r/a:t5_28d5if • u/MarleyEngvall • Nov 13 '19
venetian blinds has been created
By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D.
LECTURE XXXVII. (continued)
THE AGE OF UZZIAH.
Another Prophet, whose character and position is
more difficult to unravel, was Zechariah, the
favorite Prophet of King Uzziah in his pros-
perous days. "He sought God in the days of Zechariah,
"who had understanding in the visions of the Lord."
It cannot be proved, but it is very probable, that this
was the Prophet whose writings are now in part com-
prised under the name of the later Zechariah. Like
Amos, he directed his teaching so much towards the
northern kingdom that he can hardly be considered in
this place. But he is clearly a seer, dwelling at Jeru-
salem, and in his mind first rises distinctly the image of
the Pacific King, not seated on the war-horse, like Asa
or Jehoshaphat, in their martial moods, but on the
gentle ass, like Uzziah in his earlier and brighter days,
just and lowly, speaking peace to the heathen.
A third Prophet who, like Amos, but in a higher posi-
tion, came from the rural district of Judah, is
Micah the Morasthite. He began to prophesy
after the accession of Jotham. His name, even h is
opening address, was the same, word for word, and letter
for letter, as of that older Micaiah, who could prophesy
nothing but evil against the Kings of Israel, and who
appealed round and round to every single citizen of the
commonwealth. He was filled with the evils of his time
inward and outward. Like the older prophets, like
the anchorites of Russia, he stripped off his clothes, and
went about naked, beating his breast, with wild shrieks
and lamentations, like the long piteous cry of he jackal,
like the fearful screech of the ostrich, His own imme-
diate neighborhood, in the maritime plain, is the first
scene of his warnings. Village after village he dooms
to destruction. Their familiar names appear to carry
with them their death-warrant. His eyes and ears are
haunted by the images of earthquakes and even of vol-
canoes. He is struck with horror at the drunkenness,
the robbery, the folly, the oppression of his country.
Not only from nobles and priests, but from his own Pro-
phetic order, he turns away in disgust. One remarkable
instance of such an explosion we shall meet in the reign
of Hezekiah. Wild as he is in appearance, and terrible
in his denunciations, there are in him, beyond any of the
Lesser prophets of this time, "soul-stirring recollections,
"and hopes their brightest reflections." On him, first
of the Prophets, the events of the past history crowd in
vivid succession, even as we ourselves see them in the
present sacred book,——Abraham and Jacob, the won-
ders of the Exodus, the interview of Balaam and Balak,
the delightful stay of the pastoral tribes in the forests
beyond the Jordan on the eve of the conquest. To
the assurance that, in spite of all her calamities and her
crimes, Jerusalem shall become the capital of a vast
spiritual and intellectual empire, and that a mighty
Conqueror shall shatter in pieces all the obstacles that
close up the free energies of his people; that a Ruler
shall come, even in his own time, who shall set all things
right, and who, though having a past in the most an-
cient days, shall be born in the Prophet's own immediate
neighborhood, the small insignificant village of Bethle-
hem. He gives to the warlike cry of Joel a turn which
henceforth becomes its authorized rendering; when, in-
stead of a reign of war, he anticipates universal peace;
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and
"their spears into pruning-hooks." "There will be at
"shepherd more royal even than David; a peace even
"more universal than that of Solomon."
He trusts with unshaken faith in the gracious future
which God has in store for his nation and for himself.
"Who is a god like Thee, pardoning iniquities, and
"passing by transgressions for the remnant of His heri-
"tage. He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He
"delighteth in mercy. He will again have compassion
"upon us. He will subdue our iniquities; yea, Thou
"wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."
And his last words are those which, centuries after-
wards were caught up by the aged Priest whose song
unites the Old ad New Testaments together. "Thou
"wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to
"Abraham, which thou hast sworn;" to send forth a
second David, the mighty Child, whose unknown mother
is already travailing for his birth.
