Voices of the night

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Preface

This Volume is meant to be a sort of whispering- gallery, in which may be heard the manifold and mingled Voices of " the night now far spent." Amid that darkness which thickens as the dawn draws near, and in the wilderness whose intricacies grow more perplexing as the land of promise is approached, the traveller watching for sunrise, and sometimes at a loss which way to turn, may be directed and perhaps encouraged by these echoes of celestial voices borne earthward, sounding at times a promise, at times an encouragement, and

IV PREFACE.

always a direction — " This is the Tray, walk ye in it."

The writer believes that every Voice he has sought to make audible has its origin in the Word of God. Its key-note is there. The harmonies he has arranged are combinations, not creations of his own. It is this that encourages him to hope that, beyond the reach of his own voice, these will be heard; and that, by the pillows of the dying, in the chambers of the sick, and amid the vigils of the dead, the truths that subdue, sustain, and sanctify — that, like delicate aromatic perfumes, penetrate where coarser consolations are inaccessible — may find hospitality, and, "received as angels unawares," leave deep and abiding impressions behind them.

Most of these "Voices/:' in somewhat different forms, were uttered from the pulpit. One, from the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, was preached in St. George's

PREFACE, V

Church, Glasgow, before the Society of the Sons of the Clergy; and to those who expressed their desire to see it in a permanent form, it is hoped it may prove acceptable in its present.

To some these Voices have sonnded very musical. To those whose heart-strings have been re-tuned, they will still prove soft chimes borne from above, suggestive, and even sanctifying.

Chapter I

** Watching on the hills of faith, Listening what the Spirit saith Of the dim-seen liyht afar, Growing like a nearing star —

a ' God's interpreter art thou To the waiting ones below ; 'Twixt them and its light midway, Heralding the better day !

** ' Catching gleams of temple spires- Hearing notes of angel choirs— Where, as yet unseen of them, Comes the new Jerusalem.' "

"The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night ? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night : if ye will enquire, enquire ye : return, come." — Isaiah xxi. 1 1, 12.

The words prefixed to this chapter mayhave a primary meaning applicable to local circumstances and to temporary events ; but it seems to me that the words have an ulterior meaning, and remain yet to be fulfilled, if indeed they are not now actually fulfilling.

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2 WHAT OF THE NIGHT f

The expression "burden" is frequently used by the Prophets. It denotes that some great message has been entrusted to them, which lies, from its sorrowful contents, like a load or burden on their souls; that they are charged with a solemn but a sad embassy ; commanded, in short, to bear tidings which must be told, though the heart should break while the lips give utterance to them; and that there is a weight upon their spirits, and their spirits can only be unloaded by letting that weight fall where the wisdom and the will of God had fixed that it should fall. The minister of the gospel is not like the prophet of old. His is a joyful work : he is appointed to proclaim good tidings — " glad tidings of great joy." He is, indeed, the ambassador of God, but his embassy is an embassy of gladness ; and while the prophet's spirit must have often sunk beneath the weight of the calamities he was commissioned to predict, the spirit of the minister of the gospel should feel his message to be wings to soar with, rather than a weight by which to be depressed; for he proclaims clearly a Saviour — Christ the Lord — glad tidings to all people ! And yet the minister of the gospel has some

WHAT OF THE NIGHT f messages not so joyful. When he sees the sword gleaming in the distant horizon, and ready to fall upon a guilty people, it is his duty, as a watchman, to say so ; when he sees sin indulged in that must end in the ruin of a people, it is his duty to lift up his yoice like a trumpet, and announce distinctly and intelligibly what it leads to. While the minister's chief message is joy, there are thus parts of it that must be sadness; and no portion of it is more sad or more solemn to be thought of than this — that the gospel preached during each year has been to some in his congregation, as he must fear, a savour of death, though he may rejoice also, that it has been to others a sayour of life. We have lately passed through years darkened by overwhelming clouds; through scenes and circumstances that have shaken the firmest nerves, and made to quail the strongest hearts. They who profess to have a wider range of vision, see yet heavier calamities louring in the distant horizon. Whether it shall be so or not, Ave know not. This, however, we do know : be Christians, and all things will turn up their sunny sides to you, and the very sounds that convulse the universe shall come to you in music, because they are the intimations that your redemption draweth nigh, and that the home and the kingdom of your Father is approaching nearer, day by day.

