they also may know how to wait. There is something divine in being able so to do.

2. There is something in the movement of the seasons tending to remind us of this great law. The changes of day and night, how slow, how gradual, how imperceptible! How gentle is the coming of the light! How silently and slowly does it give place to darkness! These might have come with suddenness, as if from a hurried hand; but they do not, &c.

3. There is something in the history of all life adapted to convey the same lesson. Life, whether in plants or animals, is everywhere a growth; and all growth is silent, gradual, so gradual as not to be perceived. All this is rooted in mystery. Individual life in man, in the sense of education or development, is in harmony with all that has gone before it. But the truth we are illustrating is seen conspicuously in the history of national life. If the education of an individual be so slow, what marvel if the education of a people should be very slow? (H. E. I. 3420.)

II. So far we see, from facts in nature and providence, it behoves us to guard against impatience in judging the ways of God, and to know how to wait. Religion, revealed religion, includes much in harmony with those facts. It is, moreover, in these phases of religion that we find some of the aspects of it which are often especially perplexing to Christians.

1. We see a fact of this nature in the long interval which was to pass between the promise of a Saviour and His advent. Sin enters the world, &c. Four thousand years pass, and the Promised One does not come. Now in the history of the earth, in the slowness of the changes through which it was to pass before it came to be what it was to be, we see enough to prevent our being greatly surprised by such a fact. What was to be gained by this delay, we can know only in part.

2. So when the Saviour did come, the manner of His coming was not such as the thoughts of man would have anticipated. The kingdom of God was

to come without observation (Luke xvii. 20). It was to begin with small beginnings. Its Founder was to be to many as a root out of a dry ground, as one without form and comeliness, &c. But these facts are in harmony with the Divine conduct as known elsewhere. It is not the manner of the Almighty to cause great things to become great at once. Our Lord revealed Himself even to His disciples gradually, slowly, imperfectly. If the Church, which is to fill the world, had its beginning in the hut of a fisherman, or in the upper room in Jerusalem, this is only in accordance with the Divine law of things. The great forces of nature all move thus, without noise, without haste, so secretly that we never know their beginnings, and so slowly that we can never see their motion, though we know that they are moving.

3. Nor is it without mystery to many minds that the history of revealed religion since the advent should have been such as it has been. No truth the world had ever possessed had been proof against corruption. Out of all the evolutions of error, out of all the devices of evil, He will educe lessons for the future which shall cause His universe to be upon the whole the wiser and the better for all that has happened. But for this we must wait. Often we see good come out of evil. In the end we shall see that all things have been regulated towards such an issue. "The Lord God omuipotent reigneth."

4. If we descend from the general life of the Church to the spiritual history of the individual believer, we may find much there to remind us that the experience of the Church at large and of the Christian, taken separately, are regulated by the same intelligence. In our tendency towards haste we naturally wish to see the world converted soon, very soon. when we enter on the Christian life, we covet that it should be matured speedily. But it does not so mature. We unlearn the evil slowly; we learn the good still more slowly, &c. All this is very humiliating and very

So

them that oppress thee with their own flesh, and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as sweet wine;" i.e., He would cause them to destroy one another with as much eagerness as half-famished men fall upon a wellfurnished table; they shall hasten to that banquet of blood with as much fervour as men hasten to a banquet of wine. The historian tells us that on the night in which Babylon was taken many of the Chaldeans fell off from Belshazzar and joined the standard of Cyrus; they were themselves most forward in surprising the city, and showing the way into the king's palace, where they slew him and all his attendants. Thus the promise of the text was fulfilled by the overthrow of the reigning government, and the introduction of a new dynasty to the throne. So completely was this done, that the captives were as much overpowered by the greatness of their deliverance as they had before been confounded by the depth of the calamity (Ps. cxxvi. 1).

Learn, then, how fully God can make good His promises, and disperse the worst fears of His people. "The Lord can clear the darkest skies." And He does it with as much tenderness as power (ver. 15). The captives feared more for their beloved families than for themselves, as you do for yours, and the promise respects them: "And I will save thy children."

II. Apply it spiritually to man's redemption by Christ. To the convicted sinner, human redemption has often seemed incompatible with the inalienable claims of Divine justice, which seem to demand that the punishment of the transgressors should take its course. God cannot connive at sin; and the law we have broken is holy, just, and good, as necessary to the happiness of the universe as it is essential to the glory of God; a law too good to be repealed, too sacred to be trifled with; the abrogation of it would dethrone the Deity, and pour anarchy through all the worlds He has made (H. E. I. 3157, 3188). How then shall the great dilemma which

