Cry for God’s Judgments

“Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make Thy name known to Thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Thy presence!”—Isaiah lxiv. 1, 2.

This is nothing less than a prayer that God would manifest Himself as a Judge,—yes, and as a Destroyer. How unlike it is to the prayers which we are naturally disposed to offer up! How unlike it is to the prayers which we should offer up if we attended to the words of many grave and religious counsellors! “O God, remain far from us, remain hidden from us; teach us how to escape Thy judgments! Let Saints, Angels, the Virgin-Mother, Thy Son, interpose between us and Thy burning wrath!” These are the cries which ascend out of the natural heart of man. And they seem to justify themselves by arguments of religion as well as of reason. Is not the preacher sent to tell us how terrible the wrath of God is, how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God? Is he not sent to tell us, in the words of the very prophet from whom the text comes, of a Man “Who shall be a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest”?

If Isaiah contradicts himself, no comments of ours can restore sense and coherency to his words. But perhaps this passage respecting the Man Who is to be a covert from the heat and from the tempest does not contradict, but illustrates the prayer in the text; perhaps our fancy that there is a contradiction may show us, more than anything else, how our Theology differs from his. Isaiah craved for a Man Who should deliver men from the oppressions of the world’s tyranny, from the storms which are raised by the passions of peoples and rulers, from the weariness and exhaustion which follow, when they have accomplished their projects with great labour and nothing comes out of them. All the misery which they cause springs, so the prophet thinks, from their assuming to be gods themselves and from the disbelief which they cherish and which they generate in a God Who is altogether unlike them, Whose ways are not their ways, Whose purposes are not their purposes. And what he longed for was, that the true Man should appear, Who would thoroughly manifest the ways and purposes of the true God; Who would remove the thick veil which had intercepted His light from reaching His creatures, Who would make them know that He was present with them, that He was ruling them and judging them. To long then for a Man Who should be a hiding-place from the tempest and a covert from the storm or heat, was the very same thing as to long that God would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would flow down at His presence.

I have said, however, that there is a natural heart in all of us, baptized and unbaptized,—Christian, Jew, Turk, Pagan,—which is averse from this prayer, which would rather utter any prayer than this. And I have hinted also that there is a natural religion—natural in one sense, most artificial in another—which adapts itself to these cravings and inclinations of ours, and supplies them with a language. Such a religion one meets with in every country of the earth; it connects itself with all professions; it is able to make almost all litanies into its instruments; to the highest and to the lowest of people it commends itself equally. Priests organize this religion into a system of practices; doctors, into a system of notions. It has one great common characteristic, which is discovered through all its special forms. To keep God at a distance from men is the end which it proposes to itself; to convert all persons who perform its offices, all prayers and dogmas, into barriers more or less secure against His appearing and His vengeance, is its art.

But widely spread as this religion has been and is, wonderful as seem its powers of adaptation to different latitudes and traditions, it has wanted the great sign of Universality. It expresses all different feelings of men, in different conditions of disease. It does not express the one common feeling of men, to be raised out of their diseases, to be made whole. It puts into a number of different shapes the dread and horror of God—the wish that there were no God—which dwells in every man. It has no language for the infinite craving after God, the intense longing to be brought face to face with Him,—to encounter all His vengeance rather than to be separated from Him, which dwells also in every man. That desire is kindled by a number of objects in nature; the sunrise and sunset, the still lake, the faces of children, the music of the human voice. In all these things there is a witness of something calmer, brighter, truer than himself. There is a witness to man that he is to cry after this; that only this will satisfy him. But there is a witness, also as strong, in them and in him, that they do not contain the treasure. There is a more perplexing witness, that it is nearer to him than it is to them; and yet that he, and not they, would shut it out, would fain extinguish it. The deep and the sky say to man, “It is not in us.” They answer his question with another, “Is it not in thee?” And when he seeks, he begins to exclaim first, “If it is, let it depart from me, for I am a sinner;” and then, “Let it come near to me, though I am a sinner, or I shall continue one for ever and for ever.” No wonder that every prayer which translates the cry “Depart from me” into the dialect of a particular tribe, which moulds it according to the circumstances and habits of that tribe, should be entertained with wonderful tenacity, should be always gathering new accretions from fresh experiences of inward evil. And yet I say the universal prayer—the prayer which goes up from the whole heart of humanity, which is heard at once in every dialect wherein men are born,—which is heard amidst all those sounds that are most discordant with it, is this of Isaiah’s; this, that God would make Himself known, if it be in mountains melting away and in a fire that burneth.

