No one of us indeed would question in words our Lord's immutable Deity. No one would question that He came to us
1 W. G. Jordan.
ISAIAH 109 1
in the Father's name, to reveal the Father to us. Yet is it not true that, practically, we are all tempted to think of Him as He moved about among men under the limitations of earthly existence ? Is it not true that we are tempted to substitute Him for the Father to whose presence He leads us ? Is it not true that our faith in consequence is in peril of becoming unmanly, sentimental, fantastic, unbraced by the generous discipline of reverence, unpurified by the spiritual fire of awe ?
IT For eight years Dannecker, the German sculptor, laboured upon a marble statue of the Christ. When he had worked upon it for two years it seemed to him that the statue was finished. What more could he do to add to its perfection ? To test the matter, however, he one day called a little girl into his studio, and, directing her attention to the statue, said, " Who is that ? " She replied promptly, " A great man." He turned away disheartened. He felt that he had failed, and that his two years of labour had been lost. But he began anew. He toiled on for six years more, and then, inviting another little child into his studio, repeated the inquiry, "Who is that?" This time he was not disappointed. After looking in silence awhile, the child's curiosity deepened into awe and reverence, and bursting into tears, she said softlV " Suffer little children to come unto Me." It was enough. The untutored instinct of the child had led her to the right con- clusion, and he knew that his work was a success. Dannecker declared afterwards that in his solitary vigils he had seen a vision of Christ, and had but transferred to the marble the image which the Lord had shown him. Some time later Napoleon Bonaparte requested him to make a statue of Venus for the gallery of the Louvre. But he refused, saying, " A man who has seen Christ would commit sacrilege if he should employ his art in the carving of a pagan goddess. My art henceforth is a consecrated thing." ^
4. The title Lord of Hosts has a history.
(1) It is possible that at one time the title suggested the idea of Jahweh as the leader of the Israelite forces. In favour of this view is the fact that the word sabaoth outside this phrase always refers to bodies of men, and usually to Israelite forces. There is no doubt that in the early stages of the history of the nation the popular view of the functions of Jahweh was concentrated to a large extent on this point, that He was the guider and commander of the armies in warfare; and the same
> R. F. Coyle.
no THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
idea lingered late, and lies at the bottom of the objection to the institution of the monarchy which is put in Samuel's mouth (cf. 1 Sam. viii. 20 with 1 Sam. xii. 12). In the same way, David, as he taunts Goliath, says to him, "I come in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel" (1 Sam. xvii. 45). (2) So we are brought to another view, which may merely mark a later stage : the " hosts " are the spiritual forces which stand at God's disposal. So in Josh. v. 13, 14, when Joshua asks the unknown warrior whether he is on their side or on that of their enemies, the implied answer of the Divine stranger is that he belongs to neither side, but is come as captain of the Lord's host to succour His people. (3) The third stage is reached in the prophets, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Malachi, where the title assumes a far wider meaning and embraces all the forces of the universe.'^
Every man's vision of the true God of history or of hope
repeats this of Isaiah. Behind every great statesman, or
reformer, whether he speaks our theologic dialect or not, is a
vision of the power which leads the universe and every atom of
it to lofty ends, whose forces run everywhere, whose flowing
robes fill the whole palace of life and being, and whose energies
are more than we see and hear and know, and above us, — the
Lord of hosts. A man need not believe intelligently all the
truth about a seraph and cherub, but if he is to organise society
and guide men well, if he is to reform abuses and reconstitute
broken-down humanity, he must, with the inner eye of thought
and faith, see that the powers above life are supreme over those
beneath it, that there are more and finer energies in the unseen
than in the seen, that they that are for us are more than they
that be against us, and that around every Elisha are chariots and
horses in the clouds which are the invisible reserve of God and
man. This faith in unseen truths and powers has made men
brave enough to be statesmen rather than politicians. They
have counted upon the reality of what they did not see. The