Isaiah 42:4 He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. Naturalists tell us that our earth from time to time has been exhausted by bearing countless generations of plants and animals; and has only recovered its fertilising materials under the baptism of the great waters, and become fit for bearing new life when the sea changed its bed. Continents are losing the elements which are necessary for building up the bone and brain of man by the streams and rivers that carry them away to the ocean; and islands, owing to the way in which they have been produced from the sea, are rich in such elements, and are therefore fitted to nourish and to maintain vigorous races. This is one reason why islands, more than continents, have been the cradles of new movements connected with the progress of man; and it may be, reasoning from this analogy, that if we in this old island impart to the young isles of the sea the knowledge of the law of Christ for which they are waiting, newer and more vigorous manifestations and developments of that law may be met in those islands than we have yet seen. Christianity may acquire a new impulse from the fresh force and enthusiasm of new races, and the things that have been latent in it may blossom and bear fruit in a new soil for the good of the world. It may be that the isles of the sea that now wait for the law of Christ, shall in turn communicate that law to the regions from which they originally derived it, and which, from their sloth and selfishness, have sunk into ignorance and darkness, just as the candlestick that was removed from places once bright with the light of the truth because of their carelessness, was set up in our heathen island long ago. (H. Macmillan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. |
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