The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 49

our material circumstances. We may pray for life, restored bodily life and health; then we may pray for everything less than that, but included in it. III. WHAT SHOULD DE ITS SPinIT? We may specially dwell on: 1. Openness; frankness; removal of reserve; tone that convinces of sincerity. Most grieving to God is our" keeping back anything." Worthy parents gladly listen to both the bad and the good in their children's requests. 2. Trusifulne.~s; the spirit of confidence in God as Hearer and Answerer. 3. Imporlunity; the sign of really earnest desire, Parents often delay answering children's requests because they have asked half-heartedly, as if answering did not much matter. IV. WHAT WILL DE THE RESPONSE? Something always. No sincere cry ever rose to God unheeded or unanswered. The answer may be: 1. Refusal. 2. The call to wait. 3. The gift of what is asked. 4. The gift of something better. 5. The quieting down of our desire for the thing.-R. T. Ver. 3.-Man'sfair estimate of his own life. Hezekiah ventures to say before God, "Ah, Jehovah, remember, I pray, how I have walked before thee in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done that which is good in thine eyes." Can a good man rightly appeal to his conscious integrity? David did. Hezekiah may. It is not pious work to get up a case against ourselves. Confessions are too often utterly insincere things. It is rigM to keenly criticize self, and to recognize, and humble ourselves before God on account of, our sins and frailties; but it magni6es the grace of God to recognize the good in our lives, the established will, the earnest purpose, the persistent endeavour. We must be true to see the good, as well as the evil, and seek to appraise our life as God appraises it. David may speak of his "integrity." Hezekiah may speak of his "perfect walk," his firm resolve to obey and please God. But can such terms as "righteousness" be properly applied t.o any man? It has been pressed upon us from our childhood, as if it were a self-evident truth, and needed no argument or proof, and contained the whole of the truth, that rnan has no righteousness of his own. The best things in man are bad. "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we are all as an unclean thing." Yet there must be some sense in which man has a personal righteous- ness, We have known men and women of integrity, right-hearted, sincere, and righteous. David may say, before the heart-searching God, "Judge me according to my righteousness that is in me;" and our Lord distinctly assumed that there is a sense in which man can have a righteousness, when he said, "Except your righteousn~ss shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees." Such a term will not stiffen into one rigid meaning. Sometimes it means right-heartedness, sincerity, ano. describes the man who is at heart centred on God and virtue. A man may be right at heart, 1Jhough there may be twists and stains in the conduct. We have a way of speak- ing of men as being "good at bottom." If we say that as any excuse for men's sins, we are miserably and shamefully wrong. If we say it in recognition of human frailty, and with discernment of life e.s the conflict of the human will over the weakness of our bodies, and the disabilities of our circumstances, then it is a true and worthy speech. Many men around us, and even we ourselves, are like David, "good at bottom." 'l'he desire of our soul is to the Di,ine Name. We are pilgrims, indeed, though men may find us wandered away into By-path Meadows, sleeping in arbours, and losing our rolls. Illustrate by the difference between King Saul and King David. Saul failed utterly, because his were sins of will. David failed only temporarily, because his were sins of fmilty. David failed in the body-sphere, but Saul in the soul-sphere. Learn to judge your life fairly, and be willing to see, to rejoice in, and to thank God for, what has been and is good.-R. T. Vere. 7, B.-Signsfor the help offaith. In this case, 111 in that of Gideon, God IJfflntcd signs. For the people of Palestine, n.nd for his disoiples, our Lord wrought miracles, which were signs; but he utterly refused to meet the demand of the Phn.risoes. "Thero ehall no sign be given you." Our Lord, however, reproved tho desire for sil!ns as showing sorno wee.lrness of chn.ractor in those who do~ired them. "Except ye ~ce signs and wonders ye will not boliovo." Exactly what the sign granted to Hezekiah w11s cannot certainly be ascertained. '!'he shn.dow passing back on the dit,l m1iy hn.vo sug- gested God's putting book the dee.th-nngol for I\ whtlo. ProhBbly n shadow cast on a  52 THE BOOK OF 'fHE PROPHET ISAIA.H. [ou. x.xxvm. 1-22.