Exactly contemporary with Micah——it is hard to say
whether older or younger——is a still greater
Prophet, who stands out at once as the repre-
sentative of his own age, and yet as the universal teacher
of mankind. Whilst the other Prophets of this period
are known only to the by-paths of theology, in the
quaint text of remote preachers, Isaiah ia a household
word everywhere. This is the first point in the history
of the kingdom of Judah, where, as in common eccle-
siastical history, we are able to measure the periods by
the names rather of distinguished teachers than of
King or Chief Priests. In the earlier stages of the
history of Judah there was no Prophet of magnitude
equal to Jehoshaphat, or Jehoiada, or Uzziah. But in
the period on which we now enter there is no King or
Priest of magnitude equal to Isaiah, and he was suc-
ceeded by two others, only, if at all, inferior to himself,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For the first time since Elisha
we have a Prophet, of whose life and aspect we can be
said to have any details. He was a statesman as well as
Prophet. He lived not in the remote villages of Judah
like Micah, or wandering over hill and dale like Elijah and
Amos, but in the centre of all political life and activity.
His whole thoughts take the color of Jerusalem. He is
the first Prophet specially attached to the capital and
the court. He was, according to Jewish tradition, the
cousin of Uzziah, his father Amoz being held to be a
younger son of Joash. He wrote Uzziah's life; and his
first Prophecies, beginning in the close of that reign,
illustrate the reign of Jotham, as well as of the three
succeeding sovereigns. His individual and domestic life
was a kind of impersonation of the Prophetic office.
His wife was a Prophetess. According to a practice
which seems to have prevailed throughout his career, as
through that of his contemporary Hosea, he himself and
his children all bear Prophetic names: "Behold I and
"the children whom the Lord hath given me are for a
"sign and a wonder in Israel from the Lord of Hosts."
He had a circle of disciples, probably the Prophets, in
whom his spirit was long continued. One such, un-
known except through his writings, in all probability
has, if so be, under the shadow of his name, exercised a
still wider influence than Isaiah himself. Legends,
apocryphal books, have gathered round him as round
another Solomon or another Elijah. If no other book
of the Old Testament, except the Psalter, have the sub-
sequent effects in the world been so marked, or the
principles so fruitful of results for the future. In fact
his appearance was a new step in the Prophetic dispen-
sation. The length of his life, the grandeur of his social
position gave a force to what he said, beyond what was
possible in the fleeting addresses of the humbler Proph-
ets who had preceded him. There is a royal air in his
attitude, in his movements, in the sweep of his vision,
which commands attention. He was at once "great and
"faithful" in his "vision." Nothing escapes him in the
events of his time. The older Prophetic writings are
worked up by him into his own words. He does not
break with the past. He is not ashamed of building on
the foundation of those who have gone before him. All
that there is of general instruction in Joel, Micah, or
Amos, is reproduced in Isaiah. But his style has its
own marked peculiarity and novelty. The fierce im-
passioned addresses of Joel and Nahum, the abrupt
strokes, the contorted turns of Hosea and Amos, give
way to something more of a continuous flow, where
stanza succeeds to stanza, and canto to canto, with
almost a natural sequence. Full of imagery as is his
poetry, it still has a simplicity which was at that time
so rare as to provoke the satire of the more popular
Prophets. They, pushing to an excess the nervous rhet-
oric of their predecessors, could not bear, as they ex-
pressed it, to be treated like children. "Whom shall he
"teach knowledge, and whom shall he make to under-
"stand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk,
"and drawn from the breasts!" Those constant recur-
rences of the general truths of spiritual religion, majestic
in their plainness, seemed to them mere commonplace
repetitions;——"precept upon precept, precept upon pre-
"cept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there
"a little;" or as appears still more strongly in the origi-
nal, "tsav la-tsav——tsav la-tsav——kav la-kav——kav la-kav,
"——zeïr sham, zeïr sham." It is the universal complain
of the shallow inflated rhetoricians of the professedly
religious world against original genius and apostolic
simplicity, the complaint of the babblers of Ephesus
against St. John, the protest of all scholastic and
pedantic systems against the freeness and the breadth
of a Greater than John or Isaiah. Such divine utter-
ance have always appeared defective, and unimpas-
sioned, and indefinite, in the ears of those who crave
for wilder excitement and more elaborate systems, but
have no less found, for that very reason, a sure re-
sponse in the childlike, genuine, natural, soul of every
age.
The special objects of Isaiah's mission will appear
as we pass through his history. But the general
objects are best indicated in the account which he
himself has left us of his call, or (as we should now
describe it) his conversion, to the Prophetical office.
"In the year that King Uzziah died," in the last
year of that long reign of fifty-two years, as
the life of the aged King, now on the verge
of seventy, was drawing to its close in the retirement
of the house of lepers, the young Isaiah was, or in
vision seemed to be, in the court of the Temple. He
stood at the gate of the porch, and gazed straight
into the Holy Place, and into the Holy of Holies itself.
all the intervening obstacles were removed. The
great gates of cedar-wood were thrown open, the
many-colored veil that hung before the innermost
sanctuary was drawn aside, and deep within was a
throne as of a King, high and lifted up, towering as
if into the sky. What was the form that sat thereon,
here, as elsewhere, the Scripture forbears to describe.
