The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 55

Men often lose more morally in their rest-time than they can recover In their work- time. No unjust trading can produce real prosperity. England bas• gained by every act of righteous policy, such a.e the abolition of the corn-laws, the slave-trade. Whatever is gain to the health of the national conscience ie permanent. Every juat act is 11, tonic to the soul. 3. They are full of the materials/OT war. Their reliance is on horses and chariots. When a nation places confidence on physical force only, it is another symptom of moral enervation. How often haa this been seen in history ! The very existence of e. great armed force is 11, constant provocative to war. It breeds a martial imagination and 11, bellicose spirit. National jealousies are roused, and the slightest occasion may set 11, continent aflame. The people must learn that Jehovah delights not in' the legs of men; i.e. in serried battalions, and that in proportion as they lean on armies they are faithless to God. They must learn to say, " Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy" (Hos. xiv. 3). 4. They are f11ll of idols. Thie is perhaps the worst feature of their state. The prohibi- tion of idols is grounded in the nature of our thought. The idol defines and narrows what ought to be left indefinable. The Phrenician and other idols introduced into Israel brought down the Divine to the forms and dimensions of the human being, and all human passions the most sensuous could be projected upon them. And when man sees only his idealized 8elf before him in the sculptor's work, he falls to self-adoration. It waa quite otherwise with the grand music and religious poetry of the prophets and psalmists. Lofty poetic images by their very vagueness and suggestiveness lead the mind to the truth beyond and behind them. High music and poesy we ever need in worship; but too definite forms fetter the flight of the devout imagination. In general idolatry means eelf-1ove, and. must ever be antagonis_tic to pure religion. " Thus man lowers himself, becomes unworthy to appear before Jehovah, and belong to hill people." A:nd judgment is inevitable; .there can be no escape from it now! II.. TERROR AT THE Al'PROA0H OF THE JUDGE. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, fleeing before Jehovah's terror, and the splendour of his majesty." The soul living in falsehood as its element shrinks away from the coming trnth which must annihilate it. Men's fears represent to them at last their follies and their sins. "Like bate e.nd vermin hurrying from the sudden light, Our sordid vices fe.r from God would take their flight. n The eyes· that were not cast down in prayer, the mien of profane impudence that laughed at Beaven, e.re now shrivelled, prone in the dust now before the lonely sublimity of the eternal Holiness. Those who made nought of God must learn that nought can exist jWhich 'does not exist in God. "At last we hear a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, Is there any hope? To which an answer peals from that high land, But in a tongue no man co.n understand; And on the glimmering limit far with,Ire.wu, God makes himself au awful rose of dawn." J. Vere. 12-22.-The day of fudgment. Here follows 11, grand pioture, in whioh 11, few ei,mple thoughts are, set. , I. TnE DAl' ,oF JEnov·AH. This stands for any and every epoch of clearer light which reveals the relative worth of things. False estimates of life and its objects have become by custom fixed. The imagination has been under a delusion. A false idea of greatness and goodness ha.a become so fixed that nothing but a revolution will subvert it. The criticism of words may be defied ; but the criticism of facts, of results,-against this there is no appeal. There is no reversal of the judgment of events. A great day of judamcnt was, for example, the French Revolution of a century ago. The falsehood of gen~rations was then expiated in blood. Social institutions which were bad, inhuman. yet which those who had grown up in them regarded as impossible to alter, were effaced in that terrible outpouring of the wrath of God. The sense amidst great wrong that th@  40 TlIE BOOK OF THE •PROPHET ISAIAH.