_BEARING OR BORNE._
ISAIAH xlvi.
Chapter xlvi. is a definite prophecy, complete in itself. It repeats
many of the truths which we have found in previous chapters, and we
have already seen what it says about Cyrus. But it also strikes out a
new truth, very relevant then, when men made idols and worshipped the
works of their hands, and relevant still, when so many, with equal
stupidity, are more concerned about keeping up the forms of their
religion than allowing God to sustain themselves.
The great contrast, which previous chapters have been elaborating, is
the contrast between the idols and the living God. On the one side
we have had pictures of the busy idol-factories, cast into agitation
by the advent of Cyrus, turning out with much toil and noise their
tawdry, unstable images. Foolish men, instead of letting God undertake
for them, go to and try what their own hands and hammers can effect.
Over against them, and their cunning and toil, the prophet sees the
God of Israel rise alone, taking all responsibility of salvation to
Himself--_I, I am He: look unto Me, all the ends of the earth, and be
ye saved_. This contrast comes to a head in ch. xlvi.
It is still the eve of the capture of Babylon; but the prophet
pictures to himself what will happen on the morrow of the capture.
He sees the conqueror following the old fashion of triumph--rifling
the temples of his enemies and carrying away the defeated and
discredited gods as trophies to his own. The haughty idols are
torn from their pedestals and brought head foremost through the
temple doors. _Bel crouches_--as men have crouched to Bel; _Nebo
cowers_--a stronger verb than _crouches_, but assonant to it, like
_cower_ to _crouch_.[101] _Their idols have fallen to the beast and
to the cattle._ _Beast_, "that is, tamed beast, perhaps elephants
in contrast to _cattle_, or domestic animals."[102] The _things
with which ye burdened yourselves_, carrying them shoulder high in
religious processions, _are things laden_, mere baggage-bales, _a
burden for a hack_, or _jade_. The nouns are mostly feminine--the
Hebrew neuter--in order to heighten the dead-weight impression of the
idols. So many baggage-bales for beasts' backs--such are your gods,
O Babylonians! _They cower, they crouch together_ (fall limp is the
idea, like corpses); _neither are they able to recover the burden_,
and _themselves_!--literally _their soul_, any real soul of deity
that ever was in them--_into captivity are they gone_.
This never happened. Cyrus entered Babylon not in spite of the native
gods, but under their patronage, and was careful to do homage to them.
Nabunahid, the king of Babylon, whom he supplanted, had vexed the
priests of Bel or Merodach; and these priests had been among the many
conspirators in favour of the Persian. So far, then, from banishing
the idols, upon his entry into the city, Cyrus had himself proclaimed
as "the servant of Merodach," restored to their own cities the idols
that Nabunahid had brought to Babylon, and prayed, "In the goodness of
their hearts may all the gods whom I have brought into their strong
places daily intercede before Bel and Nebo, that they should grant me
length of days. May they bless my projects with prosperity, and may
they say to Merodach, my lord, that Cyrus the king, thy worshipper, and
Kambyses, his son (deserve thy favour)."[103]
Are we, then, because the idols were not taken into captivity, as
our prophet pictures, to begin to believe in him less? We shall be
guilty of that error, only when we cease to disallow to a prophet
of God what we do allow to any other writer, and praise him when he
employs it to bring home a moral truth--the use of his imagination.
What if these idols never were packed off by Cyrus, as our prophet
here paints for us? It still remains true that, standing where they
did, or carried away, as they may have been later on, by conquerors,
who were monotheists indeed, they were still mere ballast, so much
dead-weight for weary beasts.
Now, over against this kind of religion, which may be reduced to so
many pounds avoirdupois, the prophet sees in contrast the God of
Israel. And it is but natural, when contrasted with the dead-weight
of the idols, that God should reveal Himself as a living and a
lifting God: a strong, unfailing God, who carries and who saves.
_Hearken unto Me, O House of Jacob, and all the remnant of the House
of Israel; burdens from the womb, things carried from the belly.
