'Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is
risen upon thee. 2. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and
His glory shall be seen upon thee. 3. And the Gentiles shall come to
thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.'--ISAIAH lx. 1-3.
The personation of Israel as a woman runs through the whole of this
second portion of Isaiah's prophecy. We see her thrown on the earth a
mourning mother, a shackled captive. We hear her summoned once and
again to awake, to arise, to shake herself from the dust, to loose the
bands of her neck. These summonses are prophecies of the impending
Messianic deliverance. The same circle of truths, in a somewhat
different aspect, is presented in the verses before us. The prophet
sees the earth wrapped in a funeral pall of darkness, and a beam of
more than natural light falling on one prostrate form. The old story is
repeated, Zion stands in the light, while Egypt cowers in gloom. The
light which shines upon her is 'the Glory of the Lord,' the ancient
brightness that dwelt between the cherubim within the veil in the
secret place of the Most High, and is now come out into the open world
to envelop the desolate captive. Thus touched by the light she becomes
light, and in her turn is bidden to shine. There is a very remarkable
correspondence reiterated in my text between the illuminating God and
the illuminated Zion. The word for shine is connected with the word for
light, and might fairly be rendered 'lighten,' or 'be light.' Twice the
phrase 'thy light' is employed; once to mean the light which is thine
because it shines on thee; once to mean the light which is thine
because it shines from thee. The other word, three times repeated, for
_rising_, is the technical word which expresses the sunrise, and it is
applied both to the flashing glory that falls upon Zion and to the
light that gleams from her. Touched by the sun, she becomes a sun, and
blazes in her heaven in a splendour that draws men's hearts. So, then,
if that be the fair analysis of the words before us, they present to us
some thoughts bearing on the Missionary work of the Church, and I
gather them all up in three--the fact, the ringing summons, and the
confident promise.