THE FINAL FESTIVAL.

Isaiah XXV. 6-8.

As an introduction to this noble poem, we have the story of a marginal note and its destiny. We need to remember that our Old Testament comes down to us from a time when books in our sense did not exist; the written record was then preserved on bricks or skins, "the roll of the book"1 had to be painfully made and copied by hand. It was much more difficult then than now to reproduce the copy with perfect accuracy, and it was not until a late date that this became a sacred duty. The careful scribe loved and respected the literature to which so much toil had been given and desired to render it accurately, but he was not, at first, a slave to the letter. Words rendered dim by time or illegible through rough usage had to be restored, and explanatory notes made in the margin were, in some cases, carried into the text. Illustrations or demonstrations of this need not now be attempted, but the "gloss" or marginal note supposed to be contained in this poem is worthy of a little attention. The sentence "He will swallow up death in victory" or, as the R.V. has it more correctly, "He hath swallowed up death for ever" is regarded by many careful scholars as just such an explanatory note. It interrupts the thought; it separates the two elements of a beautiful figure and seems to be awkward from the metrical point of view. If this is true, see what an interesting light it throws upon the written word. A devout student is poring reverently over the sacred page and meditating upon the meaning of this noble picture of future blessedness. He perhaps has suffered a heavy loss, and thinks that in the great day of the fuller revelation Jehovah will destroy the power of death which causes such sad havoc in this world. This God-given thought he writes in the margin of his copy, and a later scribe treats it as part of the original text that had been accidentally omitted. When the apostle of the Gentiles conies to write his vindication of the Christian hope, he thinks of this passage, seizes this particular phrase, and gives it an even nobler setting and wider scope, when he cries, "Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."2 Truly no great word is lost, it finds its place and does its work.

1. The Universality of Sorrow.

Here is a promise that Jehovah will destroy "the face of the covering that is cast over all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations." The reference that is given in the margin of our Bible would lead us to think of a veil of ignorance or prejudice which hinders men from seeing the beauty and discerning the real meaning of God's revelation.3 But this does not seem to be the right line; rather we have a beautiful figure, a personification of the nations, under the form of a sorrowful woman. Jehovah, as father or husband, draws near to invite her to the festival; he lifts the veil and lo, there are tears. How can one come to the festival with weeping eyes or tear-stained face? Asa preparation for the joyful feast God must wipe away all tears from her eyes.4 There are many passages that speak of the rebuke of sinners and the destruction of sin; here we have one that, in picturesque poetic fashion, tells of the conquest of sorrow.

This statement affirms the reality of sorrow and the power and purpose of God to conquer it. The poet, no doubt, speaks out of his own life, but he certainly sets his bright picture over against the sombre background of his nation's experience. The history of Israel is very largely a story of sorrow and disappointment; it had its calm hours, its days of simple joy, its moments of national triumph, but there were periods of terrible calamity and heart-rending disappointment. The power to write enduring psalms of penitence and minister sympathy to a sorrowful world was purchased at a great cost. The great nations of the world that have rendered the highest service to humanity have themselves wrestled with the problem of life and faced the mystery of sorrow. This is pre-eminently true of God's servant, Israel. In acquiring the great revelation and in holding it fast, this nation has suffered from division within and persecution without. The sweetest "songs of Zion" owe much of their pure quality to the discipline of sorrow.

Sorrow is a real thing, we need all the power of God to cope with it and take the sting out of it. In our day there are those who claim to have "new thought," a philosophy that preaches the unreality of sorrow. The phrase is not strictly correct. We have a knowledge of new facts, new thoughts are suggested by these, and our great systems of science and philosophy are modified. But we have no new type of thought. The ultraspiritual philosophy that resolves all pain and evil into something unreal or imaginary is not by any means modern, it may be found, in its most radical forms, in ancient India. The Hebrew religion, however, was sober, it had a firm grip of mother earth, it did not fall into a false spiritualism or lose itself in the morass of a spurious mysticism. Even if it did not attain to the more ethereal forms of refinement it has still its part to play. It teaches us to face sorrow in the name of God. Suicide is a confession of defeat and a counsel of despair; earthly stimulants cannot minister to a mind diseased, they only aggravate the malady; man's need is the need of God to wipe the tears from his eyes and give a sacrificial power to pain.

