The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 331

land will soon be turned into barrenness, and their harvests cease. Two things ue sttggcstcd for consideration. I. 'l'HE WONDERFUL WAY IN WHICH THINGS ABE LINKED TOGETHER. So that failure In one .thing brings on a most varied train of evils. '£he prominent thing here is the failure of the Nile flood; but how many things are found to depend on that !-the basket- trade:; 'tho paper-trade; the farmer's trade;· the fish-trade; the flax-trade; the Mt~tl'ade; the builder's trade. So is it still. The cotton supply from America was checked a few years ago, and the consequences reached, in one way or another, all classes· of society. Depressions in trade first affect one branch, but presently rise to the highest and descend to the lowest classes of society; and so it is again and ~gain proved that, "we are members on·e of another." II. 'l'HE WONllEBFUL WAY IN WHICH ALL PROSPERITY IS MADE DEPENDENT ON THB ~·1iST GIFTS OF Goo. Man's riches are.God's gifts, Man can never add to the wealth of the world by err;char,ges, which only vary_ the possessors. Air, rain, sunshine, water, electricity, coal, increase from field and beast, are man's riches; and these are first things that are absolutely dependent on God, and out of man's control God withholds the rains, and a nation is in misery; God tempers the air, and plague sweeps away the multitudes; God stops the flood, and Egypt pines away in its helplessness. The source of all real good ia God, in whose hands are the very springs and sources of all human happiness and prosperity.-R. T. Ver. 14.-Men's minds a sphere in which God's fudgments may WO'f'k. "'l'he Lord ho.th mingled a perverse ~pirit in the midst thereof." Failure iu recognizing men's minds and wills, as spheres of Divine operation, makes difficult to us such cases as that of Pharaoh, whose. heart tho Lord is said to have hardened; or that of the prophets iu the time of Ahab, amongst whom God had sent a "lying spirit." But the apostle distinctly taught that all the sides and all the forces of man's nature are in Go.d's control, and that he can work his purposes through them all. Writing to the Romo.ns (i. 28), Paul says of the Gentiles, "God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to'do those things which are not convenient." And the heathen have a motto which ·eni.bodi'es the same tri1th, •~ Whom the gods would destroy they first dement "-a sentence involving a belief in the control of the gods over men's minds. A further illustration tnay be found in the prayer ,offered by David in the time of his extreme peril:·" 0 Lord, I pray thee, tum the counsel of Ahithophcl into foolishness" (2 Sam. xv; 31). This truth we can clearly see and fully accept. I. Goo HAS CON'l'ROL OVER !li:AN's' crn"cuMSTANCES. These are, undoubtedly, the usual spheres of Divine operation. Lifo in the midst of varying circumstances, and subject to the influence or circumstances, is our present lot. God's providence we assume to have its sphere in things and ~vents; and too easily we may come to limit God's working to the incidents of life, and keep him entirely in the external spheres, reaching us ,only through out· senses. So we need to have set before us the further and more searching truth, that-- • II. Goo HAS CONTROL oviR MAN'S MIND AND HEART. This may be difficult to harmonize with our notions of man's free-will and independence. But man's free-will is not an absolute thing; it is set within careful and precise limitations. Man has liberty within a tether; and he cannot be trusted beyond the tether. God never looses his hold on him. 'l'he point, however, which especially calls for illustration and enforcement here is, that God ma:y' execute his judgments on ·man in the sphere of his mind. A state of stubbornness, perversity, and hardening may be traced by man as the natural response of certain minds to certain circumstances. ·we are taught to look deeper, and see iu bad mental states and moods not Divine permissions only, but Divine operation·s and Divine judgments. 'l'he mental blindness and deafness, the nai·row-mindcdness, the sceptical tendency, of a particular age, we view arig:!it when we regaru. as Divine judgment working towards humility.-R. 'l'. Ver. 19.-The r:ry of distress after the true God. The erection of the altar and the pillar would be a sign of desire after God. "In Isaiah's time it must have seemed iucrcdible that the firmly organized idolatrous system of Egypt should ever be broken '.Ip. Yet such a result was brought about by a series uf movements-Assyrian, 828 THE BOOK OF 'l'H~ PROPHET ISAIAH. [on. xtx. 1-25.