Where can the Prophet have learnt that prayer? How can he have been spokesman for Egyptians, Phœnicians, Assyrians, who despised his tribe and his worship; for Greeks, Romans, Goths, who were not yet known in the world? Had he not been taught to look upon his nation as dwelling alone among the nations? Was it not fenced round by ordinances and prohibitions from intercourse with them, from participation in their habits and their prayers? Yes! and thus, even thus, had he been disciplined to understand that man does not require to be protected against God, but that God should protect him against himself, and should raise him out of the slavery which he invents for himself. Thus was he prepared to receive every event which befell Israel, or the enemies of Israel, as a sign that God was coming out of His place to judge the one and the other; not the chosen race less severely than those who despised it and trampled on it,—but both by the same eternal law of righteousness, both for the purpose of establishing righteousness and truth in the earth—of purging out of it whatever loveth and maketh a lie. Thus did he learn that the misery of Heathen nations was that they suspected their gods; that they supposed their authority to be merged in the authority of those who ministered to them; that they fancied the worshipper could flatter and pervert them by his offerings. Thus did he come to perceive how hateful in God’s eyes are the services which He has Himself appointed, when they are not rendered to Him as a righteous Being, when they are not acknowledgments of His purpose to make men righteous. Thus did he come to know that the melting fire, the fire which causes the waters to boil, is not only the minister of men’s purposes,—though it is that, though they are meant to compel all the subtlest agencies of Nature into their service; that it is also God’s minister, the executor of His justice upon the wrong-doers of the earth, an instrument of its purification. Thus did he learn to rejoice even when he trembled, at the convulsions in the outward world or in human society which bade his people cease from men whose breath was in their nostrils, and go into the clefts of the rocks for the fear of the Lord and for the glory of His Majesty. Thus did he understand that by all such signs was God avenging the cause of the poor and of those who had no helper, was shaking kings on their thrones, was surprising the hypocrites. Thus did he perceive that to fall into the hands of the living God is indeed fearful, if we are separating our cause from the cause of those whom He has made in His image, if we are seeking some advantage for ourselves, but that the only hope for us and for all human beings is, that the Living God should make the nations tremble at His presence, that He should prove Himself—and not some dead God—far less the Spirit of Pride, Oppression, Injustice—to be Lord of the nations. Thus finally was Isaiah made into the Evangelical prophet, the witness that unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, Who can be a covert from the tempest, because He is both the Son of Man and the Son of God; because God appearing in Him does indeed rend the heavens and come down.

Isaiah accompanied that prophecy of a Son Who should be born, with other words which often sound strange to us, as we read them in connection with these: “Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood. But this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.” How does such language accord with our notions of Him Who is called in this very passage the Prince of Peace,—Who, we affirm, was revealed in the city of David, meek and sitting upon an ass, with none of the signs and trophies of the warrior? Does not Isaiah appear to associate with His appearing a battle far more tremendous and destructive than ordinary battles? Did Jesus of Nazareth not fulfil the idea which his language sets forth to us? Or is He hereafter to be another than He was, when the children poured forth their hosannas to Him,—when the daughters of Jerusalem followed Him to the Cross,—when the Apostles preached of Him to Jews and Greeks?

Brethren, I hold that the Prophet’s words were accomplishing themselves strictly and literally when Jesus came in great humility; when He died; when He rose; when He ascended; when the Apostles bade their countrymen and the Greeks and the Latins receive Him as their king. I hold that they have been accomplishing themselves ever since, and are accomplishing themselves now. When Jesus came among Scribes and Pharisees, among Publicans and Sinners, when He claimed to be the Son of Man, sympathizing with men, healing men’s diseases, vindicating the day of rest for men, preaching to them the Kingdom of God,—when He took to Himself the power and functions of a Son of God, bidding devils depart, forgiving sins,—He did not at once stir up that customary battle of the warrior with confused noise and garments dyed in blood. Nothing appeared to threaten such a battle. But one was raging in the hearts of men, raging like a fire which seized hold of every inflammable material, and turned it into its own nature. “Is this our King, the true King of men, or is He, as the Scribes and Pharisees tell us, a liar and a blasphemer? Does He manifest to us the nature of the God Who created us, or, as they say, of the Devil who is destroying us?” Was a battle which had this issue described by the Prophet in exaggerated phrases? Must it not be the battle of all battles, the central battle of the Universe,—yes, and the final one? Did it not assume still mightier proportions when the assertion went forth that Death, the Grave, Hell,—all that had been the terrors of mankind, the powers of the invisible world which were holding the visible in dread,—had been encountered and vanquished for men by their Champion and Lord; because He came to do His Father’s Will? What a subversion of all the religious maxims by which the governments of the world had been supported! What a contradiction of the whole policy to which the nation of Israel, and every other, was pledged!

