused manner, in any measure commend themselves to your
judgments and your consciences, let me ask you to go with me one step
further, and to figure to yourselves the significance and the
strangeness of that moment to which I have already referred, when a man
stood up in the temple court, and, with distinct allusion to the whole
of the multitude of Old Testament sayings, in which God and the
communication of God's own energy were represented as being the
fountain of salvation and the salvation from the fountain, and said,
'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me.' Why, what a thing--let us
put it into plain, vulgar English--what a thing for a man to say--'If
any man thirst.' Who art Thou that dost thus plant Thyself opposite the
race, sure that Thou hast no needs like them, but, contrariwise, canst
refresh and satiate the thirsty lips of them all? Who art Thou that
dost proclaim Thyself as sufficient for the fruition of the mind that
yearns for truth and thirsts for certitude, of the parched heart that
wearies and cracks for want of love, of the will that longs to be
rightly and lovingly commanded? Oh, dear brethren, not only the Titanic
presumption of proposing oneself as enough for a single soul, but the
inconceivable madness of proposing oneself as enough for all the race
in all generations to the end of time, except on one hypothesis, marks
this utterance of Him who has also said, 'I am meek and lowly of
heart.' Strange lowliness! singular meekness! Who was He? Who is this
that steps into the place that only a God can fill, and says, 'I can do
it all. If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink'?

Dear brethren, some of us can, thank God, answer that question as I
pray that every one of you may be able to answer it, 'Thou art the King
of Glory, O Christ; Thou art the everlasting son of the Father. With
Thee is the fountain of life; Thou Thyself art the living water.'

But I think there is a still further step to be taken. It is not only
that our Lord Jesus Christ, in His nature, in His person, is the
communicator of the divine life to man, just as--if you will let me
take such a metaphor--just as up in the hills sometimes you will find
some little tarn or loch all shut in; but having trickling from it a
thread of limpid life, and, wherever it flows, the water of the loch
goes; only, the one is lake and the other is river, and the latter is
the medium of communication of the former to the thirsty pastures of
the wilderness. And not only so, but--if I might venture to build upon
a word of the context--there seems to be another consideration there.
The words which precede my text are a quotation from a song of the
Israelites in their former Exodus: 'The Lord Jehovah is my strength and
my song; He also is become my salvation.' Now, if our Bible has been
correct--and I do not enter upon that question--in emphasising the
difference between _is_ and _is become_, mark where it takes us. It
takes us to this, that there was some single, definite, historical act
wherein God _became_ in an eminent manner and in reality what He had
always been in purpose, intent, and idea. Then that to which my text
originally alludes, to which it looks back, is the great deliverance
wrought by the banks of the Red Sea. It was because Pharaoh and his
hosts were drowned in it that Miriam and her musical sisters, with
their timbrel and dance, not only said, 'The Lord is my strength,' but
'He _has become_ my strength'--there where the corpses are floating
yet. What answers to that in the matter with which we are concerned?
Brethren, it is not enough to say that God is the fountain of
salvation, it is not enough to say that the Incarnate Christ is the
medium of salvation. Will you take the other step with us, and say that
the Cross of Christ is the realisation of the divine intention of
salvation? Then He, who from everlasting was the strength and song of
all the strong and the songful, _is become_ the salvation of all the
lost, and the fountain is 'opened for sin and for uncleanness.' A
definite, historical act, the manifestation of Jesus Christ, is the
bringing to man of the salvation of God. So much, then, for that first
point to which I desired to ask your attention.

And now let me say a word or two as to the second. I wish to speak
about this process of drawing from the fountain. That metaphor, without
any further explanation, might very naturally suggest more idea of
human effort than in reality belongs to it. Men have said: 'Yes; no
doubt God is the fountain of salvation; no doubt Christ is the river of
salvation; no doubt His death is the opening of the fountain for sin
and for uncleanness; but how am I to bring myself into contact and
connection with it?' And there have been all sorts of answers. Every
kind of pump has been resorted to. Go up to the Agricultural Hall and
you will see no end of contrivances for bringing water to the surface.
There are not so many there as men have found out for themselves to
bring the water of salvation to their lips, and the effect has always
been the same. There has been something wrong with the valves; the pump
has not worked properly; there has been something wrong with the crank;
the pipe has not gone down to the water; and there has been nothing but
a great jingling of empty buckets, and aching and wearied elbows, and
what the woman said to Christ has been true all round, 'Sir, thou hast
nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' Ay! thank God, it _is_
deep; and if we let our Lord be His own interpreter, we have only to
put together three sayings of His in order to come to the true meaning
of this metaphor. My text says, 'With joy ye shall draw water'; and
Christ, sitting at the well of Samaria--what a strange combination of
the weakness and the weariness of manhood and the strength and
self-consciousness of Divinity was there!--wearied with His journey,
said, 'If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to
thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him and He would
have given thee living water.' So, then, drawing is asking. That is
step number one.

Take another word of the Master's that I have already quoted for other
purposes, 'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.' So,
then, drawing, or asking, or coming are all equivalent. That is step
number two.

And, then, take another word. 'He that cometh unto Me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.' So, then,
drawing, asking, coming, all melt into the one simple word--believing.
Trust in Him, and thou hast come, thou hast asked, thou hast drawn,
thou dost possess.

But whilst I would lay the foundation thus broad, thus simple, do not
forget, dear brethren, what I was saying about a definite historical
act. You will hear people say, 'Oh, I trust in Christ!' What do you
trust in Christ? You will hear people say, 'Oh, I look to the goodness
of God.' Be it so. God forbid I should say a word to prevent that; but
what I would insist upon is that a mere vague regard to a vague Christ
is not the faith that is equivalent to drawing from the fountain of
salvation. There must be a further object in a faith that saves. It
must lay hold of the definite historical act in which Christ has become
the salvation of the world.

Do not take it upon my words, take it upon His own. He once said to His
fellow-countrymen in His lifetime, 'I am the living bread'; and many of
our modern teachers would go that length heartily. Was that where
Christ stopped? By no means. Was His Gospel a gospel of incarnation
only? Certainly not. 'I am the living bread that came down from
heaven.' Anything more? Yes; this more, 'and the bread which I will
give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. He that
eateth Me he shall live by Me.' 'Well,' say some people, 'that means
following His example, accepting His teaching, being loyal to His
Person, absorbing His Spirit.' Yes, it means all that; but is that all
it means? Take His own commentary: 'He that eateth My flesh and
drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.' Yes, brethren, a Christ
incarnate, blessed be God! A Christ crucified, blessed be God! And not
the one but _both_ must be the basis of our faith and our hope.

Now, will you let me say one thing about this matter of drawing the
water? It is an act of faith in a whole Jesus, and eminently in the
mighty act and sacrifice of His Cross. But to go back again to the
context: 'He also is become _my_ salvation. 'That is what I desire, God
helping me, to lay on the hearts of all my hearers--that a definite act
of faith in Christ crucified is not enough unless it is a personal act,
unless it is what our old Puritan forefathers used to call
'appropriating faith.' Never mind about the somewhat dry and technical
phraseology; the thing is what I insist upon--'_my_ salvation.' O
brother! what does it matter though all Niagara were roaring past your
door; you might die of thirst all the same unless you put your own lips
to it. Down on your knees like Gideon's men; it is safest there; that
is the only attitude in which a man can drink of this fountain. Down on
your knees and put your lips to it--your very own lips--and drink for
your own soul's salvation. Christ died for the world. Yes; but the
world for which Christ died is made up of individuals who were in His
heart. It is Paul's words that I would beseech you to make your own:
'The Son of God, who loved _me_ and gave Himself for _me_.' Every one
of you is entitled to say that, if you will. You remember that verse
filled with adoring contemplation that we sometimes sing, one word in
which seems to me to be coloured by the too sombre doctrine of the
epoch from which it came:--

  'My soul looks back to see
    The burden Thou didst bear,
  When hanging on the accursed tree,
    And _knows_ her guilt was there.'

