Isaiah 58

58:1 CRY aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people 2 their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways; as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of 3 their God, they ask of me righteous ordinances, they delight to draw near unto God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and 4 exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist 5 of wickedness: ye fast not this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and 6 an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye 7 break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that 8 thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; 9 the glory of the LORD shall be thy rearward. Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of 10 thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in darkness, 11 and thine obscurity be as the noonday: and the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in dry places, and make strong thy bones; and thou shalt be like a watered 12 garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach. The restorer of paths to dwell in. 13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, and the holy of the LORD honourable; and shalt honour it, not 14 doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth; and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

Chap. 58. Self-righteous formalism is one main evil which grew up among the Jewish people along with open idolatry, and survived it in the times after the return from Babylon. Direct idol worship then almost wholly disappeared. But the other evil, more subtle in its nature, though present from the first, became conspicuous under the second Temple, and reached its height when our Lord began His ministry. After rejecting the Gospel, it hardened into the Talmudical rabbinism of later times. In the visible Church of Christ the succession has been almost the same. The open prevalence of saint and image worship has been followed by a wide prevalence of various forms of lifeless orthodoxy, or zealotry, near akin to the Pharisaism of the Jews in the days of Isaiah. In this chapter we have a distinct warning against this second great evil in the Jewish and Christian churches. Birks.

The design of this chapter is to reprove the Jews for a vain dependence on the performance of the outward forms of religion. The nation is represented as diligent in the performance of the external rites of their religion, and as expecting to avert the Divine judgments by the performance of those rites. They are represented as filled with amazement, that though they were thus diligent and faithful, yet they had no tokens of the Divine approbation, but were left as if forsaken by God. The main scope of the chapter is to show the reason why their religious services met with no tokens of the Divine acceptance, and the way in which they might obtain His favor, and the blessings which would follow the proper performance of their duties. Barnes.

This is a chapter on hypocrites, the special type or class being those who combine the apparently self-denying formalities of religion with the most self-indulgent and heartless oppression of their fellow-creatures. Since the Jewish nation as a whole professed to be the people of God, apostates in heart would often be hypocrites, keeping up the forms of religion after they had utterly lost its spirit, and indeed making special account of its forms as a means of obtaining God’s favor—a cover to their sin and an indulgence for its more safe and free commission. Against such hypocrites, the stern rebukes of this chapter are thundered forth. The prophet is commanded to proclaim aloud to this class of people their sins; to set before them the very spirit of their ceremonial religion and of their oppressive life; to show them what religious worship is and what sort of life pleases God; and to promise them that, living so, their blessings should be unbounded.

1. Earnestness and not vociferation is the spirit of this direction to the prophet. As applied to preachers of the Gospel, this distinction is sensible, and should not be lost sight of. Effectiveness should be studied. H. C.—Gospel ministers should not only be like dials on watches, or mile-stones upon the road, but like clocks and larums, to sound the alarm to sinners. Aaron wore bells as well as pomegranates, and the prophets were divinely commanded to lift up their voice like a trumpet. A sleeping sentinel may be the loss of a city. Bp. II.

2. This verse describes them as professing to seek God and even as pretending to inquire after justice and righteousness—the very principles which they most of all outraged and trampled under foot in their oppressive ways of life. H. C.—The main feature is a pretended eagerness to learn the commands and will of God, as shown in ceremonial details, and still a neglect of the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. Birks.

A hypocrite has no true and real delight in the service of God or in His truth, but it is true at the same time that there may be a great deal of professed interest in the ways of God. There may be a great deal of busy and bustling solicitude about the order of religious services. There may be a great deal of pleasure in theological discussion; in the metaphysics of theology; in the defence of what is deemed orthodoxy. There may be a great deal of pleasure in the mere music of devotion. There may be pleasure in the pleasant voice of a preacher, and in his eloquence and the power of his arguments. And there may be a great deal of pleasure in the triumphs of party; the advancement of the denomination to which we are attached; the conversion of men not from sin, but from a side opposite to us, and not to holiness and to God, but to our party and denomination. True delight in religion is in religion itself; in the service of God as such, and because it is holy. It is not mere pleasure in creeds, and liturgies, and theological discussions, and in the triumph of our cause, nor even in the triumph of Christianity as a mere party measure; but it is delight in God as He is, in His holy service, and in His truth. Barnes.

