The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 99

the thirty-two kings nre repulsed by "the young men of the princes of the provinces " (1 Kings xx. 1-20). Cyrus, with a handful of Persian rustics, defeats Astyages (Herod., i. 126, 127). Three hundred Greeks decimate the myriads of Xerxes at 'l'hermopylm. Judas Maccabaius, with e. few thousands, destroys half a dozen Syrian armies three or four times as numerous (1 Mace, iv. 26---34; vii. 40-47; 2 Mace. xii. 13--37; xv. 20-28), God's hand is the more clearly seen, the weaker and poorer the means that he uses. II. IT IS FOR HAN'B ADVANTAGE TllA.T HE SHOULD HAVE IT IHPREBBED UPON HIK THAT BIB SUC0ESSEB ARE NOT DUE TO HIMSELF. As man's arrogance is one of the chief causes of Gud's judgments upon him, it is well that success should be given him under circumstances which make it al.most impossible that he should ascribe the merit of it to his own efforts or abilities. Best, far best for him to know that it is "when be is weak, that be is strong" (2 Cor. xii. 10). So long as we are conscious that we are instruments, we are less inclined to exalt ourselves, to be puffed up, to think of our- selves more highly than we ought to think. We feel our dependence upon God, realize his power upholding us, lean upon him, and have a sweet satisfaction in so leaning. As our day iH, so we feel that our strength will be (Deu t. xxxiii. 25). His grace will be always sufficient, just sufficient, for us. So we avoid all boasting and self-com- placency, and are able to "rest in the Lord," to "stay upon him," and to maintain a perpetual consciousness of his mighty arm supporting us. Vera. 21-29.-The futility and absurdity of false systems do not prevent them from keeping their hold on men. At the present day, men are apt to find it strange that the prophets should spend so mnch time, employ so many words, in conrutiug idolatry and showing it to be utter and absolute folly. To us of the present age the absurdity seems palpable and gross-therefore not worLh arguing against. But systems of religion or of irreligion, whenever they have become established and have got possession of men's minds, are very bard to root out. Those who have been brought up in them, who have been accustomed all their lives to hear them spoken of as undoubtedly t.rue, who ba,·e found all those about them of one mind respecting them, can with difficulty be per- suaded that there is any absurdity in notions with which they have been from infancy familiar. The force of prejudice is in most minds stronger than the force of reason, and often renders men impervious to all argument which runs counter to their lon::\- cherished opinions. Still, as nothing but argnrnent can shake such opiuions, it has to be used, nay, to be insisted on, to be reiterated, to be dinned into people's ears, whether they will bear or whether they will forbear. Many systems quite as absurd as idolatry have been accepted by men, and have stood them in the stead of true religion for centuries: some such are accepted even at the present day. An instance of the former kind may be found in the Hystem of Democritus and Epicurus; instances of the latter in the pantheism of India and the more fashionable tbeory of evolution. I. THE SYSTEM OF EPICURUS AND DRMOCRITUB. 'l'o suppose the universe nothing but a congeries of minute atoms, existing from all eternity, and moving as chance <lirccts, combining accidentally into forms more or less permanent and after a while fall- ing apart, ungoverned by any mind, without object, intention, or cause; and to suppose life, intelligence, thought, the accidental results of certain positions or combinations or the atoms ;-iB a theory so intrinsically absurd and ridiculous, that it might have seemed impossible for the wildest fancy to have conceived it, much more of any man of sane mind to have persuaded himself of its truth. Yet this theory, el.\borated by Democritus and Leucippus about e.c. 430-400, embraced by Epicurus about B.o. 300-270, and recommended by the geuius of Lucretius about B.0. 75, became the favourite creed of educated Greeks and Homans in the century before and the century aftor our era. St. l'aul found two sects predominant at Athens-Stoics and Epicureans. Epicureans preponderated in Italy, where their treatises are found to havo been the [avourite read- ing of the rich men who built their villas on the soft shores of the bay of Naples, at the fashionable watering-place of Herculaneum. Among the adversaries which Christianity had to meet and subdue, this Epicurean philosophy was one of the most formidable. II. THE PANTHEISM OF INDIA. That God exists and nothing else; that he is ' the Ouc without a second;" that individual men aro God, duplicati011s of him, imagininS!; tht·mselves separate; that tho material world is absolutely non-existent; nnd that all 102 'l'HE BOOK OF 'l'HE PROPHE'l' ISAIAH. [on. XLI.1-20,