'He also is my strength and my song. He is become my salvation;
therefore, in joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.'

Now, I have left myself no time to do more than say one word about that
last point, the gladness of the water-drawers. It is a pretty picture
in our text, full of the atmosphere and spirit of Eastern life: the
cheery talk and the ringing laughter round the village well, where the
shepherds with their flocks linger all day long, and the maidens from
their tents come--a kind of rude Exchange in the antique world; and,
says our prophet, 'As the dwellers in the land at their village
springs, so ye, the weary travellers at "the eye of the desert," will
draw with gladness.' So we have this joy.

Dear brethren, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is meant for something better
than to make us glad, but it is meant to make us glad too, and he is
but a very poor Christian who has not found that it is the joy and
rejoicing of his heart. We need not put too much emphasis and stress
upon that side of the truth; but we need not either suppress it or
disregard it in our modern high-flown disinterestedness. There are joys
worth calling so which only come from possessing this fountain of
salvation. How shall I enumerate them? The best way, I think, will be
to quote passages.

There is the gladness of forgiven sin and a quieted conscience: 'Make
me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which Thou hast broken may
rejoice.' There is the joy of a conscious possession of God: 'Blessed
are the people that know the joyful sound; they shall walk, O Lord, in
the light of Thy countenance. In Thy name shall they rejoice all the
day.' There is the joy of fellowship and communion with Jesus Christ
and His full presence: 'I will see you again; and your hearts shall
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh away from you.' There is the joy of
willing obedience: 'I delight to do Thy will.' 'It is joy to the just
to do judgment.' There is the joy of a bright hope of an inheritance
'incorruptible,' 'wherein ye greatly rejoice,' and there is a joy
which, like that Greek fire they talk about, burns brighter under
water, and glows as the darkness deepens--a joy which is independent of
circumstances, and can say, 'Although the fig-tree shall not blossom,
neither shall fruit be in the vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.'

And all that, brother and friend, may be yours and mine; and then what
this same prophet says may also be true: 'The ransomed of the Lord
shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their
heads'--that is for the pilgrimage; 'They shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away'--that is for the
home. There is another prophecy in this same book of Isaiah: 'Ho, every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters'; that was the voice of the
Christ in prophecy. There is a saying spoken in the temple courts: 'If
any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink'; that was the voice of
the Christ upon earth. There is a saying at the end of
Scripture--almost the last words that the Seer in Patmos heard:
'Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely'; that was
the voice of the Christ from the throne. And the triple invitation
comes to every soul of man in the world, and to thee, and thee, and
thee, my brother. Answer, answer as the Samaritan woman did: 'Sir, give
me this water that I thirst not, neither come hither' any more to draw
of the broken cisterns.




THE HARVEST OF A GODLESS LIFE

'Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not
been mindful of the Rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant
pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips: In the day shalt
thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy
seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief
and of desperate sorrow.'--ISAIAH xvii. 10, 11.


The original application of these words is to Judah's alliance with
Damascus, which Isaiah was dead against. He saw that it would only
precipitate the Assyrian invasion, as in fact it did. Judah had
forsaken God, and because they had done so, they had gone to seek for
themselves delights--alliance with Damascus. The image of planting a
garden of pleasures, and 'vine slips of a stranger' refers to sensuous
idolatry as well as to the entangling alliance. Then follows a
contemptuous description of the rapid growth of this alliance and of
the care with which Israel cultivated it. 'In a day thou makest thy
plant to grow' (or fencest it), and next morning it was in blossom, so
sedulously had they nursed and fostered it. Then comes the smiting
contrast of what it was all for--'A harvest heap in the day of sickness
and incurable pain.'

Now we may take this in a more general way as containing large truths
which affect the life of every one of us.

I. The Sin of a Godless Life.

(a) Notice the Sin charged. It is merely negative--_forgettest_. There
is no charge of positive hostility or of any overt act. This
forgetfulness is most natural and easy to be fallen into. The constant
pressure of the world. It indicates alienation of heart from God.

It is most common among us, far more so than active infidelity, far
more so than gross sin, far more so than conscious hostility.

(b) The implied Criminality of it. He is the 'Rock of thy strength' and
the 'God of thy salvation.' Rock is the grand Old Testament name of
God, expressing in a pregnant metaphor both what He is in Himself and
what in relation to those who trust Him. It speaks of stability,
elevation, massiveness, and of defence and security. The parallel title
sets Him forth as the Giver of salvation; and both names set in clear
light the sinful ingratitude of forgetting God, and force home the
question: 'Do ye thus requite the Lord, oh foolish people and unwise?'

(c) The implied Absurdity of it. What a contrast between the safe
'munitions of rocks' and the unsheltered security of these Damascene
gardens! What fools to leave the heights and come down into the plain!
Think of the contrast between the sufficiency of God and the emptiness
of the substitutes. Forgetfulness of Him and preference of creatures
cannot be put into language which does not convict it of absurdity.

II. The Busy Effort and Apparent Success of a Godless Life.

(a) If a man loses his hold on God and has not Him to stay himself on,
he is driven to painful efforts to make up the loss. God is needed by
every soul. If the soul is not satisfied in Him, then there are hungry
desires. This is the explanation of the feverish activity of much of
our life.

(b) Such work is far harder than the work of serving God. It takes a
great deal of toil to make that garden grow. The world is a hard
taskmaster. God's service is easy. He sets us in Eden to till and dress
it, but when we forget Him, the ground is cursed, and bears thorns and
thistles, and sweat drips from our brows.

Men take more pains to damn themselves than to save themselves. There
is nothing more wearying than the pursuit of pleasure. 'Pleasant
plants'--that is a hopeless kind of gardening. There is nothing more
degrading.

'Ye lust and desire to have,'--what a contrast is in, Ask and have! We
might live even as the lilies or the ravens, or with only this
difference, that we laboured, but were as uncaring and as peaceful as
they.

God is _given_. The world has to be _bought_. Its terms are 'Nothing
for nothing.'

(c) Such work has sometimes quick, present success.

'In the day.' It is hard for men to labour towards far-off unseen good.
We like to have what will grow up in a night, like Jonah's gourd. So
these present satisfactions in a worldly life appeal to worldly,
sensuous natures. And it is hard to set over against these a plant
which grows slowly, and only bears fruit in the next world.

III. The End of it all.

'A harvest heap in the day of grief.' This clearly points on to a
solemn ending--the day of judgment.

(a) How poor the fruit will be that a God-forgetting man will take out
of life! There is but _one heap_ from all the long struggle. He has
'sowed much and brought home little.' What shall we take with us out of
our busy years as their net result? A very small sack will be large
enough to hold the harvest that many of us have reaped.

(b) All this God-forgetting life of pleasure-seeking and idolatry is
bringing on a terrible, inevitable consummation.

'Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.'

No doubt there is often a harvest of grief and desperate sorrow
springing, even in this life, from forgetting God. For it is only they
who set their hopes on Him that are never disappointed, and only they
who have chosen Him for their portion who can always say, 'I have a
goodly heritage.' But the real harvest is not reaped till death has
separated the time of sowing from that of ingathering. The sower shall
reap; i.e. every man shall inherit the consequences of his deeds. 'They
that have planted it shall eat it.'

(c) That harvest home will be a day of sadness to some. These are
terrible words--'grief and desperate sorrow,' or 'pain and incurable
sickness.' We dare not dilate on this. But if we trust in Christ and
sow to the Spirit, we shall then 'rejoice before God as with the joy of
harvest,' and 'return with joy, bringing our sheaves with us.'




'IN THIS MOUNTAIN'

'In this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast
of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of
marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. 7. And He will destroy in
this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the
veil that is spread over all nations. 8. He will swallow up death in
victory.'--ISAIAH xxv. 6-8.


