Vers. 6, 7.-Man's devices to do without God. A curious and interesting fact is con- nected with the reference in this passage to hammering an idol into shape. Ancient hammers had no handles; the workman held in his hand the metal piece with which he worked. In all the copies of Egyptian figures engaged in various arts, there does not appear to be one representation of a handled hammer. Mr. Osburn, remarking on this, says, "The jar occasioned to the nerves of the hand by this violent contact of metal with metal, withont the interposition of a wooden handle, or other deadening substances, would be intolerable to a modern workman, or, if he had resolution to persevere, would probably bring on tetanus. Long practice from an early age had habituated the robust frames of the ancient mechanics to these rude concussions." This passage is of a satirical character; the folly of idolaters in trusting to gods made by common workmen, and dependent on the most trivial mechanical operations for their form and their stability, is vigorously presented. We regard all this idol-making as man's device to do without the one living and true God; and, so regarded, it is sug- gestive of applications which may be made to our own times. Now men try to do without God because- L Trrn CONCEPTION oF HIM IS TOO SPIRITUAL. We are not permitted to think of him through any material associations, or to image him in any creaturely shapes. He is to be to us a Spirit. But that sets him out of reach; and since men will not cultivate their spiritual faculties for the apprehension, they put him aside, and try to find what they may put in his place in art-creations, art-ideals. This is their device-let us create the "beautiful,'' a.nd make it do for us instead of the spiritual God. The " beautiful " is their idol. IL THE BEQUIBEMENTB OF Goo ARE TOO BTBIOT. He gives no chance to self-willed• ness, no opportunity for the pleasantness of doing wrong. So their device is to arrange a training of the body, a system of rules and restraints, by which they may regulate themselves and their relationships. Because religion is too severe they try to be satis- fied with a morality which reaches no higher than a man's idea of goodness. Morality is their idol. III. THE ATMOSPHERE OF Goo IS TOO PURE. "Nothing entereth hie presence that <lefileth;" and it is characteristic of him that he "desireth truth in the inward parts." There man finds the demand too great, and is set on the endeavour to satisfy himself with a ceremonial purity, which does not disturb the inward corruptions. Ceremonies may express heart-piety; but they may be put instead of heart-piety. Ceremonies and ritual too often become men's idols, whose worship is easier and more comfortable to the orr. xr,1. 1-29.] THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 113
natural man. So men help one nnother to make their own idols, antl shift the one true Goel into the background.-R. T.
Ver. &c-The Divine choices are wise selections. .Abraham and Jacob are God's chosen ones as founders, and first fathers, of the Israelite race. By this we are to under- stand that they were selecterl, in the Divine wisdom, as having just the qnalities which, developed in a race, would make a people precisely fitted to carry out his purposes. ',Ve are not to understand that, in a way of accident, or in a way of mere soverei~nty, these first fathers were picked out. God's choices are never arbitrary; they are al ways judicious selections. "The race is described as God's servant anrl his elect, or, c'lmhining the two characters, his chosen servant, chosen to be his servant." This special relation to Jehovah is the thing which distinguishes the people of Israel from the heathen nations around them. "What advantage then hath the ,Jew? . . . Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Rom. iii. I, ~). 'l'he lrnth that the Divine choices are selections, on the ground of recognized fitness, may gain illustration from three distinct spheres. I. FROM THE SPHERE OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. These cover long spaces of the earth's history, and the most marked feature of them is the way iu which individuals are set forth prominently; we are shown the precise work they <ii<l, and then it is impressed on us that these are the Lord's chosen ones. In the light of that view we read again their story, appraise their qualities and gifts, set their endowments alongside their life-mission; and then we can see clearly that they were selected because they were precisely fitted for their particular work. If we think that subtle laws of heredity have gone to the making and endowing of men, we m•y also think of God as watching the fiLnesses of men, and taking them out for the duing of certain parts of his work. lllnstration may be taken from Moses, who was characteristic,dly pa•riotic and disin- terested; or David, whose poetical genius sanctified song for Divine worship; 01 Paul, whose natural impetuosity adapted him for his service as the first Christian missionary. II. FnoM THE SPHERE OF COMMON LIFE. For Scripture is but the illustration "in the small" of what God is ever doing "in the large." The mistake is so often made of thinking that God exhausted himself, or limited himself, to the spheres dealt with in Scripture. The true view is that God il/11,.,trated himself there. Cyrus is the man in common life of whom God says, "I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." We see God's selections in the fitting of men to places, men of genius and comm,m men, the Tennysons and ourselves. III. FROM THE SPHERE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Here too there are evidently elect men and women; but we need to see that God has no "pets," only "servants"- men whose fitnesses are recognized, and who nre conseque11tly selected for office to praise, to preach, to pray, or variously to minister to the Church's needs.-R. T.