'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the
ancient days, in the generations of old.'--ISAIAH li. 9.
'Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion.'--ISAIAH lii. 1.
Both these verses are, I think, to be regarded as spoken by one voice,
that of the Servant of the Lord. His majestic figure, wrapped in a
light veil of obscurity, fills the eye in all these later prophecies of
Isaiah. It is sometimes clothed with divine power, sometimes girded
with the towel of human weakness, sometimes appearing like the
collective Israel, sometimes plainly a single person.
We have no difficulty in solving the riddle of the prophecy by the
light of history. Our faith knows One who unites these diverse
characteristics, being God and man, being the Saviour of the body,
which is part of Himself and instinct with His life. If we may suppose
that He speaks in both verses of the text, then, in the one, as priest
and intercessor, He lifts the prayers of earth to heaven in His own
holy hands--and in the other, as messenger and Word of God, He brings
the answer and command of heaven to earth on His own authoritative
lips--thus setting forth the deep mystery of His person and double
office as mediator between man and God. But even if we put aside that
thought, the correspondence and relation of the two passages remain the
same. In any case they are intentionally parallel in form and connected
in substance. The latter is the answer to the former. The cry of Zion
is responded to by the call of God. The awaking of the arm of the Lord
is followed by the awaking of the Church. He puts on strength in
clothing us with His might, which becomes ours.
The mere juxtaposition of these verses suggests the point of view from
which I wish to treat them on this occasion. I hope that the thoughts
to which they lead may help to further that quickened earnestness and
expectancy of blessing, without which Christian work is a toil and a
failure.
We have here a common principle underlying both the clauses of our
text, to which I must first briefly ask attention, namely--
I. The occurrence in the Church's history of successive periods of
energy and of languor.
It is freely admitted that such alternation is not the highest ideal of
growth, either in the individual or in the community. Our Lord's own
parables set forth a more excellent way--the way of uninterrupted
increase, whereof the type is the springing corn, which puts forth
'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,'
and passes through all the stages from the tender green spikelets that
gleam over the fields in the spring-tide to the yellow abundance of
autumn, in one unbroken season of genial months. So would our growth be
best, healthiest, happiest. So _might_ our growth be, if the mysterious
life in the seed met no checks. But, as a matter of fact, the Church
has not thus grown. Rather at the best, its emblem is to be looked for,
not in corn, but in the forest tree-the very rings in whose trunk tell
of recurring seasons when the sap has risen at the call of spring, and
sunk again before the frowns of winter. I have not to do now with the
causes of this. These will fall to be considered presently. Nor am I
saying that such a manner of growth is inevitable. I am only pointing
out a fact, capable of easy verification and familiar to us all. Our
years have had summer and winter. The evening and the morning have
completed all the days since the first.
We all know it only too well. In our own hearts we have known such
times, when some cold clinging mist wrapped us round and hid all the
heaven of God's love and the starry lights of His truth; when the
visible was the only real, and He seemed far away and shadowy; when
there was neither confidence in our belief, nor heat in our love, nor
enthusiasm in our service; when the shackles of conventionalism bound
our souls, and the fetters of the frost imprisoned all their springs.
And we have seen a like palsy smite whole regions and ages of the
Church of God, so that even the sensation of impotence was dead like
all the rest, and the very tradition of spiritual power had faded away.
I need not point to the signal historical examples of such times in the
past. Remember England a hundred years ago--but what need to travel so
far? May I venture to draw my example from nearer home, and ask, have
we not been living in such an epoch? I beseech you, think whether the
power which the Gospel preached by us wields on ourselves, on our
churches, on the world, is what Christ meant it and fitted to exercise.
Why, if we hold our own in respect to the material growth of our
population, it is as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and
expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the world? It looks
like some stream that leaps from the hills, and at first hurries from
cliff to cliff full of light and music, but flows slower and more
sluggish as it advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat
marshes. Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money,
organisations--and the net result of it all at the year's end is but a
poor handful of ears. 'Ye sow much and bring home little.' Well may we
take up the wail of the old Psalm, 'We see not our signs. There is no
more any prophet; neither is there any among us that knoweth how
long--arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause.'
If, then, there are such recurring seasons of languor, they must either
go on deepening till sleep becomes death, or they must be broken by a
new outburst of vigorous life. It would be better if we did not need
the latter. The uninterrupted growth would be best; but if that has not
been attained, then the ending of winter by spring, and the suppling of
the dry branches, and the resumption of the arrested growth, is the
next best, and the only alternative to rotting away.
And it is by such times that the Kingdom of Christ always has grown.
Its history has been one of successive impulses gradually exhausted, as
by friction and gravity, and mercifully repeated just at the moment
when it was ceasing to advance and had begun to slide backwards. And in
such a manner of progress, the Church's history has been in full
analogy with that of all other forms of human association and activity.
It is not in religion alone that there are 'revivals,' to use the word
of which some people have such a dread. You see analogous phenomena in
the field of literature, arts, social and political life. In them all,
there come times of awakened interest in long-neglected principles.
Truths which for many years had been left to burn unheeded, save by a
faithful few watchers of the beacon, flame up all at once as the
guiding pillars of a nation's march, and a whole people strike their
tents and follow where they lead. A mysterious quickening thrills
through society. A contagion of enthusiasm spreads like fire, fusing
all hearts in one. The air is electric with change. Some great advance
is secured at a stride; and before and after that supreme effort are
years of comparative quiescence; those before being times of
preparation, those after being times of fruition and exhaustion--but
slow and languid compared with the joyous energy of that moment. One
day may be as a thousand years in the history of a people, and a nation
may be born in a day.
So also is the history of the Church. And thank God it is so, for if it
had not been for the dawning of these times of refreshing, the steady
operation of the Church's worldliness would have killed it long ago.
Surely, dear brethren, we ought to desire such a merciful interruption
of the sad continuity of our languor and decay. The surest sign of its
coming would be a widespread desire and expectation of its coming,
joined with a penitent consciousness of our heavy and sinful slumber.
For we believe in a God who never sends mouths but He sends meat to
fill them, and in whose merciful providence every desire is a prophecy
of its own fruition. This attitude of quickened anticipation, diffusing
itself silently through many hearts, is like the light air that springs
up before sunrise, or like the solemn hush that holds all nature
listening before the voice of the Lord in the thunder.
And another sign of its approach is the extremity of the need. 'If
winter come, can spring be far behind?' For He who is always with Zion
strikes in with His help when the want is at its sorest. His 'right
early' is often the latest moment before destruction. And though we are
all apt to exaggerate the urgency of the hour and the severity of _our_
conflict, it certainly does seem that, whether we regard the languor of
the Church or the strength of our adversaries, succour delayed a little
longer would be succour too late. 'The tumult of those that rise up
against Thee increaseth continually. It is time for Thee to work.'