A poet's imagination and a prophet's clear vision of the goal to which
God will lead humanity are both at their highest in this great song of
the future, whose winged words make music even in a translation. No
doubt it starts from the comparatively small fact of the restoration of
the exiled nation to its own land. But it soars far beyond that. It
sees all mankind associated with them in sharing their blessings. It is
the vision of God's ideal for humanity. That makes it the more
remarkable that the prophet, with this wide outlook, should insist with
such emphasis on the fact that it has a local centre. That phrase 'in
this mountain' is three times repeated in the hymn; two of the
instances occurring in the verses of my text have lying side by side
with them the expressions 'all people' and 'all nations,' as if to
bring together the local origin, and the universal extent, of the
blessings promised.

The sweet waters that are to pour through the world well up from a
spring opened 'in this mountain.' The beams that are to lighten every
land stream out from a light blazing there. The world's hopes for that
golden age which poets have sung, and towards which earnest social
reformers have worked, and of the coming of which this prophet was
sure, rest on a definite fact, done in a definite place, at a definite
time. Isaiah knew the place, but what was to be done, or when it was to
be done, he knew not. You and I ought to be wiser. History has taught
us that Jesus Christ fulfils the visioned good that inspired the
prophet's brilliant words. We might say, with allowable licence, that
'this mountain,' in which the Lord does the great things that this song
magnifies, is not so much Zion as Calvary.

Brethren, in these days, when so many voices are proclaiming so many
short cuts to the Millennium, this clear declaration of the source of
the world's hope is worth pondering. For us all, individually, this
localisation of the origin of the universal good of mankind is an offer
of blessings to us if we will go thither, where the provision for the
world's good is stored--'In this mountain'; therefore, to seek it
anywhere else is to seek it in vain.

Now, I wish, under the impression of that conviction, to put before you
just these three thoughts: where the world's food comes from; where the
unveiling which gives light to the world comes from; and where the life
which destroys death for the world comes from--'In this mountain.'

I. Where does the world's food come from?

Physiologists can tell, by studying the dentition--the system of the
teeth--and the digestive apparatus of an animal, what it is meant to
live upon, whether vegetables or flesh, or a mingled diet of both. And
you can tell, if you will, by studying yourself, what, or whom, you are
meant to live upon. The poet said, 'We live by admiration, hope, and
love.' But he did not say on what these faculties, which truly nourish
man's spirit, are to fix and fasten. He tells of the appetites; he does
not tell of their food. My text does: 'In this mountain shall the Lord
make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the
less well refined.' Friends, look at these hearts of yours with their
yearnings, with their passionate desires, with their clamant needs.
Will any human love--the purest, the sweetest, the most unselfish, the
most utter in its surrender--satisfy the heart-hunger of the poorest of
us? No! Look at the capacities of grasping thought and truth in our
spirits, which are ever seek, seek, seeking for absolutely certain
foundations on which we may build the whole structure of our beliefs.
You have to go deeper down than the sand of man's thinkings and
teachings before you can reach what will bear without shifting the
foundations of a life's credence and confidence. Look at these
tumultuous wills of ours that fancy they crave to be independent, and
really crave an absolute master whom it is blessedness to obey. You
will find none such beneath the stars. The very elements of our being,
our heart, will, mind, desires, passions, longings, all with one voice
proclaim that the only food for a man is God.

Jesus Christ brings the food that we need. Remember His own adaptation
of this great vision of my text in more than one parable; such as the
supper that was provided, and to which all men were invited, and, 'with
one consent,' declined the invitation. Remember His own utterance,' I
am the Bread of God which came down from heaven to give life to the
world.' Remembering such words, let me plead with you to listen to the
voice of warning as well as of invitation, which sounds from Cradle and
Cross and Throne. 'Why will ye spend your money for that which is not
bread'--you know it is not--'and your labour for that which satisfieth
not?'--you know it does not. Turn to Him, 'eat, and your souls shall
live.' 'In this mountain is prepared a feast... for all nations.'

Notice that although it does not appear on the surface, and to English
readers, this world's festival, in which every want is met, and every
appetite satisfied, is a feast on a sacrifice. That touches the deepest
need, about which I shall have a word or two to say presently. But in
the meantime let me just press this upon you, that the Christ who died
on the Cross is to be lived on by us; and that it is His sacrifice that
is to be the nourishment of our spirits.

Would that the earnest men, who are trying to cure the world's evils
and to still the world's wants, and are leaving Jesus Christ and His
religion out of their programme, would take thought and ask themselves
whether there is not something more in the hunger of humanity than
their ovens can ever bake bread for! They are spinning ropes of sand,
if they are trying to lift the world clear of its miseries and of its
hunger, and are not presenting Jesus Christ. I hope I am no bigot; I
know that I sympathise earnestly with all these other schemes for
helping mankind, but this I am bound to say here--all of them put
together will not reach the need of the case, unless they start from,
and are subsidiary to, and develop out of, the presenting of the primal
supply for the universal want, Christ, who alone is able to still the
hunger of men's hearts. Education will do much, but university degrees
and the highest culture will not satisfy a hungry heart. Fitting
environment, as it is fashionable to call it, will do a great deal, but
nothing outside of a man will staunch his evils or still the hunger
that coils and grips in his heart. Competent wealth is a good-there 1s
no need to say that in Manchester-but millionaires have been known to
be miserable. A heart at rest in the love of husband, wife, parent,
child, is a blessing earnestly to be sought and thankfully to be
treasured by us all; but there is more than that wanted. Put a man in
the most favourable circumstances; give him competent worldly means; do
all that modern philosophers who leave religion out of the question are
trying to do; put in practice your most advanced Socialistic schemes,
and you will still have a man with a hungry heart. He may not know what
he wants; very often he will entirely mistake what that is, but he will
be restless for want of an unknown good. Here is the only thing that
will still his heart: 'The bread which I give is My flesh, which I will
give for the life of the world.'

Brother and sister, this is not a matter only for social reformers, and
to be dealt with as bearing upon wide movements that influence
multitudes. It comes home to you and me. Some of you do not in the
least degree know what I am talking about when I speak of the hunger of
men's hearts; for you have lost your appetites, as children that eat
too many sweets have no desire for their wholesome meals. You have lost
your appetite by feeding upon garbage, and you say you are quite
content. Yes, at present; but deep down there lies in your hearts a
need which will awake and speak out some day; and you will find that
the husks which the swine did eat are scarcely wholesome nutriment for
a man. And there are some of you that turn away with disgust, and I am
glad of it, from these low, gross, sensuous delights; and are trying to
satisfy yourselves with education, culture, refinement, art, science,
domestic love, wealth, gratified ambition, or the like. There are
tribes of degraded Indians that in times of famine eat clay. There is a
little nourishment in it, and it distends their stomachs, and gives
them the feeling of having had a meal. And that is like what some of
you do. Dear friends, will you listen to this?--'Why do ye spend your
money for that which is not bread?' Will you listen to this?--'I am the
Bread of Life,' Will you listen to this?--'In this mountain will the
Lord make unto all people a feast of fat things.'

II. Where does the unveiling that gives light to the world come from?

My text, as I have already remarked, emphatically repeats 'in this
mountain' in its next clause. 'He will destroy in this mountain the
face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread
over all nations.'

Now, of course, the pathetic picture that is implied here, of a dark
pall that lies over the whole world, suggests the idea of mourning, but
still more emphatically, I think, that of obscuration and gloom. The
veil prevents vision and shuts out light, and that is the picture of
humanity as it presents itself before this prophet--a world of men
entangled in the folds of a dark pall that lay over their heads, and
swathed them round about, and prevented them from seeing; shut them up
in darkness and entangled their feet, so that they stumbled in the
gloom. It is a pathetic picture, but it does not go beyond the
realities of the case. For, with all our light on other matters, with
all our freedom of action, with all our frequent forgetfulness of the
fact that we are thus encompassed, it remains true that, apart from the
emancipation and illumination that are effected by Jesus Christ, this
is the picture of mankind as they are. And you are beneath that veil,
and swathed, obstructively as regards light and liberty, by its heavy
folds, unless Christ has freed you.

