There is a remarkable contrast between the stately prelude to the
section of the prophecy in chapter xlix., and the ideal in this text.
There the Servant calls the isles and the distant peoples to listen,
and declares that His mouth is 'like a sharp sword'; here all that is
keen and smiting in His word has softened into gentle whispers of
comfort to sustain the weary.
A mission addressed to 'the weary' is addressed to every man, for who
is not 'weighed upon with sore distress,' or loaded with the burden and
the weight of tasks beyond his power or distasteful to his
inclinations, or monotonous to nausea, or prolonged to exhaustion, or
toiled at with little hope and less interest? Who is not weary of
himself and of his load? What but universal weariness does the
universal secret desire for rest betray? We are all 'pilgrims weary of
time,' and some of us are weary of even prosperity, and some of us are
worn out with work, and some of us buffeted to all but exhaustion by
sorrow, and all of us long for rest, though many of us do not know
where to look for it.
Jesus may have had this word in mind, when He called to Him all them
'that labour and are heavy laden.' At all events, the prophet's ideal
and the evangelists' story accurately correspond. Christ's words have
other characteristics, but are eminently words that sustain the weary
and comfort the down-hearted. Who can ever calculate the new strength
poured by them into fainting hearts and languid hands, the all but dead
hopes that they have reanimated, the sorrows they have comforted, the
wounds they have stanched?
What a lesson here as to the noblest use of high endowments! What a
contrast to the use that so many of those to whom God has given 'the
tongue of them that are taught' make of their great gifts! Literature
yields but few examples of great writers who have faithfully employed
their powers for that purpose, which seems so humble and is so lofty,
the help of the weary, the comfort of the sad. Many pages in famous
books would be cancelled if all that had been written without
consideration for these classes were obliterated, as it will be one day.
But Christ not only speaks by outward words, but has other ways of
lodging sustenance and comfort in souls than by vocables audible to the
ear or visible to the eye on the page. 'The words that I speak unto
you, they are spirit and they are life.' He spoke by His deeds on
earth, and in one and the same set of facts, He 'began to do and to
teach,' the doing being named first. He 'now speaketh from Heaven' by
many an inward whisper, by the communication of His own Spirit, on Whom
this very office of ministering sustenance and comfort is laid, and
whose very name of the Comforter means One who by his being with a man
strengthens him.