3. Their fasting was wholly an external thing, an affliction of the body and not a humbling of the soul. God’s answer is, In the very days of your fasting, ye are as oppressive and exacting as ever. Ye seek your own selfish pleasures on these days in which ye profess to be so religious toward Me. In God’s view their days of fasting should have been days of humiliation for those monstrous sins. But they meant no such thing. They only hoped to make these days a substitute for the duties of justice and kindness; an atonement for the sins of injustice and oppression—a substitution which God unutterably abhorred! . . . Ye will not, by such fasting as this, make your prayer reach heaven. Fasting like yours on these days will not carry your voice up to the pure throne above. H. C.

The idea seems to be that they were at that time rigid and oppressive in exacting all that was due to them; they relaxed nothing of their griping demands of those who were under them; they remitted nothing, they forgave nothing. There was no kindness shown to the poor; to the laboring classes; to those who were in their employ; to those who were indebted to them; to those who had injured or offended them. Alas, how often is this still true! Men may be most diligent in the external duties of religion; most abundant in fasting and in prayer, and at the same time most rigorous and unyielding in demanding all that is due to them. Like Shylock—another Jew like those in the time of Isaiah—they may demand “the pound of flesh,” at the same time that they may be most formal, punctual, precise and bigoted in the performance of the external duties of religion. The sentiment taught here is, that if we desire to keep a fast that shall be acceptable to God, it must be such as shall make us kind, mild, benignant; such as shall have the effect to cause us to unbind heavy burdens from the poor, and to lead us to relax the rigidity of the claims which would be oppressive on those who are subject to us. (See verse 6.) Barnes.

5. The second member of the first clause is not part of the contemptuous description of a mere external fast, but belongs to the definition of a true one, as a time for men to practise self-humiliation. He does not ask whether the fast which he chooses is a day for a man to afflict himself, implying that it is not, which would be destructive of the very essence of a fast; but he asks whether the fast which he has chosen as a time for men to humble and afflict themselves is such as this—i.e., a mere external self-abasement. A.—Is my fast day like this of yours—mine, the day of my choice, being a day for a man to afflict and humble his soul and not his body merely? Is this the same thing as bowing down the head like a bulrush, and making one’s bed of sackcloth and ashes? Will ye account the latter to be a real fast and a day acceptable to God? H. C.

The bowing of the head refers to the affected seriousness, the sanctimoniousness of a hypocrite when fasting—a man without real feeling who puts on an air of affected solemnity and “appears to others to fast.” Against that the Saviour warned His disciples, and directed them when they fasted to do it in their ordinary dress and to maintain an aspect of cheerfulness. The hypocrites in the time of Isaiah seemed to suppose that the object was gained if they assumed this affected seriousness. Nothing more injures the cause of true religion than sanctimoniousness, affected seriousness, gloom, reserve, coldness and the conduct and deportment which, whether right or wrong, will be construed by those around us into gloom and misanthropy. Be it not forgotten that the seriousness which religion produces is always consistent with cheerfulness, and is always accompanied by benevolence. Barnes.

6. The terms are so selected as to be descriptive of oppression universally; to make which still more evident, the prophet adds a general command or exhortation, Ye shall break every yoke. A.—This is God’s idea of a fast for oppressors—viz., a day for them to loosen bands wickedly imposed. This condemnation of oppression is very broad—“break every yoke.” No matter by what law, whether municipal, or merely social or even parental, any of our fellow-creatures fall in any measure under our power, let us see to it that our hand upon them becomes not a yoke; our authority not a crushing bondage. H. C.

When God saith, “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:6), the meaning is, that mercy is to be preferred before sacrifice. Just thus the prophet speaks of fasting here, as a thing, in itself, of little or no use to show how much mercy is to be preferred, without which fasting will not avail anything. W. Lowth.

What God desires in you and me is not certain forms, services, emotions, the saying of prayers and the like; it is a renewal of the whole nature—of the inner and the outer man. Away with the thought that haunts so many, that the work of Christ is some cunningly devised plan for enabling men to get to heaven without righteousness. It is rather the divinely simple and yet marvellously successful plan for making men, not merely by imputation or proxy, but in themselves and in fact, holy, pure, godlike and fit for heaven. J. Ogle.