For soon the question was debated, not only in the secret hearts of men, but in the Temple, whither the Jews always resorted,—in the market-place, which was the exercise-ground for Greek philosophy, as well as Greek trade,—whether the Cæsar, or this crucified Man of Whom the tent-maker spoke, was really King of kings and Lord of lords. What could come of such a debate but that which did come of it? First, the chosen people confessing that they had no king but Cæsar; that they had given over the dream of any other; that such a one was the ideal they proposed to themselves; then that same people provoking the Cæsar—the God-General to whom they had surrendered all the faith and hopes of past ages—to show that he was stronger than any of the miserable anarchs who tried to obtain rule in the holy city, and that he was commissioned to destroy it. Next, when that old foe was swept away, the Cæsar discovered a new foe, not shut within walls, not tied by local customs, but speaking its treason to every tribe of which the Emperor was master, affirming constantly that One Who had sacrificed Himself, Who lived for ever and ever, not a commander of legions who bade men sacrifice to his image, was the Ruler in the armies of Heaven, and would be found to be mightiest on earth. Supposing such a doctrine was not mere madness, and did not die out of itself, or was not at once crushed by the imperial power, could it be anything less than the commencement of a battle with burning and fuel of fire? Was it not sure in time to be the cause of some of those more material battles with confused noise, and garments dyed in blood?

And if that battle ended, as we know that it did,—if a Christendom rose out of the Roman empire—if the empire itself bowed to the Cross,—did that cry become mute, to which we suppose that Christ’s appearing was the answer,—the cry that the true God would “rend the heavens, and come down, that the mountains might flow down at His presence; that as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, He would make His name known to His adversaries, that the nations might tremble at His presence”? Mute it could not be, unless the rulers of the earth, civil and ecclesiastical, were confessing in their words and their deeds the righteous King, the self-sacrificing King, to be their King and the King of men, and that He had come into the world that He might establish His righteous, heavenly order in the midst of it. Loud must be the cry ascending from the lonely couch of misery, from the dens where prisoners lie, for speaking right words and refusing to be the agents of treacherous men,—louder and louder must the cry become, swelled with the cries of all ages, echoed ever by new saints beneath the altar,—if the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of the earth think that a Cæsar, and not a crucified Man, holds the real and highest royalty; if they lead men to think that Christ came into the world not to redeem but to enslave it, not to bring us near to God, but to hide us from Him. Hidden from Him, living in a dark unbelief respecting His character and purposes, men are left to the mercy of all whom He has entrusted with powers to wield in His name: those powers are sure to be wielded for the curse and not for the blessing of His creatures.

Brethren, it is needful for us to be dwelling far more earnestly in these thoughts than has been our wont. Battles with confused noise and garments rolled in blood may end for a little while. Do not let us think that the battle with burning and fuel of fire——the battle of principles—has ended or can end. Let us understand that we are more than ever in the midst of it. Let us not try to sever, for they are inseparable, those principles which affect the polities of the earth and those which concern the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is the Kingdom of Righteousness. All unrighteous government whatever, all that sets itself against the order and freedom of man, is hostile to Christ’s government, is rebellion against Him, in whatsoever name and by whatsoever instruments it is administered. Let us go back to this old and undoubted maxim, for we are strangely forgetting it amongst notions about religious interests and civil interests, religious duties and common duties. Remember that what were supposed to be religious interests and religious duties among the Jews, set themselves up to war with Christ, to blaspheme Christ, to crucify Christ, when He came in the flesh. Remember that the religious interests and religious duties of the Roman world were those which sent the witnesses for Christ to the wild beasts. Remember that they have been the pleas for every crime that has been committed for the last eighteen hundred years. God has permitted us in this land to be witnesses that civil tyranny and ecclesiastical tyranny are equally detestable in His sight; that one must always be strengthening and abetting the other; that both alike dread the appearing of Him Who is the true Judge of men, because the sufferer for them and with them. Oh, let us never abandon that testimony! Let us ask that everything which hinders us from bearing it faithfully may be taken out of our hearts! In us, as in others, there is the notion,—always working, sometimes expressing itself in words, and assuming the shape of Christian orthodoxy,—that we want a deliverer, not from Atheism, but from God; a Mediator to prevent Him from fulfilling His cruel designs against us; not a Mediator to reveal to us His love and to purge us from our own cruelty, that we may be partakers of it. In us there is a feeling that the Judge and the Saviour are different beings, or the same being pursuing different purposes; not that He Who hung upon the Cross will show in the day which winds up this age, as He showed in the day which wound up the former age, that His is that power which is meant to draw all things to itself; that all power which is not like His must be dividing and destructive. Let us think of it well, that we, like the other nations, may have to decide what it is which we reverence and worship most in our hearts; whether it is the Spirit of Him Who took upon Him the form of a servant, and became the lowest of all that He might exalt all, or the Spirit which exalts itself that it may crush humanity. Let us solemnly determine that nothing shall tempt us to abandon our hope for the freedom and blessedness of all the nations of the earth. But let us place our hopes, not in the promises of princes or in the schemes of plotters, but in the oath of God, that He will set Truth upon the earth. Then the cry, “Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down,” will be answered to us no less than it was to our forefathers. Now, as of old, the bitterest disappointments will be the preparation for the surest hope; when darkness is thickest the Light will come forth, to shine over all, and not to be extinguished for ever.