The consuming fire

BS 1515 .K5

Kirk, Harris Elliott, 1872-

1953.
The consuming fire

THE CONSUMING FIRE

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THE
CONSUMING FIRE

JUL 31 1919

BY ^y^

HARRIS ELLIOTT KIRK, D.D.

jl3eto gotfe

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1919

AU rights reserved

Copyright, 1919
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1919

TO
THOMAS BAXTER GRESHAM

A SON OF CONSOLATION

PREFACE

It is too early to formulate a philosophy of the
great war, but we are justified in speaking of some
impressions with a certain degree of confidence. One
is that the struggle has demonstrated on a vast scale
the truth that there is something radically wrong
with human nature, which the advance of intelligence
and the refinements of civilization have not been
able to remedy. It brought home to us the
monstrous power of evil, and created a well-defined
suspicion that the control of life, even under en-
lightened forms of government, is not wholly in
man's power.

Another impression is that the successful issue
of the struggle was due to the power of moral prin-
ciple over intelligent self-interest and material ef-
ficiency. No doubt the Allied nations began the war
with mixed motives — since human nature cannot
vote unanimously on any subject — economic ques-
tions and self-preservation had much to do with it;
still as the conflict developed in intensity, and the
Teuton matured his policies, it appeared that above
all other considerations this was a struggle between

vii

viii PREFACE

moral principle and organized evil. Hatred of in-
justice and passion for the right sustained the Allied
morale through four years of bitter suffering and
sacrifice ; and the terrible retribution which has over-
taken autocratic Germany is a demonstration on the
field of history that material efficiency cannot over-
come moral reality.

A third impression, less obvious just now, but one
that is certain to become better defined as the compli-
cations of readjustment tend towards a clarification
of thought, is that the moral passion which sustained
the Allied nations and the United States was the
direct outcome of the influence of Christianity on
Western civilization. No struggle has partaken so
much of religious experience. It has been a holy
war — the principle of righteousness against the
spirit of evil — and this impression must be developed
into a fixed conviction if we are to meet the re-
sponsibilities of the reconstruction period in an
adequate way. The war has released multitudes of
people from the tyranny of autocracy; the world
has been made safe for democracy; but if this is to
be a successful experiment democracy must derive
its sanctions from faith in God. " Where there is
no vision, the people perish," they perish because
they cannot resist the destructive force of self-
interest. Democracy must be stabilized by a sanc-
tion for government which shall maintain respect
for constituted authority in face of the self-regard-

PREFACE ix

ing propensities of human nature. Without the
sentiment of justice and fair dealing such inchoate
movements will destroy themselves ; and if the Allied
nations and the United States brought the great
struggle to a successful issue through moral prin-
ciple, it is all the more necessary that this principle
should be decisive in the days of social readjust-
ment.

I have written this book in order to show that the
religious aspect of the question is fundamental to
all the rest. What the world needs is a fresh reali-
zation of God in history; and I have relied less on
abstract argument than upon demonstrable facts,
and turned to one of the most fascinating and
illuminating epochs of the past — the eighth century
before Christ, which was distinguished by the suc-
cessful struggle of the chosen people with Assyria
— and to Isaiah, the supreme prophet of the Old
Testament, in order to justify the view that in the
conflict between material efficiency and moral reality,
righteousness in the end is certain to prevail.

A study of this character is of the most timely
importance ; for the teaching of Isaiah lends itself
with singular felicity to the social and religious
understanding of the times. He lived in an age
which in most aspects of its thought and life strik-
ingly resembles our own. There is little diff^erence
after all between eighth century Judea and twentieth
century America. The same moral principles were

X PREFACE

involved, and the same issues decided on the hills of
Palestine, which after four years of suffering and
sacrifice have been successfully determined on the
fields of France.

Isaiah faced the grave problems of social and
religious readjustment that are at present our
supreme concern ; he brought to their solution a firm
belief in the power of righteousness over organized
and defiant evil ; and he shows better than any of his
contemporaries how religious faith sustained the
morale of a nation under the stress and strain of a
world war.

I have limited the study to the essential features
of the prophecies contained in the first thirty-nine
chapters of the book of Isaiah; with the section
beginning at the fortieth chapter, which has a dif-
ferent historical setting, we have here no concern.

I have had access to the best authorities ; what
was needed, however, was not detailed information,
but a spirit for the interpretation of the larger
aspects of the great epoch; and if I have been at
all successful I owe it to the writings of Principal
George Adam Smith, whose " Historical Geography
of the Holy Land," and commentaries on Isaiah and
the Book of the Twelve Prophets have been my con-
stant and loved companions for years. I gladly
confess my indebtedness to him.

I wish to thank Mr. William R. Moody, whose
invitation to deliver a course of lectures, during

PREFACE xi

the Christian Workers' Conference, at Northfield,
Mass., during the summer of 1918 gave me an op-
portunity of formulating my thoughts on the sub-
ject. I am particularly indebted to my colleague
and friend. Rev. Robert S. Axtell, for a careful read-
ing of the proofs.

H. E. K.
The Manse
Franklin Street Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, January, 1919.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEE PAGE

I Into the Arena of World PoLiTicg . . 1

II The Consecration of the Timei ... 22

III The Staleness of the Years .... 40

IV The Ironic Realism of God .... 62
V The Doom of Material Efficiency . . 81

VI The Repose of a Settled Faith . . .101

VII The Stately March of Providence . . 121

VIII The Heritage of Tyre 144

IX The Three Questions . . . . . .163

THE CONSUMING FIRE

CHAPTER I

INTO THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS

Isaiah i:18: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith
the Lord."