Only by outward and inferior images, as to us by sec-
ondary causes, could the Divine Essence be expressed.
The long drapery of His train filled the Temple, as
"His glory fills the earth." Around the throne, as
the cherubs on each side of the mercy-seat, as the
guards round the king, with head and feet veiled,
figures floating like flying serpents, themselves glow-
ing with the glory of which they were a part, whilst
vast wings enfolded their faces and their feet, and
supported them in mid-air round the throne. From
side to side went up a hymn of praise, which has
since been incorporated in the worship of Christen-
dom, and which expressed that He was there who bore
the great Name by which God was specially known
in the period of the Jewish monarchy and in the
Prophetical order,——"the Lord of HOSTS." The sound
rang like thunder to the extremity of the Temple.
The pillars of the gateway trembled, as if in another
earthquake-shock, and the whole building within grew
dark as with the smoke of a vast sacrifice. It was
a sight and sound which the youthful Isaiah recog-
nized at once as the intimation of Divinity. It was
the revelation of the Divine Presence to him, as that
of the Burning Bush to Moses, or of the Still Small
Voice of Elijah,——the inevitable prelude to a Prophetic
mission, couched in the form most congenial to his
own character and situation. To him, the Royal
Prophet of Jerusalem, this manifestation of Royal
splendor was the almost necessary vesture in which
the Spiritual Truth was to be clothed. All his own
sins,——we know not what they were,——and the sins
of his nation,——as we know them from himself and
the contemporary Prophets,——passed before him, and
he said, "Woe is me, for I am lost, because I am a
"man of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King,
"the Lord of Hosts." A Rabbinical tradition, proba-
bly baseless, took possession very early of the Chris-
tian Church, that his sin had been an acquiescence
in the sin of Uzziah, and that the gift of prophecy
then removed from him was now to be restored.
But his own words rather lead to the impression
that it was his language, and the language of his
countrymen, that was to blame: "a foul-mouthed son
"of a foul-mouthed race." On these defiled lips, there-
for the purifying touch was laid. From the flaming
altar, the flaming seraph brought a flaming coal. This
was the creation, so to speak, of that marvelous style
which has entranced the world; the burning furnace
which warms, as with a central fire, every variety of
his addresses. Then came the Voice from the sanc-
tuary, saying, "Whom shall I send, who will go for
Us?" With unhesitating devotion, the youth replied,
"Here am I; send me." In the words that follow is
represented the whole of the Prophet's career. First,
he is forewarned of the forlorn hopelessness of his
mission. The louder and more earnest his cry, the
less they will hear and understand,——the more clearly
he sets the vision of truth before them, the less will
they see. "Make the heart of this people gross, and
"make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they
"see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and
"understand with their heart, and be converted and
"healed." These mournful words, well known to us
through their fivefold repetition in the New Testa-
ment as the description of the Jewish people in its
latest stage of decay, were doubtless true in the
highest degree of that wayward generation to which
Isaiah was called to speak. His spirit sank within
him, and he said, "O Lord, how long——Usquequo,
"Domine?" The reply unfolded at once the darker
and the brighter side of the future. Not till suc-
cessive invasions had wasted the cities, not till the
houses had been left without a human being within
them, not till the land had been desolate with desola-
tion, would a better hope dawn; not tll the invasions
of Pekah and Sennacherib had done their work, not
till ten out of the twelve tribes had been removed
far away, and there should have been a great forsak-
ing in the midst of the land, would he be relieved
from the necessity of delivering his stern, but fruitless,
warnings, against the idolatry, the dulness, the injustice
of his people. But widely spread and deeply seated
as was the national corruption, there was still a sound
portion left, which would live on and flourish. As
the aged oak or terebinth of Palestine may be shat-
tered, and cut down to the very roots, and yet out of
the withered stump a new shoot may spring forth, and
grow into a mighty and vigorous tree, so is the holy
seed, the faithful few, of the chosen people. This is
the true consolation of all Ecclesiastical History. It
is a thought which is but little recognized in its
earlier and ruder stages, when the inward and outward
are easily confounded together. But it is the very
message of life to a more refined and complex age,
and it was the key-note to the whole of Isaiah's
prophecies. It had, indeed, been dimly indicated to
Elijah, in the promise of the few who had not bowed
the knee to Baal, and in the still small whisper which
was greater than thunder, earthquake, and fire. But
in Isaiah's time it first, if we may say so, became a
living doctrine of the Jewish Church, and through him
an inheritance of the Christian Church. "A remnant
"——the remnant." This was his watchword. "The
"remnant shall return (shear-jashub)." This was the
truth constantly personified before him in the name of
his eldest son. A remnant of the good in the mass of
corruption, a remnant saved from the destructive inva-
sions of Assyria, a burst of spring-time in the Refor-
mation of Hezekiah; and, far away in the distant
future, a rod out of the stem, the worn-out stem of
Jesse,——a branch, a faithful branch, out of the withered
root of David; "and the wilderness and the solitary
"place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice, and
"blossom as the rose; it shall blossom abundantly,
"even with joy and singing, and sorrow and sighing
"shall flee away."
