Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 4

is the use of saying 'Arise and
walk' to the man who has been lame from his mother's womb? How can
a foul body be washed clean by filthy hands? Ancient or modern
preachers of a self-wrought-out morality exhort to impossibilities, and

unless they follow their preaching of an unattainable ideal as Isaiah
followed his, they are doomed to waste their words. He cried, 'Make
you clean,' but he immediately went on to point to One who could
make clean, could turn scarlet into snowy white, crimson into the
lustrous purity of the unstained fleeces of sheep in green pastures. The
assurance of God's forgiveness which deals with guilt, and of God's
cleansing which deals with inclination and habit, must be the
foundation of our cleansing ourselves from filthiness of flesh and spirit.
The call to repentance needs the promise of pardon and divine help to
purifying in order to become a gospel. And the call to 'repentance
toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,' is what we all,
who are 'laden with iniquity,' and have forsaken the Lord, need, if ever
we are to cease to do evil and learn to do well.
As with one thunder-clap the prophecy closes, pealing forth the eternal
alternative set before every soul of man. Willing obedience to our
Father God secures all good, the full satisfaction of our else hungry and
ravenous desires. To refuse and rebel is to condemn ourselves to
destruction. And no man can avert that consequence, or break the
necessary connection between goodness and blessedness, 'for the
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,' and what He speaks stands fast for
ever and ever.

THE STUPIDITY OF GODLESSNESS
'The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth
not know, My people doth not consider.'--ISAIAH i. 3.
This is primarily an indictment against Israel, but it touches us all.
'Doth not know' i.e. has no familiar acquaintance with; 'doth not
consider,' i.e. frivolously ignores, never meditates on.
I. This is a common attitude of mind towards God.
Blank indifference towards Him is far more frequent than conscious
hostility. Take a hundred men at random as they hurry through the

streets, and how many of them would have to acknowledge that no
thought of God had crossed their minds for days or months? So far as
they are concerned, either in regard to their thoughts or actions, He is 'a
superfluous hypothesis.' Most men are not conscious of rebellion
against Him, and to charge them with it does not rouse conscience, but
they cannot but plead guilty to this indictment, 'God is not in all their
thoughts.'
II. This attitude is strange and unnatural.
That a man should be able to forget God, and live as if there were no
such Being, is strange. It is one instance of that awful power of
ignoring the most important subjects, of which every life affords so
many and tragic instances. It seems as if we had above us an opium sky
which rains down soporifics, go that we are fast asleep to all that it
most concerns us to wake to. But still stranger is it that, having that
power of attending or not attending to subjects, we should so
commonly exercise it on this subject. For, as the ox that knows the
hand that feeds him, and the ass that makes for his 'master's crib' where
he is sure of fodder and straw, might teach us, the stupidest brute has
sense enough to recognise who is kind to him, or has authority over
him, and where he can find what he needs. The godless man descends
below the animals' level. And to ignore Him is intensely stupid. But it
is worse than foolish, for
III. This attitude is voluntary and criminal.
Though there is not conscious hostility in it, the root of it is a sub-
conscious sense of discordance with God and of antagonism between
His will and the man's When we are quite sure that we love another,
and that hearts beat in accord and wills go out towards the same things,
we do not need to make efforts to think of that other, but our minds turn
towards him or her as to a home, whenever released from the holding-
back force of necessary occupations. If we love God, and have our will
set to do His will, our thoughts will fly to Him, 'as doves to their
windows.'
It is fed by preoccupation of thought with other things. We have but a

certain limited amount of energy of thought or attention, and if we
waste it, as much as most of us do, on 'things seen and temporal,' there
is none left for the unseen realities and the God who is 'eternal,