But we must go a step further than that, I think; and although one does
not wish to force too much meaning on to a poetic metaphor, still I
cannot help supposing that that universal pall, as I called it, which
is cast over all nations, has a very definite and a very tragic
meaning. There is a universal fact of human experience which answers to
the figure, and that is sin. That is the black thing whose ebon folds
hamper us, and darken us, and shut out the visions of God and
blessedness, and all the glorious blue above us. The heavy, dark mist
settles down on the plains, though the sky above is undimmed by it, and
the sun is blazing in the zenith. Not one beam can penetrate through
the wet, chill obstruction, and men stumble about in the fog with lamps
and torches, and all the while a hundred feet up it is brightness and
day. Or, if at some points the obstruction is thinned and the sun does
come through, it is shorn of all its gracious beams and power to warm
and cheer, and looks but like a copper-coloured, livid, angry ball. So
the 'veil that is spread over all nations, 'that awful fact of
universal sinfulness, shuts out God--who is our light and our joy--from
us, and no other lights or joys are more than twinkling tapers in the
mist. Or it makes us see Him as men in a fog see the sun--shorn of His
graciousness, threatening, wrathful, unlovely.

Brethren, the fact of universal sinfulness is the outstanding fact of
humanity. Jesus Christ deals with it by His death, which is God's
sacrifice and the world's atonement. That Lamb of God has borne away
the world's sins, and my sins and thy sins are there. By the fact of
His death He has rent the veil from the top to the bottom, and the
light comes in, unhindered by the terrible solemn fact that all of us
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. By His life He
communicates to each of us, if we will trust our poor sinful souls to
Him, a new power of living which is triumphant over temptation, and
gives the victory over sin if we will be true to Him. And so the last
shreds of the veil, like the torn clouds of a spent thunderstorm, are
parted into filmy rags and float away below the horizon, leaving the
untarnished heavens and the flaming sunshine; and 'we with unveiled
faces' can lift them up to be irradiated by the light. 'In this
mountain will the Lord destroy the covering that is spread over all
nations.'

The weak point of all these schemes and methods to which I have already
referred for helping humanity out of the slough, and making men
happier, is that they underestimate the fact of sin. If a man comes to
them and says, 'I have broken God's law. What am I to do? I have a
power within me that impels me now to evil. How am I to get rid of it?'
they have no adequate answer. There is only one remedy that deals
radically with the fact of human transgression; only one power that
will deliver each of us, if we will, from the penalty, the guilt, the
power of sin; and that is the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, and its
result, the inspiration of the spirit of life that was in Jesus Christ,
breathed into us from the Throne itself. Thus, and thus only, is the
veil done away in Christ.

III. Lastly, where does the life that destroys death come from?

'He will swallow up death in victory,' or, as probably the word more
correctly means, 'He will swallow up death _for ever_.' None of the
other panaceas for the world's evils that I have been speaking of even
attempt to deal with that 'Shadow feared of Man' that sits at the end
of all our paths. Jesus Christ has dealt with it. Like the warrior of
Judah who went down into a pit and slew a lion, He has gone down into
the lair of the dreadful thing, and has come up leaving Death dead on
the threshold.

By His death Christ has so altered that grim fact, which awaits us all,
that to those who will trust their souls to Him it ceases to be death,
even though the physical fact remains unaltered. For what is death? Is
it simply the separation of soul from body, the cessation of corporeal
existence? Surely not. We have to add to that all the spiritual
tremors, all the dreads of passing into the unknown, and leaving this
familiar order of things, and all the other reluctances and
half-conscious feelings which make the difference between the death of
a man and the death of a dog. And all these are swept clean away, if we
believe that Jesus died, and died as our Redeemer and our Saviour. So,
unconsciously and instinctively, the New Testament writers will seldom
condescend to call the physical fact by the ugly old name. It has
changed its character; it is 'a sleep' now; it is 'an exodus,' a 'going
out' from the land of Egypt into a land of peace. It is a plucking up
of the tent-pegs, according to another of the words which the writers
employ for death, in preparation for entering, when the 'tabernacle is
dissolved,' into 'a house not made with hands,' a statelier edifice,
'eternal in the heavens.' To die in Christ is not to die, but becomes a
mere change of condition and of place, to be with Him, which is far
'better.' So an Apostle who was coming within measurable distance of
his own martyrdom, even whilst the headsman's block was all but in his
sight, said: 'He hath abolished death,' the physical fact remaining
still.

By His resurrection Jesus Christ has established immortality as a
certainty for men. I can understand a man, who has persuaded himself
that when he dies he is done with, dressing his limbs to die without
dread if without hope. But that is a poor victory over death, which,
even in the act of getting rid of the fear of it, invests it with
supreme and ultimate power over humanity. Surely, surely, to believe
that the grave is a blind alley, with no exit at the other end,--to
believe that, however it may minister to a quiet departure, is no
victory over the grave. But to die believing, on the other hand, that
it is only a short tunnel through which we pass, and come out into
fairer lands on the other side of the mountains, is to conquer that
last foe even while it seems to conquer us.

Jesus Christ, who died that we might never die, lives that we may
always live. For His immortal life will give to each of us, if we join
ourselves to Him by simple faith and lowly obedience, an immortal life
that shall persist through, and be increased by, the article of bodily
death. And when we pass into the higher realm of fulness of joy,
then--as Paul quotes the words of my text--'shall be brought to pass
the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.'

Dear brethren, gather all these thoughts together. Do they not plead
with you to cast yourselves on Jesus Christ, and to turn to Him alone?
He will give you the food of your souls; if you will not sit at His
table you will starve. He will strip you of the covering that is cast
over you, as over us all; if you will not let Him unwind its folds from
your limbs, then like the clothes of a drowning man, they will sink
you. He will give you immortal life, which laughs at death, and you
will be able to take up the great song, 'O Death, where is thy sting; O
grave, where is thy victory?... Thanks be to God which giveth us the
victory.' 'In this mountain' and in this mountain only, are the food,
the illumination, the life of the world. I beseech you, do not turn
away from them, lest you stumble on the dark mountains, where are
starvation and gloom and death, but rather join that happy company of
pilgrims who sing as they march, 'Come! let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord. He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths.'




THE FEAST ON THE SACRIFICE

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a
feast.' ISAIAH xxv. 6.


There is here a reference to Sinai, where a feast followed the vision
of God. It was the sign of covenant, harmony, and relationship, and was
furnished by a sacrifice.

I. The General Ideas contained in this Image of a Feast.

We meet it all through Scripture; it culminates in Christ's parables
and in the 'Marriage Supper of the Lamb.'

In the image are suggested:--

Free familiarity of access, fellowship, and communion with Him.

Abundant Supply of all wants and desires.

Festal Joy.

Family Intercommunion.

II. The Feast follows on Sacrifice. We find that usage of a feast
following a sacrifice existing in many races and religions. It seems to
witness to a widespread consciousness of sin as disturbing our
relations with God. These could be set right only by sacrifice, which
therefore must precede all joyful communion with Him.

The New Testament accepts that truth and clears it from the admixture
of heathenism.

God provides the Sacrifice.

It is not brought by man. There is no need for our efforts--no
atonement to be found by us. The sacrifice is not meant to turn aside
God's wrath.

Communion is possible through Christ.

In Him God is revealed.

Objective hindrances are taken away.

Subjective ones are removed.

Dark fears--indifference--dislike of fellowship--Sin--these make
communion with God impossible.

At Sinai the elders 'saw God, and did eat and drink' Here the end of
the preceding chapter shows the 'elders' gazing on the glory of
Jehovah's reign in Zion.

