* "W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, iii, p, 388. ' James Russell Lowell.
ISAIAH %67
Hitherto life has been a thin existence, a mere surface glitter, a superficial movement. Now, vitality shall awaken in undreamed- of depths. " Your soul shall live." Life shall no longer be con- fined to the channels of the appetites, to mere sensations, to the outer halls and passages of the sacred house. "Your soul shall live," The unused shall be aroused and exercised. Unevolved faculty shall be unpacked. Benumbed instincts shall be liberated. Barren powers of discernment shall troop from their graves. New intelligences shall be born. The ocean of iniquity shall ebb, and " the sea shall give up its dead " ! " Your soul shall live." Life shall no longer be scant and scrimpy. Your soul shall "delight itself in fatness." Every tissue shall be fed. Weakness shall depart with the famine. " The people that do know their God shall be strong." The tree of its life shall bear all manner of fruits, and " the leaves of the tree shall be for the healing of the nations."
1. The first benefit is, the pleasure of it: " Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." I recollect the time when I used to look upon the precious things of God as many a poor street arab has gazed at the dainties in a confectioner's window, wishing that he could get a taste, and feehng all the more hungry because of that which was stored behind the glass out of his reach. But when the Master takes us into His banqueting house, and His banner over us is love ; and when He says to us, " Eat, friends ; drink, yea, drink abundantly, 0 beloved," then we have a grand time of it, and we feel almost as if heaven had begun below.
2. The second benefit is, the great preserving power of good spiritual food. It helps to keep us out of temptation. I do not think a man is ever so likely to be tempted as when he has neglected to eat his spiritual meat. We have this truth, in a parable, for in Him there was no lack of spiritual meat ; but, after He had fasted, when He was an hungered, then it was that Ee was tempted of the devil ; and if your soul has been, for a long time, without spiritual food, you are very likely to meet the devil. I have known men go away for a holiday on the Continent, and when they have been away, there has been no hearing of the Word, and, possibly, no private reading of the
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68 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
Word. Or they may have gone to live in a country town, where the gospel was not faithfully preached ; and they have made a terrible shipwreck of character, because their inward strength was not sustained by spiritual meat, and then the tempter fell upon them. There is rather a pretty remark that someone makes, though I do not vouch for the truth of it. You know that, when the Lord put Adam in the garden of Eden, He said to him, " Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it " ; and, says one, " If Eve had availed herself of that gracious permission, on that fatal day, and if she had eaten freely of all the other trees in the garden, of which she might have eaten, she would not have been so likely to wish to eat of that which was forbidden '
3. A third blessing is this. Spiritual food comforts mourners. The analogy of this will be found in the Book of Nehemiah, the eighth chapter, and the ninth and tenth verses, where we read that Nehemiah said to the people, " This day is holy unto the Lord your God ; mourn not, nor weep. ... Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared." A feast is a good way of breaking a fast. He that eats forgets his former misery, and remembers his sorrow no more, especially if he eats the mystic meat which God provides so abundantly for his sorrowing children. It was of this that Mary sang, " He hath filled the hungry with good things."
4. Spiritual meat has a fourth excellence. It revives the fainting ones. Did you ever study the sermon that was once preached by an angel to a desponding prophet ? It consisted of only three words, and he preached it twice. The prophet was Elijah, who, after the wondrous victory and excitement on the top of Carmel, fainted in spirit, and was afraid of Jezebel, and said, " Let me die ; " and so fled from the field of battle, and longed to expire. In his weariness and sorrow, he fell asleep, and an angel came, and awoke him, and this was the sermon he preached to him, "Arise and eat." And when he opened his eyes, he saw that " there was a cake baken on the coals, and a
ISAIAH 369