Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 7

and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25.
Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against His people, and He
hath stretched forth His hand against them, and hath smitten them: and

the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the
streets. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is
stretched out still. 26. And He will lift up an ensign to the nations from
far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they
shall come with speed swiftly: 17. None shall be weary nor stumble
among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of
their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: 28.
Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs
shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: 29. Their
roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they
shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and
none shall deliver it. 30. And in that day they shall roar against them
like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold
darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens
thereof.'--ISAIAH v. 8-30.
Drunkenness is, in this text, one of a ring of plague-spots on the body
politic of Judah. The prophet six times proclaims 'woe' as the inevitable
end of these; such 'sickness' is 'unto death' unless repentance and
another course of conduct bring healing. But drunkenness appears
twice in this grim catalogue, and the longest paragraph of denunciation
(vv, 11-17) is devoted to it. Its connection with the other vices attacked
is loose, but it is worth noting that all these have an inner kinship, and
tend to appear together. They are 'all in a string,' and where a
community is cursed with one, the others will not be far away. They are
a knot of serpents intertwined. We touch but slightly on the other vices
denounced by the prophet's burning words, but we must premise the
general observation that the same uncompromising plainness and
boldness in speaking out as to social sins ought to characterise
Christian teachers to-day. The prophet's office is not extinct in the
church.
The first plague-spot is the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and
the selfish withdrawal of its possessors from the life of the community.
In an agricultural society like that of Judah, that clotting of wealth took
the shape of 'land-grabbing,' and of evicting the small proprietors. We
see it in more virulent forms in our great commercial centres, where the

big men often become big by crushing out the little ones, and denude
themselves of responsibility to the community in proportion as they
clothe themselves with wealth. Wherever wealth is thus congested, and
its obligations ignored by selfish indulgence, the seeds are sown which
will spring up one day in 'anarchism.' A man need not be a prophet to
have it whispered in his ear, as Isaiah had, that the end of selfish
capitalism is a convulsion in which 'many houses shall be desolate,' and
many fields barren. England needs the warning as much as Isaiah's
Judah did.
Such selfish wealth leads, among other curses, to indolence and
drunkenness, as the next woe shows. The people described make
drinking the business of their lives, beginning early and sitting late.
They have a varnish of art over their swinishness, and must have music
as well as wine. So, in many a drink-shop in England, a piano or a band
adds to the attractions, and gives a false air of aestheticism to pure
animalism. Isaiah feels the incongruity that music should be so
prostituted, and expresses it by adding to his list of musical instruments
'and wine' as if he would underscore the degradation of the great art to
be the cupbearer of sots. Such revellers are blind to the manifest tokens
of God's working, and the 'operation of His hands' excites only the tipsy
gaze which sees nothing. That is one of the curses which dog the
drunkard-that he takes no warning from the plain results of his vice as
seen in others. He knows that it means shattered health, ruined
prospects, broken hearts, but nothing rouses him from his fancy of
impunity. High, serious thoughts of God and His government of the
world and of each life are strange to him. His sin compels him to be
godless, if he is not to go mad. But sometimes he wakes to a moment's
sight of realities, and then he is miserable till his next bout buys fatal
forgetfulness.
The prophet forces the end of a drunken nation on