Christianity, and you break its mainspring, so that the clock will only
tick when it is shaken. It is the Christ who died for our sins to whom
men say, 'Command what Thou wilt, and I obey.'

III. The prophet's commission.--He was not sent on his work with any
illusions as to its success, but, on the contrary, he had a clear
premonition that its effect would be to deepen the spiritual deafness
and blindness of the nation. We must remember that in Scripture the
certain effect of divine acts is uniformly regarded as a divine design.
Israel was so sunk in spiritual deadness that the issue of the prophet's
work would only be to immerse the mass of 'this people' farther in it.
To some more susceptible souls his message would be a true divine voice,
rousing them like a trumpet, and that effect was what God desired; but
to the greater number it would deepen their torpor and increase their
condemnation. If men love darkness rather than light, the coming of the
light works only judgment.

Isaiah recoils from the dreary prospect, and feels that this dreadful
hardening cannot be God's ultimate purpose for the nation. So he humbly
and wistfully asks how long it is to last. The answer is twofold, heavy
with a weight of apparently utter ruin in its first part, but disclosing
a faint, far-off gleam of hope on its second. Complete destruction, and
the casting of Israel out from the land, are to come. But as, though a
goodly tree is felled, a stump remains which has vital force (or
_substance_) in it, so, even in the utmost apparent desperateness of
Israel's state, there will be in it 'the holy seed,' the 'remnant,' the
true Israel, from which again the life shall spring, and stem and
branches and waving foliage once more grow up.