The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 63

market-place. A frame was fastened round the neck and wrists, which left the head and hands exposed. Crowds gathered below, and scorned the poor man, throwing at him·all manner of vile things, and then raising the laugh at his soiled and bemired face. The shame of ·such a punishment must have been very hard to bear. The chapter before us intimates thnt this intenser kind of punishment, this shame and humiliation, awaits all who forsake or neglect the living God, and serve the idols of their own pleasure. 'l'he Law of God must indeed rise up to vindicate its claims and execute its .11anotiona; it mUBt lift up its hand to smite. But there is something more solemn than that; .the- Law shall come to the sinner himself one day. It shall look upon him with its look of inward purity and outraged love; it shall be the look of his God. That will be a flash of the eternal light; it will reveal to him the blackness of his heart, and pride will be, once for all, crushed; vain confidences will drop out of his hands, an<l, putting those hands on his face, he will cry in his shame, "0 rock, hide me from the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty." The fear of coming shame ought to deter men from evil. - I. RIGHT AND WRONG ARE READILY CONFOUNDED IN THIS WORLD. "Woe unto those who call .evil good, and good evil," disturbing thus the foundations of morals,. and confusing the te~timony of men's consciences. Evil and good are opposites, contra- dictories; they meet nowhere, they blend nohow. Few men question the distinction between right: and wrong, but many ask on what ground the distinction rests; and "Is it possible for us men clearly to recognize the distinction'?" Are there no finer shades of. circumstance which occasion di.fliculty and confusion? In this complicated state of society do we not need some very clear, sharp, precise test? And is there any such? There is. '.I:he right, the tr:ue, is everything with which we can associate the presence and inspection of God, without feeling either sense of unfitness or fear. In orde11 to discover the contents and qualities of a substance, the chemist will add some testing fluid! to it, and by the effect produced he learns the qualities. That we can do to· test the rightness or wrongness of any act of life. .ddd the thought of God to it. But the fact··stares us in the face that good and evil.are now sadly .confounded. 1. H is often so when the movements of life are made without befitting consideration. Into so many undertakings we are simply borne by the press of social customs, the example of our neighbours, or the influence of excitement; and we have actually stepped over the borderland of the-right before we have quite realized our position. 2. It is often so because the false can put on such appearances as will suffice to deceive us. "Even Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." 3. .And it is often so because the wrong bias of our souls even makes us willing to see fancied goodness in the false. So often the wrong offers a present gratification of passion, and so stills opposition and effects its evil design. II. SooNER'OR LATER THE FALSENESS OF THE FALSE, AND THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE TRUE, MUST . DE MANIFESTED ; and that manifestation must prove an overwhelming shame to all who have served the false. 'l'he time of the manifestation is called "the day of God." In some sense the present is man's day. His voice is loud now; his will ia strong now; bis pleasures abundant; and God seems to be still. Wrong riots, and God seems to hold aloof. Sin rules, and in forbearance God restrains himself. .And yet the tl'lltb,iil'that God's day is an eternal now; it is always close at hand. It may be shown that God's day comes (1) in the time of our conversion; (2) in the humblin).?; of our first·sight of the cross; (3) in the time of the sinner's remorse; (4) in the tim" of national ·calamity; (5) and in what is spoken of iu Scripture ns "the day of jml~- ment." Men may do in this twilight time of earth, deceiving themselves, and bein~ deceived, in this dim, uncertain light, this mingled shade and shine. If they want to do wrong, it is only to push it a little further into the shadow, and then they cannot well see what it is. llut men would blush to do their wrongs in the full blaze of day. 'l'hey will hide their heads in shame when God dispels the shadows, and makes tho revealing light of his day rest on their lives.-R. '1'. Vere. 12--17.-The Lora's day for the proud. .Any time of specific judgment or mercy is in the Scriptures called n " day of the Lord." Tho dBy of the Lord has como fur the antediluvian world, for Sodom, for the Canannites, for Babylon, for Isrnel. It is ever coming to nations, in the corruption or the calamity that follow on national sin.  THE BOOK OF 'l'HE PROPHET •ISAIAH. [OH, n, 1..._22