xix. 1-3, 14. _The burden of Egypt, &c._
The prophecies of Isaiah take a wide range, embrace the fortunes of
almost every nation, however remote, with whom the Israelites were
brought into common relation, whether of policy or commerce--Moab,
Damascus, Tyre, Babylon, Ethiopia, Egypt. The prophet records the
political and social phenomena of his day, not with the eye of a mere
statesman or diplomatist, but as reviewing the moral as well as the
political aspects of things, the eternal governing laws as well as
the fitful moods and changes of a nation's life, the spiritual as
well as the material forces of the world.
Israel, in their dread of the great Assyrian monarchy, often cast
wistful eyes towards Egypt, where they hoped to find a sure and
powerful ally. The Egyptians accepted their subsidies, but thought
they consulted their own interests best by observing what has been
called amongst ourselves a "masterly inactivity." Their strength was
to sit still. They had a large standing army; but as Rabshakeh
showed, on a memorable occasion, that he knew (chap. xxxvi. 6) the
nation, with all its outward semblance of prosperity, was being eaten
up with a thousand moral and social cankers, which corrupted the very
source of all national life. This chapter lays bare those wounds and
bruises and putrefying sores.
1. _There was a day when Egypt had been famous for its wisdom._ This
wisdom had become a thing of the past (vers. 11, 12).
2. _There was no unity of purpose, no coherence of action in the body
politic._ The true ideas of the family, of the municipality, of the
nation, were lost. Every man was fighting against his brother (ver.
2). It is history eternally repeating itself; it is the lament of
Thucydides over Greece; of Horace, Livy, and Tacitus over the
corruption of guilty imperialism, and over the absence of the
masculine, simple, republican virtues of ancient Rome.
3. _With the decay of public virtue comes the decay of public spirit,
and then soon follows the decay of national strength._ Then comes
what these old Hebrew seers called the "judgment;" God coming out of
His place to visit the earth; anarchy, internal dissolution,
collapse, conquest by the foreigner; the giving over of the nation
into the hand of a cruel lord; the establishment of a military
despotism.
It were easy to point these remarks elsewhere, but let us look at
home. Many feel that during the last decade of years or more England
has been parting with many of her old traditions. Some of those
principles which were merely corrupt remnants of a social and
political system which has passed away--feudalism--we have
undoubtedly gained by losing. _But there are others which we have
lost, or are fast losing, to the great detriment of the
commonwealth._ The high sense of duty to the State overruling the
sense of interest in the individual citizen; the true measure of a
nation's wealth and greatness, not by its revenue in pounds sterling,
but by its revenue in the heavenly bodies, and honest hearts, and
pure, healthy homes of the people; the noble, self-sacrificing spirit
of devotion to the call of duty; the principle of right recognised as
a higher principle than that of expediency; a temper of loyalty in
the strict sense of the word, of willing obedience to the law and
those who represent the law; strict commercial integrity, and not the
tricks of trade which have been generated by an unwholesome
competition--these are maxims of ancient wisdom which made England
great, and the loss of which will make England small. Our greatness,
whatever it has been, has not rested so much upon material forces,
but, like Israel's of old, upon moral. We can only hope that our
position among the peoples will be maintained as long as we hold fast
the principles by which it was won. These privileges are not things
of chance, but the direct result of moral laws as immutable and
irreversible as the laws which govern the physical world. God send us
statesmen who will turn the nation's mind away from delusive and
partisan aims, and direct them seriously to efforts which may unite
us all in one great crusade against evil; in which every soldier
might certainly feel that he was fighting under the banner of Christ,
in a righteous war, for objects which surely have a place in the
redemption which Christ accomplished for the world.--_Bishop Fraser:
Christian World Pulpit,_ vol. xvii. pp. 177, 178.