foree.ke them. I will open rivers . . . I will plant trees," etc. If this be primarily e.pplic:i.ble to the Israelites in captivity (or on their way home), it must be true of all God's children. lie who pitied the thousands of bodily sufferers will much more pity the millions of bis sons e.nd daughters who are in the last extremity of spiritnal destitu- tion. When Christ "saw the multitude," hungry and weary, he was "moved with compassion" for them. With what profounder pity and intenser feeling does he look down on these far greater multitudes, who are pining and perishing in the famine of the soul I And then does the Church of Christ enter into his spirit and rise toward his stature when it also is stirred to strong, deep sympathy with these poor and needy ones, hungering and athirst for the truth and love of God. And as Christ's purpose answered to his pity, and be came, by the sacrifice of himself, to put away our sin and to take away our sorrow, so must ours also. Pity must end in provision, in ·causing the rivers to flow and the fountains to spring and the trees to bear their fruit. Such sources and springs of health and life are our mission Churches. Heathenism is a desert place, a wild waste, where there is no provision for human need. But our Christian Churches, planted in the midst of the ignorant and idolatrous, are rivers in the high places, fountains in the valleys, trees in the desert; there is bread for the hungering, water for those who are perishing with thirst, life for dying souls.-C. Vers. 21-29.-.A true test of Divinity. When these words were written the question to be solved was-Which god, of all the rival deities, is worthy of human tn.ist and worship? The question now is-What is the authority to which we shall submit our judgment and in which we shall rest ?-is it human nature, or is it the forces of the material world, or is it the Lord God? The verses before us suggest to us that one criterion iu this state of inquiry is to be found in the consideration that we cannot find rest in anything which does not tell us what we most want to know as dependent, struggling, sorrowing, sinning, dying men. The idols of the heathen were valueless; they could not tell "things to come hereafter;" they were utterly ignorant; they had no voice to answer the most urgent and pressing questions which men were asking. Those great and profound iuquiries which we are now putting are beyond the reach of nature and of man. Nature, at the demand of science, can shed no light at all on the most sacred problems, the solution of which is everything to us. It makes no sign, it leaves us as we were. Its teaching is as consistent with one conclusion as with the opposite. Man, unaided by special illumination, can reach no certainty, can attain to nothing like assurance; he can guess, can argue, can hope, but he cannot know. Goel alone, the Author of our being, the Lord of our lif~, the Arbiter of our destiny, can tell us whence we came and whose we are and whither we go. He can tell us "things to come hereafter," and much else which it is as urgeut that we should know. He makes plain and sure to us the truth concerning- !. THE ORIGIN, SUSTENANCE, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. II. 0011 HUMAN NATURE. That it is not what it was when it came forth from his creative hand ; that it has fallen through sin; that there is a way back which is a way 11,p, toward himself and his favour. III, HIMSELF-HIS NATURE, CHARACTER, AND WILL, IV. 'l'aE FUTURE, 1. Future things here. 2. The great future-the fact of another life, of a day of account-eternal life through faith in Jesus Clirist.-C. Ver. 4.-The eternal .Alpha and Omega. The idea of these verses seems to be this- look back, if you will, to the very beginnings of nations : God is there. Watch the changes of nations, the uprising of great kin~s and lenders: God is presiding over all. Peer into the dim mysteries of the future, and still God is controlling and overruling nil. The thought here set before the nation finds expression in the private meditations of the psalmist (Ps. cxxxix.). Nowhere cnn he get away from the sense of God's presence, and nowhere would he if he co11!d. How fully the Apostle John was imbued with the spirit of the great prophn~3 1s well illustrated in the fact that his thought of the mani- fested God is the oid prophetic thought. The glorified and living Christ is revealed to him a.• i;ay:ing, "I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginnin,! and the Ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Rov. i 8). Some think the "righteous man," referred to in var. 2, is Abraham, regarded as the first father of the 112 THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. [ea, XLI. 1-29.
Hebrew nation; and this view finds some support in the expression found in ver, 4 "calling the gene!'lltions from the beginning;" but it is evident that the mind of Isaiah was at this time filled with tb~ return_ from captivity, and with.the Divine rnising up of Cyrus as the human agent rn effectmg that return. .And this Cyrus is to him the snggestion of the glorious spiritual Deliverer, who should appear later on to redeem bis people from their sins; not first from their sorrows, but first and chiefly from their sins. ~o we may cover the long a~es in our thought, Abraham raised up by God. Moses set forth hy God. Cyrus called out by God. Messiah the Sent One of God. "I the Lord, the First, and with the last, I am he." This view of our God may be tak~n as- I. .A COSTl<AST WITH ALL MA~-MADE GODS. This is the prophet's great point. .A man-made, or man-conceived, gorl comes .~econd. Man, in that case is first; the god is his creature, and the creation of a being involves that it is inferior to its creator. God comes ti,·st; he is before man. Man is his creature, and set under his conrlitions. II. A HOPF. WHEN MAN CAN MAKE NO MORE GODS. That time comes by dissatisfaction. None of his gorls bring him rest, and at last he will try to make no more. Then God lives, and may he the soul's Rest. That time comes by the ending of the earth-life; but even then God lives, and we may live in him. IIL A SATISF.!sCTIOS FOR ALL BETWEEN TIMES, If he is first, and is last, then surely he covers and includes all the space between, and we may well turn from all self-trusts and idol-trusts, and seek now the rest, the joy, of his love and favour and service. " This God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our Guide unto death."-R. 'T.