"inherit it." And "a remnant" hearkens, and returns, and repents, and "doos the first works" (Rev. ii. 6), and becomes a great and flourishing and religious people. Vere. 13-16.-The contrasts of the religioua with the vrreligious life. The prophet notices three main contrasts. I. GOD'S SERVANTS ARE FED WITH A FOOD THAT SATISFIES; HIS ADVERSARIES ARE TORMENTED BY A OEABELF:BS ORAVING. Man is so constituted that nothing short of his highest good contents him. Earthly blessings, l:ealth, wealth, success, fame, power, glory, leave a void in the heart which nothing earthly can fill up. The worldling is always dissatisfied, always desires more than he has, craves some fresh excitement, desires some "new pleasure." "Hungry and thirsty, their souls faint in them" (Ps. cvii. 6). With God's servants the case is different. A Divine contentedness fills their hearts. They have been given to drink of a water of which "whosoever drinketh shall never thirst," but it "shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John iv. 14). They have God for their Saviour; they are at one with him; and in thid communion they rest satisfied; they neither hunger nor thirst. II. Goo's SERVANTS SING FOR JOY OF HEART; Ills ADVERSARIES HOWL FOR VEXATIO:,' OF SPIRIT. "The voice of joy and thanksgiving is in the dwellings of the righteous" (Ps. cxviii. 15). The love of God, which "casts out fear" (1 John iv. 18), reigns in their hearts, and elevates them above the troubles and anxieties of ordinary human life. They "know whom they have believed;" they know in whom they trust. All their care they have cast upon God; and hence they are without care; their souls are full of an ineffable joy and satisfaction ; they want nothing, unless it be to have their communion with God complete (Rom. viii. 23; 2 Cor. v. 2, 4; Phil. i. 23, etc.). But the adversaries of God are always vexed in spirit. \Vorldly cares trouble them; worldly disappointments annoy them; doubts and misgivings with respect to the future weigh on them; an awful fear lest they have entirely mistaken the true end and aim of life broods over them. In the expressive language of Scripture, they "howl" through anguish of heart-complain, murmur, proclaim themselves pessimists. The world, to their thinking, is the worst of conceivable worlds; the scheme of the universe, if there be any such scheme, a gigantic fraud aud mistake. III. Goo's SERVANTS BRING A BLESSING UPON TRE EARTH; ms ADVERSARIES LEAVE THEIR. NAME AS A cu1tsE TO IT. "A little leaven leavenetb the whole lump" (1 Cor. v. 6). God would have sparecl Sodom if it had contained "ten righteous" (Gen. xviii. 32). It is the existence of his servants upon the earth that especially commends the earth to his care, and causes him to watch over it, to sustaill it, and to bless the increase of it. Moreover, the servallts of God are a blessing to mankind at large, (1) as an example to them; (2) as a. real help to them if they desire to amend their ways; (3) as in many respects ameliorating and elevating their condition. God's adversaries, Oil the cnntrary, are in every respect a curse to the earth. They debase its moral tone ; they stir up strife in it; they are the authors of war, bloodshed, enmities, calumnies, uncleanness, variance, sedition, heresy, blasphemy, alld the like; they ea.used God once to "repent that he bad made man Oil tile earth" (Gen. vi. 6), and they cause him continually to look upon the earth with more or less of disfavour. Their presence pull,nes t:1e cart h, and makes it necessary that "the first heaven and the first earth" shall "pass a.way " (flev. xxi. 1), and be superseded by "new henvens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet. iii. 13).
Vera. 17-25.-The new creation. It is difficult to harruollize tho various passages of Scripture which touch Oil" the new creation." In one place (Acts iii. 21) it is called an lr...-o,c1mlt1Taau, in another (Matt. xix. 23) a ..-ci,\1n•v•t1la. S0mctimes its scene appears to be the presellt world purified (eh. ii. 2-4); sometimt·s an entirely new world created for the habitatioll of God's people (eh. !xv. 17, 18). Perhaps the best explanation is that of Delitzsch, that there a.re to be altogether three worlds, or three ages. 1. The first age, or ordinary human life, as we have hitllerto known it-a checkered scene of sin anu holiness, of happines~ and misery, of sorrow and rejoicing. 2. The second a2e, or the period of tile millennium, in which "the patriarchal measuro of human life will return, in which death will no more break off the life that is just beginning to bloom, and in which the war of man with the animal world will be 416 THE BOO:it OF TH~ PilOPHFlT ISAIAlI. [011:. nv. 1-20,
exch~nged for peace without danger." 3. And the third age, or a final state of happi- ness m heaven, or the heavenly Jerusalem, when death will be destroyed, and sin will be no more, and tears will be wiped from all eyes, and the former things will be passed away altogether (Rev. xxi. 4). The three e.ges are distinctly marked only in the apocalyptic vision of St. John the divine (eh. xx., xxi.). Isaiah e.nd the other Old Testament prophets have an indistinct view, in which the second e.ge and the third age are confused together, the characteristics being chiefly those of Age II., but some of the characteristics of Age Ill. being intermingled. Age I. and Age III. are common t-0 all the redeemed. Age H. will belong only to a select few-" the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of J<"sus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their fore- heads or in their hands," who will "live and reign with Christ a thowiand years" (Rev. x.x. 4).