big for him; he became oppressed, distracted, and broke away from his traditions in a world of ceaseless conflict and change. Between Alexander's conquests and Roman supremacy the thinker was thrown back upon himself, and compelled to ask ultimate questions: What am I? Whence came I &c. There was a tendency towards the Christian question of salvation. But there was no response to the question forcing itself forward, What must I do to be saved? All was waiting for the proclamation (ch. lxi. 1).

IV. THE ROMAN EMPIRE. This was by far the most important secular herald of the Advent (Luke ii. 1). 1. Modern European society is but the fully-developed Empire of Rome.

2. Amid a universal peace, and with a universal language, preachers could go almost everywhere. 3. The fundamental question opened by the Roman Empire is also that of Christianity-the relation of men to each other. Is it enmity or brotherhood? (1.) Political amity gave rise to the idea of human brotherhood. (2.) Still men were at sea about the reality, grounds, and claims of this brotherhood. (3.) Thus the way was prepared till the time came when there were 66 shepherds abiding in the field," &c. (Luke ii. 8-14). Thus the Lord entered into this world and took possession of His throne.-J. Baldwin Brown: Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiii. p. 40.

We are authorised by the four Evangelists to understand these verses as a prophecy of the ministry of John the Baptist, who appeared as the forerunner of the Messiah; and they may be properly applied to all missionaries and religious workers who go out to uncivilised, heathen, and superstitious countries, to prepare the inhabitants for the reception of pure Christianity. The language is figurative, and is borrowed from an ancient Eastern custom. When monarchs went out to visit distant parts of their dominions or to invade neighbouring kingdoms, they sent heralds or pioneers before them to clear the way and remove obstructions. In allusion to this custom, John the Baptist and all his successors in similar work are represented as going out before the Messiah to clear away obstructions and prepare the way for the establishment of His kingdom in the world. Let us notice

I. THE CONDITION OF THE WORLD IN ITS SINFUL AND UNREFORMED STATE.

It is here represented as a wild, pathless, and dreary wilderness. This figurative description suggests - 1.

2.

That it is unproductive of anything good. The earth when left uncultivated will produce nothing valuable and useful; and so men in their sinful state will bear no fruit to the glory of God and the good of their fellow-creatures. That it is productive of things worthless, noxious, and injurious. A wilderness produces briars, thorns, and worthless weeds, and forms hiding places for ravenous beasts and poisonous reptiles. This is a proper description of the heathen and uncivilised world. Men there rob, deceive, and devour each other. "The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty."

II. THE NECESSARY AND IMPORTANT PREPARATION FOR ITS MORAL

TRANSFORMATION.

1. Religious teachers must be employeȧ to combat with the ignorance and thick darkness which cover the people. To preach the Gospel to people without any kind of elementary education would be like throwing grain-seed among thorns or over hard rocks uncovered with any soil. This preparatory work is carried on most effectively in the present day. Eleven Protestant missionaries. and assistants are now employed on

the wide field of the heathen and superstitious world for every one so employed fifty years ago.

2. The Word of God must be made accessible to the ntions in their respective languages and dialects. Eighty years ago the Bible had not been translated into more than forty of the languages of the world; now the whole book, or portions of it, is translated into more than two hundred and fifty languages. We thus see that the Christian Church has done six times more to prepare the way of the Lord in the last eighty years than it had done in the previous eighteen hundred years.

3. The international communications which are rapidly opening in every direction are promoted by men of the world simply for mercantile and scientific purposes, but they are evidently overruled by Divine Providence to prepare the way of the Lord. Many are running to and fro, and knowledge is increasing. Pure Christianity will ultimately reap all the advantages of this, for every form of false religion can only thrive in the darkness of ignorance and thoughtlessness.