Burdens, things carried_, are the exact words used of the idols in
ver. 1. _Even unto old age I am He, and unto grey hairs I will
bear_--a grievous word, used only of great burdens. _I have made, and
I will carry; yea, I will bear, and will recover._ Then follow some
verses in the familiar style. _To whom will ye liken Me, and match
Me, and compare Me, that we may be like? They who pour gold from a
bag, and silver they measure off with an ellwand_--gorgeous, vulgar
Babylonians!--_they hire a smelter, and he maketh it a god_--out of
so many ells of silver!--_they bow down to it, yea, they worship
it! They carry him upon the shoulder, they bear him,_--again the
grievous word,--_to bring him to his station; and he stands; from
his place he never moves. Yea, one cries unto him, and he answers
not; from his trouble he doth not save him. Remember this, and show
yourselves men_--the playing with these gilded toys is so unmanly
to the monotheist (it will be remembered what we said in ch. iii.
about the exiles feeling that to worship idols was to be less than
a man[104])--_lay it again to heart, ye transgressors. Remember the
former things of old: for I am God_, El, _and there is none else;
God_, Elohim, _and there is none like Me. Publishing from the origin
the issue, and from ancient times things not yet done; saying, My
counsel shall stand, and all My pleasure shall I perform; calling
out of the sunrise a Bird-of-prey, from the land that is far off the
Man of My counsel. Yea, I have spoken; yea, I will bring it in. I
have purposed; yea, I will do it. Hearken unto Me, ye obdurate of
heart_--that is, _brave, strong, sound_, but too sound to adapt their
preconceived notions to God's new revelation;--_ye that are far from
righteousness_, in spite of your _sound_ opinions as to how it ought
to come. _I have brought near My righteousness_, in distinction to
yours. _It shall not be far off_, like your impossible ideas, _and
My salvation shall not tarry, and I will set in Zion salvation, for
Israel My glory_. It is evident that from the idolaters Jehovah has
turned again, in these last verses, to the pedants in Israel, who
were opposed to Cyrus because he was a Gentile, and who cherished
their own obdurate notions of how salvation and righteousness should
come. Ah, their kind of righteousness would never come, they would
always be far from it! Let them rather trust to Jehovah's, which He
was rapidly bringing near in His own way.
Such is the prophecy. It starts a truth, which bursts free from local
and temporal associations, and rushes in strength upon our own day
and our own customs. The truth is this: it makes all the difference
to a man how he conceives his religion--whether as something that he
has to carry, or as something that will carry him. We have too many
idolatries and idol manufactories among us to linger longer on those
ancient ones. This cleavage is permanent in humanity--between the
men that are trying to carry their religion, and the men that are
allowing God to carry them.
Now let us see how God does carry. God's carriage of man is no mystery.
It may be explained without using one theological term; the Bible gives
us the best expression of it. But it may be explained without a word
from the Bible. It is broad and varied as man's moral experience.
1. The first requisite for stable and buoyant life is ground, and
the faithfulness of law. What sends us about with erect bodies and
quick, firm step is the sense that the surface of the earth is sure,
that gravitation will not fail, that our eyes and the touch of our
feet and our judgement of distance do not deceive us. Now, what the
body needs for its world, the soul needs for hers. For her carriage
and bearing in life the soul requires the assurance, that the moral
laws of the universe are as conscience has interpreted them to her,
and will continue to be as in experience she has found them. To
this requisite of the soul--this indispensable condition of moral
behaviour--God gives His assurance. _I have made_, He says, _and I
will bear_.[105] These words were in answer to an instinct, that
must have often sprung up in our hearts when we have been struggling
for at least moral hope--the instinct which will be all that is
sometimes left to a man's soul when unbelief lowers, and under its
blackness a flood of temptations rushes in, and character and conduct
feel impossible to his strength--the instinct that springs from
the thought, "Well, here I am, not responsible for being here, but
so set by some One else, and the responsibility of the life, which
is too great for me, is His." Some such simple faith, which a man
can hardly separate from his existence, has been the first rally
and turning-point in many a life. In the moral drift and sweep he
finds bottom there, and steadies on it, and gets his face round, and
gathers strength. And God's Word comes to him to tell him that his
instinct is sure. _Yea, I have made, and I will bear._
2. The most terrible anguish of the heart, however, is that it