"Duniah" is only another form of expression for " Iduinea," the Country of Edom. It is one of the names given to Edom by the prophet. It lay south of Palestine, and was peopled by the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother : its capital city was Petra. I need not tell you what God has here said of Petra, or Seir, and how strictly it has been fulfilled ; most of the works that treat of the fulfilment of ancient prophecy refer to Idumea, or Dumah, or Edom, with Petra, its capital, as at present — a most striking evidence of the minute fulfilment of God's predictions. "Edom," said God, "shall be a wilderness; a line of confusion and stones of emptiness shall it be. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and Mount Seir (i.e. the hill on which Petra was built) I will make a perpetual desolation/' Every traveller who has visited that country, and inspected the site and rocky caves of Petra, testifies that every prediction of God respecting it has been literally and minutely fulfilled. The origin of the quarrel

WHAT OF THE NIGHT t 5

between Edom or Idumea and the children of Israel — a quarrel that is alluded to frequently by Isaiah and by all the prophets — was early in origin and lasting in effect. The strife between Jacob and Esau was perpetuated in their descendants ; for the children of Edom, who sprang from Esau, carried on a constant hostility, whenever the opportunity occurred, with the children of Jacob or the tribes of Israel. This quarrel was renewed in one of its bitterest forms, when the Israelites were passing through the wilderness in order to reach the promised land: they had, as a map will easily show, to pass through the land of Edom, before they could reach Palestine. When Moses came to Dumah or Idumea, as it is recorded in Numbers xx. 14, "He sent messengers unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel" — affectionate and Christian language addressed by Moses, as the head of the tribes of Israel, to the children of Esau, and a precedent for us to use kind language at least — never a very great sacrifice, even to the bitterest foe with whom we have to contend — " Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travel that hath befallen us." Moses appeals to liis pity : " How our fathers went down into Egypt, and we have dwelt in Egypt a long time ; . . . And when we cried nnto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt : and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uppermost part of thy border. Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country : we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of thy wells ; we will go by the king's highway, we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders." What a beautiful Christian spirit actuates Moses in speaking thus to a known, relentless, and bitter foe ! You would suppose that Edom would thus have replied to the peaceful message of Moses: u You are a people that have come forth from the depths of oppression and bondage in Egypt, — you are weary and way-worn with a long and perilous journey; you ask what is reasonable ; and if you will maintain the discipline you promise among the half million of followers by whom you are surrounded, you will be quite welcome to pass along our highway towards your own land.""

"But Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword. And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the highway ; and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then will I pay for it : I will only without doing any thing else, go through on my feet. And he said, Thou shalt not go through." What obstinacy, antipathy, and bitter hatred lurked in the King of Edonr's heart! "And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border : wherefore Israel" did not instantly fall upon him, and make war upon him, which would be the taste of the day, the vote of the multitude, but "turned away from him," and went another way. We find the quarrel begun between Jacob and Esau thus perpetuated ; and such was the hostility that still rankled in the descendants of Esau, that they would neither give the passage as a favour, nor accept a price for it.

