Luke iii. 4 — 6. It is written in the book of the tvords of Esaias the 'prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the zvilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all fie sit shall see the salvation of God.
THERE is an abruptness in the language of the prophets, which, though it sometimes casts an ob- scurity over their writings, often gives them very peculiar force and energy. This may be noticed par- ticularly in the passage referred to in our text. At the beginning of the fortieth chapter of his prophecies, Isaiah, without any particular intimation of it breaks
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forth into a distinct subject, which from that time occupies his chief attention. He has indeed in the preceding chapters occasionally spoken of the Re- deemer's kingdom : but from the beginning of this chapter he almost loses sight of the deliverance from Babylon, and dwells, even in the primary sense of his words, on the more important deliverance of men from their bondage to sin and Satan. He informs usa that God had commissioned him to comfort his drooping people with assured prospects of his return- ing favour through the intervention of the Messiah. Then, passing over eight hundred years as scarcely more than a single day, he seems to himself to hear the very voice of Christ's forerunner, and to see him occupied in preparing the Messiah's way : and then, with a confident expectation that God's word should stand, he predicts the ultimate and universal establish- ment of the Messiah's kingdom.
The passage is quoted by St. Luke as actually ful- filled in the preaching of John the Baptist; and it may well be considered as of peculiar importance, since it is quoted by all the Four Evangelists. In considering it, we shall be led to shew,
I. What are the chief obstructions to our Redeemer's kingdom —
Some there were peculiar to the apostolic age —
[The Jetvs were so attached to Moses and their law, that they could not endure any thing which appeared to weaken their authority, and to transfer the people's regard to any other teacher. Knowing that their religion was from God, and not aware that it was intended only to be of temporary duration, they accounted it the vilest blasphemy to speak of the ministry of the one, or the authority of the other, being superseded.
They had also very erroneous notions of the Messiah's kingdom : they supposed he would be a great temporal prince, who would deliver them from the Roman voke, and raise their nation to the highest pinnacle of human grandeur. Hence they were quite indignant that a poor despised Nazarene, who had not a place where to lay his head, should pretend to call himself their Messiah.
These prejudices greatly obstructed the establishment of
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