1 A. L, Moore.
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be deaf to the Voice that declared it. The cynic may burst into ironic laughter, and the coarse interpret its holy prophecy in terms of madness. But goodness ever has its own vision. The prophet has ever been the man with eyes in his soul. He can sing with Abt Vogler —
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear ; The rest may reason and welcome : 'tis we musicians know.
One holy vision fills his mind and heart — there is a perfectness which is dowered with supremacy, beauty, and abidingness. And ultimately that shall surely triumph.^
The Need of Deliverance.
1. The herald and hastener of a better and hoHer day must be distinguished first by a profound sense of the evil of the present. The prophet was no blind optimist cherishing a foolish hope of a better and happier future, because he did not see the abounding evils around him. He saw with clear, penetrating eyes, the moral and spiritual degradation of his nation and day ; saw how king and priests and people were, with few exceptions, eaten with idolatry as with a cancer. He speaks of it, aye, and of the national evils which must issue from it — exile, defeat, the overthrow of their beautiful city. That is true of the prophetic band from first to last — from Elijah to John. They saw, they were oppressed by, the evils in Church and State — were almost overwhelmed by them — and rose up in indignant condemnation. They pointed out the unescapable issue of the evil they saw, and demanded a return to a simpler and purer life. Elijah, with trumpet voice, demands: "How long halt ye?" And John lifts up his voice in the desert and bids men " flee from the wrath to come." A profound sense of the sinfulness of sin, and of the wrath of God which abides perpetually upon it, distinguishes those who were the " road-makers " of past ages. I do not say it was not shared by many of their countrymen, but it is as true of these men as it is of men of our own day — the holier and the more consecrated to God feel the evil and the sin most. They
1 G. B. Austin, The Beauty of Goodness, p. 190,
2i8 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
see the mountains of injustice that need to be levelled, the abysses of vice to be filled in, the crookedness, falsity of social life, the inequalities which make the existence of myriads a life- long martyrdom.
2. What then was the evil which Christ was to conquer in man and for man ? It was sin. Sin is the one real evil. It is certainly worse than pain, since pain may become a good. It is certainly worse than death, since death is only the effect of sin, and may be the gate of freedom. It is worse even than the devil, since it makes the devil to be what he is. The devil would be powerless, and death would have no sting, and pain would be unknown, if it were not for sin. But sin is not a thing always palpable to and recognised by the sinner. It is, says Liddon, like the peculiar atmosphere in which we pass the great part of our lives here in Oxford. Looking down upon our homes from the top of Shotover, we see the thick damp fog burying this city and valley beneath a shroud of unwholesome vapour; but here in the streets of Oxford we scarcely observe it hanging in the sunlight, except when it becomes excessive in the depth of winter. Sin is just such a mist as this : it is a fog, a blight, impalpable yet real, about us, around us, within us. It bathes our moral life on this side and that, and withal it blinds us to the fact of its existence. If man would take a true measure of sin, he must be lifted out of it ; he must ascend to some moral eminence, whence its real character will be made plain to him, and where he may form strong resolutions to close with any ofifer of deliverance and escape from its importunity and thraldom. Now such an eminence was supplied in early days by the gift of a moral law. The law did not add to the stock of existing evil, but it drew the unsuspected latent sin of man forth into the daylight ; it irritated into intense vigour the principle of opposition which, even when dormant, is ever so strong in sinful human nature, and which shows itself, under the irritation, in its true light as sin. The law was like those remedies in medicine which rid us of a disease by bringing it to the surface, or, as we say, by precipitating it ; it forced man to see what he really is, and to forget what he had fancied himself to be. " By the law is the knowledge of sin."
3, But men mast be convinced of the evil and of the need
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of deliverance from it. Take an illustration. We know that in this country no political measure that really touches the interests of the people can receive the sanction and the force of law, unless the people themselves are convinced that the evils which the measure proposes to remedy are substantial and not fancy evils. No legislative genius on the part of the minister can dispense with this condition of success. If the country is not convinced that the measure is necessary, the minister must take measures that will produce this conviction. He must hold meetings ; he must make speeches ; he must write dissertations ; he must deal in dry statistical demonstrations and in vehemently passionate appeals ; he must set in motion all the complicated machinery of political agitation and enterprise which may be at his disposal. Supposing him to be himself satisfied of the necessity of the measure in contemplation, this is nothing more than his duty to his country ; he would fail of that duty if he should neglect to diffuse, according to the best of his power, that amount of political information which is necessary to his success.