Now, some think that the various references in the Prophets to the judgments which were to come upon Edom, refer entirely to the time when Israel was carried away captive into Babylon,, on which occurrence the children of Edom, instead of being sorry, as they might have been expected to be, laughed, rejoiced, and triumphed that at last they had gained a victory, without struggle, through the judgment of God, which had thus fallen on their enemies. That some allusion is made to this epoch, I think is plain, from what is stated in Psalm cxxxvii. : " By the rivers of Babylon, there (say the Jews) we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion," &c. ; and then, at ver. 7, "Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem ; who said, Base it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof" — as if, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldeans, and the Jews were led away captive, the children of Edom, instead of expressing sympathy with a discrowned king, and a scattered population, gave utterance to the laugh and shout of merriment and exultation, because the people whom they hated, and whose passage to their own land they had obstructed with such inveterate antipathy, had now been ]aid desolate, and carried into captivity to the banks of the Euphrates. The passage of Scripture at the head of this chapter, may refer to this period ; but it appears, from reading all that is said of Edom, that Edom is used throughout the ancieut Prophets, in a great number of passages, as a type of the unbelieving nations among the Gentiles — just as Babylon is plainly used to describe the great apostasy which was to grow up in the lc#cr ages of the world, and finally to be consumed by "the spirit of the Lord's mouth, and by the brightness of His coming."

Babylon, which was the name of the literal city, which was literally destroyed, and which was then the stronghold of apostasy from the true God, is applied in the Book of Revelation universally to the Church of Rome — it being the modern Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, whose doom is fixed by that tribunal whose decision never can be reversed ; and so Edom has been understood by the most impartial readers of ancient prophecy to have a range of judgments associated with it, and to be associated itself with an epoch in the history of the world which can be no other than the last days of the last epoch, in which a night of overwhelming darkness is to fall, though out of which a morn of beauty and imperishable brightness is destined also to evolve. "We read, for instance, in Isaiah xxxiv., a striking description of judgments that must have reference to something ulterior. In verses 4 and 5 of that chapter, we read : " All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll : and all their hosts shall fall down, as the leaf falleth from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven : behold, it shall come down upon Idumea." You may read at your leisure Isaiah xxxiv., and you will see that, under the name of Edom or Idumea, judgments are predicted so sweeping, so desolating, and so terrible, that they must refer to an era subsequent to the age of Edom as a regular kingdom, and to a people of whom Idumea was only a type.

That this interpretation is correct will be seen by our consideration of some of the passages; — Isaiah xxxiv., for instance, describes a series of judgments so overwhelming, that they must go beyond Idumea; so chap. xxxv. describes a scene of beauty and of blessedness so unclouded and so unbroken, that it must refer to something beyond this dispensation. It is immediately after the judgments upon Edom pronounced in Isaiah xxxiv. have ceased, that the blessings, which clearly are millennial blessings, contained in chap, xxxv., begin. For instance, this has never yet been realised : " And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness : the unclean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for those : the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there : and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." These words, which delineate what is to succeed the desolation of Edom, surely describe a scene of peace, and a catalogue of blessings which have never been actualised in the experience of Mankind. And if chap, xxxv., in which this scene occurs, describes a scene of millennial glory, as I might easily prove, if necessary, this chapter xxxiv., which describes havoc and ruin upon Idumea, must be a detail of judgments on the nations immediately preceding the millennium. And therefore the text, and the question and answer contained therein, whilst primarily relating to Idumea, refer to it, nevertheless, as the pedestal for the exhibition of scenes, and circumstances, and persons, long subsequent to the period of the existence of Idumea as a nation, — even the scenes, and circumstances, and ages in which our lot is now cast.

