Isaiah 48:18 O that you had listened to my commandments! then had your peace been as a river, and your righteousness as the waves of the sea: If you have ever been at St. Andrews, and have looked at the ruins of that great cathedral, you have seen not only the massive walls that are left in a small part of it, but you have seen just the appearance above ground, the whole shape of the cathedral — nothing more than that: you can just form an idea of what it would be if it stood there in all its grandeur. Well, there is left in every man something of this kind. Sin depraves, but it does not obliterate the organic powers and the natural peculiarities and tendencies of the individual. What I might have been — that is not a picture which has altogether vanished in the air; there is some outline of it left, an outline in each man. Of course, these differ very much among themselves, just as pictures differ in a gallery or as human faces in a crowded street, all of which, perhaps, you will find to have a general resemblance, but none of which are exactly alike. The ideal of another person would not be mine, nor mine his. There are diversities. (A. Raleigh, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: |
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