The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 500

the .1eart.. Burns the poet said, "After sll that has l1een said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not Rpeak of the eeleoted frw, favoured by partial Heaven, who~e ~ouls nre tuned to gladness, and riohes, and honours, and prudence, and wisdom; I speak of the neglected mauy, whose nerves, whOIIO Binews, whose days, are sold to the minion of fortune." It is this way of thinking -it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so preoious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of euthusia.sm, "what truth on earth so precious as the lie"? What is needed is "the expulsh·e power of a new affection in the sense of the nearness of God-the sense that he does hear and that he does answer out of the vastness and the void." And he will so answer, if he be sought for with" all the heart" (Jer. xxix. 12-14). ll. THE BLESSING OF TEACHERS. On the one hand, here is physical want-" bread of adversity, and water of affliction." On the other hand, a perpetual supply of spiritual food and spiritual consolation. The best of the people felt that it was the saddest thing that could be suffered-to have no more "signs" from God, to be desti.. tute of the prophet, and of the man of superior insight (Ps. lxxiv. 9). The famine of "not bearing the Word of Jehovah" (Amos viii. 11) is bitterer than hunger or thirst. The effect may be traced to a definite cause-the sin of the people or of the teachers themselves (eh. xliii. 27). The one might be unworthy to listen to, the other to deliver, the truth of God (eh. xliii. 27). There is no calling more glorious, none which leads to a more lustrous immortality (Dan. xii. 3), than that of the religious teacher, none. which is of greater service in the promotion of the kingdom of God. If so great be the blessing of the ministry of the truth, it flows from the goodness of God that, in the happy times to come, teachers shall never be absent from the people. III. THE DLEssr~G OF INWARD ILLUMINATION. The" word behind them" may be the Bath-Kol, the daughter of the Voice, as the Jews say, or, according to a way of thinking more familiar to ourselves, the voice of conscience. "God is not a hidden God in the sense that his life is closed up within himself. His Word goes forth to the world, that it may come into being, and to the children of men that they may know it and find life in it (Ps. xxxiii. 6; cf. Deut. iv. 12; 1 Sam. iii. 4; 1 Kings xix. 11, sqq.). (On the Bath-Kol, see Matt. iii. 17; xvii. 5; John xii. 28.) The notion is that of invisible and unexpected agency. The admonitions of providence, of conscience, of the Holy Spirit, seem often to come behind us-to recall us from the path on which we were going, from the course that would be fraught with danger. When in danger of straying to this side or to that, the voice will call us back. In this ,respect the Divine ,oice is like the dzmonion of Socrates, which was a restraining influence. IV. PunITY AND PROSPERITY. A symptom of a return to true religion will be the casting away of the relics and reminders of idolatry-the defiling in the Name of the holy God of that which to heathen eyes was holy. Josiah'e conduct was an example of this (2 Kings xxiii.). The expression of abhorrence for the symbol expresses at the same time abhorrence for the thing symbolized. The repentance of the individual, the reformation of the nation, must be signalized by the " rending of the idol," not merely from its high place, but from the heart itself. When the heart is brought into the fuller knowledge of God, it loves what he loves, and bat.ea what be bates. The thought of what is "an abomination to Jehovah" (Deut. vii. 25) is reflected in an intense distaste in the sonl. 2. This will be consistent with external prosperity. Rain will come down upon the sown seed. As the withholding of the rain followed upon national iniquity as the greatest curse (Zech. xiv. 17, 18), so the giving of the rain meant at once all physical blessing and all Divine favours (Zech. x, 1, etc.). Bread-rich and abundant produce of the land-cattle teeming in the wide pasturea ;-it is the happy picture of a gold_en age. Bread and water-simple elements of living; yet what poetry bangs upon their supply I and what woe, what tragedy and horror, upon the want of them !-J. Ver. 15.-Sources of strength. "In quietness and in confidence shall • your strength." Because," if God be for us, who can be against us?" ,vben the winds are in our favour, all we have to do is to set our sails. When the tides are with us, we nOQd not fret concerning the issues of the voyage. God is on the si<lo of the just man, the true man, the pure man. 'fhe qj.scjples of his Son are not likoly to lG'Be his favour Ott. xn. 1-33.J TUE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH.