phecy is the happier period that is to await Israel after the Babylonian captivity, and the moral influence which the teachings of the Synagogue are to exert over mankind in general. Yet nothing can be plainer than the recompense which it promises to the Hebrew nation for its sufferings of the past, as set forth in verses 14, 15, and 16.

והלכו אליך שחוח בני מעניך והשתחוו על כפות רגליך כל מנאציך וקראו לך עיר יהוה ציון קדוש ישראל: תחת היותך עזובה ושנואה ואין עובר ושמתיך לגאון עולם משוש דור ודור : וינקת חלב גוים ושד מלכים תינקי The » וידעת כי אני יהוה מושיעך וגאלך אביר יעקב :

sons of thy oppressors shall come to thee on bent knee, and all who despised thee shall be prostrate at thy feet, and they shall call thee the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and despised, so that no one passed through thee, I will make thee an enduring excellency, the joy of generation to generation. And thou shalt be nourished with the milk of the nations, and shalt suck the breast of kings, and thou shalt know that I, the Lord, am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob."

It needs hardly be said that "light" as it is described in the text, is employed in a figurative sense, and means the revealed word of God. 1 That mankind might never wholly lose sight of their divine origin, it pleased the Lord to reveal

In other parts of prophetic Scripture "light" signifies joy and deliverance. (See Isaiah xlv. 7; lviii. 8, 10; lix. 9.)

N

Himself in the infancy of the world, and to publish, through the mission of Abraham, the doctrine of His absolute unity, which was to constitute the arch of the fuller and more developed revelation through Moses. From Sinai came the "light" on which the Prophet of the text dilates; from Sinai came the immortal Decalogue, the perfection of holiness and of moral and social duty; and as, in the economy of the material world, the sun was made the centre from which the planets were to receive their light, so in the spiritual world Israel was made the fountain of light, which it was to diffuse as widely as the spread of humanity, in

from » ממזרח שמש עד מבואו מהלל שם י order that

the rising of the sun, until the setting thereof, the name of the Lord might be praised";' and that

the earth * מלאה הארץ דעה את י כמים לים מכסים

should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas. 992

As in the earlier part of the prophetic career of Isaiah, so at the period to which the chapter of the text points, the Hebrews appear to have grown heedless of their sacerdotal mission which they were to prosecute by the telling lesson of their own lives and by the influence of their example. Side by side with the principles of faith embodied in the Sinaitic covenant, and which, as Moses emphatically impressed on them, were to be regarded as "their very life and the prolongation of their days," a two-fold worship was enjoined-inward or spiritual, and outward or ritual, constituting the relative

1 Psalm cxiii. 3.

2 Isaiah xi. 9.

3 Deut. xxix. 20.

characters of the two phases of positive religionthe essence and the accident, the matter and the manner, the spirit and the form. But they were strictly cautioned not to confound external rites with inward religion, and not to act on the false notion that ritual discipline of itself could recommend them to the favour and approval of their Heavenly Father. They were clearly taught that their religion demanded of them the exercise of the moral faculties, for which it admitted of no substitution and no compromise. Of the sinner it required a renovation of the heart and the practice of the law of right. Its aim was to guard its disciples against sensuality and criminal desire, as well as against malevolence, resentment, and revenge, and to eradicate from their breasts every evil and unamiable passion. In the spirit of perfect holiness it condemned whatever was designing or crafty in conduct and unrelenting in disposition, whilst it enforced the unvarying practice of truth, honesty, benevolence, self-sacrifice, and, indeed, all the kindred qualities that promote the glory of God and ennoble the nature of man. Its characteristic principles were pronounced to be love to God and love to mankind; and the aim and end of all its ritual worship was, after raising the mind to the Supreme Being, to divest religion of austerity and gloom, as well as of everything fringing on superstition, and to impart joy to the spirit, light to the path, elevation to the mind, and energy and activity to the faculties.

התורה אשר שם משה לפני בני ישראל Such was

"the code which Moses placed before the chil

dren of Israel.” 1 It is on this perfect law, described under the figure of "light," that the prophet descants whilst he arouses his hearers to a sense of their preceptive vocation, or, in other words, to diffuse this light by means of their precept and example. In another part of his book, he encourages them to action by assuring them that, notwithstanding their frequent backslidings, they had already been made instrumental in bringing the light unto some who are not of their own race. Speaking in the name of the Holy One, he

I am נדרשתי ללוא שאלו נמצאתו ללוא בקשני,says

sought by them that inquired not for me: I am found by them that sought me not."3 This is, however, but a small beginning of the spiritual work that is to be accomplished by Israel. The prophet therefore lifts the veil from before the future, in order to expose the wide and almost boundless track over which Israel is to spread the master-truth of Sinai as ages roll on. Although much of the earth and its peoples be now enveloped in darkness, the time will come, saith the oracle,

nations * והלכו גוים לאורך ומלאכים לנגה זרחך when

shall walk in thy light, and kings shall go in the brightness of thy sunrising."

In this prophetic address we may recognise the echo of the utterance of Solomon on the day when he inaugurated the grand national temple at Jeru

1 Deut. iv. 44.

28,"The law is light" (Prov. vi. 23).

3

3 Isaiah lxv. 1. Commenting on verse 1, Ibn Ezra

says,

לגוים שלא נקראו בשמי נדרשתי

אפילו

salem. Amongst the objects for which he declared the sacred structure to have been reared, he emphatically alluded to that which bore on the prosecution of the mission of Israel, which was conferred on them at Sinai when they were ennobled with the "a kingdom of priests." To this end he pronounced the temple open,—not, as he emphatically declared, to the Israelite only, but Day

,ממלכת כהנים title of

אל-הנכרי אשר לא מעמך ישראל הוא ובא מארץ רחוקה

also to the foreigner, not of thy people Israel, who may come out of a far country for the sake of thy name. And he gives expression

למען ידעו כל עמי הארץ את־ ,to the prayerful hope that all the peoples * שמך ליראה אתך כעמך ישראל

66

of the earth may know Thy name, to fear Thee as Thy people Israel.” 3

To accomplish their appointed mission, Israel was not required to have recourse to a proselytising propaganda, such as exists among some denominations in our times. No; it was to be worked out by such moral means only as the Israelites should exhibit in their own lives and examples, combined, as these would be, with the remarkable manner in which they would continue throughout time to be preserved in their religious and racial identity, no less by reason of their faith than of their distinctive ritual observances. For, the Divine word had gone forth that "the Guardian of Israel" would send His especial providence to hover about them. Moreover they had been comforted, at the very time when the 21 Kings viii. 41.

1 Exod. xix. 6.

3 Ibid, verse 43.