Life is a vineyard. Its business is a task. We are set down in a field white already to harvest. Humanity has wrongs to be righted, and oppressions to be lifted off. Bargains are to be made immaculate. Lusts are to be quenched. Selfishness is to be softened. In a word, faith is to bear fruit a hundredfold, and piety to lead a moral life. Otherwise, the whole head of faith is sick, and the whole heart of piety is faint. This every-day, familiar, working religion, the religion of little things, is Christianity. F. D. H.

7. The Scriptures throughout both the Old Testament and the New give great and deserved prominence to these duties of broad, deep, practical sympathy with the suffering and the friendless. (See Isa. 32:6; Job 31:16-32; Ezek. 18:7, 8; Prov. 22:9; Ps. 112:9; Matt. 25:35, 36; Rom. 12:13; Heb. 13:2, 3, and James 2:15, 16.) H. C.

The blessed God is the most benevolent because He is the best of beings; and this is one test of the reality of our religion: if it has made us new creatures, it has made us humane; if it has made us partakers of the Divine nature, it has made us kind and communicative; if it has made us Christlike, it has made us like one who went about continually doing good. And for this softness of feeling, for this susceptibility to human suffering, I know not of any substitute, for I know nothing which will prove a man to be godly, if you can prove him still to be selfish. But if humanity is a grace of God’s Spirit, if in its truest, widest sense it is a Heaven-implanted principle, it none the less needs careful culture. Not only does it need to be wisely regulated, but more harm than good is done by its largesses, precipitate and promiscuous; but it needs to be constantly refreshed and fostered, lest it die away. Hamilton.

We owe other people service. Service goes with loving. We cannot love truly and not serve. Love without serving is but an empty sentiment, a poor mockery. God so loved the world that He gave. Love always gives. The world is very full of sorrow and trial, and we cannot live among our fellow-men and be true without sharing their loads. If we are happy, we must hold the lamp of our happiness so that its beams will fall upon the shadowed heart. If we have no burden, it is our duty to put our shoulders under the load of others. Selfishness must die, or else our own heart’s life must be frozen within us. We soon learn that we cannot live for ourselves and be Christians; that the blessings that are given to us are really for other people; and that we are only God’s ministers to carry them in Christ’s name to those for whom they were intended. J. R. Miller.

We are under the obligation of love, as interpreted by the Eternal Son of God in His voluntary sacrifice for man’s redemption. He came to give His life a ransom for many. The law that the strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak is no mere temporary enactment, imposed for disciplinary ends; it has its origin in the essential life of God, and its most impressive illustration in the ministry and mediation of Jesus Christ. Love must be both intelligent and righteous. It does not bear the infirmities of the weak simply for the sake of bearing them. It summons us to please our neighbors only for their good to edification. It is not every wish that we are to gratify. It is not every weakness that we are to condone. We are to seek our neighbor’s upbuilding in all that is good. We are so to bear his infirmities that he may shortly be able to walk alone, and be helpful to others. The principle of love is justified to the reason by the high doctrine, appearing in the very first pages of the Bible, articulate in all its subsequent utterances, most impressively illustrated in the incarnation, and solemnly sealed in the resurrection from the dead and the ascension into glory: that man, though framed in body of the dust of earth, is the heir of eternity and the child of God. Sadly has he fallen, but he is not beyond rescue. He cannot be what he ought to be, and what he may be, until the grace of Christ has renewed and sanctified him; and therefore love impels to any sacrifice and endeavor that may place this grace within his reach. Behrends.

Even kindness may be overdone when it leads to over-helping. We need to guard against meddling with God’s discipline, softening the experience that He means to be hard, sheltering our friend from the wind that He intends to blow chillingly. All summer does not make a good zone to live in; we need autumn and winter to temper the heat and keep vegetation from luxuriant overgrowth. The best thing we can do for others is not always to take their load or do their duty for them.

“Our friends,” says Emerson, “are those who make us do what we can.” Says another writer: “Our real friend is not the man or woman who smooths over our difficulties, throws a cloak over our failings, stands between us and the penalties which our mistakes have brought upon us; but the man or woman who makes us understand ourselves and helps us to better things.” Too often our friendship is short-sighted in this regard, and most hurtful to those we fervently desire to aid. We should never indulge or encourage weakness in others when we can in any way stimulate it into strength. We should never do anything for another which we can inspire him to do for himself. Much parental affection errs at this point. Children are sometimes sheltered when it were better if they faced the storm. They are saved from toil and exertion when toil and exertion are God’s ordained means of grace for them, of which parents rob them in their over-tenderness. Even in the sacredness of sorrow we should never forget that our mission to others is not merely to weep with them, but to help them to be victorious, to receive their sorrow as a messenger from God, and to bear themselves as God’s children under it. Instead, therefore, of mere emotional condolence with our friends in their times of grief, we should seek to present to them the strong comforts of Divine love, and to inspire them to the bearing of their sorrow in faith and hope and love.