III. The Feast consists of a Sacrifice.

Christ is the food of our souls, He and His work are meant to nourish
our whole being. He is the object for all our nature.

The Sacrifice must be incorporated with us. It is not enough that it be
offered, it must also be partaken of.

Now the Sacrifice is eaten by faith, and by occupation with it of each
part of our being, according to its own proper action. Through love,
obedience, hope, desire, we may all feed on Jesus.

The Lord's Supper presents the same thoughts, under similar symbols, as
Isaiah expressed in his prophecy.

Symbolically we feast on the sacrifice when we eat the Bread which is
the Body broken for us. But the true eating of the true sacrifice is by
faith. _Crede et manducasti_--Believe, and thou hast eaten.




THE VEIL OVER ALL NATIONS

'He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over
all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations.'--ISAIAH xxv.
7.


The previous chapter closes with a prediction of the reign of Jehovah
in Mount Zion 'before His elders' in Glory. The allusion apparently is
to the elders being summoned up to the Mount and seeing the Glory, 'as
the body of heaven in its clearness.' The veil in this verse is
probably a similar allusion to that which covered Moses' face. It will
then be an emblem of that which obscures for 'all nations the face of
God.' And what is that but sin?

I. Sin veils God from men's sight.

It is not the necessary inadequacy of the finite mind to conceive of
the Infinite that most tragically hides God from us. That inadequacy is
compatible with true and sufficient knowledge of Him. Nor is it 'the
veils of flesh and sense,' as we often hear it said, that hide Him. But
it is our sinful moral nature that darkens His face and dulls our eyes.
'Knowledge' of God, being knowledge of a Person, is not merely an
intellectual process. It is much more truly acquaintance than
comprehension; and as such, requires, as all acquaintance does, some
foundation of sympathy and appreciation.

Every sin darkens the witness to God in ourselves, In a pure nature,
conscience would perfectly reveal God; but we all know too sadly and
intimately how it is gradually silenced, and fails to discriminate
between what pleases and what displeases God. In a pure nature, the
obedient Will would perfectly reveal God and the man's dependence on
Him. We all know how sin weakens that.

Every sin diminishes our power of seeing Him in His external
Revelation. Every sin ruffles the surface of the soul, which is a
mirror reflecting the light that streams from Creation, from
Providence, from History. A mass of black rock flung into a still lake
shatters the images of the girdling woods and the overarching sky.

Every sin bribes us to forget God. It becomes our interest, as we
fancy, to shut Him out of our thoughts. Adam's impulse is to carry his
guilty secret with him into hiding among the trees of the garden. We
cannot shake off His presence, but we can--and when we have sinned, we
have but too good reason to exercise the power--we can dismiss the
thought of Him. 'They did not _like_ to retain God in their knowledge.'

Individual sins may seem of small moment, but an opaque veil can be
woven out of very fine thread.

II. To veil God from our sight is fatal.

We imagine that to forget Him leaves us undisturbed in following aims
disapproved by Him, and we spend effort to secure that false peace by
fierce absorption in other pursuits, and impatient shaking off of all
that might wake our sleeping consciousness of Him.

But what unconscious self-murder that is, which we take such pains to
achieve! To know God is life eternal; to lose Him from our sight is to
condemn all that is best in our nature, all that is most conducive to
blessedness, tranquillity, and strenuousness in our lives, to languish
and die. Every creature separated from God is cut off from the fountain
of life, and loses the life it drew from the fountain, of whatever kind
that life is. And that in man which is most of kin with God languishes
most when so cut off. And when we have blocked Him out from our field
of vision, all that remains for us to look at suffers degradation, and
becomes phantasmal, poor, unworthy to detain, and impotent to satisfy,
our hungry vision.

III. The Veil is done away in Christ.

He shows us God, instead of our own false conceptions of Him, which are
but distorted refractions of His true likeness. Only within the limits
of Christ's revelation is there knowledge of God, as distinguished from
guesses, doubtful inferences, partial glimpses. Elsewhere, the greatest
certitude as to Him is a 'peradventure'; Jesus alone says 'Verily,
verily.'

Jesus makes us able to see God.

Jesus makes us delight in seeing Him.

All dread of the 'steady whole of the Judge's face' is changed to the
loving heart's joy in seeing its Beloved.

IV. The Veil is wholly removed hereafter.

The prophecy from which the text is taken is obviously not yet
fulfilled. It waits for the perfect condition of redeemed manhood in
another life. But even then, the chief reason why the Christian is
warranted in cherishing an unpresumptuous hope that he will know even
as he is known is not that then he will have dropped the veil of flesh
and sense, but that he will have dropped the thicker, more stifling
covering of sin, and, being perfectly like God, will be able perfectly
to gaze on Him, and, perfectly gazing on Him, will grow ever more
perfectly like Him.

The choice for each of us is whether the veil will thicken till it
darkens the Face altogether, and that is death; or whether it will thin
away till the last filmy remnant is gone, and 'we shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is.'




THE SONG OF TWO CITIES

'In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a
strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. 2. Open
ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may
enter in. 3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed
on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee. A. Trust ye in the Lord for ever:
for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength: 5. For He bringeth
down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, He layeth it low; He
layeth it low, even to the ground He bringeth it even to the dust. 6.
The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps
of the needy. 7. The way of the just is uprightness: Thou, most
upright, dost weigh the path of the Just. 8. Yea, in the way of Thy
judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee; the desire of our soul is
to Thy name, and to the remembrance of Thee. 9. With my soul have I
desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek
Thee early: for when Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of
the world will learn righteousness. 10. Let favour be shewed to the
wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness
will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the
Lord.'--ISAIAH xxvi. 1-10.'


'This song' is to be interpreted as a song, not with the cold-blooded
accuracy proper to a scientific treatise. The logic of emotion is as
sound as that of cool intellect, but it has its own laws and links of
connection. First, the song sets in sharp contrast the two cities,
describing, in verses 1-4, the city of God, its strength defences,
conditions of citizenship, and the peace which reigns within its walls;
and in verses 5 and 6 the fall and utter ruin of the robber city, its
antagonist Jerusalem, on its rocky peninsula, supplies the form of
Isaiah's thought; but it is only a symbol of the true city of God, the
stable, invisible, but most real, polity and order of things to which
men, even while wandering lonely and pilgrims, do come, if they will.
It is possible even here and now to have our citizenship in the
heavens, and to feel that we belong to a great community beyond the sea
of time, though our feet have never trodden its golden pavements, nor
our eyes seen its happy glories.

In one aspect, it is ideal, but in truth it is more real than the
intrusive and false things of this fleeting present, which call
themselves realities. 'The things which are' are the things above. The
things here are but shows and shadows.

The city's walls are salvation. There is no need to name the architect
of these fortifications. One hand only can pile their strength. God
appoints salvation in lieu of all visible defences. Whom He purposes to
save are saved. Whom He wills to keep safe are kept safe. They who can
shelter behind that strong defence need no other. Weak, sense-governed
hearts may crave something more palpable, but they do not really need
it. A parapet on an Alpine road gives no real security, but only
satisfies imagination. The sky needs no pillars to hold it up.

Then an unknown voice breaks in upon the song, calling on unnamed
attendants to fling wide the gates. The city is conceived of as empty;
its destined inhabitants must have certain qualifications. They must be
righteous, and must 'keep faithfulness' being true to the God who is
'faithful and true' in all His relations. None but the righteous can
dwell in conscious citizenship with the Unseen while here, and none but
the righteous can enter through the gates into the city. That
requirement is founded in the very nature of the case, and is as
emphatically proclaimed by the gospel as by the prophet. But the gospel
tells more articulately than he was enlightened to do, how
righteousness is to be won. The last vision of the Apocalypse, which is
so like this song in its central idea, tells us of the fall of Babylon,
of the descent to earth of the New Jerusalem, and leaves as its last
message the great saying, 'Blessed are they that wash their robes that
they may ... enter in through the gate into the city.'

