liko Eli (1 Sam. iii. 18), but congratulates himself on bis own personal safety. It would, no doubt, have been the nobler course to beg that he alone might bear the punish- ment, as he alone had sinned. But the principle of the soliclarity of the forerather and his posterity, and of the king and his people, prevails almost throughout the Old Testa- ment." Sclr-delusion is very common in the matter of submission. I. SOME THINK THEY SUBMIT WHEN THEY HAVE ONLY CEASED TO CARE. The two things are quite distinct. A man only truly submits while he keeps his ea.re, and hn., his personal desire and wish Btill vigorous. True submission is the voluntary givin~ up or one's own wish because we accept the wish of another. The glory of it is that it is hard. It is easy enough when we have ceased to care. II. SOME THmK THEY SUBMIT WHEN THEY ONLY LIE DOWN UNDER Goo. .As dying people, if asked whether they submit, will often say, "Oh yes; there is nothing el.se I can do." God is too big for them-that is all. If he were not, they would still struggle against him. This is the Mohammedan form of submission. '' Alhh Akbar!" -" God is great!" "Islam "-"We must submit to him." The exaggeration of this kind of submission is found in the Eastern doseh. Men lie down on the ground side by side, and let the king ride on horseback over their shoulders. Our God asks for no such submission as that. III. SOME THINK THEY BU11MIT WHEN THE BURDEN IS LIFTED FROM THEM TO REST ON OTHERS. A very comfortable, but very mean, sort of submission. .A selfish sub- mission that acquiesces in a will of God that shields ourselves, whatever others may have to suffer. This was Hezekiah's submission. "Good is the will of the Lord in judgment, for he has shifted it over to make things comfortable for me.n It is impos- sible to give Hezekiah much credit for so poor II submission as that. IV. TRUE HEARTS THmK THEY SUDMIT ONLY WHEN THEY LOVINGLY ACCEPT TIIE HOLY WILL, WHATEVER THAT WILL MAY INVOLVE. Submission is the expression of confidence, the breath of trust, the sign of perfect love. It is the uttered child-heart. It cannot make nny qualifications. Its unceasing refrain is, "My Father knows." The one sublime example of submission is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, though the holy will involved bitterest personal suffering, could sincerely say, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." After Christ the world's great figure of submission is the venerable Moses, ascenrliQg Nebo to receive the kiss of God and die, "with Canaan's goodly land in view."-R. T,
PART III. ISAIAH'S LATER PROPHECIES (CH. XL.-LXVI.). SECTION I. THE PEOPLE OF Goo COMFORTED IN TBIBULATION (CH. XL.).
EXPOSITION. faces, among which he has hitherto Ii vcrl CHAPTER XL. and luboured, have grown dim and disap- PREFATORY REMARll'.8. peared. .All sounds nod voices of tho present THE Assyrian struggle is over. The prophet are hushed, and move him no more. Tho has accepted into the depths of his spirit present has died out of the horizon of his God's anuounoement that the true spoiler, soul's vision. . . . The voices in Lis eflIS 111'0 "the rod of his anger, and the sto.ff of his those of men unborn, and be lives a second indignation," is not Assyrin, but Babylon. life among events and persons, sins and He has accepted the sentence the.t his people suffering, and fears and hopes, photographed is t.o go into captivity. Into this future of sometimes with the minutest accuracy on his natil)n he throws himself with a faith, e. the sensitive and sympalhetio medium of fervour, o.nd a power of realiz11tion, which his own spirit; and he becomes the denouncer a.re all his own. "The familiar scenes and of the apocial sins of a. distant generation, ISAIAH-II. I' C6 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. [on. XL.1-81.