Isaiah 8:19-20 And when they shall say to you, Seek to them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that peep, and that mutter… We must learn to recognise the friends and foes of our life even when they are presented to us in an Oriental and old-world dress. I. WE HAVE HERE A PLEA FOR THE LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF THE LIVING PRESENT. "On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?" Such is the sarcastic question that the disciples of the great prophet are required to ask the people when the latter desire to resort to wizards and witches to help them out of their straits. The retort goes much further than merely striking a blow at the silly superstition of seeking by enchantment to bring back and question the shades of the dead. It contains a principle which lies at the very foundation of the world's development, — a principle the reverent recognition of which will enable us to work out unfettered the full mission of our lives, and give us unbounded faith in the future of the race which Christ has come to redeem. Every new generation has its own special mission to fulfil; it is a new life charged with the duty of working out its own salvation. It is a new stage in the manifestation of the Divine through the human. The living present claims for itself a dignity and a mission, and, if we are lax in upholding the former, we are likely to fall short of fulfilling the latter. There is a way of worshipping the past, and of appealing to it which puts the present in chains, or, at least, compels it to be stationary. Has human life in very deed exhausted the thought of God? Surely the very history of the past itself ought to teach us the essential liberty and power of life. What epochs of the past are those that call forth our highest admiration and homage! Not such a period as that of the middle Ages when the living fortified and entrenched themselves in the sepulchres of the dead; but rather such times as those of the Lutheran reformation, when men felt the holy freedom of their own life, cast away the swathings of the past, and fearlessly took a new step in the name of God. I believe that God reigns through the rich movements of life, and not through traditional and external fetters. Given an earnest generation, awake to the responsibilities of its own life, and I can trust God to direct the flowing tide to a sacred shore. We cannot assert that an active and earnest generation will not make any mistakes. Every age has its own peculiar dangers, the vices which are the excess of its virtues. There are shallow lives that lose their gravity with the slightest movement, and dash themselves into thin vapour around the deeper movement of the time. And there are the men that pride themselves upon being fearless spirits in the realm of thought; which often means that they take advantage of a new movement to rush into one-sided and extreme conclusions upon the most precarious basis — conclusions which a truer judgment will anon reverse or correct. And even the most earnest and reliable spirits find it difficult to discover the golden mean between the bondage of the old and the violence of the new. II. THAT THE TRUE LIFE OF THE PRESENT CAN BE ATTAINED ONLY BY LIVING CONTACT WITH THE LIVING GOD. The prophet's message has not ended with the declaration that life is essentially movement and a force, having a Divine right to cast off the encrusting forms of the dead past. In order to prevent this awful liberty from being abused, and this vast movement from being misdirected, he must supply it with a guiding Spirit, and a directing force. It is a dangerous thing for men to become suddenly conscious of a vast and unused power unless they at the same time feel the grip of the eternal principles along which this power should move. Every movement of life presupposes an appointed orbit, without which it runs wild, and ends in a crash. The prophet, therefore, directs the people to root and ground their liberty in living contact with God — "Should not a people seek unto their God?" In examining, therefore, any particular case of movement in the moral and religious sphere it is all-important to inquire whether it exhibits the living energy of the Divine life in the human, whether it enriches men with a profounder apprehension of the beating, quickening life of God here in our very midst; in fine, whether the movement is marked with the sacred brand of living contact with the living God. Every true life movement brings God nearer — never drives Him further away. Let us apply this test in one particular and crucial case — the great question of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps our formal deflations may undergo a slight change; but of this I feel sure — that it will never be necessary or rational for me to accept a theory of inspiration which will make the Bible less Divine than I hold it to be at present. There is no truly onward movement which is not also upward. Life's true mission is fulfilled and life's true path pursued, only in proportion as a people seek to their God. III. So we are led to our last thought: THAT THE TRUTHS WHICH WERE THE ESSENTIAL BASIS OF THE BEST LIFE OF THE PAST MUST BE THE BASIS OF THE ENLARGING LIFE OF THE PRESENT. "To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them." So the cycle of thought is completed. True progress and true conservatism are not opposed to one another, but are rather supplementary. The only true liberty is that which runs along the lines of eternal law. The world was not begun yesterday, and we have not been deputed to lay its foundations anew. So Isaiah's last position is not only consistent with his first; it is necessarily involved in it. The living, says the prophet, need not consult the shades of the dead, for they have a living God to guide them and to give them ever larger supplies of power. True; but God is one. He does not change with each new generation. The great principles by which He ennobles human life are well known, for they have been writ large in His self-manifestations in the past. God will not reveal Himself in the present to those that are too blind to recognise His glory as revealed in the past. God has revealed Himself to the world long ago. If we would have more light in the present, we must be true to the radiance that lights up the history of the past. (J. Thomas, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? |
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