XVI.]

STRENGTH IN GOD.

285

city. Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.'

NOTE.

"In the time of Sanherib (Sennacherib)" says Niebuhr, "Babylon acknowledged the supremacy of Assyria and had, perhaps, even been compelled to submit to Shalmanassar. Hagisah, a brother of Sanherib, was king of Babylon, but that kingdom revolted and Hagisah was slain. Merodach Baladan then raised himself to the throne."-Lectures on Ancient History. Vol. I. pp. 31, 32.

SERMON XVII.

THE SUFFERING KING AND PEOPEL.

LINCOLN'S INN, PALM SUNDAY.-APRIL 4, 1852.

ISAIAH, XLII. 1—3.

Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed he shall not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

THE burden of Babylon of which I spoke last Sunday, is said to have been in the year that Ahaz died. In that year Isaiah warned the whole of Palestine that it must not rejoice because the rod of him that smote it was broken; for out of the serpent's root should come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit should be a fiery flying serpent. Yet he tells his countrymen that the poor shall feed and the needy shall lie down in safety. The Lord hath founded Zion; the poor of his people shall trust in it.

I said that Isaiah evidently expected that this new calamity would soon overtake the land. He tells Moab

Serm. XVII.] WOES APPROACHING OR ARRIVED.

287

that in "three years its glory shall be contemned with all its great multitudes." He goes barefoot three years as a sign to the Egyptians and Ethiopians that the young and old should be led captives by the Assyrians. He says that Kedar shall be wasted within a year. The desolation will be a very sweeping one. The prophet looks to see the whole earth turned upside down, the land emptied, the master and the servant perishing, money lenders and money borrowers, all classes of men, cast into utter ruin.

There were two great invasions of Palestine in the reign of Hezekiah; that which took place under Shalmaneser in his fourth year, that of Sennacherib in his fourteenth. I apprehend that most of the calamities which are spoken of in the twenty-fourth chapter were fully realised in the former.

I have spoken already of the hopes which dawned upon the prophet's mind in the midst of its gloom, of his assurance that the time of discomforture and overthrow to all surrounding nations, of terror to his own, would nevertheless be in some respects a better and more blessed time than most which had preceded it. The confidence grows brighter and firmer as the cloud becomes nearer and more portentous. The prophet does not merely trust that light will follow when the darkness is scattered. He sees the light present in the midst of the darkness. The depth of the night makes him know that there is a dayspring from on high which will visit his land and all lands. It is difficult to say whether the song of trust and thanksgiving in the twentyfifth chapter is one of anticipation or whether it was uttered in sight of a ruin which had already more than fulfilled all his saddest forbodings. The visions of a prophet, concerning that which is to be, are so full of present force and reality; his contemplation of that which has happened is so ne

288

CONSOLATIONS.

[Serm. cessarily involved with foresight of its issues, that nothing is harder as all interpreters have felt-than to fix the boundaries between the two. If we could do it accurately and decisively, much of the very meaning of prophecy would be lost; it would be far less a guide to us in our own meditations upon the world we read of, the world we behold, and the world that shall be, than (if we use it rightly) it is now. And music or song seems so especially ordained to give a sense of wholeness and unity to those thoughts which ordinary discourse breaks up into successive instants, that when the prophet pours forth a lyrical rapture, we should try more than at other times to follow the movements of his spirit in the certainty that they cannot be defined by chronological landmarks. Nevertheless it is the impression I think upon the minds of most readers, and, I cannot doubt, a right impression, that this chapter if it is in a measure prospective, yet must have been written during the Assyrian invasion. I do not rest any thing upon tenses. Every reader of the prophets must feel how ambiguous they are. But still the words, “ Thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defenced city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city," and these, "Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall," do seem to describe an actual experience. One can hardly help thinking that the man who wrote such words, had just heard of some old and famous Palestine city which had been sacked, if he was not walking amidst the ruins of it; and that he was at the same time drinking in consolation from the thought that the cry of a number of serfs and bondsmen, which had gone up to Heaven against

XVII.] THE USE OF JUDGMENTS. (C. XXIV.-XXVI.) 289

the oppressors in their own country, was answered by this visitation. It was not merely that their wrongs were thus avenged. The humbling of the proud men of their own cities may have been an actual immediate blessing to them. The rich men and rulers of neighbouring lands may have been awakened by the common danger to a sense of sympathy and brotherhood which they had never known before. At all events an eternal law was revealed to the prophet's mind, and in greater or less clearness to the minds of others who witnessed the same events,—a law which decreed that mere force should not prevail, that the strong should be laid low, that the weak should be raised up; a law which contained a sure pledge that some day or other "God would destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that was spread over all nations, that He would swallow up death in victory, and wipe away tears from all faces."

We have all of us witnessed enough of remarkable changes and sudden revolutions, to be capable of understanding passages in the prophet's discourse which at first sound puzzling and contradictory. "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." "Let favor be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness." "In the land of uprightness, will he deal unjustly and not behold the majesty of the Lord." "Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will But they shall see." It is thus that two opposing sides of truth present themselves to a divinely taught man. There is a blindness, an insensibility, a lightness of heart, which at one moment strikes him as quite inconceivable in those who are passing through fires which will leave effects behind them for generations to come. Then he perceives

not see.

U