So all personal helpfulness should be wise and thoughtful. It should never tend to pamper weakness, to encourage dependence, to make people timid, to debilitate madness and womanliness. We must take care that our helping does not dwarf any life which we ought rather to stimulate to noble and beautiful growth. God never makes such mistakes as this. He never fails us in need; but He loves us too well and is too wise to relieve us of weights which we need to make our growth healthful and vigorous. We should learn from God, and should help as He helps, without ever overhelping. J. R. M.

We are certainly not wrong if, with God’s Bible in our hands, we urge that the religion that is revived shall revive with it honesty, fair dealing, veracity, chastity, plain living and faithful work; shall bring on a new epoch of duty—courageous, clean-handed, sweet-hearted duty, irreproachable and incorruptible—fearing God and keeping His commandments. F. D. H. —Isaiah and his brother prophets were holier, and heavenlier, and richer in the works of love, upon an anticipated Christ, than we are in a Christ already our crucified example. These men of God knew no divorce between belief and love; between living perpetually in the presence of a benevolent Lord and imitating His benevolence to their fellow-creatures! W. A. B.

Manifestly for the purpose of giving the highest possible force and solemnity to that sense of obligation which impels the Christian to abound in every good work, the ostensible proof of religious sincerity, to be adduced in the momentous procedures of the last judgment, is made to consist in the fact of a life of beneficence. Those, and those only, shall inherit the prepared blessedness who shall be found to have nourished, and clothed, and visited the Lord in His representatives—the poor. The “cursed” are those who have grudged the cost of mercy. I. Taylor.

Experience demonstrates that the heart which responds to the cries of a world perishing through lack of knowledge is the heart which most readily thrills at the cry of bodily want; that those who care most for the souls of the heathen are among the most active agents of patriotic and local charities; that genuine Christian charity, while it leaves no object unattempted on account of its vastness, overlooks none on account of its minuteness. In this respect, it copies the example of Him who, in His way to the cross to save a world, often stood still to give health to the sick, and to wipe away the tears of the mourner; sowing at each step the seeds of those various institutions of mercy which are still springing up in His Church. Harris.—Remember that your stewardship here is not for long. Use carefully and lovingly the things that God has given you. And when it comes time for you to depart, may there be many hearts here that shall be orphaned by your going, and many waiting hearts there that shall be gladdened by your coming. C. H. P.

Our Lord has done more than to remove all limitations from the law of neighborly service. He has also introduced a new measure and motive for its obedience. “A new commandment,” He said, “I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye love one another.” Christ’s love for us is to be the measure and the motive of our love for our fellow-men. Here we have the ultimate test by which we may judge the quality of our neighborly regard. The old law said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself;” Christ changes the rule by saying, “Love your neighbor as I love you.” And therein is at least a sixfold command. You are to love your neighbor rationally, because he is a man for whom Christ died. You are to love him impartially, seeing that Christ is the friend of sinners. You are to love him passionately, your inmost heart on fire with holy affection. You are to love him patiently, imitating Him who is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. You are to love him righteously, intent on making him an heir of holiness, because Christ came to save men from their sins. And as all holiness is based on a keen sense of personal responsibility, it follows that you can love your neighbor righteously only as you wake in him the sense of personal energy, and urge him to the cultivation of a vigorous, rounded, Christian manhood. The very best thing you can do for the extirpation of pauperism, of ignorance, of intemperance, lust and crime, is so to multiply your missionary agencies that the Gospel of Christian manhood shall be brought to every man’s door. Pure hearts will make clear heads, and strong hands, and temperate men and women; and under the silent ministry of holiness the world’s tyrannies and miseries would speedily disappear. Behrends.

8. By a mixture of metaphors, which does not in the least obscure the sense, this healing is here said to sprout or germinate, a figure employed elsewhere to denote the sudden, rapid and spontaneous growth or rise of anything. In the last clause a third distinct figure is employed to express the same idea—viz., that of a march like the journey through the wilderness, with the pillar of cloud, as the symbol of God’s presence, going before and after. A.