Now, at this time, which I believe to be the very era in which Ave now stand, and which I think to be so from great prophetic epochs rolling rapidly to their conclusion, a solitary watchman — some Christian minister, whose heart sympathises with the Jew, not with the inhabitants of Edom rejoicing over their ruin — some Christian minister, who believes God's word, that his ancient people are not cast off for ever, and that there is a bright day yet for those who have been the children of so long and so black a night — is seen by the prophet standing tiptoe upon the loftiest rock, boulder, or ruin of ancient Jerusalem, and straining his eyes, as he gazes into the East, if, peradventure, there shall fall upon that eye some solitary strag* gling beam that will prove to him that the great Sun of Righteousness is but a very few degrees below the horizon, and is soon to emerge; that the night of Jerusalem is drawing to its close, and the light of the millennial day beginning to dawn with the rising sun. The vision of the prophet is, that of a watchman — a Christian minister, standing amid the ruins of that once great capital, looking up and gazing if he can catch the least token that the sun is about to rise, the night of sorrow about to retire, and the day-light of joy and peace to take its place. Whilst this watchman is thus waiting, looking, listening, marking all the signs and symbols that denote the approaching day, and hoping, and misgiving, and hoping again, but still clinging to God's promises, convinced that what he has predicted is sure to be performed, a proud scorner, seated on Mount Seir, the mount on which Petra, the capital of Idumea, was built — some proud, insolent, haughty sceptic, whose Messiah is money — whose millennium is the predominence of the moneyed interest — calls from Mount Seir, in scorn and derision.

and says: "I.have heard that you watchmen, you prophets, you ministers, you millenarians, if there be any of the name, believe that these Jews are to be restored. Why, watchman, Providence is very long about it. You have been standing amid those ruins and those dismantled towers for some eighteen centuries, straining your eyes, neglecting the making of money and the dnty of providing for your children, and getting a comfortable place and a rich living, and have been looking and longing for the return of that miserable outcast nation, the Jews : well, watchman, you have waited so long, What of the night ? What evidence have you that this morn will ever break ? " For my part," says this proud scorner — this rich inhabitant of this rich capital, " I don't believe one word of your prophecies. They are antiquated notions — old remains of the old prophets of a dispensation that has passed away. There are no more signs that the Jews will be restored in 1851, than there were when Jerusalem was broken down by the ploughshare of Titus, and the Jew sent a wanderer and a by-word over all the earth." This scorner from Mount Seir — this atheistic man, whose sole worship is money-making, and whose God is mammon — will also say : u Palestine is still just as it was, a people Avithout a nation, and a nation in Palestine without a people ; the rocks and the arid sand are its only soil; dust is its only rain ; the plagues of the people are still many ; the bird of prey still flaps his broad wings upon its air ; the jackal is the only inhabitant of its dreary caves, and graves, and dens;" and the "whole land," even a sceptic will be obliged to say, because he must acknowledge facts — facts which are simply the echoes of God's ancient prophecy — "the whole land is brimstone, and salt, and burning : there is nothing that it bears, nor is there any grass in it." And even Chateaubriand, who went to visit Palestine, in the course of his travels, when he walked over it and saw its terrible desolation, made the following striking commentary on ancient prophecy : " We perceived Jerusalem through an opening in the mount. I did not at first know what it was. I believed it to be only a mass of shattered rocks. The sudden apparition of this city of desolation in the midst of such wasted solitudes, had something about it altogether fearful. She was then, indeed, in the valley of the desert."

16 WHAT OP THE NIGHT?

So the scoffer from Mount Seir, or, if you like to change the locality, the scoffer from our own metropolis, or from that across the Channel, asks, " Watchman, what of the night ? Are those ruins beginning to rise into that glorious structure of Ezekiel that you have talked about? Does the grass begin to grow green beneath the hoof of the Arab's horse ? or beneath the naked foot of the tonsured monk? Is there any evidence that the sun is about to rise above the horizon? Your prospect is poor, watchman — leave the rocks; show more common sense ; go and make money, try to be rich and renowned; cease to anticipate any such impossibility." Let me remind such of what one has said whose testimony a Christian at least will not dispute : " Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying (just the very thing that was said here), Where is the promise of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." This, these scoffers " willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men •" or, as the word should be literally rendered, "The earth that now is is stored with fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But," adds St. Peter, turning from these scoffers, "beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness" — as the watchman from Mount Seir declares — "but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night;" just when men see no sign of His advent unexpectedly ; "in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up." We have thus considered the question put to the watchman by

c the scoffer, predicted by Isaiah, who is only a type of the scoffers predicted by St. Peter to arise in the last days.

