248

ALL THINGS SIGNS OF HIM.

[Serm. XIV. Quid times? Cæsarem vehis-The Son of God is in the vessel,—will be an answer to all suggestions of the cowardly nature within us that the Father of Spirits will desert the work of His own hands. "Associate yourselves and ye shall be broken in pieces, powers of darkness and evil! for God is with us." And we shall desire and hope that we and the children whom God has given us, may be signs to the world of His Kingdom and His victory. The commonest birth into the world will be a wonder, since He has been born into it. The continuance of every family in spite of its sins and strifes will speak of Him as the Everlasting Brother, even as the endurance of the earth itself amidst all that is shaking it, will bear witness, that He sitteth above the water-floods, a King for ever.

SERMON XV.

THE LIGHT IN DARKNESS.

LINCOLN'S INN, 4TH SUNDAY IN LENT.-MARCH 21, 1852.

ISAIAH, IX. 1-7.

Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of

250

THE HATRED OF THE TRIBES.

[Serm. his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

THE separation of Israel from Judah reached its consummation in the time of Ahaz. The confederacy of the Samaritans with the Syrians against Judah was encountered by the confederacy of Judah with Assyria against Israel. It was no mere border war. Each sought the extermination of the other. These confederacies betokened the spirit which was at the root of all the crimes which Isaiah had deplored and denounced. The acknowledgment of a common king had bound the tribes together, so long as that implied the acknowledgment of a common God. Idolatry had broken the tie and had kept them asunder. But the present scheme of Samaria to extinguish its rival even at the cost of giving an ascendancy to the uncircumcised king of Damascus, showed clearly enough that the last link of brotherhood was broken, because the last feeling of the divine calling, which had made them a nation of brothers, was gone. The more plausible, really more insane, desire of Ahaz to secure the favour of an empire which was the common enemy of all nations, that he might get rid of the two which were tormenting him, showed that faith had departed from Judah also. The idols of silver and gold had driven God out of its heart, and made the worship of Him a mockery.

It was at this time that Isaiah's child was born. He received it, we have seen, as a sign and wonder from the Lord of Hosts. It was a sign of the coming fall of Samaria

XV.]

THEIR COMMON MISERY.

251

and Damascus. Before the child had knowledge to cry 'My Father and Mother,' the spoils of both would be taken away before the king of Assyria. But that prospect, however cheering it might have been to Ahaz if he had believed Isaiah, would only have oppressed the prophet himself.

The destruction of a part of the covenant people, even the destruction of any nation, was to him an awful event. Had this been all, the child would have been an omen of evil, not of good. But something was awakened in his mind by the sight of it and by all the affections and sympathies that accompanied it, which lifted him to a higher and securer ground of confidence for the land and for himself. Laws and principles were connected with that relation of child and father, which he could dimly discern, not measure or understand. Truths which did not stand aloof from him, which were associated with his own being, had their root and ground somewhere else. A ladder which was set upon earth reached to Heaven, and it was one upon which the angels of God might descend and ascend.

The prophet had need of this new strength to bear the gloomy visions which pressed more and more heavily upon him, of a people hardly bested and hungry, who would fret themselves and curse their king and God and look upward; of a people who, in their despair of any divine help, would turn to wizards that peeped and muttered,—“ of a people who would then look upon the earth, and behold trouble and darkness and dimness of anguish, and who should be driven into darkness." This prostration of all moral strength and hope, this utter dreariness of spirit, is just what was to be augured of men like the Israelites of the north, who had given themselves up to vanities and delusions, who had believed a lie and worshipped it. And

252

ZEBULUN AND NAPHTHALI.

[Serm.

why should the hypocritical Judah with her unbelieving king sink into a darkness less utter?

"Nevertheless," says the prophet, "the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined."

It is clearly indicated here that a body of Israelites, who in other comparatively light visitations, had remained shut out from the privilege of their countrymen, a set of borderoutcasts, consigned to Heathenism, should now in this more troublous time, when the whole people seemed likely to share their fall and exclusion, receive a new and sudden illumination. The hour of utter dislocation and dissolution when, in the prophet's language, "they were eating every one the flesh of his own arm," when Manasseh was against Ephraim and Ephraim against Manasseh, and both together against Judah;-in that hour would there be some unlooked for testimony that they were all one people. Some light from Heaven penetrating the darkest corners of the land would shew that it was still a Holy Land. If you turn to the thirtieth chapter of the second Book of Chronicles, you will see that between the invasion of Tiglath Pileser and that of Shalmaneser,—when a great body of the Israelites had been carried captive and the power of the Assyrian Empire had been fully realised, but while they were still dwelling in their old cities and allowed to claim Samaria as a capital,— an event occurred which must have seemed utterly strange and wonderful to all the tribes, but especially to those Ze