sin has introduced be met? If mercy triumphs, justice is tarnished; if justice prevail, man is overthrown for ever. Mere power has no force in regard to moral questions; it cannot make right wrong, or wrong right. To solve this question was a task for Omniscience: God dealt with it, and through Scripture has made known to us its solution (ch. liii. 5, 6; Rom. iii. 19-26, &c.; H. E. I. 375-382, 396). Justice triumphs in the death of Christ, and mercy triumphs in the pardon of penitent sinners through Him. The very idea of redemption turns upon this point. It means the buying back again of lost and forfeited good, by a compensative arrangement between the parties. In ancient times the lives of prisoners taken in war were held to be at the disposal of the conqueror, and the acceptance of a stipulated ransom was the established mode of buying back the lives and liberty of the prisoners. The law of God, with all the forces of the universe behind it, must be in the end the conqueror of all who rebel against it, and in the Gospel we are told that the ransom-price was the death of Christ, who gave Himself for us and suffered in our stead (1 Pet. i. 18). The ransom was sufficient (H. E. I. 377-381).

III. Apply the text experimentally to the Christian's deliverance from sin. 1. Jesus not only made atonement for our sins; He at the same time contended with and overcame our worst enemies. Man was the willing servant of the powers of darkness; not a forced captive, but a ready subject of Satan. But, by dying, Jesus overcame him who had dominion over our race (Heb. iv. 14, 15; Eph. iv. 8). He literally made good the promise, "I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children."

2. In converting grace, the triumph is the same; and in the experience of the penitent sinner it is continually renewed (Luke iv. 18, xi. 20-22). Christ's people are pardoned and delivered from the power of sin in all its forms; in every conflict He gives them victory, and He will do so to the end

IV. Apply it prospectively to the blessed resurrection from the dead promised to the people of God.— Samuel Thodey.

(a) "The lawful captive" has been rendered "the captive of the strong" (Herd.), of the stern or severe (Schult., Rosenm.), of the victorious (Mich., Beck), of the terrible, by a conjectural change of reading (Hitz., Lowth, Knob., Ewald), righteous captives, i.e., exiled Jews (Symm., Jareb., Aben Ezra, Hitz., Hahn), the plunder of the righteous, i.e., taken from them (Ges., Maurer, Umbreil). But the received version (Stier) gives the true meaning, "the captive of one who has a rightful claim to keep another in bondage." There is a climax, seldom noticed, in the reply; and a threefold gradation, of a simply rightful, a powerful, and a terrible conqueror; of one who has a just claim, one who has also power to maintain it, and one whose power is so terrible that resistance seems hopeless. Shall the prey of the mighty be taken away, or even a captive justly claimed, though by one less mighty, be delivered? Not in the common course of things, or by human justice alone. But God's grace has a higher law, and even more than this shall be done the prey of the most terrible among Zion's adversaries shall be delivered.-Birks.

Both in providence and grace, "man's extremity is God's opportunity." Of this, the Jews needed to be reminded. They had been taken into captivity, and were detained there for the punishment of their sins. They had been assured that God would deliver them in due time, but the difficulties in the way of the fulfilment of that promise seemed so insuperable, that they despairingly asked, "Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered?" To this question Isaiah was authorised confidently to give a reassuring reply (ver. 25).

I. To this question there was an answer in the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tyranny of Egypt. The history of what God did for their fathers should have prevented the Jews in Babylon from asking this question. But in every new extremity men are prone to forget the history of the past.

II. There was an answer to this

of God from their captivity in Babylon. It seemed impossible, but it was accomplished, and in complished, and in precisely the manner that God had predicted. These things were written for our learning!

III. There was an

answer to this question in the great work of human redemption effected by Christ on the Cross. That seemed the hour of Satan's victory; it was the hour of his defeat (Col. ii. 14, 15).

IV. There are answers to this question in the conversion of sinners by the preaching of the Gospel. The glorious work of emancipation still goes on (Luke iv. 18; 2 Cor. x. 4).

Then

V. There will be an answer to this question when our Redeemer returns with power and great glory. death and the grave shall be compelled to give up their prey; and death and hell shall be "cast into the lake of fire."-W. Dransfield: Forty-six Short Sermons, pp. 239–264.

I. The enemy to be encountered. Satan, an enemy that is mighty and terrible. 1. In the nature of his influence. On the intellectual and moral man-the immortal soul. 2. In the number of his agents. A legion against one. 3. In the extent of his territory.

II. The captives he retains. 1. Those who are born where he reigns unrivalled. Idolatrous countries. 2. Those who yield to his sway, though deliverance is at hand. Pharisees. Hardened sinners.

III. The prospect of deliverance. 1. The price of their redemption is provided. 2. The agent that can make it effective. 3. The means are in operation to make the deliverance known. 4. Specimens of triumph already obtained.

IV. The means to be employed. 1. Fervent and importunate prayer. 2. Free and extensive diffusion of the charter of liberty-"The Word of God."-Studies for the Pulpit, part ii.

p. 308.