Then the watchman replies to this insolent, derisive question — for do not forget that such is the light in which yon are to look at it — with great calmness, and with a quiet confidence that indicates his thorough conviction of the truth : " The morning cometh :" you may say what you like, you may talk of prospects as you like ; you may lay down probabilities as you like ; but " the morning cometh •" it is a : fixed thing. God's word is stronger than man's ' facts ; you may stand upon a promise of the 'Almighty firmer than on the strongest build- \ ing of man, or on the everlasting hills. " The i morning," says the watchman, " cometh, and also the night. If ye will enquire, enquire ye." " The morning cometh." Now let' me look at this first. As the question of the scoffer is derisively asked with reference to the restoration of the Jews, (for such is the allusion,) so the answer of the watchman is decidedly given, in reference to the same thing — " The morning cometh."" "Your scoffs," says the faithful watchman, " do not damp my hopes ;

your derision does not move me one inch from the strong ground of the sure and faithful promise on which I stand. God has said it, and my utterance is but the echo of the mind of God. The Jews will be restored; improbable as it may appear, it is notwithstanding absolutely certain." In order to confirm our faith in the statement of the prophet, I may here refer the reader to the 60th and 61st chapters of Isaiah, which clearly describe the restoration of the JeAvs. These chapters directly relate to the Jews. We Gentiles act very hardly by these Jews. Every beautiful promise that we read in the Old Testament, we seize, and say, "That is for us Gentiles ;" and of every threat of desolation, judgment, and destruction, we say, u That is for you Jews." We take the kernel for ourselves, and give the shell to the poor Jews. We subtract from the prophecies everything that is bright and beautiful, and say, That is ours ; and then all that is dark and threatening we fling in scorn to the Jew ; and not only fling curses at him, but trample him under foot, and treat him as if he were the very offscouring of the earth, instead of being one

c2 of a people embosomed in glorious promises, with title-deeds, beside which those of the greatest men in the world are bnt of yesterday, and with an inheritance in reversion the most glorions that langnage can describe or heart conceive — an inheritance incorrnptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. Now I believe that the whole 60th chapter of Isaiah relates to the redemption of the Jews ; it is when speaking of Israel that he says, " Thy light is come," that is the fulfilment of what the watchman says: "The morning corneth." "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee ; and the city had no need of the sun nor of the moon, for the glory of God, and of the Lamb, did lighten it." Now mark ver. 3, "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising/ 5 and, speaking to the Jews, "then shalt thou see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee ; the forces of the Gentiles shall cover thee." And then at ver. 9, " Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sous from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls/'' the walls of the city spoken of by Ezekiel, " and their kings shall minister unto thee ; for in my wrath I smote thee ; but in my favour have I had mercy on thee :" i. e.

" the morning cometh." " Therefore," he proceeds, " thy gates shall be open continually ; they shall not be shut day nor night." And then at ver. 19, " The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee : but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. The sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous ; they shall inherit the land" — i. e. Palestine, the promised land — "for ever : the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified." And again, in Isaiah lxii., you have the allusion to the watchman, " For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, till the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burnetii. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory ; and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name." " And this is the name of the city — the Lord is there." Then at verse 6 : " I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem." Do not say, that belongs to us Gentiles ; you may give a spiritual application to that blessed truth to us ; but literally and strictly it belongs to the Jews. "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night ; ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence; and give Him no rest till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." Do we pray for the Jews as we ought ? — do we labour for the conversion of the Jews as we ought ? I believe we do not. We do not do all we ought to do for the Gentiles; but we ought to do something for the Jews, if it were only for a testimony. I believe their conversion is yet future ; but our duty to the Jews is unequivocal, and I fear that we Gentiles do not discharge that dutv.