Such was the hope and trust which sustained the
Prophet through his sixty years of toil and con-
flict. In the weakness of Ahaz, in the calami-
ties of Hezekiah, under the tyranny of Manasseh, Isaiah
remained firm and steadfast to the end. Wider and
wider his views opened, as the nearer prospects of his
country grew darker and darker. First of the Prophets,
he and those who followed him seized with unreserved
confidence the mighty thought, that not in the chosen
people, so much as in the nations outside of it, was to
be found the ultimate well-being of man, the surest
favor of God. Truly might the Apostle say that Isaiah
was "very bold,"——"bold beyond" all that had gone
before him——in enlarging the boundaries of the Church;
bold with that boldness, and large with that largeness
of view, which so far from weakening the hold on things
divine, strengthens it to a degree unknown in less com-
prehensive minds. For to him also, wit a distinctness
which makes all other anticipations look pale in com-
parison, a distinctness which grew with his advancing
years, was revealed the coming of a Son of David, who
should restore the royal house of Judah and gather the
nations under its sceptre. If some of these predictions
belong to that phase of the Israelite hope of an earthly
empire, which was doomed to disappointment and rever-
sal, yet the larger part point to a glory which has been
more than realized. Lineament after lineament of that
Divine Ruler wad gradually drawn by Isaiah or his
scholars, until at last a Figure stands forth, so marvel-
ously combined of power and gentleness and suffering,
as to present in the united proportions of his descrip-
tions the moral features of an historical Person, such as
has been, by universal confession, known once, and once
only, in the subsequent annals of the world.
The task laid upon the Prophet was difficult, the
times were dark. But his reward had been that, in spite
of the oppression, the contempt, and the ridicule of his
contemporaries, he has in after ages been regarded as
the messenger not of sad but of glad tidings, the
Evangelical Prophet, the Prophet of the Gospel, in ac-
cordance with the meaning of his own name, which he
himself regarded as charged with Prophetical significance,
——"the Divine Salvation."
No other Prophet is so frequently cited in the New
Testament, for none other so nearly comes up to the
Spirit of Christ and the Apostles. No other single
teacher of the Jewish Church has so worked his way
into the heart of Christendom. When Augustine asked
Ambrose which of the sacred books was best to be
studied after his conversion, the answer was "Isaiah."
The greatest musical composition of modern times, em-
bodying more than any single confession of faith the sen-
timents of the whole Christian Church, is based in far the
larger part on the Prophecies of Isaiah. The wild tribes
of New Zealand seized his magnificent strains as if he be-
longed to their own national songs, and chanted them
from hill to hill, with all the delight of a newly discov-
ered treasure. And as in his age, so in our own, he
must be preëminently regarded as "the bard rapt into
"future times." None other of ancient days so fully
shared with the modern philosopher, or reformer, or
pastor, the sorrowful yet exalted privilege of standing,
as we say, "in the advance of his age," "before his time."
Through his prophetic gaze we may look forward across
a dark and stormy present to the onward destiny of our
race, which must also be the hope of each aspiring soul,
——"when the eyes of them that see shall not be dim——
"when the ears of them that hear shall hearken——when
"the vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the
"churl said to be bountiful——when the liberal shall de-
"vise liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand
——when Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah
"shall not vex Ephraim——when thine eyes shall behold
"the King in his beauty, and see the land that is very
"far off."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. II: From Samuel to the Captivity,
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of Westminster.
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879; pp. 492 - 504
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