These blessings follow obedience. Those who will observe God’s fast days and bring their life up to the spirit of them will have this reward. “Light breaking forth as the morning” is a strong and exquisitely beautiful figure for happiness after misery. The last half of the verse alludes to the symbols of God’s presence in the wilderness, the pillar of cloud and of fire; God before and God behind their moving hosts. “Thy righteousness” going before may best be taken as thy righteous God, ever gracious to thee, will march before thee; corresponding to “the glory of God,” the Shechinah, the symbol of His presence, going behind. The sentiment is, God shall be on every side of thee, thy never-failing, ever-present Guide and Protector. H. C.

There is a special and familiar presence of God with those who walk uprightly, both in the night of their sorrow and in the day of their joy. Yet we do not always in the same way perceive that presence so as to enjoy it. God never leaves us, but we sometimes think He has done so. Yes, the glory of the Lord is above us and beneath us, on the right hand and on the left, without us and within us. We depart not from it, though it is behind us; we are going ever into the glorious light, for it is before us, too. The Lord shall be a wall of fire around about us, and the glory in the midst. Spurgeon.

9. This answer to prayer is in contrast with the praying spoken of in verse 4. H. C.

10. We must not only give alms according as the necessities of the poor require, but must give freely and cheerfully, and from a principle of charity; we must “draw out our soul to the hungry” (verse 10), not only draw out the money, and reach forth the hand, but do this from the heart, heartily, and without grudging; from a principle of compassion, and with a tender affection to such as we see to be in misery; let the heart go along with the gift, for God loves a cheerful giver, and so does a poor man too. When our Lord Jesus healed and fed the multitude, it was as having compassion on them. H.

11. There is in the last clause a climax. Not content with the image of a well-watered garden, he substitutes that of the stream, or rather of the spring itself. The general idea is a favorite with Isaiah. The exodus from Egypt had already made these images familiar and appropriate to any great deliverance.

12. The first clause agrees exactly with the work assigned to Israel in chaps. 42:14 and 57:11—viz., that of reclaiming the apostate nations, and building the wastes of a desolated world. A.—Thou shalt have the good things of earth; a restored community; the traces of desolation obliterated; prosperity smiling over the whole face of the land. H. C.

13. The mere outward observance was of no avail, unless the institution were regarded with reverence, as of God; nay more, with complacency, as in itself delightful. To call it a delight, is to acknowledge it as such. The second clause may be best explained by a paraphrase: “If thou wilt give to the Sabbath the name of a delight, and to the holy day or ordinance of Jehovah that of honorable.” But mere acknowledgment is not enough—it must not only be admitted to deserve honor, but in fact receive it. Hence he adds, and if thou wilt honor it thyself, by not doing, literally, away from doing, so as not to do. Here again, to find one’s pleasure on the Sabbath is more natural than to find one’s business. Doing thy own ways, although not a usual combination, is rendered intelligible by the constant use of way in Hebrew to denote a course of conduct. Speaking speech or talking talk is by some regarded as equivalent to speaking vanity in verse 9. A.

“The holy day of the Lord.” God’s own title of the Sabbath. His people are to account it a delight, and honorable; in contrast both to the weariness of a formal, heartless observance, and to open, careless profanation. The same message, which exalts moral duties in contrast to mere ceremonies, also exalts Sabbath keeping as the crown of true morality. In the fifth commandment religion stoops into the sphere of social morality, and in the fourth, morality rises into the sphere of religious faith. Birks.

God claims the day as His, and as a holy day on that account. While all time is His, and while He requires all time to be profitably and usefully employed, He calls the Sabbath peculiarly His own—a day which is to be observed with reference to Himself and which is to be regarded as belonging to Him. To take the hours of that day, therefore, for our pleasure, or for business which is not a work necessary or merciful, is to rob God of that which He claims as His own. The idea is, here, that we are to do the things which God requires, and to consult His pleasure and His will in the observance. It is remarkable that the thing here adverted to is the very way in which the Sabbath is commonly violated. It is not extensively a day of business—for the propriety of a periodical cessation from toil is so obvious that men will have such days recurring at moderate intervals. Barnes.