The universality of sorrow is here taken for granted; the promise comes to a sorrowful world, and the Jew can claim no monopoly of sorrow. Pain, bereavement, disappointment, these are indeed touches of nature that make the whole world kin. It is well to feel our community of life in this sad region, for it may help to break down useless barriers in other directions. One may say justly that this is only a mood; it does not represent the whole of human life. True, but it is a mood that corresponds to an actual phase of life, it is not morbid irritability or gloomy exaggeration. We would not ignore the advance of science or undervalue the resources of civilisation, but we can understand men who, in moments of despondency, declare that very little impression has been made on the great mass of human suffering and that the burden and mystery of it all presses with crushing weight on their souls. Civilisation, they say, has not conquered the ills of humanity but only changed many of them into more refined forms of torture. That is a great subject not to be explored at this point, as we are concerned with the universality of the sorrow which serves as a basis for the great promises. There are times when both the individual and the nation can say —

"Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me." 5

A great sorrow always brings with it a sense of isolation, it separates us from men, and it has often been taken to mean "the curse of God." It is then a part of the growing missionary idea to recognise that the sorrow which calls for divine help and sympathy is not a sectarian thing; here at least there is proof of the oneness of humanity. Differences of race, language, and creed cannot hide the real sameness of human life; physical pain, mental torture, and spiritual anguish are substantially the same in all lands and among all classes. In whatever way we may state this, it is at the basis of our common sympathy and our efforts after mutual helpfulness.

2. The Universality of the Promise.

The Lord of hosts is to prepare this feast for "all peoples" and the tears are to be wiped "from off all faces." Unlike some other pictures of the future victory, the consolation is not confined to the Jews, it is a festival for all those stricken by sorrow. The form in which the promise comes may seem to many of us to be primitive and child-like, it is to be a feast of fat, sweet, stimulating things. Those who are accustomed to generous living every day can scarcely feel the power of this appeal in its literal sense. It is those who know hunger who can appreciate most keenly the promise of the feast. Those ancient peoples, as a rule, did live the simple life; their life was hard and their fare plain; it was rarely that luscious meat and sparkling wine formed part of the meal. Such luxuries were reserved for great festive days when men rejoiced before God and with each other. Addressed to such a people the figure was natural, and we can understand why it has played a powerful part in the poetic descriptions of future blessedness. The future was to them the present purified and glorified, not some shadowy, ethereal reflection of it.6

Literal hunger still appears among the pains of life, so that there are many to whom these figures appeal mightily; and even in respectable well-fed congregations there are hungry hearts, there are men and women who know that it is possible to have plenty and yet be sore at heart and empty in soul. These hearts desire to take hold of some great promise that shall lift them out of weariness and quicken in them a new spirit of hope. Men who have needs that money cannot satisfy and who have lost the power to enjoy the simple things of life, to these also the promise comes that life may be made new, the zest and joy of it restored.

The glory of the Old Testament religion is in this clear strong faith for the future. In later times something of hardness and stagnation came to it, but with the prophets and poets of our sacred books it was vital, flexible, refusing to be crushed by disappointments. Through the blinding tears the glory of the future is dimly seen, but there is faith that God will wipe away the tears and the vision dawn in all its splendour. The Old Testament and the religion that it expressed was the result of a growth stimulated by the Divine Spirit and revealed in the lives of noble men. The hard crust of custom was often broken and fresh sources of blessing allowed to rush up from God's living springs. The prophetic movement was always moving forward, never content with the past If there was, in the popular religion, any remains of that ancestor worship which tended to lay the dead hand of the past too heavily upon the living generations, the prophets conquered this by their insistent preaching of a living, present God who makes new demands of faith and duty upon His people. Reverence for parents and elders is still enjoined and continues to be a noble element in all true religion, but the spontaneous life of the prophets would not brook bondage from the dead past, though they enlarged its living tradition.

Thus the religion has ever a forward look, straining its eager gaze towards a richer future and always expecting some nobler thing from God. Both in its perfection and its imperfection such a religion is prophetic; the beauty of the bud is a promise of the richer fulness and fragrance of the flower. We admire, with reverence, the many forms of faith that appear in this great literature; we find them heroic and sublime, in their own way, approaching perfection, but we have to recognise that often they are put in a form that we must regard as local and limited, a form that in the light of the later revelation is imperfect. But we must reiterate the statement that there is a prophetic element on both sides. This rests upon our belief that God is behind the whole movement; He is present in strength; and the imperfection is a cry to Him for more light, an appeal to remove the limitation and give to His truth the freedom of the world.

