The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 1 — Section 501

and reward. "Bles~ed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city." I. Tim DIOTUM IS DIVINE, "'fhus saith the Lord God." There is direct and special emphasis given to this promise. And he calls himself" the Holy One of Israel." So that the "holy people" need not fear, inasmuch as the Holy One cannot lie, cannot prosper anything opposed to holiness, cannot therefore let evil onrcome goodness. What we have to look to is our Btate. We need not dream that quietness will help us if it be the indifference of sloth or the quiescence of an indulgent soul in evil. But if .. holiness unto the Lord" be written on our hearts and lives, God, who is the Holy One, will surely prosper us. II. 'l'HE DECLARATION Is DUAL. "Quietness and confidence." Because there ia a quietness which comes from the paralysis of fear, or from the coma of fatalism. We are to have a confidence which keeps the soul alive, and fills it with intense ardour and devotion. Nature is intensely active, but all her ministrations, as in the light and the dew, are quiet. Fussiness and loudness a.re no true signs of energy. Nay, rather they bespeak a superficial and shallow nature. Confidence is the child of wisdom and courage, It is not the result of ignorance, or of under-estimating the power of our foes. It takes cognizance of them all-their number and their variety and their ubiquity, but then, looking up to him who is mightier than them all, it says, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." Ill. 'l'HE STRENGTH IS WITHIN. What we need is not so much a lessening of the forces without us, but a strength in the inward man to overcome them. Take temp- tation. We a.re told that no temptation shall come but such as we are able to bear. We are not promised immunity from keen attacks. Everything depends upon the state of the soul. 'l'emptation, to be successful, requires correspondency within. Sparks falling upon the ocean are not dangerous. Christ said, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." 'l'ake trial. Sorrow, coming to the worl,lly heart, breaks it down-it ends in the death of hope and energy and joy. Sorrow to the Christian is an angel of discipline, The soul is sustained by the presence withiu us of the Man of sorrows, who can make all grace abound. So even the martyr and the confessor have been able to rejoice ; even Paul and Silas sang "songs in the night." "As thy day thy strength shall be.n This, then, is proven true in human history, and must be accepted as a fact. Spiritual consciousness is worthy of as much honour and to be accepted with confidence, as the· boasted facts of science. The promise, there- fore, is comforting to every generation. " In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."-W. M. S. Vers. 1-7.-Going down into Egype. The prophet of Jehovah utters another " woe," he denounces another sin ; for the people of the Lord, in the day of their difficulty, have looked, not to their Divine Redeemer, but to that arm of flesh in which they should not have trusted, and by which they will be abandoned. We see- I. THEIR SIN. It is threefold. 1. Desertion of God. 'l'hcy take counsel, but not now of God, as in better days (Josh. vii. 6; Judg. x:x:. 2i; 1 Sam. x:1:iii. 2; x:::a. S); they macle a.Ilia.nee, but not with the Divine consent-not" of my Spirit" (ver. 1); they did not ask "at God's mouth" (ver. 2). Once they would not have dreamed of acting without encouragement from God; now they look elsewhere for sanction. This desertion of him who was their Lord, and who had so often proved himself their Deliverer, had its root in: 2. Distrust of God. '!'hey trusted in " the shadow ol Egypt" (ver. 2), because they had come to distrust the "shadow of his wings" in whom David found his refuge-until his calamity was overpast (Ps. lvii. 1). It wa>- lhe loss of their faith in God which made them cast about for another power which should befriend and deliver them. And this deplorable distrust was dne to: 3. The spirit of materialism. '!'hey preferred the visible nation to the invisible God; the fleshly" power" to the Divine Spirit; the material army of Egypt, whose forces they could count and whose weapons they could handle, to the unseen One whose angels were beyond the range of vision, and whose instruments were unfashioneu by huruan lmnds. This is the sin of mankind. Desertion of God, departure from his sicle and from his service; desertion springing from distrust, anu this distrust rooted in 11 wreiched and pitiful materialism, 502 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, [cH. ::u.x.1-38,