Our song gives some hint of similar thoughts by passing from the
description of the qualifications for entrance to the celebration of
the security which comes from trust. The safety which is realised
within the walls of the strong city is akin to the 'perfect peace' in
which he who trusts is kept; and the juxtaposition of the two
representations is equivalent to the teaching that trust, which is
precisely the same as the New Testament faith, is the condition of
entrance. We know that faith makes righteous, because it opens the
heart to receive God's gift of righteousness; but that effect of faith
is implied rather than stated here, where security and peace are the
main ideas. As some fugitives from the storm of war sit in security
behind the battlements of a fortress, and scarcely hear the din of
conflict in the open field below, the heart, which has taken refuge by
trust in God, is kept in peace so deep that it passes description, and
the singer is fain to give a notion of its completeness by calling it
'peace, peace.' The mind which trusts is steadied thereby, as light
things lashed to a firm stay are kept steadfast, however the ship toss.
The only way to get and keep fixedness of temper and spirit amid change
and earthquake is to hold on to God, and then we may be stable with
stability derived from the foundations of His throne to which we cling.

Therefore the song breaks into triumphant fervour of summons to all who
hear it, to 'trust in Jab Jehovah for ever,' Such settled, perpetual
trust is the only attitude corresponding to His mighty name, and to the
realities found in His character. He is the 'Bock of Ages' the grand
figure which Moses learned beneath the cliffs of Sinai and wove into
his last song, and which tells us of the unchanging strength that makes
a sure hiding-place for all generations, and the ample space which will
hold all the souls of men, and be for a shadow from the heat, a covert
from the tempest, a shelter from the foe, and a home for the homeless,
with many a springing fountain in its clefts.

The great act of judgment which the song celebrates is now (vs. 5, 6)
brought into contrast with the blessed picture of the city, and by the
introductory 'for' is stated as the reason for eternal trust. The
language, as it were, leaps and dances in jubilation, heaping together
brief emotional and synonymous clauses. So low is the once proud city
brought, that the feet of the poor tread it down. These 'poor' and
'needy' are the true Israel, the suffering saints, who had known how
cruel the sway of the fallen robber city was; and now they march across
its site; and its broken columns and ruined palaces strew the ground
below their feet. 'The righteous nation' of the one picture are 'the
poor and needy' of the other. No doubt the prophecy has had partial
accomplishments more than once or twice, when the oppressed church has
triumphed, and some hoary iniquity been levelled at a blow, or toppled
over by slow decay. But the complete accomplishment is yet future, and
not to be realised till that last act, when all antagonism shall be
ended, and the net result of the weary history of the world be found to
be just these two pictures of Isaiah's--the strong city of God with its
happy inhabitants, and the everlasting desolations of the fallen city
of confusion.

The triumphant hurry of the song pauses for a moment to gaze upon the
crash, and in verse 7 gathers its lessons into a kind of proverbial
saying, which is perhaps best translated 'The path of the just is
smooth (or "plain"); Thou levellest smooth the path of the just.' To
render 'upright' instead of 'smooth' seems to make the statement almost
an identical proposition, and is tame. What is meant is, that, in the
light of the end, the path which often seemed rough is vindicated. The
judgment has showed that the righteous man's course had no unnecessary
difficulties. The goal explains the road. The good man's path is
smooth, not because of its own nature, but because God makes it so. We
are to look for the clearing of our road, not to ourselves, nor to
circumstances, but to Him; and even when it is engineered through rocks
and roughnesses, to believe that He will make the rough places plain,
or give us shoes of iron and brass to encounter them. Trust that when
the journey is over the road will be explained, and that this
reflection, which breaks the current of the swift song of the prophet,
will be the abiding, happy conviction of heaven.

Lastly, the song looks back and tells how the poor and needy, in whose
name the prophet speaks, had filled the dreary past, while the tyranny
of the fallen city lasted, with yearning for the judgment which has now
come at last. Verses 8 and 9 breathe the very spirit of patient longing
and meek hope. There is a certain tone of triumph in that 'Yea,' as if
the singer would point to the great judgment now accomplished, as
vindicating the long, weary hours of hope deferred. That for which 'the
poor and needy' wait is the coming 'in the path of Thy judgments.' The
attitude of expectance is as much the duty and support of Christians as
of Israel. We have a greater future clearer before us than they had.
The world needs God's coming in judgment more than ever; and it says
little for either the love to God or the benevolence towards man of
average Christians, that they should know so little of that yearning of
soul which breathes through so much of the Old Testament. For the glory
of God and the good of men, we should have the desire of our souls
turned to His manifestation of Himself in His righteous judgments. It
was no personal end which bred the prophet's yearning. True, the
'night' round him was dreary enough, and sorrow lay black on his people
and himself; but it was God's 'name' and 'memorial' that was uppermost
in his desires. That is to say, the chief object of the devout soul's
longings should be the glory of God's revealed character. And the
deepest reason for wishing that He would flash forth from His
hiding-place in judgments, is because such an apocalypse is the only
way by which wilfully blind eyes can be made to see, and wilfully
unrighteous hearts can be made to practise righteousness.

Isaiah believed in the wholesome effect of terror. His confidence in
the power of judgments to teach the obstinate corresponds to the Old
Testament point of view, and contains a truth for all points of view;
but it is not the whole truth. We know only too well that sorrows and
judgments do not work infallibly, and that men 'being often reproved,
harden their necks.' We know, too, more clearly than any prophet of old
could know, that the last arrow in God's quiver is not some unheard-of
awfulness of judgment, but an unspeakable gift of love, and that if
that 'favour shown to the wicked' in the life and death of God's Son
does not lead him to 'learn righteousness,' nothing else will.

But while this is true, the prophet's aspirations are founded on the
facts of human nature too, and judgments do sometimes startle those
whom kindness had failed to touch. It is an awful thought that human
nature may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons
as that favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains
unpierced by either. It is an awful thought that there may be induced
such truculent obstinacy of love of evil that, even when in 'a land of
uprightness,' a man shall choose evil, and forcibly shut his eyes, that
he may not see the majesty of the Lord, which he does not wish to see
because it condemns his choice, and threatens to burn up him and his
work together. A blasted tree when all the woods are green, a fleece
dry when all around is rejoicing in the dew, a window dark when the
whole city is illuminated, one black sheep amid the white flock, or
anything else anomalous and alone in its evil, is less tragic than the
sight, so common, of a man so sold to sin that the presence of good
only makes him angry and restless. It is possible to dwell amidst the
full light of Christian truth, and in a society moulded by its
precepts, and to be unblessed, unsoftened thereby. If not softened,
then hardened; and the wicked who in the land of uprightness deals
wrongfully is all the worse for the light which he hated because it
showed him the sinfulness of the sin which he obstinately loved and
would keep.




OUR STRONG CITY

'In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a
strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye
the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter
in.'--ISAIAH xxvi 1-2.


What day is 'that day'? The answer carries us back a couple of
chapters, to the great picture drawn by the prophet of a world-wide
judgment, which is followed by a burst of song from the ransomed people
of Jehovah, like Miriam's chant by the shores of the Red Sea. The 'city
of confusion,' the centre of the power hostile to God and man, falls;
and its fall is welcomed by a chorus of praises. The words of my text
are the beginning of one of these songs. Whether or not there were any
historical event which floated before the prophet's mind is wholly
uncertain. If there were a smaller judgment upon some city of the
enemy, it passes in his view into a world-wide judgment; and my text is
purely ideal, imaginative, and apocalyptic. Its nearest ally is the
similar vision of the Book of the Revelation, where, when Babylon sank
with a splash like a millstone in the stream, the ransomed people
raised their praises.

