The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 457

thresh our lives. And when the chl\ft' ie separated from the wheat, then the oom mu~t be bruised nn<i broken. It is not the outwardly peaceful, comfortable life that hae in it the elements of ministry. The Saviour was a Man of sorrows, and ncq_uaintcd with grief. He is brought near to us 8ll being not of the seed of angels, but ot the seed of Abraham. How were those sensibilities of bis nature bruised with the hardness, coldness, and ne~lect of men I How even his disciples hurt him, forsaking him, and not even watching with him one hour I "Bread-corn is bruised." "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for manv." I. "Tm: BEST J.IP'E MEANS PAm. Bruised I Com is not enough. It must be made into bread. It is thus that tn1e affection comes out when we suffer for others. So also is it with true humility. It is the bruised heart that has medicaments in it for others out of its own castings down. II. THE BEST LIFE MEANS USEFULNESS. We stand in constant relationship to others. Man may be to his hrother bread of thought, through long hours of mental struggle and agony. He may be bread of compassion too. We are to be "meet for the Master's use." Thus we learn that to be mere quictists or pietists is not enough. We must not ligbt the lonely lamp of incense before the altar, and remain in rapt meditation or even de,otion, always. No. The disciples had to come down from the ecstatic moments of the transfiguration to the common earth and to homespun duty. III. THE BEST LIFE ME.ANS OPPOSITION TO THE SPIRIT OP' THE WORLD. " Save us from being bruised," is the cry of men of this world. "Give us comfort, ease, health, outward prosperity." And so these are protected at every point. Sorrow is never welcomed as an angel. Discipline is never thought of as a moulder of character. IV. TrrE BEST LIFE MEANS Gon's OWN CHASTISEMENT. This is divinely appointed and delicately ordered. It means wisdom and forethought and adaptation ; ver. 27, "For the fitches are not threshed with a threshiug-instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitcbes are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod." Yes, that is it, there is a hand at work-a Father's hand. V. THE BEST LIFE MEANS HEAVEN. "Because he will not ever be threshing it." No. Discipline, however painful, ends in the grave. The beauty of spiritual per- fection begins when we are with the saints in light. "These are they which came out of great tribnlation. They hunger no more. 'l'hey thirst no more. There shall be no night there."-W. M. S. VerL 1-4, 7, 8.-The evil of excess: a sermon on intemperance. The allusion here is to the prevalent baneful vice of intemperance. The evils which are connected with it, and which constitute its condemnation, are such as belong to other kinds of excess, but especially and emphatically to it. I. li0Nou11 IS HUMILIATED BY IT. "The crown of pride is trodden under feet" (vers. 1, 3). The proud city, which was, alas! a city given up to drunkenness, should be brought down to the very dust. Intemperance causes the man who has h~ld the highest position to become despised by every neighbour that has the common virtue of l!Obri~y; it takes the crown of honour from the brow; it humbles even to the ground the pitiable victims of vice. II. BEAUTY IB SPOILED BY IT. Its "glorious beauty becomes a faded flower" (vers. 1, 4). Excess is found, not only in the vulgar, in the illiterate, in the uncomely, but also in the refined, in the accomplished, in the beautiful, of the sons and daughters of men. When it is found there it soon does its fatal work. The beautiful is soon gone both from the form and from the spirit; the green leaf witbers, the e:i:quisi~e bloom fadeB. From that which once attracted every eye, all men turn away grieved, 1f not positively repelled. III. STnEi-OTII 1s SAPPED DY IT. "Overcome with wine" (ver. 1). The ma!l whose strength is composed of so many elements-material, mental, spiritual-is posi- tively bl-aten, overcome, made helpless, useless, ludicrou~, despicable, by a few glas~es c,f liquor I It is a painful, shameful instance of strength being mastered by that which it ought to be able to subdue, IV. W1s1>0.\I IB MISLED BY IT. "They have erred lhrouwh wine • • • are out ~f the way •.. they err in vision, they stumble in judgment' (ver. 7), They who, if oa, xxvm. 1-29.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 461