carries something, which can shake a man off even that ground. The
firmest rock is of no use to the paralytic, or to a man with a broken
leg. And the most steadfast moral universe, and most righteous moral
governor, is no comfort--but rather the reverse--to the man with a
bad conscience, whether that conscience be due to the guilt, or to
the habit, of sin. Conscience whispers, "God indeed made thee, but
what if thou hast unmade thyself? God reigns; the laws of life are
righteousness; creation is guided to peace. But thou art outlaw of
this universe, fallen from God of thine own will. Thou must bear
thine own guilt, endure thy voluntarily contracted habits. How canst
thou believe that God, in this fair world, would bear thee up, so
useless, soiled, and infected a thing?" Yet here, according to His
blessed Word, God does come down to bear up men. Because man's
sunkenness and helplessness are so apparent beneath no other burden
or billows, God insists that just here He is most anxious, and just
here it is His glory, to lift men and bear them upward. Some may
wonder what guilt is or the conviction of sin, because they are
selfishly or dishonestly tracing the bitterness and unrest of their
lives to some other source than their own wicked wills; but the
thing is man's realest burden, and man's realest burden is what God
stoops lowest to bear. The grievous word for _bear_, "sabal," which
we emphasized in the above passage, is elsewhere in the writings of
the Exile used of the bearing of sins, or of the result of sins. _Our
fathers have sinned, and are not, and we bear their iniquities_,[106]
says one of the Lamentations. And in the fifty-third of Isaiah it is
used twice of the Servant, _that He bore our sorrows_, and _that He
bare their iniquities_.[107] Here its application to God--to such a
God as we have seen bearing the passion of His people's woes--cannot
fail to carry with it the associations of these passages. When it is
said, God _bears_, and this grievous verb is used, we remember at
once that He is a God, who does not only set His people's sins in the
awful light of His countenance, but takes them upon His heart. Let us
learn, then, that God has made this sin and guilt of ours His special
care and anguish. We cannot feel it more than He does. It is enough:
we may not be able to understand what the sacrifice of Christ meant
to the Divine justice, but who can help comprehending from it that in
some Divine way the Divine love has made our sin its own business and
burden, so that that might be done which we could not do, and that
lifted which we could not bear?
3. But this gospel of God's love bearing our sins is of no use to a
man unless it goes with another--that God bears him up for victory
over temptation and for attainment in holiness. It is said to be a
thoroughly Mohammedan fashion, that when a believer is tempted past
the common he gives way, and slides into sin with the cry, "God is
merciful;" meaning that the Almighty will not be too hard on this
poor creature, who has held out so long. If this be Mohammedanism,
there is a great deal of Mohammedanism in modern Christianity. It is
a most perfidious distortion of God's will. _For this is the will
of God, even our sanctification_; and God never gives a man pardon
but to set him free for effort, and to constrain him for duty. And
here we come to what is the most essential part of God's bearing of
man. God, as we have seen, bears us by giving us ground to walk on.
He bears us by lifting those burdens from our hearts that make the
firmest ground slippery and impossible to our feet. But He bears us
best and longest by being the spirit and the soul and the life of our
life. Every metaphor here falls short of the reality. By inspired
men the bearing of God has been likened to a father carrying his
child, to an eagle taking her young upon her wings, to the shepherd
with the lamb in his bosom. But no shepherd, nor mother-bird, nor
human father ever bore as the Lord bears. For He bears from within,
as the soul lifts and bears the body. The Lord and His own are one.
_To me_, says he who knew it best, _To me to live is Christ_. It is,
indeed, difficult to describe to others what this inward sustainment
really is, seating itself at the centre of a man's life, and thence
affecting vitally every organ of his nature. The strongest human
illustration is not sufficient for it. If in the thick of the battle
a leader is able to infuse himself into his followers, so is Christ.
If one man's word has lifted thousands of defeated soldiers to an
assault and to a victory, even so have Christ's lifted millions:
lifted them above the habit and depression of sin, above the weakness
of the flesh, above the fear of man, above danger and death and
temptation more dangerous and fatal still. And yet it is not the
sight of a visible leader, though the Gospels have made that sight
imperishable; it is not the sound of Another's Voice, though that
Voice shall peal to the end of time, that Christians only feel.
