3. He is ever living and interceding. Our earthly friends may die, but we shall never lose our best Friend. All merely human comforters will fail us sooner or later, but He will ever abide true and steadfast to all who rely upon Him.
He lives, the great Eedeemer lives, —
so His cause is always safe, and our safety is always secured in Him. Hide thyself, therefore, in the ever-living Man ; for, there, thou needst not fear any change that the rolling ages may bring.
Blessed be the name of Jesus, He is also the intercedirig Man ; for, at this very moment, He is pleading for His people before His Father's throne. We cannot see Him ; yet, sometimes, when our faith is in lively exercise, we can almost behold Him, and can all but hear Him presenting His almighty pleas on behalf of all those who have entrusted their case into His hands.
In every dark distressful hour, When sin and Satan join their power, Let this dear hope repel the dart. That Jesus bears us on His heart,
The King and the Country.
Literature.
Alexander (W.), Leading Ideas of the Gospels, 128. Austin (G. E.), The Beauty of Goodness, 110. Bromfield (A.), Sermons in Town and Country, 48. Brooke (S. A,), Christ in Modern Life, 89, 102, 117. Buckland (A. R.), Text Studies for a Year, 145. Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 288. Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 213. How (W. W.), Plain Words, i. 245. Hatchings (W. H.), Sermon-Sketches, ii. 23. Macmillan (H.), The Mystery of Grace, 265. Manning (H. E.), Sermons, iii. 431. Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Lifers Journey, 102. Maturin (W.), The Blessedness of the Dead in Christ, 90. Moore (A. L.), From Advent to Advent, 277. Newman (J. H.), Parochial Sermons, v. 1, 13, 29, 46. Paget (E. C), Silence, 31. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, ix. 225. Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 40, 41. „ In the Hour of Silence, 41.
Spurgeon (G. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xiii. No. 752. Spurgeon (T.), God Save the King, 175. Swan (A. R.), The Death of Jesus Christ, 59. Welldon (J. E. C.), Tlie School of Faith, 199. Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, 30. Wilmot Buxton (H. J.), Mission Sermons for a Year, 212. British Congregationalist, January-June 1907, 156 (Jowett). Christian World Pulpit, li. 106 (Snell) ; Ixvii. 379 (Rawnsley) ; Ixxiv.
101 (Antram). Church Pulpit Year Book, vii. 282. Contemporary Pulpit, Ist Ser., vii. 1 (Farrar). Thinker, viii. 556 (Hutchings).
The King and the Country.
Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty : they shall behold a far stretching land [R.V.wt. a land of far distances]. — xxxiii. 17.
The circumstances that gave rise to this saying were those con- nected with the memorable siege of Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah. The tents of the Assyrians were blackening all the heights round the sacred city, and the inhabitants were reduced to the greatest straits. Hezekiah during this siege covered himself with sackcloth and ashes, and humbled himself before God. He was also disfigured with the boils of a severe and dangerous illness, and prayed earnestly for relief. In these trying circumstances, a cheering promise of deliverance came by the mouth of the prophet, conveyed in imagery derived from the circumstances of the siege. The fierce invader, Sennacherib, would be routed, the besieging troops would be withdrawn, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem would see the king in his beauty — restored to health, and clothed again with the gorgeous robes of state which he had laid aside during the period of his humiliation. They would also behold the land of farnesses. Hitherto, for a long period, they had been shut up in the besieged city ; they were confined within the walls and closed gates of Jerusalem ; their horizon was bounded by the narrow streets and houses around them ; they could see nothing beyond — no green tree, or field, or garden. But when the siege would be ended, they would be able to go out at will into the country, and feast their eyes upon its fair landscapes and far-extending prospects. They would be brought out into a free and large place, and their horizon would stretch into illimitable distances.
This, then, is the first application of the text; and so interpreted, what a beautiful image it is. But it has a further application than this. The text is undoubtedly Messianic,
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194 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
although, as Dr. Skinner says, some commentators have been unaccountably slow in perceiving this. And when we have reached the Messianic sphere, it is legitimate, even although it may be no part of the original prophecy, to pass yet further and use the text to introduce us to the beauty of the ascended Lord, and to the limitless stretches of that heaven where the redeemed dwell whom no man can number. Thus there will be three stages of exposition — (1) the ideal kingly beauty of the commonplace and the enlargement of the narrow and the near ; (2) the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ on earth and the far- stretching Kingdom of God ; (3) the beauty of the King of Glory and the emancipation of Heaven.
I.
The Beauty of the Commonplace and the Enlargement
OF THE ISTaKEOW.
How persons or things appear to us depends as much upon our own eyesight as upon the persons or things themselves. While the people saw Hezekiah humiliated and unlovely, Isaiah saw him a king in his beauty. For the soul of Isaiah was emancipated from the earthly. His eye had the spiritual insight. This lifted him up so that he saw the king from a heavenly height, transformed in the purpose of God to the beauty of true kingliness. And at the same time he saw the kingdom ever widening till it fulfilled the utmost reach of the promise — from sea to sea, and from the Eiver unto the ends of the earth.