The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 438

at its gates. No one great battle comes to settle it for ever; it is an endless fiaht with an nndying enemy. But" who is this that cometh from Edom?" Is it possible that tL1s One that we see coming, this One on whose step, as he moves tbrouah history the eyes of all t~e ages are fastened-is it possible that he is the Conquero:='of the en~my and the Deliverer of the soul? He comes out of the enemy's direction. The whole work of the Saviour bas relation to and issues from the fact of sin. If there had been no sin there would have been no Saviour. He comes from the right direction and he has an attractive majesty of movement as be appears. He seems strong. What does be say to the anxious questioner; what account of himself does he give; what has be done to Edom; and what mean those blood-stains on his robes? I. He replies to the question, "Who is this?" by saying," I that speak in righteous- nes~, mighty to save." This reassures us. The Saviour comes in the strength of righteousness. Any reform or salvation of which the power is righteousness must go down to the very root of the trouble. II. He replies to the question," Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel?" by saying "I have trodden the wine-press." It is no holiday monarch coming with a bloodies; triumph. It has been no pageant of a day, this strife with sin. The power of God has struggled with the enemy and subdued him only in the agony of strire. What pain may mean to the Infinite and Divine, what difficulty may mean to Omnipotence, I cannot tell. Only I know that all they could mean they meant here. "'l'his symbol of the bl11od-and by-and-by, when we turn from the Old Testament to the New, from the prophecy to the fulfilment, we find that it was not only the enemy's blood, but his own blood too, that stained the victorious Deliverer's robes-this symbol of the blood bears this great truth, which has been the power of salvation to millions of hearts, and which must make this Conqueror the Saviour of your heart too, the truth that only in self-sacrifice and suffering could even God conquer sin. Sin is never so dreadful as when we see the Saviour with that blood upon his garments. And the Saviour himself, surely he is never so dear, never wins so utter and so tender a love, as when we see what it has cost him to save us. Out of that love born of his suffering comes the new impulse after a holy life; and so when we stand at last purified by the power of a grateful obedience, it shall be said of us, binding our holiness and escape from sin close to our Lord's struggle with sin for us, that we • have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb'" (condensed from Phillips Brooks). -R.T. Ver. 7.-The Lord's loving-kindnesses. The great goodness seen in the return of the exiles from Babylon helped to a right apprehension of the goodness of God to his people all down through the long ages. Dean Stanley eloquently describes the return, "The restoration was an event which, unlikely and remote as it might have seemed, was deemed almost a certainty in the expectation of the exiles. The confidence of Jeremiah and Ezekiel never flagged that within two generations from the beginning of the capti,;ity their countrymen would return. The patriotic sentiment, which had existed as it were unconsciously before, found its first definite expression at this period. . . . And when the day at last arrived which was to see their expectations fulfilled, the burst of joy was such as has no parallel in the sacred volume; it is, indeed, the revival, the second birth, the second Exodus, of the nation. '!'here was n :iw 'a new song,' of which the burden was that the Eternal again reigned over the earth, and that the gigantic idolatries which surrounded them hail received a deadly shock; that the waters of oppression had rolled back in which they had been struggling like drowning men; that the snare was broken in which they had been entangled like e. caged bird. It was like a rlream, too good to be true. The gaiety, the laughter of their poetry, resounded far and wide. 'l'he surrounding nations could nol but confess what great things had been done for them. It was like the sudden rush of the waters into the dry torrent-beds of the south of Palestine, or of the yet extremer south, of which they may have heard, in far Ethiopia. It was like the reaper bearing on his shoulder the golden sheaves in summer which he had sown amongst the tears of winter. So full were their hearts that all nature was called to join in their thankful- ness. The vast rivers of their new Mesopotamian home, and the waves of the Indian Ocean, are to take p&rt in the chorus, and clap their foaming crests like Jiving hands, OH. LxnI. 1-19.J THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH. 4G5