true religion, the only safeguards for the continuance among men of law, order, 01• morality. 2. The Christian Church is at one on all these points with the Jewish Church and bears the same testimony for God, only with additions to it. Christianity teache; thRt within the Uuity of the Divine Substance there is a Trinity of Persons. Cbris- )ianity maintai~s ~h3:t the most essential attribute of the Divinity is love (1 John n-. S, lG). Chr1stmn1ty has much to tell of the Second and Third Persons of the T!·inity, of which Judaism kno~s nothing. Thus, at the present day, it forms a second witness for Glld, and gives a wider, fuller, and deeper testimony. II. THE LoRD CnRIST HIMSELF. "Ye are my witnesses, ... and my Servant whom 1 have chosen" (,·er. 10). The Lord Jesus witnessed for God in many ways; and bis utter- ances, placed on record by the evangelists, are testimonies of inestimahle valne, infallibly declaring to ns the true nature of God. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John iii. 16); "God sent not bis Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John iii.17); "God is true" (John i!i. 33); "God is a Spirit" (John iv. 24); "'l'be Father raisetb up the dead, and qmckeneth them" (John v. 21); "If a man love me, be will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John xiv. 23); "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name, be will give it you" (John xvi. 23). Or, to take another class of utterances," God clotbetb the grass of the field" (Matt. vi. 30); God "sendetb bis rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt.,. 45); "My Fntbcr worketb hitherto, and I work" (,John v.17). The witness of the Son to the Father is far beyond the witness of men, and is inexpressibly touching, being pervaded by a sririt of such tender love and reverence as we shall vainly seek for tlsewbere. III. THE FATHER IN ms OWN PERSON. In the present chapter of Isaiah, Jehovah, while citing as witnesses the Jewish Church, and bis Servant, i.e. Christ (vcr. 10), goes ou to bear bis own testimony to bis own greatness and unapproachableness. "I am be : before me there was no God form eel, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am Jebo,ab; and be~ide me there is no Saviour ... Yea, before the day was, I am be; there is none that can deliver out of ruy band: I will work, and who shall reverse it?" (vers. 10-13). And does not the Father bear the same testimony to himself in the soul of each of us? Is the general recognition of something high and holy external to us, "making for ri~bteousnrss," anything but the Father ~peaking in us and bearing witness of himself in our heart of hearts? Has be not thus spoken always to all the teachable ones of bis myriads upon myriads of human creatures, besides providing external testimony, making himself also an internal witness to bis own Being? Witnesses against God are, unfortunately, also many, as appears by the present passage. Among them may be mentioned- !. 'l'HE IDOLATROUS, OB IN Al'iY WAY IBBELIGIOUS, NATIONS AND PEOPLES. Idolatry is either a negation of God or an utter misrepresentation and degradation of him. Polytheism is in a certain sense atheism, since a "god," limited and conditioned by a bust of other gods, is in very truth 110 " God " at all. And the gods of idolaters bad rarely such a character as enligbt.ened Christians would willingly assign even to a low grade of angels. The " nations" of Isaiah's time, and of later ages, "because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge," bad been given over by him to" a reprobate mind," and bad lost the power of forming in their minds the conception of a pure, holy, all-perfect, Rpiritual existence. When such a conception was presented to them, they rejected it, preferring their own familiar ideas of gods more nearly on a level with them- selves to so transcendental a Being. II. THE SCEPTICAL THINKERS AND PHILOSOPHERS EVERYWHERE. At all times there have been "fools" who have "said in their hearts," or even proclaimed to the world at large, "There is no God" (Ps. xiv. 1). Dernocritus, as early as B.c. 440, and Leucrppus still earlier, taught that th'3 universe bad come into being without the help of a God, by evolution from lif,,Jess and sha1,cless matter. Practical atheism was aN ancient in Cl.tina as the tillie of Cunfucins. Soi-disant philosophers have been in every age among the most forward to witness against the Being from whom they derive their whole power to speak, 1hink, or act. In the present day, atheism, though still bold and Llata.nt in some places, for the most part bates its breath, and modestly shrouds itself under the agnostic veil. OH. xtm. 1-28.J THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAI.A H. 143
III. THE PRA0TICALLY IRRELIGIOUS AMONG THE NOMINAL SERVANTS OF GoD. The witnesses against God whose testimony is most dishonouring to him, and at the same time most injurious to mankind, are the unworthy professors of belief in him. To confess God with the lips while denying him in the life, is to do him the greatest dis- service that is possible. It is to cast a doubt upon the value of all the human testi- mony borne in his favour, since who shall say how much of it is insincere? It is to iusult God by a mock acknowledgment, a lip-service, in which the heart has no part. It is to admit his claim to allegiance and to cast off our allegiance in the same breath. The Christian religion would, it is probable, have, long ere this, overspread the world, had it not been for the vicious lives of professing Christian~. The testimony of their acts takes away all its force from the testimony of their words, and changes them from witnesses for God into most persnasi ve witnesses against him.