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 immense 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).

3. A common obligation. Different codes of duty divide men. The Gospel reveals one law for all-to love the one God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves.

4. A common depravity. Pharisaic sentiment divides (Rom. iii. 23; Isa. liii. 6).

5. A common salvation. All are 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.

II. 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

mands against adultery, or murder, or false witness.

III. Apostles, while they claimed the words of this prophet as pointing to Christ, forbade a contentment with what disciples had heard, or seen, or, felt, or believed. They said, "We are saved by hope" (Rom. xi. 33; Eph. iii. 18, 19).

IV. Of such teaching the consequence must be, that whatever calamities come upon the world will be stimulants and encouragements to this hope. There will be no shame in indulging it; because it is a hope for the world and not only for ourselves. There will be no uncertainty about it; because it does not depend upon our faith or virtue, but upon the eternal Word of God. The mouth of the Lord had spoken it.

LESSONS.-1. Let us have no doubt that, however we may classify men's oppressions, as individual or social, as political or intellectual, as animal or spiritual, God Himself has awakened the cry for freedom. 2. Let us have no doubt

that that cry is, when truly understood and interpreted, a cry that God will appear as the Deliverer, that His glory may be revealed. 3. Let us therefore be most eager to meet all these cries, however discordant they be, with a true sympathy and recognition. 4. Let us, without precipitation-rather by acts than by words-show that we believe we can give God's answer to them.

It is an old commonplace of divinity which we are strangely forgetting, that despair is the only utter perdition, because despair binds a man in the prison of his evil nature, and fastens the chain of the evil spirit upon him; because all hope points upwards to God, and is the response of our spirit to His Spirit. The promise of this final Epiphany stands not on the decrees of lawgivers, or the expectations of holy men, or the confidence of seers. It comes from Him who said, "Let there be light, and there was light."-F. D. Maurice: Lincoln's Inn Sermons, vol. i. pp. 175-289.

We are witnessing one of the last phases of that wonderful life which Nature unfolds before us each year with ever-new beauty. To most men it is a sad phase. Why? Not because we are entering upon the rugged season of the year. They know that the discomforts of winter are transient; and winter brings its own pleasures. The feeling finds its source in that intuitive faculty in man which enables him to interpret the spiritual significance in Nature, and which tells him that in the withering and falling leaf, decomposing and resolving itself into its first elements, in the dry and flowerless stalk and the harsh brown grass, he sees the type of his own mortality (P. D. 248, 2222).

The decay of autumn suggesting the thought of decay in human life,

abiding; there is somewhat that is only temporary-the foliage in which the real expresses itself to-day, and which it will cast aside to-morrow. And so we find the sacred poet thinking upon the transitoriness of life, reassuring himself with the thought that there is nevertheless somewhat that is real and abiding. "All flesh is grass," &c.

There are lives which all of us can live which will have more than a transitory significance; deeds within the power of us all which will be immortal; things which may be acquired by us which neither time nor accident can wrest from us.

I Our good deeds will live for ever. Our acts of kindness, generosity, helpfulness are immortal because they are Divine. There is a threefold immortality-1. Acts that lessen life's burdensomeness and diminish the temptations to sin have. far-reaching consequences to others. By these personal ministries, often humble and obscure, we are shaping immortal lives. Our good deeds will live in other souls (P. D. 1006, 2302, 2443, 3205). 2. You cannot do another good without doing yourself good in the deed; you are building your own character, and that will show your work upon it unto eternity (H. E. I. 720; P. D. 3609). 3. Our good deeds become immortal by their life in the thought of God (Heb. vi. 10; Acts x. 31; H. E. I. 451, 1726; P. D. 2012).

II. Our pure affections will live for ever (P. D. 749-2351).

The leaves fall and mingle with the sod, the flower droops and withers, and earth ere long will lie sepulchred beneath the snow; but in the providence of God the spring will come, and earth will wake to a fresh and radiant life. And so, also, when our earthly plans are broken, our accumulations scattered, and our bodies crumble into dust, the soul with all its fulness of love and all its trophies of service shall live on in the immortality of God.-George P. Gilman.

(a) The very affecting images of Scripture which compare the short-lived existence of

In

man to the decay of the vegetable creation are scarcely understood in this country. The verdure is perpetual in England. It is difficult to discover a time when it can be said, "The grass withereth." But let a traveller visit the beautiful plain of Smyrna, or any other part of the East, in the month of May, and revisit it toward the end of June, and he will perceive the force and beauty of these allusions. May, an appearance of fresh verdure and of rich luxuriance everywhere meets the eye; the face of Nature is adorned with a carpet of flowers and herbage of the most elegant kind. But a month or six weeks subsequently, how changed is the entire scene! The beauty is gone, the grass is withered, the flower is faded; a brown and dusty desert has taken the place of a delicious garden. It is, doubtless, to this rapid transformation of Nature that the Scriptures compare the fate of man. -Hartley: Researches in Greece, p. 237.

God's comparisons are striking, His contrasts sharp. Could the perishability of creation and the imperishability of its uncreated Author be put more vividly before our eyes than by likening the one to a worn-out garment, ready to drop apart, while the other stands out untouched by time, and with years that have no end? (Ps. cii. 26, 27). In this passage from ancient prophecy, how the fleeting is made a background on which to set the fixed! Over against Nature's decaying growth are put Revelation's verities that eternally abide. "The grass withereth," &c.

I. We have symbolised a changing world. While the decay of vegetation which the season brings needs not be, and ought not to be, a ghastly or gloomy thing (8), it is a symbol of change, a reminder of the evanescence of all material objects and concerns. Look around, and you will observe that all things are changing, most of them rapidly (H. E. I. 4975-4989; P. D. 408, 2536, 3336). Turn where you will, you note the restlessness of men. New partners, new parties, new experiments, new diversions. Why are all things around us thus full of change? 1. Partly because that capricious thing the human will underlies all finite activities, and will not let us remain quiet. Its fickleness it is that keeps public and private life disturbed (7). A changing world! Can it be