III. THE GLORIOUS TRANSFORMATION WHICH SHALL BE EFFECTED.

"Every valley shall be exalted," &c., i.e., all the malarious morasses of immorality shall be drained and converted into healthy and productive land; all high hills and barren mountains of false systems of religion shall be levelled down and disappear; and all crooked and uneven dealings in the diplomacies of nations and commercial transactions shall be straightened and made conformable to the golden rule of the Gospel (Matt. vii. 12). When this blessed change is realised, "the glory of the Lord shall be revealed "—

1. In the number of converts to the true religion. The true followers of Christ in every age hitherto have been only a "little flock" in comparison with all the inhabitants of the world, but the time is coming "when they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me,

from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord."

2. In the beauty of their holy and consistent characters. "Holiness unto the Lord" shall be stamped upon every person and thing then; "and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." The good works of God's people will so shine before men that they shall be led to glorify our Father which is in heaven.

3. In the temporal and spiritual happiness of the world. All the sources of misery and unhappiness shall be dried up entirely. Wars and bloody contentions between nations shall cease unto the ends of the earth. All tyranny, oppression, and every form of injustice shall be removed, and kindness, charity, and justice will occupy their place. occupy their place. Men who used to be likened to bears, wolves, lions, leopards, and poisonous serpents, shall be changed and become tame and as harmless as the lamb, the kid, and the weaned child (chap. xi. 6-8). The whole earth will become the holy mountain of the Lord. The spiritual condition of the Church will then be indescribably happy and glorious. There will be no lifeless religious service, and no worshipper groaning and downcast under the hidings of the Lord's face, for "the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud of smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defence."

IV. THE CERTAINTY OF THE REALISATION OF THIS TRANSFORMATION.

"For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." 1. The Lord has ample power to fulfil all His promises. The opponents and obstructors of the promised transformation are described in

the next three verses as grass and withering flowers. withering flowers. And what is grass to withstand Almighty power?

2. The Lord is omniscient, and no unforeseen contingencies can derange His plans, as it is often with us (chap. xlvi. 9).

3. The Lord is the God of truth, and

it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of His law and promises

to fail (Numb. xxiii. 19).-Thomas Rees, D.D.

The primary reference of these words. is to the clearing of the way for the captive Jews in Babylon to return to their own land. Between Babylon and Jerusalem there was an inmense tract of country, which was an untrodden and mountainous desert. The prophet hears in vision the voice of a herald demanding that a highway should be made, that the valleys be filled up, the mountains levelled, and the crooked way made straight. The Evangelists give the passage another and a moral application. They regard John the Baptist as the herald who in his wakening ministry prepared the way in men's hearts for the mission of Him who was the spiritual Deliverer of mankind.

The words illustrate the socially levelling force of Christianity. There are and ever have been in the soul of society opinions, prejudices, feelings, conventional notions, which, like mountains and valleys, have separated men into classes, and prevented the free and loving interchange of soul. How does Christianity remove those mountains, fill up the valleys, and give a straight pathway into souls ?

In two ways:

I. By the levelling truths which it reveals. 1. A common God. A plurality of deities divides heathen society into sections. Christianity reveals one God, the Father of all, by whom are all things, and to whom are all things. It denounces all other deities as vanities and lies. A common God wakens a community of love, purpose, and worship.

2. A common nature. In heathen mythology men are represented as the offspring of different deities. In India one caste claims a nobler origin than another; and even in Christendom there are those who impiously claim a higher blood (Acts xvii. 26).

Different The Gos

3. A common obligation. codes of duty divide men. pel reveals one law for all-to love the one God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves. 4. A common depravity. sentiment divides (Rom. iii. 23; Isa. liii. 6). All are

Pharisaic

5. A common salvation. diseased, and there is but one Physician. All are captives, and there is but one Deliverer. All are lost, and there is but one Saviour.

IL By the levelling spirit which it generates. It generates a spirit which raises a man above the prejudices of heart and conventionalities that divide men. It is a spirit which has supreme regard to three things-1. The spiritual in man. The true Christian spirit sees no dignity where there is meanness of soul, no degradation where there is a true nobility of heart. 2. The right in conduct. The true spirit judges not by custom and policy, but by principles of everlasting right; and it inspires a man to attempt the removal of all social mountains and hills that stand in the way of the right. 3. The eternal in destiny. The human race is regarded not in its merely visible and temporal relation, but in its unseen and eternal.