So, then, whatever may have been the immediate horizon of the prophet,
and though, there may have stood on it some historical event, the city
which he sees falling is other than any material Babylon, and the
strong city in which he rejoices is other than the material Jerusalem,
though it may have suggested the metaphor of my text. The song fits our
lips quite as closely as it did the lips from which it first sprang,
thrilling with triumph: 'We have a strong city; salvation will God
appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous
nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.'

There are three things, then, here: the city, its defences, its
citizens.

I. The City.

Now, no doubt the prophet was thinking of the literal Jerusalem; but
the city is ideal, as is shown by the bulwarks which defend, and by the
qualifications which permit entrance. And so we must pass beyond the
literalities of Palestine, and, as I think, must not apply the symbol
to any visible institution or organisation if we are to come to the
depth and greatness of the meaning of these words. No church which is
organised amongst men can be the New Testament representation of this
strong city. And if the explanation is to be looked for in that
direction at all, it can only be the invisible aggregate of ransomed
souls which is regarded as being the Zion of the prophecy.

But perhaps even that is too definite and hard. And we are rather to
think of the unseen but existent order of things or polity to which men
here on earth may belong, and which will one day, after shocks and
convulsions that shatter all which is merely institutional and human,
be manifested still more gloriously.

The central thought that was moving in the prophet's mind is that of
the indestructible vitality of the true Israel, and the order which it
represented, of which Jerusalem on its rock was but to him a symbol.
And thus for us the lesson is that, apart altogether from the existing
and visible order of things in which we dwell, there is a polity to
which we may belong, for 'ye are come unto Mount Zion, the city of the
living God,' and that that order is indestructible. Convulsions come,
every Babylon falls, all human institutions change and pass. 'The
kingdoms old' are 'cast into another mould.' But persistent through
them all, and at the last, high above them all, will stand the stable
polity of Heaven, '_the_ city which hath _the_ foundations.'

_There_ is a lesson for us, brethren, in times of fluctuation, of
change of opinion, of shaking of institutions, and of new social,
economical, and political questions, threatening day by day to
reorganise society. 'We have a strong city'; and whatever may come--and
much destructive will come, and much that is venerable and antique,
rooted in men's prejudices, and having survived through and oppressed
the centuries, will have to go; but God's polity, His form of human
society of which the perfect ideal and antitype, so to speak, lies
concealed in the heavens, is everlasting. Therefore, whatsoever
changes, whatsoever ancient and venerable things come to be regarded as
of no account, howsoever the nations, like clay in the hands of the
potter, may have to assume new forms, as certainly they will, yet the
foundation of God standeth sure. And for Christian men in revolutionary
epochs, whether these revolutions affect the forms in which truth is
grasped, or whether they affect the moulds into which society is run,
the only worthy temper is the calm, triumphant expectation that through
all the dust, contradiction, and distraction, the fair city of God will
be brought nearer and made more manifest to man. Isaiah, or whoever was
the writer of these great words of my text, stayed his own and his
people's hearts in a time of confusion and distress, by the thought
that it was only Babylon that could fall, and that Jerusalem was the
possessor of a charmed, immortal life.

This strong city, the order of human society which God has appointed,
and which exists, though it be hidden in the heavens, will be
manifested one day when, like the fair vision of the goddess rising
from amidst the ocean's foam, and shedding peace and beauty over the
charmed waves, there will emerge from all the wild confusion and
tossing billows of the sea of the peoples the fair form of the 'Bride,
the Lamb's wife.' There shall be an apocalypse of the city, and whether
the old words which catch up the spirit of my text, and speak of that
Holy City as 'descending from heaven' upon earth, at the close of the
history of the world, are to be taken, as perhaps they are, as
expressive of the truth that a renewed earth is to be the dwelling of
the ransomed or no, this at least is clear, that the city shall be
revealed, and when Babylon is swept away, Zion shall stand.

To this city--existent, immortal, and waiting to be revealed--you and I
may belong to-day. 'We _have_ a strong city.' You may lay hold of life
either by the side of it which is transient and trivial and
contemptible, or by the side of it which goes down through all the
mutable and is rooted in eternity. As in some seaweed, far out in the
depths of the ocean, the tiny frond that floats upon the billow goes
down and down and down, by filaments that bind it to the basal rock, so
the most insignificant act of our fleeting days has a hold upon
eternity, and life in all its moments may be knit to the permanent. We
may unite our lives with the surface of time or with the centre of
eternity. Though we dwell in tabernacles, we may still be 'come to
Mount Zion,' and all life be awful, noble, solemn, religions, because
it is all connected with the unseen city across the seas. It is for us
to determine to which of these orders--the perishable, noisy and
intrusive and persistent in its appeals, or the calm, silent, most
real, eternal order beyond the stars--our petty lives shall attach
themselves.

II. Now note, secondly, the defences.

'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.' This 'evangelical
prophet,' as he has been called, is distinguished, not only by the
clearness of his anticipations of Jesus Christ and His work, but by the
fulness and depth which he attaches to that word 'salvation.' He all
but anticipates the New Testament completeness and fulness of meaning,
and lifts it from all merely material associations of earthly or
transitory deliverance, into the sphere in which we are accustomed to
regard it as especially moving. By 'salvation' he means and we mean,
not only negative but positive blessings. Negatively it includes the
removal of every conceivable or endurable evil, 'all the ills that
flesh is heir to,' whether they be evils of sin or evils of sorrow;
and, positively, the investiture with every possible good that humanity
is capable of, whether it be good of goodness, or good of happiness.
This is what the prophet tells us is the wall and bulwark of his
ideal-real city.

Mark the eloquent omission of the name of the builder of the wall.
'God' is a supplement. Salvation 'will _He_ appoint for walls and
bulwarks.' No need to say who it is that flings such a fortification
around the city. There is only one hand that can trace the lines of
such walls; only one hand that can pile their stones; only one that can
lay them, as the walls of Jericho were laid, in the blood of His
first-born Son. 'Salvation will He appoint for walls and bulwarks.'
That is to say in a highly imaginative and picturesque form, that the
defense of the City is God Himself; and it is substantially a parallel
with other words which speak about Him as being 'a wall of fire round
about it and the glory in the midst of it.' The fact of salvation is
the wall and the bulwark. And the consciousness of the fact and the
sense of possessing it, is for our poor hearts, one of our best
defenses against both the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow. For
nothing so robs temptation of its power, so lightens the pressure of
calamities, and draws the poison from the fangs of sin and sorrow, as
the assurance that the loving purpose of God to save grasps and keeps
us. They who shelter behind that wall, feel that between them and sin,
and them and sorrow, there rises the inexpugnable defense of an
Almighty purpose and power to save, lie safe whatever betides. There is
no need of other defenses. Zion

                     'Needs no bulwarks,
                      No towers along the steep.'

God Himself is the shield and none other is required.

So, brethren, let us walk by the faith that is always confident, though
it depends on an unseen hand. It is a grand thing to be able to stand,
as it were, in the open, a mark for all 'the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune' and yet to feel that around us there are walls most
real, though invisible, which permit no harm to come to us. Our feeble
sense-bound souls much prefer a visible wall. We, like a handrail on
the stair. Though it does not at all guard the descent, it keeps our
heads from getting dizzy. It is hard for us, as some travellers may
have to do, to walk with steady foot and unthrobbing heart along a
narrow ledge of rock with beetling precipice above us and black depths
beneath, and we would like a little bit of a wall of some sort, for
imagination if not for reality, between us and the sheer descent. But
it is blessed to learn that naked we are clothed, solitary we have a
Companion, and unarmed we have our defenceless heads covered with the
shadow of the great wing, which, though sense sees it not, faith knows
is there. A servant of God is never without a friend, and when most
unsheltered

                    'From marge to blue marge
                     The whole sky grows his targe,
                     With sun's self for visible boss,'

beneath which he lies safe.