3. The Limitation of a Great Idea.

In this poem we have the bright hope for the future assuming a missionary form, comprehending in a sympathetic spirit all the sorrowful nations of the world, but there is a condition attached which shows that, as we might expect, the national spirit is not yet left behind. Although the thought is not elaborated here it is clearly present that the Jew is to maintain his superiority, to this extent at least, that his city is to become the city of God. "In this mountain shall Jehovah of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things." It is a great claim, a magnificent aspiration, that the universal need shall be met in this one city, that Jerusalem shall be not only the honoured sanctuary of Judaism but also the centre of light and healing for the world.7 We are prepared to interpret this in a sympathetic spirit, to pay the just tribute to the wonderful history of this city and acknowledge the great things that have come out of it, but we have to declare that in this precise form the prophecy cannot be fulfilled, that no one city can monopolise the Divine ministries. There is great importance to be attached to the attractive power of religion which draws willing pilgrims to its source and centre, but this power must go forth into the wide world and take to itself varied and changing forms.8

The contrast between the actual and the ideal Jerusalem is striking, in fact we may say, without straining the expression, that it is tragic. Jerusalem did remain for some time after this poem was written the centre of Jewish religion, the place towards which the scattered patriots could look with reverent aspiration and cry, "I was glad when they said unto me let us go into the house of Jehovah." Even then, while the temple was standing, pilgrims of other lands and races came to pay their tribute of praise to the God of Israel. But it has been for long a desolation, for the Jew a symbol of shame and national failure. It is now a sacred city to the people of three religions, but its life is marred by the vulgar quarrels of contending sects. When fanatics fight and blood is shed on account of its "holy places," it seems that within its gates the principles of spiritual religion are ignored and the Christ crucified afresh. How sordid and sensational all this appears to be when it is lifted into the light of pure prophetic teaching! In the Christian vocabulary, Jerusalem means something quite different; the name has been raised into another atmosphere and speaks of the ideal city of God, "Jerusalem the golden," the home of all the saints; or it prophesies of heaven, the celestial city of the deathless future.

But whatever form our faith in the future may take, we see clearly that no city on earth can, in the spiritual sense, rule the world. Jerusalem, Rome, Geneva, Canterbury, these and other famous shrines, centres of ancient religion or reforming zeal, have their historic interest, but the truth is larger than any or all of them. Never again on an immense scale can the attempt at uniformity and centralisation be made with any prospect of real success. Monopoly must confine itself to places that are off the main track of the world's life. "This mountain" may appeal to our reverence because of its past, but never again can it dominate the life of mankind. We are not called to lose all local colour and attractive traditions in dim, theological abstractions, but we must have a religion that can create new homes for itself and that can bring the promise of the Father's presence in all times and places.

Even a crude faith is better than hopeless scepticism. The essential thing is that religion must not lose its true catholicity; it must claim to meet and conquer the common sorrow. It must maintain its forward look, its faith in the possibility of new and glorious revelation. 'The old faith may be translated into permanent forms. There is the hope of national success; this may be taken to mean not mere material prosperity, but success in solving the problem of social life in such a way as to give a chance at life's feast to those who are poor and weak. The nation that cares for its own in the noblest sense, realising the spirit of brotherhood, will, by the very fact, be a missionary nation.9 Then there is the hope of personal immortality; this has come to us in the teaching of the greatest saints and in the life of our Lord; we cannot surrender it without severe loss. But with this there must be the conviction that the banquet is spread for us here and now, that the realisation of communion with God in the present is our source of satisfaction and our basis of hope. 2 Heaven is not a mechanical compensation for pain and loss here, it is the ** eternal life" revealed through communion with God and rising into its own sphere to fulfil its own destiny.

"Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and

which entered not into the heart of man,

Whatsoever things God prepared

For them that love him."10

1 Ps. xl. 7.

2 1 Cor. xv. 54.

3 2 Cor. iii. 1 5.

4 Rev. xxi. 4.

5 Lam. i. 12.

6 Isa. Iv. 2; John iv. 10; Rev. xxi. 6; xxii. 17; etc.

7 See also pp. 30, 65, 76.

8 Isa. ii. 1-4; and xlii. 1-4.

9 Cf. p. 35. 2 Ps. lxxiii. 25.

10 Isa. Ixiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 11.