shall be your strength.'--ISAIAH xxx. 15.


ISRAEL always felt the difficulty of sustaining itself on the height of
dependence on the unseen, spiritual power of God, and was ever
oscillating between alliances with the Northern and Southern powers,
linking itself with Assyria against Egypt, or with Egypt against
Assyria. The effect was that whichever was victorious it suffered; it
was the battleground for both, it was the prize of each in turn. The
prophet's warnings were political wisdom as truly as religious.

Here Judah is exhorted to forsake the entangling dependence on Egypt,
and to trust wholly to God. They had gone away from Him in their fears.
They must come back by their faith. To them the great lesson was trust
in God. Through them to us the same lesson is read. The principle is far
wider than this one case. It is the one rule of life for us all.

The two clauses of the text convey substantially the same idea. They are
in inverted parallelism. 'Returning and rest' correspond to 'quietness
and confidence,' so as that 'rest' answers to 'quietness' and
'returning' to 'confidence.' In the former clause we have the action
towards God and then its consequence. In the latter we have the
consequence and then the action.

I. The returning.

Men depart from God by speculative thought or by anxious care, or by
sin.

To 'return' is just to trust.