Hezekiah's resources.
The conduct of the king on hearing the haughty message of the Assyrian is that of a man of habitually religious mind and religious practice.
1. He rends his garments and covers himself with sackcloth. This was significant of sorrow and of self-humiliation: "Humble yourselves beneath the mighty hand of God, and he will exalt you in due time." Instead of searching far and wide for the causes of our distress, it were well to look first into our own hearts, and that closely. There, where the mischief has begun, the remedy and the hope may be revealed.
2. He sends a deputation to the minister of God; also clothed in sackcloth. They give the king's message to Isaiah, "This day is a day of trouble, punishment, and contumely." The outward forms and shows of grief could not denote them truly. They had
"That within which passed show,
Beneath the trappings and the suits of woe."
The mourning garb expresses the need of the rending of the heart, and the bowing down of its pride before the judgments of God. Human extremity is confessed: "There is no strength to bring forth." The toil over insoluble problems—the matching of one's strength against a superhuman enterprise, the comparison of one's idea of what should be with one's sense of the absence of resources for its accomplishment, brings utter exhaustion. It is under such conditions that men learn that whatever strength they had at any time is from God, that whatever help is needed must come from him now. In the house of God, in the attitude of humility and penitence, in communion with men of God, let us be found in the day of distress.
I. THE HUMAN INTERCESSOR. In common life we recognize the principle of intercession. We shelter ourselves behind the worth of another; we seek to gain interest with the powerful and the good. To carry things by personal interest and partiality doubtless opens the door to abuses; but alter all it is founded itself upon love. Logic says," Let every case be judged by its merits, every man stand or fall by merit or demerit of his person." Love, softening down the hard lines of logical principle, or concealing them with flowing ornament, says, "Let fellow-feeling and pity, kinship of blood or of mind, have their influence on the decision." The great truth of the mediation of Christ is reflected in a weaker but still emphatic way in the office of an Abraham, a Moses, a Samuel. Scripture expressly recognizes: "The prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (cf. Jeremiah 15:1). Our objection to the Romish doctrine of the intercession of saints should not carry us too far. It might lead us to a cold denial of the influence of loving thought upon one another's weal. What limit is there to the far-reaching influences of love? Because some assume to know too much of those influences and the manner in which they may be secured, that is no reason why we should ignore them. "An interest in the prayers of good men," it is natural to seek, and blessed to have secured. The belief in the intercession of good men rests on the belief that some men stand nearer to God than others. They have a firmer faith, a steadier insight into the methods of Providence, and therefore a clearer outlook into the future, and a courage which is inspiring to others. On this occasion Isaiah is found to be calm and undisturbed by the revilings of the Assyrian. He can speak of his officers with contempt as the "minions of the King of Assyria." He can foretell that a "spirit" will be put in the enemy—an impulse quite contrary to that now animating him; he will hear ill news, will return to his own land, and will fall by the sword. The prophet sustains the king; Hezekiah leans on Isaiah; true policy finds its inspiration in religion. The ministers of state, if wise, will own the worth of the service of the ministers of God.
II. BUSINESS LAID BEFORE GOD. The threat of the Assyrian, the taunting arguments on which he had before relied, are repeated. Let Hezekiah beware of trusting in Jehovah, for he may prove no better resource than the "gods of the nations" which have been subdued by the Assyrians. Hezekiah takes the letter, goes up into the house of Jehovah, and spreads it open before Jehovah. We may be reminded, as we read, of the prayer-machines of the Buddhists; or of the waxen tablets hung upon the statues of the gods by the Romans. inscribed with prayers, as alluded to by Juvenal in his tenth Satire. But where the outward act is similar, the intention may be widely different. If we look to the essence of the act, there is nothing in itself more superstitious in laying open a written letter before God, than in addressing him orally on its contents. If the spreading out is a "prayer without words," the prayer with words follows. There is no external form which we may not fill out with the life of our spirit and make vital and real; none from which we may not withdraw that life, and so leave dead and cold. It is idle to suppose that the mere abandonment of certain forms will remove the foundations of superstition, which is certain to spring up in a mechanical and lifeless state of mind.
III. HEZEKIAH'S PRAYER. His thoughts of God. He is revealed in nature and in human life. He is enthroned upon the cherubim—those mysterious creatures of poetic and plastic fancy, representing spiritual power revealed in strong wind and cloud, and figured in the ark. Analogous figures are common in Oriental art. Jehovah is the God of nature, the Creator of heavens and earth. He is the only true Ruler of the kingdoms of the earth. The heathen believed that their gods swayed in the sphere both of nature and of human life—that their glory and power was revealed, not only in sun, and moon, and stars, and wind, but in the might of warriors and the ascendency of kings. But the contrast is that these pretensions were unreal, that of Jehovah alone. founded on truth and facts. Those "gods of the nations" who had been put into the fire by the Assyrian were no genuine gods, as the result has proved. When the idol was destroyed, the visible image of the god, the faith of the worshipper lost its visible support, and his hope fled. There was no Saviour here. True faith is not dependent on such visible props; they may fail—it remains. The symbols of religion may change; old sanctuaries may fall into decay; Jerusalem may be taken; the Shechinah-glory may fade from the hallowed spot; but Jehovah remains. In superstition, when the idols are broken, the false faith dies; in true religion, when the idols are broken, the true faith rises into new life. Adversity, fatal to imposture, brings the genuine tradition to light. The true God is bound by his very nature to be the Saviour, the Deliverer of men. The cry for salvation must sooner or later, in one or another way, be answered from him. If the cry be not answered, it is a proof that we have not directed it to the true Object—not to Jehovah, the Alone, the Eternal, but to some creature, the fabrication, if not of our hands, of our sensuous and unspiritual fancy.—J.
HOMILIES BY W.M. STATHAM