In the full sunshine of His smile.'




THREE PICTURES OF ONE REALITY

'As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem; defending
also He will deliver it; and passing over He will preserve it'--ISAIAH
xxxi. 5.


The immediate occasion of this very remarkable promise is, of course,
the peril in which Jerusalem was placed by Sennacherib's invasion; and
the fulfilment of the promise was the destruction of his army before its
gates. But the promise here, like all God's promises, is eternal in
substance, and applies to a community only because it applies to each
member of that community. Jerusalem was saved, and that meant that every
house in Jerusalem was saved, and every man in it the separate object of
the divine protection So that all the histories of Scripture, and all
the histories of men in the world, are but transitory illustrations of
perennial principles, and every atom of the consolation and triumph of
this verse comes to each of us, as truly as it did to the men that with
tremulous heart began to take cheer, as they listened to Isaiah. There
is a wonderful saying in one of the other prophets which carries that
lesson, where, bringing down the story of Jacob's struggle with the
angel of Peniel to the encouragement of the existing generation, he
says,' He spake to _us_.' They were hundreds of years after the
patriarch, and yet had fallen heirs to all that God had ever said to him
So, from that point of view, I am not spiritualising, or forcing the