'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.' This 'evangelical
prophet,' as he has been called, is distinguished, not only by the
clearness of his anticipations of Jesus Christ and His work, but by the
fulness and depth which he attaches to that word 'salvation.' He all
but anticipates the New Testament completeness and fulness of meaning,
and lifts it from all merely material associations of earthly or
transitory deliverance, into the sphere in which we are accustomed to
regard it as especially moving. By 'salvation' he means and we mean,
not only negative but positive blessings. Negatively it includes the
removal of every conceivable or endurable evil, 'all the ills that
flesh is heir to,' whether they be evils of sin or evils of sorrow;
and, positively, the investiture with every possible good that humanity
is capable of, whether it be good of goodness, or good of happiness.
This is what the prophet tells us is the wall and bulwark of his
ideal-real city.
Mark the eloquent omission of the name of the builder of the wall.
'God' is a supplement. Salvation 'will _He_ appoint for walls and
bulwarks.' No need to say who it is that flings such a fortification
around the city. There is only one hand that can trace the lines of
such walls; only one hand that can pile their stones; only one that can
lay them, as the walls of Jericho were laid, in the blood of His
first-born Son. 'Salvation will He appoint for walls and bulwarks.'
That is to say in a highly imaginative and picturesque form, that the
defense of the City is God Himself; and it is substantially a parallel
with other words which speak about Him as being 'a wall of fire round
about it and the glory in the midst of it.' The fact of salvation is
the wall and the bulwark. And the consciousness of the fact and the
sense of possessing it, is for our poor hearts, one of our best
defenses against both the evil of sin and the evil of sorrow. For
nothing so robs temptation of its power, so lightens the pressure of
calamities, and draws the poison from the fangs of sin and sorrow, as
the assurance that the loving purpose of God to save grasps and keeps
us. They who shelter behind that wall, feel that between them and sin,
and them and sorrow, there rises the inexpugnable defense of an
Almighty purpose and power to save, lie safe whatever betides. There is
no need of other defenses. Zion
'Needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep.'
God Himself is the shield and none other is required.
So, brethren, let us walk by the faith that is always confident, though
it depends on an unseen hand. It is a grand thing to be able to stand,
as it were, in the open, a mark for all 'the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune' and yet to feel that around us there are walls most
real, though invisible, which permit no harm to come to us. Our feeble
sense-bound souls much prefer a visible wall. We, like a handrail on
the stair. Though it does not at all guard the descent, it keeps our
heads from getting dizzy. It is hard for us, as some travellers may
have to do, to walk with steady foot and unthrobbing heart along a
narrow ledge of rock with beetling precipice above us and black depths
beneath, and we would like a little bit of a wall of some sort, for
imagination if not for reality, between us and the sheer descent. But
it is blessed to learn that naked we are clothed, solitary we have a
Companion, and unarmed we have our defenceless heads covered with the
shadow of the great wing, which, though sense sees it not, faith knows
is there. A servant of God is never without a friend, and when most
unsheltered
'From marge to blue marge
The whole sky grows his targe,
With sun's self for visible boss,'
beneath which he lies safe.
'Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,' and if we realise,
as we ought to do, His purpose to keep us safe, and His power to keep
us safe, and the actual operation of His hand keeping us safe at every
moment, we shall not ask that these defences shall be supplemented by
the poor feeble earthworks that sense can throw up.