Its levelling, however, does not involve spoliation. Distinctions arising from varieties in intellectual power, mental tastes, physical capacity, and individual circumstances, it recognises and respects. These do not necessarily involve social separations. Rightly used they are a blessed media of intercourse. It is the mountains arising from individual vanity, religious bigotry, national pride, worldly pretensions, and spiritual ignorance that Christianity levels to the dust.-David Thomas, D.D.: Homilist, Third Series, vol. viii. p. 95.

of the Lord may have free course and be glorified."

3. The preaching of the Gospel (Mark xvi. 15, 16, 20). Whenever the preaching of evangelical truth is rightly conducted, the glory of the Lord will be more and more revealed (1 Cor. i. 1824); but the members of the Church generally are to be instrumental by their prayers, instructions, and example (Matt. vi. 10; Isa. ii. 5; Matt. v. 16; Phil. i. 9–11).

III. The extent to which the glory of the Lord shall be exhibited-" All flesh shall see it together.' When Isaiah spoke thus, the very existence of Jehovah was unknown to every nation under heaven but one. Innumerable multitudes are yet sitting in darkness. This great promise has still, therefore, to receive its full accomplishment (ch. xii. 3; Matt. ix. 37, 38; Rom. x. 13, 15); then shall come to pass the saying that is written (Hab. ii. 14; Isa. xxxv. 1, 2).

IV. The great purpose for which the exhibition of the Divine glory is to be made. What this must be is clearly implied, though, in our version at least, not expressed. It is, that the Lord may so be made known as to be universally and exclusively honoured and obeyed (ch. ii. 11). And the next grand object in view is, to promote the best interests of men (ch. xlv. 22; lii. 10).

V. The certainty of the whole, as intimated by the assertion-" For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it" (Heb. x. 23, xi. 11; 1 Sam. xv. 23). What the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, the power of the Lord will accomplish (Jer. xxxii. 27).

APPLICATION. 1. Let us rejoice that our God is the God of glory, and in this character the God of salvation. 2. Let us individually seek to have saving manifestations of His glory (Exod. xxx. iii. 18). 3. Let us recognise our infinite obligations for the means we enjoy for this purpose. 4. Let us seek to advance His glory far and wide (ch. lxii. 1).—Adam Thomson, D.D.: Outlines, pp. 108-114.

We believe that Jesus Christ was that image of God whom prophets. had been desiring to behold. Is that enough for us? Are we content that the world should go on as it is, the Christian world, or the world that is not Christian?

If not, what is it we wish for? Is Jesus the One that shall come, or do we look for another?

There is a disposition among religious men to look for something else than the manifestation of Christ. Christ is, according to them, a means to an end, but not the end; the sight of Him is not itself what they covet; the loss of Him is not itself what they dread. Again, there are not a few who say that the Gospel has failed of its object. Has it set the world right? Has misery ceased? Has wrong ceased? Has the reign of peace begun? The last of these opinions ought not to be rejected till men have cleared their minds of the first.

I. In the Old Testament the misery of the Jewish people, though produced by the most different instruments, has but one cause. Whoever are the tyrants

Pharaoh, Jabin, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar tyranny is the cause of their groaning. A Deliverer is their one infinite necessity. Men appear as their deliverers; but they appear in the name of the Lord. Idolatry is the worship of some tyrant force. These thoughts and experiences were the school of the prophets. Through the prevalence of idolatry in the world, they were forced to rely upon the might of God and to expect the revelation of His glory. God cannot be disappointed. His purpose is to reveal Himself, and He will reveal Himself.

II. Isaiah is rightly called "The Evangelical Prophet," because he saw more clearly than any one that only One who perfectly revealed God, who perfectly revealed Him as a Deliverer, could be the Person whom Israelites and all nations desired. Every event was a partial Epiphany. He hungered for one which should be for "all flesh." The mouth of the Lord had as much spoken this as He had spoken the com