The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 304

individual inetaaoes, the words of the te:ll:t find illustration.' L When the proud, godless man is brought down from his high position; when of all in which he gloried nothing but a few berries on the topmost boughs are left. Let youth shrink from entering on a course which will certainly have this pitiful end; let those who are pursuing it abandon it at the very earliest hour. 2. When death (the penalty of sin) intimates its approach, when the leanness and fruitlessness of' death are apparent, then let a man ask whether there is life in its fulness and fruitfulneM awaiting him on the other ehore.-0. Vers. 7, 8.-Thefu1nction of adversity. I. THE PREVALENCE OF TROUBLE nr THIS WOBLD OF BIN. "That day" was the day of national disaster, and, therefore, or individual distress. In the more settleu and durable condition of modern times and Western lands, we are much less liable to suffer from this particnlar cause. But civilization brings its own perils and its own troubles, and while sin lasts "the day" of sorrow will be continually recurring. How many are the sources whence it may spring! Pecuniary embarrassment; disappointment; the loss of kindred or friends, or (what is worse) the loss of their love and their friendship; humiliation; ill healtb, and the fear of'·sudden removal from those who are clinging, and perhaps dependent; a sense of guilt before God; a sense of defeat as a Christian aspirant or Christian workman, etc. IL Gon's PURPOSE IN BENDING IT. 1. God does send it. (See Amos iii. 6.) He directly inflicts it, or he furthers it in his Divine providence, or, at the least, he permitll it (see, also, Matt. x. 29). 2, He sends it to draw us to himself. (1) To withdraw us froin the inferior and the untrustworthy objects; that a man may "not look to the altars, the work of his hands ; " that we may discover, what we are so slow to learn, that all· human help and all earthiy securities are insufficient and unavailing ; that these things of our own devising and constructing, which our fingers have made, break down iu the time of our distress, and leave us" naked to our enemies." (2) To draw us to the mighty and the holy One. Our Maker will not want the power to redeem us. 'l'he Holy One of Israel will not fail to sanctify to us the evil ho ha.s sent us. He draws us to himself that; at bis throne of grace, in sacred fellowship with him, we may be drawn ·to penitence,' to trustfulness, to prayerfulness, to the consecration or the rededication of our lives to'his service.-C. • ' Vers. 101 lb--.:The sin and doom of ungodliness. We learn- I. THAT ffi>D IS WRONGED AND GRIEVED BY OUR NEGLECT OF HIMSELF AS WELL AS BY OUR DISOBEDIENCE To ms LAWS. Men sometimes mistakenly suppose that their sin is limited by the number of_ their transgressions of God's positive enactments. They make a very serious mistake in so judging. Great guilt, indeed, is contracted by the breaoh of Divine commandment, by setting at defiance the "Thou shalt not" of sacred Scripture. But our obligation strikes deeper far, and, when we fail, our sin includes immeasurably'more than this. God deserues, anu he desires, and he even demands, that we; his human children, should render to him, himself, all that filial love and fellowship which is due from such beloved and enriched ones to such t\ gracious and bountiful Father. His charge against us is not merely that we have doue numbers or things which he has prohibited; it is that we have lived on through days, weeks, months, years, through whole periods and stages of our life, and have forgotten him, the God of our salvation, have not been mindful of him, the Rock of our strength; it is tha:t we _have taken blessings and deliverances from his strong, redeeming hand, aud have been content to spend our days in ungodliness, \\"ithholding the grntitude, the affection, the submission, the willing and joyous servico \\"hich a relationship so near as is ours to him, and which bonofits so great as are his to us, do emphatically demand. '!'he simple and true answor to the question, "What have we failed to render to our redeeming and our beneficent God?" should cover us with shame and send us to our knees in penitence. II. THAT AN UNGODLY LIFE IS NOT ONLY A PROLONGED INIQUITY, BUT IS ALSO A SUPREME MISTAKE. ·" llecause thou hast forgotten . . . therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants . . . but the harvest shall be a heap," et.;. 'l'he mistake of ungodliness is s•!1:1.\ in that: 1. It leaves out and loses all the real nobility from human lifc'-all that which raises mnn's nature above the brutes', and connects it with the angelic and 300 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAlI. [on. xvn. 1-14,