Every one who permits his mind to dwell on secular affairs, and makes them his chief subjects of conversation on Sunday, is bringing in the cares and labors of the week to the exclusion of those higher thoughts and nobler aspirations that ought to fill the sacred hours. The ban was laid upon man’s work, not as a privation, but that men might be free to turn their attention wholly to God’s work; and this purpose of Sunday is frustrated if we occupy our time with worldly thoughts and words. To accomplish its Divine purpose, the sanctification of Sunday must be complete. Not the hands and feet only, but the mind and the tongue and all the powers, whether physical or mental, must be turned from the things of the world, and consecrated in an especial manner to God. G. H. Hubbard.

14. Everything must be done that puts an honor on the day and is expressive of our high thoughts of it; we must call it a “delight,” not a

“task and a burden;” we must delight ourselves in it, in the restraints it lays upon us and the services it obliges us to; we must be in our element when we are worshipping God and in communion with Him. We must not only count it a delight, but call it so, must openly profess the complacency we take in the day, and the duties of it; we must call it so to God, in thanksgiving for it, and earnest desire of His grace to enable us to do the work of the day in its day, because we delight in it; we must call it so to others. If we thus “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” we shall have the comfort of it; the work will be its own wages. “If we call the Sabbath a delight, then shall we delight ourselves in the Lord;” He will more and more manifest Himself to us as the delightful Subject of our thoughts and meditations, and the delightful Object of our best affections. The more pleasure we take in serving God, the more pleasure we shall find in it. If we go about duty with cheerfulness, we shall go from it with satisfaction, and shall have reason to say, “It is good to be here, good to draw near to God.” H.

The delight or pleasure which God’s people have in Him is a direct and necessary consequence of the proper observance of the Sabbath. It is on that day, set apart by His own authority for His own service, that He chooses to meet with His people and to commune with them and bless them; and no one ever properly observed the Sabbath who did not find as a consequence that He had augmented pleasure in the existence, the character and the service of Jehovah. In no place in the Bible is there a more full account of the proper mode of keeping that holy day. We are to refrain from ordinary travelling and employments; we are not to engage in doing our own pleasure; we are to regard it with delight, and to esteem it a day worthy to be honored; and we are to show honor to it by not performing our own ordinary works or pursuing pleasure. This was the way in which the day was to be observed in the time of Isaiah, and in this way it may be and should be observed now. In this description there occurs nothing of peculiar Jewish ceremony, and nothing which indicates that it is not to be observed in this manner at all times. Under the Gospel, assuredly, it is as easy and as proper to celebrate the Sabbath in this way as it was in the times of Isaiah; and God doubtless intended that the Sabbath should be perpetually observed in this manner. . . . It is as true now as it was then that they who observe the Sabbath in a proper manner find a pleasure and happiness in the Lord—in His existence, perfections, promises, law and in communion with Him—which is to be found nowhere else. Of this fact there are abundant witnesses now in every Christian Church, and they will continue to be multiplied in every coming age. And it is as true that the proper observance of the Sabbath contributes to the prosperity and safety of a nation now as it ever did among the Jewish people. It is not merely from the fact that God promises to protect and bless the people who keep His holy day—though this is of more value to a nation than all its armies and fleets and fortifications; but it is that there is in the institution itself much that tends to the welfare and prosperity of a country. It is the time when worldliness is broken in upon by a periodical season of rest, and when the thoughts are left free to contemplate higher and purer objects. It is a time when more instruction is imparted and received on moral and religious subjects than on all the other days of the week put together. The public worship of God tends to elevate the soul, to enlarge the intellect and to purify the heart. No institution has ever been originated that has contributed so much to elevate the common mind; to diffuse order, peace, neatness, decency, among men, and thus to perpetuate and extend all that is valuable in society, as the Sabbath. Any one may be convinced of this who will be at the pains to compare a neighborhood, a village or a city where the Sabbath is not observed with one where it is; and the difference in morals, honesty, intelligence, decency, order and comfort will convince him at once that society owes more to the Sabbath than to any single institution besides, and that in no way possible can one-seventh portion of the time be so well employed as in the manner contemplated by the Christian day of rest. Barnes.