It is something within themselves; another self--purer, happier,
victorious. Not as a voice or example, futile enough to the dying,
but as a new soul, is Christ in men; and whether their exhaustion
needs creative forces, or their vices require conquering forces, He
gives both, for He is the fountain of life.
4. But God does not carry dead men. His carrying is not mechanical, but
natural; not from below, but from within. You dare not be passive in
God's carriage; for as in the natural, so in the moral world, whatever
dies is thrown aside by the upward pressure of life, to rot and
perish. Christ showed this over and over again in His ministry. Those
who make no effort--or, if effort be past, feel no pain--God will not
stoop to bear. But all in whom there is still a lift and a spring after
life: the quick conscience, the pain of their poverty, the hunger and
thirst after righteousness, the sacredness of those in their charge,
the obligation and honour of their daily duty, some desire for eternal
life--these, however weak, He carries forward to perfection.
Again, in His bearing God bears, and does not overbear, using a man,
not as a man uses a stick, but as a soul uses a body,--informing,
inspiring, recreating his natural faculties. So many distrust
religion, as if it were to be an overbearing of their originality,
as if it were bound to destroy the individual's peculiar freshness
and joy. But God is not by grace going to undo His work by nature.
_I have made, and I will bear--will bear_ what I have made. Religion
intensifies the natural man.
And now, if that be God's bearing--the gift of the ground, and the
lifting of the fallen, and the being a soul and an inspiration of
every organ--how wrong those are who, instead of asking God to carry
them, are more anxious about how He and His religion are to be
sustained by their consistency or efforts!
To young men, who have not got a religion, and are brought face to
face with the conventional religion of the day, the question often
presents itself in this way: "Is this a thing I can carry?" or
"How much of it can I afford to carry? How much of the tradition
of the elders can I take upon myself, and feel that it is not mere
dead weight?" That is an entirely false attitude. Here you are,
weak, by no means master of yourself; with a heart wonderfully full
of suggestions to evil; a world before you, hardest where it is
clearest, seeming most impossible where duty most loudly calls; yet
mainly dark and silent, needing from us patience oftener than effort,
and trust as much as the exercise of our own cleverness; with death
at last ahead. Look at life whole, and the question you will ask will
not be, Can I carry this faith? but, Can this faith carry me? Not,
Can I afford to take up such and such and such opinions? but, Can I
afford to travel at all without such a God? It is not a creed, but a
living and a lifting God, who awaits your decision.
At the opposite end of life, there is another class of men, who are
really doing what young men too often suppose that they must do if
they take up a religion,--carrying it, instead of allowing it to carry
them; men who are in danger of losing their faith in God, through
over-anxiety about traditional doctrines concerning Him. A great deal
is being said just now in our country of upholding the great articles
of the faith. Certainly let us uphold them. But do not let us have
in our churches that saddest of all sights, a mere ecclesiastical
procession,--men flourishing doctrines, but themselves with their
manhood remaining unseen. We know the pity of a show, sometimes seen
in countries on the Continent, where they have not given over carrying
images about. Idols and banners and texts will fill a street with their
tawdry, tottering progress, and you will see nothing human below, but
now and then jostling shoulders and a sweaty face. Even so are many
of the loud parades of doctrines in our day by men, who, in the words
of this chapter, show themselves _stout of heart_ by holding up their
religion, but give us no signs in their character or conduct that their
religion is holding up them. Let us prize our faith, not by holding it
high, but by showing how high it can hold us.
Which is the more inspiring sight,--a banner carried by hands, that
must sooner or later weary; or the soldier's face, mantling with the
inexhaustible strength of the God who lives at his heart and bears
him up?
FOOTNOTES:
[101] _Crouches_, Kara`; _cowers_, Kores.
[102] Bredenkamp.
[103] Sayce, _Fresh Light_, etc., p. 140.
[104] See p. 39 f.
[105] There is a play on the words 'anî `asîthî, wa'anî, 'essā'--_I
have made, and I will aid_.
[106] Lam. v. 7.
[107] Ver. 4, second clause, and vii.