'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and if we realise,
as we ought to do, His purpose to keep us safe, and His power to keep
us safe, and the actual operation of His hand keeping us safe at every
moment, we shall not ask that these defences shall be supplemented by
the poor feeble earthworks that sense can throw up.

III. Lastly, note the citizens.

Our text is part of a 'song,' and is not to be interpreted in the
cold-blooded fashion that might suit prose. A voice, coming from whom
we know not, breaks in upon the first strain with a command, addressed
to whom we know not--'Open ye the gates'--the city thus far being
supposed to be empty--'that the righteous nation which keepeth the
truth may enter in.' The central idea there is just this, 'Thy people
shall be all righteous.' The one qualification for entrance into the
city is absolute purity.

Now, brethren, that is true in regard to our present imperfect
denizenship within the city; and it is true in regard to men's passing
into it in its perfect and final form. As to the former, there is
nothing that you Christian people need more to have dinned into you
than this, that your continuance in the state of a redeemed man, with
all the security and blessing that attach thereto, depends upon your
continuing to be righteous. Every sin, every flaw, every dropping
beneath our own standard in conscience of what we ought to be, has for
its inevitable result that we are robbed for the time being of
consciousness of the walls of the city being about us and of our being
citizens thereof. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who
shall stand in His holy place?' The New Testament, as emphatically as
the old psalm, answers,' He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.'
'Let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous.'
There is no way by which Christian men here on earth can pass into and
keep within the city of the living God, except they possess personal
purity, righteousness of life, and cleanness of heart.

They used to say that Venice glass was so made that any poison poured
into it shivered the vessel. Any drop of sin poured into your cup of
communion with God, shatters the cup and spills the wine. Whosoever
thinks himself a citizen of that great city, if he falls into
transgression, and soils the cleanness of his hands, and ruffles the
calm of his pure heart by self-willed sinfulness, will wake to find
himself not within the battlements, but lying wounded, robbed,
solitary, in the pitiless desert. My brother, it is 'the righteous
nation' that 'enters in,' even here on earth.

I do not need to remind you how, admittedly by us all, that is the case
in regard to the final form of the city of our God, into which nothing
shall enter 'that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or
maketh a lie.' Heaven can only be entered into hereafter by, as here
and now it can only enter into, those who are pure of heart. All else
there would shrivel as foul things born In the darkness do in the
light, and be consumed in the fire. None but the pure can enter and see
God.

'The nation which keepeth the truth'--that does not mean adherence to
any revelation, or true creed, or the like. The word which is employed
means, not truth of thought, but truth of character; and might,
perhaps, be better represented by the more familiar word in such a
connection, 'faithfulness.' A man who is true to God, keeping up a
faithful relation to Him who is faithful to us, he, and only he, will
pass into, and abide in, the city.

Now, brethren, so far our text carries us, but no further; unless,
perhaps, there may be a hint of something yet deeper in the next clause
of this song. If any one asks, How does the nation become righteous?
the answer may lie in the immediately following exhortation--'Trust ye
in the Lord for ever.' But whether that be so or not, if we want an
answer to the questions, How can my stained feet be cleansed so as to
be fit to tread the crystal pavements? how can my foul garments be so
purged as not to be a blot and an eyesore, beside the white, lustrous
robes that sweep along them and gather no defilement there? the only
answer that I know of is to be found by turning to the final visions of
the New Testament, where the spirit of this whole section of our
prophet is reproduced. Again, Babylon falls amidst the songs of saints;
and then, down upon all the dust and confusion of the crash of ruin,
the seer beholds the Lamb's wife, the new Jerusalem, descending from
above. To his happy eyes its glories are unveiled, its golden streets,
its open gates, its walls of precious stones, its flashing river, its
peaceful inhabitants, its light streaming from the throne of God and of
the Lamb. And when that vision passes, his last message to us is,
'Blessed are they that wash their robes that they may enter through the
gates into the city.' None but those who wash their garments, and make
them white in the blood of the Lamb, can, living, come unto the city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; or, dying, can pass through the
iron gate that opens to them of its own accord, and find themselves as
day breaks in the street of the Jerusalem which is above.




THE INHABITANT OF THE ROCK

'Thou wilt keep him In perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee:
because he trusteth in Thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for in the
Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.'--ISAIAH xxvi. 3-4.


There is an obvious parallel between these verses and the two preceding
ones. The safety which was there set forth as the result of dwelling in
the strong city is here presented as the consequence of trust. The
emblem of the fortified place passes into that of the Rock of Ages.
There is the further resemblance in form, that, just as in the two
preceding verses we had the triumphant declaration of security followed
by a summons to some unknown persons to 'open the gates,' so here we
have the triumphant declaration of perfect peace, followed by a summons
to all to 'trust in the Lord for ever.' If we may suppose the
invocation of the preceding verses to be addressed to the watchers at
the gate of the strong city, it is perhaps not too fanciful to suppose
that the invitation in my text is the watcher's answer, pointing the
way by which men may pass into the city.

Whether that be so or no, at all events I take it as by no means
accidental that, immediately upon the statement of the Old Testament
law that righteousness alone admits to the presence of God, there
follows so clear and emphatic an anticipation of the great New
Testament Gospel that faith is the condition of righteousness, and that
immediately after hearing that only 'the righteous nation which keepeth
the truth' can enter there, we hear the merciful call, 'Trust ye in the
Lord for ever.' So, then, I think we have in the words before us,
though not formally yet really, very large teaching as to the nature,
the object, the blessed effects, and the universal duty of that trust
in the Lord which makes the very nexus between man and God, according
to the teaching of the New Testament.

I. First, then, I desire to notice in a sentence the insight into the
true nature of trust or faith given by the word employed here.

Now the literal meaning of the expression here rendered 'to trust' is
to lean upon anything. As we say, trust is reliance. As a weak man
might stay his faltering, tottering steps upon some strong staff, or
might lean upon the outstretched arm of a friend, so we, conscious of
our weakness, aware of our faltering feet, and realising the roughness
of the road, and the smallness of our strength, may lay the whole
weight of ourselves upon the loving strength of Jehovah.

And that is the trust of the Old Testament, the faith of the New--the
simple act of reliance, going out of myself to find the basis of my
being, forsaking myself to touch and rest upon the ground of my
security, passing from my own weakness and laying my trembling hand
into the strong hand of God, like some weak-handed youth on a coach-box
who turns to a stronger beside him and says: 'Take thou the reins, for
I am feeble to direct or to restrain.' Trust is reliance, and reliance
is always blessedness.

II. Notice, secondly, the steadfast peacefulness of trust.

Now there are difficulties about the rendering and precise significance
of the first verse of my text with which I do not need to trouble you.
The Authorised Version, and still more perhaps the Revised Version,
give substantially, as I take it, the prophet's meaning; and the margin
of the Revised Version is still more literal and accurate than the
text, 'A steadfast mind Thou keepest in perfect peace, because it
trusteth in Thee.' If this, then, be the true meaning of the words, you
observe that it is the steadfast mind, steadfast because it trusts,
which God keeps In the deep peace that is expressed by the
reduplication of the word.

And if we break up that complex thought into its elements, it just
comes to this, first, that trust makes steadfastness. Most men's lives
are blown about by winds of circumstance, directed by gusts of passion,
shaped by accidents, and are fragmentary and jerky, like some ship at
sea with nobody at the helm, heading here and there, as the force of
the wind or the flow of the current may carry them. If my life is to be
steadied, there must not only be a strong hand at the tiller, but some
outward object which shall be for me the point of aim and the point of
rest. No man can steady his life except by clinging to a holdfast
without himself. Some of us look for that stay in the fluctuations and
fleetingnesses of creatures; and some of us are wiser and saner, and
look for it in the steadfastness of the unchanging God. The men who do
the former are the sport of circumstances, and the slaves of their own
natures, and there is no consistency in noble aim and effort t

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