The promise to those who obey is, that they should “have a place and a name in God’s house better than of sons and daughters” (Isa. 66: 5). They should “ride upon the high places of the earth, and be fed with the heritage of Jacob.” If the people of Israel would “diligently hearken” to obey in this particular, then there would ever be “kings and princes to sit upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the city shall remain forever.” But if, on the other hand, they refuse to hearken, then the Lord Himself would “kindle a fire in the gates thereof, which shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched” (Jer. 17: 25, 27). Now, unless the nature of God has changed, or Israel has ceased to be a typical people, or the necessity for this law has passed, then His dealings with His ancient people, and the desolation which, in pursuance of His threatenings, He has visited upon them and their city, once “the joy of the whole earth,” but now an astonishment and a proverb, “must and will ever stand as a prophecy and pledge of His dealings toward every other nation and people upon the face of the earth. We have two remarkable instances of the fulfilment of promised blessings in connection with national fidelity. The first is the Chinese. That people are proverbial for their respect to parents and those in authority; and in them has been literally fulfilled the promise connected with the fifth commandment of living—“long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee;” for no nation can boast of a greater antiquity or longer existence. The other example is that of the British people, who have shown greater reverence for the sabbatical law than any other nation, and in whom has been fulfilled that other promise of outward prosperity and blessing in connection with the fourth commandment, of “riding upon the high places of the earth,” and being “fed with the heritage of Jacob their father;” for her sails whiten every sea, and upon her vast dominions “the sun never sets.” Unless revelation be a farce, and the entire Scriptures a forgery, the nation that honors its God in the observance of this law shall in turn be honored and blessed of Him; whereas the nation that dishonors Him by forsaking His law shall be lightly esteemed of Him, and shall only bring judgments upon themselves, and bind a similar, if not even greater curse upon their prosperity. Stacy.

The Sabbath is no circumscribed Jewish institution. It belongs to God’s Church of all ages. It stands here imbedded in the picture of the Messianic Church, just as it stands imbedded in the Decalogue, which also was given, not to the Jewish Church, but to the universal Church of God. The details of the passage show that it is God’s day (“My holy day”), in which man is to withdraw from his accustomed works, pleasures and ways to find his delight in holy thoughts, words and actions, a day ordained in the mercy and love of God to prevent man from being carnalized by his earthly occupations. The Sabbath is ever a vital element in true piety. As the Sabbath is neglected, religion loses its purity and power.

Disregard of the Sabbath is a sure sign of a low state of religious life. Crosby.

Even the Jewish Sabbath developed into a highly spiritual ordinance; as witness Isaiah 58; it became more spiritual as the ages passed on and as revelation grew; it included more and more of worship. What the Sabbath of Isaiah was to the Sabbath of the wilderness, the Sabbath of “the prophets” to the Sabbath of “the law”—i.e., the Pentateuch, such is the Sabbath of Christianity to the best Sabbath of Judaism. Let the Sabbath law be expounded by the light of our Saviour’s teachings and actions and pre-eminently of that Divine maxim, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;” let the true spirit and principle of the commandment be attained to and put into practice, and the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day will be found to coincide. J. H. Rigg.

When the old land-bound Sabbath of Israel passed into the world-wide Lord’s Day, it girdled the earth with universal brotherhood in the Lord. In whatever strange land, of whatever strange tongue, the believer now joins in that day’s worshipping assembly, the sense of brotherhood glows within him. Over all the world, from the western skirts of the Pacific, around with the sun to its starting-point, that day, dotting the whole globe with gatherings in the name of our Lord, busied alike in prayer, and praise, and promise in His name, makes a testimony to the unity and brotherhood of Christian faith, which no man can gainsay. Grey.

How is a wandering, fallen and depraved world to be recalled to God without that day which celebrates the works, and word, and grace of God—that day which recognizes His authority over man—that day which proclaims man’s intellectual and accountable nature, his future, his eternal hopes? The Sabbath interposes a space between total irreligion and the conscience of man; it puts in the claims of God upon the human heart. Nor is the temporal welfare of mankind less concerned than their spiritual, in the observation of the Lord’s Day. Man was created for six days’ work, not for seven; his faculties cannot bear an unremitted strain. Children, and servants, and the laboring classes of mankind (by far the more numerous and the most liable to be oppressed) require—what this institution gives—a day of repose, of refreshment, of religious recollection and peace. The whole world rests and is still, that God may speak, that conscience may resume her sway, that the exhausted body and mind may recruit their powers, and be fitted for a more vigorous effort. The utmost productive labor of man is in the proportion of rest and exertion ordained by his merciful Creator. The best prevention of disease, the prolongation of human life itself, depends on the like alternation of toil and repose. The springs of pleasure are thus augmented and purified. The satiety, the sameness, the weariness, the uniformity of human life, is broken; and a blessed, hallowed period for religion is interposed. The interval between these seasons is neither so distant as to be ineffectual to its end nor so near as to injure the real interests of our worldly callings; but, like everything else in God’s revelation, unites the prosperity of the soul with the highest welfare of the body and concerns of man. How great, then, is the importance of every one’s falling in with the designs of this institution! Bp. Wilson.

