i. 11, 16, 17. _To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I am full of the
burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of
he-goats. . . . Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil
of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow._
What was the business of the ancient prophet? Not merely to predict
events. His chief work was to make men realise vividly the presence
of God. Religions, in order to their permanence, require system. But
religious systems, with their creeds, forms, and ceremonies, have an
inevitable tendency to coldness and deadness. The prophet was sent to
counteract this tendency. It was his mission to restore to great
words their great meanings, to cause moral principles to reassert
themselves as the lords of conscience and of will--in a word, to
prophesy on the dry bones of a decaying religion until there came
upon them flesh and sinew, and there passed into them the breath of
spiritual life. Such a mission was that of Isaiah. In his time
religion was in a state of petrifaction, nay, rather of putrefaction.
From this fact his prophetic message takes its keynote. It begins
with an invective that reminds us of John the Baptist.
What was the condition of things that provoked his indignation? Not a
lack of religious observances; there was a redundancy of them. That
which caused a righteous anger to burn with him vehemently was their
perversion of the sacrificial system to which they gloried, their
dissociation of it from the moral law, to which God intended it to be
only a supplement. It was given to teach men the hatefulness of sin,
and the duty of consecration to God; but they separated it from the
moral law, and allowed all its spiritual meaning to drop out of it.
Instead of using it as a help to morality, they were making it the
substitute for morality. Coming up red-handed from their murders, and
reeking with their foul vices, they stood up before God, claiming His
favour; for were they not sacrificing to Him, yea, in accordance with
the regulations Himself had given? No wonder that a man with veracity
in him and a love of righteousness should pour out upon such men and
such offerings the whole wrath of his nature.
From this exposition take the following practical lessons--1. _All
forms of religion have a tendency to lose their original purity and
freshness._ As a stream, clear at its fountain-head, but turbid
before it reaches the sea; as our planet, which physicists say was
flung off at first from the sun a glowing mass of light and heat, has
been cooling down ever since; so is it with religions and churches.
As a rule, their history has been one of gathering accretions and of
diminishing purity and power in proportion to their distance from
their fountain-head. So was it with Judaism. So has it been with
Christianity. Contrast Christianity as we have it in St. Paul's
epistles, all aglow with fervour and love, and that of the time of
Leo X., with its professed head and most of his court professed
infidels, and the officials of the Church selling indulgences to sin
for money! Luther lit the fire again; but Protestantism has had its
illustrations of the same law. Witness the state of things in this
country in the last century. In view of this fact let the Church pray
for prophetic spirits who shall in each generation rekindle the dying
fires; and, apart from the influence of specially-gifted men, let
each Church betake itself continually to the Fountain-head of
spiritual life. 2. _False religiousness is worse than none at all._
Isaiah says, not simply that such observances are of no avail with
God, but that they are abominations to Him. We can see the reason.
Such a religion as that which Isaiah denounced works harm to the
individual and to the cause of godliness generally; to the
individual, but inspiring him with a vain confidence; to the cause of
godliness, by furnishing points for the shafts of ridicule, by which
faith is killed in many hearts. It would be difficult to say who are
the greatest promoters of infidelity--professed atheists or
hypocritical religionists. 3. _It is a perilous thing to overlook the
connection between impression and practice in religion._ In vers. 16
and 17, the prophet shows us what the true nexus between them is.
"Your ceremonies and observances will do you no good unless you
practise the morality, the judgment, mercy, and love to which they
point." Our power of receiving impressions is under a directly
opposite law from our power of practice. The former steadily
decreases by exercise, the latter as steadily increases. This is so
in religion, as well as in other things. The impression produced upon
the Jews by the sacrifices would decrease as they were repeated,
unless by them they were led to practical righteousness, and their
whole system would in time become utterly powerless as a moral
incentive; just as, if a man is for a few mornings wilfully deaf to
an alarum in his bedroom, it presently loses its power even to waken
him. The same law will operate with us. The preaching of the gospel
is intended to produce impression, and that again to lead to
practice. If the latter does not follow _at once,_ the chances are
all against its ever following, because the impressions will become
feebler with each repetition. A fact this for all hearers to ponder.
4. _Religious observances and machinery of all kinds have their end
in the development of character._ This was so in Isaiah's time. It is
so now. If their religious observances were not leading them to
"cease to be evil," and to "learn to do well," but were hindering
them from doing so, it were better for them to give them up. So our
creeds, organisations, ministers, &c., are of use only as related to
character. They are the scaffolding, character is the building; they
are the tools, that the work. If no building is going on, this parade
of scaffolding is an imposture, and had better be swept away.--_J.
Brierley, B.A._