HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers.1-8.-An ideal of political good. When the Divine Spirit has been out- p.oured, when the idols have been cast away, and the Assyrian yoke has been cast off, happy days will dawn. !.!ROYALTY WILL BE SYNONYMOUS WITH BIGHTEOUSNESS. The King will be seen in his beauty-not the splendour of purple robes and lofty throne and brilliant court, but that of the equity and justice which imitate He.'lven. God will call him by his name, will make him rich with hidden possessions, will go before him to make the crooke,l ways straight (eh. xlv. 1-4). In spite of all the failings of kings, the mass of the people bear a deep reverence and affection to royalty. Even in the counterfeit they recognize some relation to the real thing. " A divinity doth hedge a king ; " this is not only poetically, but religiously true, if the king in any sort answer to the trutl1 of his position. In happier days he will so answer. II. THE WPEB CLASSES WILL BE THE SPIBITUAL BUPEBIORS OF THE PEOPLE. Aristocracy began with personal worth, and by it only can be maintained. We see from the descrip- tion_ what_ t_he nobility ought to be in relation to the people. Patrons, protectors ; uhiding-places froLD the wind," a "covert from the rain-storm, rivulets .in a. parcherl land, the shadow of a huge cliff in a thirsty land." Nob'luse oblige. They should be looked up to; every popular cause should find in them its defenders and active advo- cates; every philanthropic scheme in them its leaders; every misery of the poor in them its zealous redressers. High place without high qualities is a mockery; lofty station coupled with low manners, a scandal and an abuse, Alas ! too often in th, history of the "ruling classes" these truths have been forgotten, these relations have been reversed. _Again and _again God has called them to judgment: "You have eaten up the vineyards, the plunder of the afflicted is in your houses. What mean ye that crush my people, and grind the face of the af.llicted?" Notably so at the timo of the great French Revolution. III. THE RESULTS OF A SPIRITUAL CHANGE. No reformation of manners, no hap1 y reconoiliation of class with class_ can come about, except by a change of mind and heart. And that change itself can only come whence all changes in the realm of nature aud spirit com:e...;..from the creative, the re-creative energy of God. The body is the organ <>f the spirit in its manifold activities. Any fresh sensibility of the physical organs is typical. therefore, of an awakened aud living conscience. The closed eye is typical of the blincl- ncss of those who will not see. To shut the eye to evil, to turn the head away from what disgusts,-this may seem for a time equivalent to cancelling the evil itsell: Not so; and reformation sets in from that hour when men are willing to face the most paiufol facts, tc let the light into the darkest corners of existence. Ears.were made to listen, not tc be stopped. Let the bitter cry be hearkened to; its tones thrill through every fibre of our sympathetic being; nor let its pleading be dismissed until the question, Wlzat cqn I do 1 has found some distinct answer. The tongue was made, not to stammer, bnt to flow with truthful and gracious speech. Silence may mean that we have no help to offer; stuttering acconts that we are of a divided mind, of obscure habits of thought. Lucidity is what we need-the lucidity of the single eye, the sensitive organism filled through and through with light. And what does our haste and feverish precipitation signify, but want of that deliberate forethought and that circumspection which is a con- stant duty? "'l'hc heart of the hasty shall perceive distinctly." Although we cannot refer all sin, like Socrates, to want of insight, yet no sin but implies that want. God's deepest, most far-reaching blessings must ever be for the heart, in that large sens@ in 628 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH, [oil, XlllL 1-10.
whioh Soripture uses the word-including every mental faculty or acti\rity, • M11teii11l improvements arc not to be neglected. The sanity and weal of tbo body have a direcl bearing on the weal of mind; yet, on the other hand, there will be no material improve• ment.s until the improving mind has been awakened and truly educated. IV. THE OONSTITIJTIOX OF THINGS NEEDING REFORMATION. It Is a. confusion which needs to be removed. It is a world turned upside down which needs to be righted. Thi! fool and the knave may designate the ruling classes of the time. Fool/ hO\v weighty the condemnation, how deep-burning the brand, which belongs to the use of the word in Scripture I The world may call him par excellence the fool who minds a.II business but his own ; the prophet calls him the fool who thinks of self, bttt forgets his God. 'l'he ninner, in short, is the fool. His is the worst and least excusable ignorance. He may be ea.lied "noble" in the convention of society, he is contemptible in the judgment of God. ·The characteristics of the fool are that he i;peaks folly, and this "out of the abundance" of a wicked bee.rt-a forge and workshop where the production of evil is 1ever going on; that he delights to propagate heresy and atheism as a centre of religious dark11ess. Hungry souls look to those Nabals, and arc not fed, bnt deprived of their sustenance; and the waters they point out prove to be as the mirage of the desert on near approach. The denunciation of such spurious leaders of the people reminds of Milton's invective-
" The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed; But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly and fonl contagion spread,"