With every generation of our history the rush of activities becomes more absorbing and more strenuous, and the danger of ceasing to be men in becoming mere workers grows upon us. Societary circulation is swifter; invention brings man closer to man, and multiplies the demands on our time and thought, while seeming only to increase our comforts. The outward look on life leaves us less time for the upward look on God. The “things seen and temporal” increase in number and interest, till we need an effort to get our gaze turned to the things unseen and eternal. So the need of the day of rest grows instead of diminishing, and experience forces men to see the uses of Sunday even for lower ends than these. We need it that man and beast may not be worn out by “the pace that kills.” We need it that men may preserve their mental sanity and retain their fitness for the best work they are capable of. But, after all, we need it most to keep us in that living relation to God which is needed to keep us men. “The Sabbath was made for man”—for our humanity. It was made to lift us off the animal level, and bring out in us all that belongs to the superior nature. It was made to keep us in human liberty and to save us from a bestial bondage to toil. It was made to keep us in that likeness to God, which was the starting-point in our creation, and is the goal of our development. R. E. Thompson.

Rest is God’s gift to us; worship is our offering to God; service is our ministry to man in the name of the Master. The day in which we are refreshed by rest and uplifted by worship is the day when we go forth armed with rare and heavenly powers, to carry tidings of God’s love to those who know Him not, or “to serve the hidden life of the brethren.” The mighty Victor gains marvellous triumphs on the day of His rising power; but He gains them all through the faithful service of the loyal and bold-hearted. Accessions to the kingdom are tenfold—yes, a hundredfold—on these days of the Son of Man. Even the revelation of the good done and the souls saved on one Sabbath would no doubt astonish and overwhelm even the most sanguine Christian. An invisible army of “wage-workers” are reaping down untold harvests for God. “He that reapeth receiveth wages.” Great spiritual forces attend upon every act of service done for God to our fellow-men. S. S. T.

There is not a message which the Sabbath brings, not a thought to which its proper use gives birth, not a feeling which it cherishes, but helps in the sanctification of the home life and in purifying the sources of domestic virtue. Without the Sabbath the family could hardly realize its unity in the fullest extent, and the roof-tree, ceasing to be love’s sanctuary, would become but the lodging-house of individuals ignorant of the highest happiness. With the Sabbath the home stands or falls. For the defence of the fireside its sacred hours of worship and rest must be kept inviolate. Anon.

Effect on the individual Christian’s life. The Christian man, desirous of loving God with all the affection of his heart, with all the rational intelligence of his mind, with all the devotion of his life, with all the energy of his strength, in the love taught him under the fourth law, will yield himself up gratefully and religiously to obey all duly ordered positive laws of the

Church of God. The Sunday and its sacred observance will be to him the centre, and furnish, so to speak, the form of his own way of life, and that of all his family and dependents. He will regard it every time it returns as God’s holy day of rest, the weekly commemoration of the primeval rest of God and of all the signal mercies of the elder covenant. Knowing himself to be of the true Israel of God, he will not forget the blessings connected by God Himself with the sabbatical institution, vouchsafed to his fathers in the faith. He will celebrate it weekly as the feast of the Lord’s resurrection, and all the blessings of that resurrection; as the feast of the Holy Ghost the Giver of peace and rest in the Church, as the weekly antepast of that glorious and unending rest in the presence of God which still remaineth for the people of God. It will be to him a day of rest, peace, prayer, praise and holy joy; no mournful and austere time, but, on the contrary, a thankful, happy time. He will remember his Lord’s injunction not to forbid or refuse works of necessity or mercy on that day. He will gratefully shut up the records of the cares, the interests and the occupations of the week, and give that holy day to God; not discharging himself of his duties of worship by an attendance in God’s house or holding himself at liberty to make his own convenience or inclination the rule of obedience; but faithfully, dutifully and completely sanctifying that day to rest, worship and the thought of God and heaven. And the other days, the train of Sunday, will borrow of its light; each having its own sacred, special commemoration belonging to it, and each reflecting some of the brightness of the Sunday just preceding and catching more and more from that which follows. Bp. Moberly.