This is the first and last word of the prophet — that
religion can be thought about, that the ways of provi-
dence are open to human intelligence. The reason-
ableness of religion was the particular contention
of Isaiah. The chief fault he found with the people
of his time was that they did not like to think very
seriously about religious matters ; and the prophet
labored in and out of season to make them face the
serious but salutary facts of everyday life.

This enables us to understand the function of a
prophet. The popular notion of a prophet is that he
is a predictor of future events ; and while prediction
is undoubtedly one of his duties, his real function is
to deliver the message of God. He furnishes spirit-
ual interpretations of secular events, explains the
meaning of history, and justifies the ways of God
to men. In other words, a prophet gives a reliable

2 THE CONSUMING FIRE

philosophy of history in the terms of man's spiritual
experience.

On this account the relation of prophecy to his-
tory is of the first importance. A prophet brings
God's message to men of his time; his teaching of
course develops principles that bear upon all time,
still these principles cannot become intelligible un-
til we have ascertained his precise relation to his own
age. The meaning of prophecy becomes clear only
in relation to history. We can no more comprehend
Isaiah's teaching apart from his times than we can
understand the Constitution of the United States
out of relation to the early history of America.
That is why we must know something of Isaiah's
world before we can understand his message.

Isaiah's period extends from b. c. 740, the year
that king Uzziah died, to the close of the century.
Micah was his contemporary in Judah, while Amos
and Hosea were concerned with the same problems
in the northern kingdom of Israel. So far as known,
Isaiah was a native of Jerusalem ; he came of an
aristocratic if not a princely family, and was a life
long intimate of the ruling classes of the nation. His
ministry of some forty years was entirely devoted to
the interests of the southern kingdom of Judah whose
capital city was Jerusalem.

The best introduction to a prophet is a study of
the world in which he was brought up ; the political,
social, and religious conditions of the time to which

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS S

he brought his illuminating and constructive inter-
pretations. Let us begin with a broad generaliza-
tion: all great historic movements are due to the
collision of ideas. Our great war was the result of
a collision of opposite notions of national develop-
ment, morals, and civilization. Such a conflict is
never caused by single events ; while it may have been
occasioned by a comparatively unimportant incident,
its cause is to be explained by principles. Such prin-
ciples slowly mature until they attain an explosive
force, and when they reach this dangerous state they
produce such things as we have seen in our time.
The events which made up the dramatic history of
Isaiah's time were caused by a similar development
and explosion of ideas. Historians may easily sit
down after the event and explain its history in terms
of principles, just as a century later a clear under-
standing of all the principles involved in the great
war will be more easily gained than now ; but herein
lies the singular superiority of the prophet that he
sees the trend of events before the}^ fully ripen. The
historian at his best is a backward looking man, the
prophet on the contrary is a forward looking man.
He stands on the world's ramparts and looking out
over the feverish life of peoples, prophesies the
course that things will take. He is able to do this
because above the passions of men and the conflicts
of nations he sees — God. This is one reason why
we can never get along without prophets, for through

4 THE CONSUMING FIRE

their eyes we may look above and beyond the events
of the moment and discern the drift of the times,
understand the significance of the principles involved
and stabilize our faith by a vision of God on the
field of history. I believe .that in these times of read-
justment no better discipline for our statesmen and
diplomats could be suggested than a thorough study
of Isaiah and his world.

That which makes him stand out as the supreme
prophet of the Old Testament is the coincidence of
two tremendous ideas : his world and his God. Some-
times God ordains that great ideas should come to-
gether in a man's mind; and when this happens the
course of history is changed. The union of these
vast conceptions in the teaching of Isaiah consti-
tutes a fresh departure of the human race on the
pathway of its destiny. Other men had seen these
things, " as through a glass darkly " ; Amos and
Hosea for instance saw them clearly and in relation,
but neither had opportunity to apply them to the
world situation. But Isaiah not only saw them dis-
tinctly but boldly applied them to the interpreta-
tion of his times, and so accurately did he sense the
drift of things that history vindicated him. To no
man was it given to see so many of his prophecies
fulfilled; and that not because of any magical in-
fluence upon events, but on account of the sanity
of a pure spiritual passion and a faith sustained at
all points by a reasonable effort to understand the

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 5

mind of God. He is a striking example of the truth
that a clean heart makes a clear mind.

Isaiah began to prophesy, as George Adam Smith
remarks, at a period when for the first time in his-
tory the idea of a world set over against a nation
v.'as breaking in on the minds of peoples. It is diffi-
cult for us who live in a world compacted together
by steam and electricity to realize the isolation
of ancient peoples. We are quite familiar with the
difference between nationalism and internationalism.
Nationalism moves within the fixed limits of one
people who, while recognizing the existence of other
peoples, do not necessarily conceive themselves as
having any important concern for those without the
pale. The ancient world was broken up in this
way between Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Barbar-
ians, Romans and Provincials. Internationalism on
the other hand is based upon the recognition of
relationships, either for weal or woe, among peoples
of different races and countries ; and this phase was
slow to develop in the ancient world because of a
series of stubborn barriers constituted chiefly of
racial prejudices which blocked the way. The nor-
mal basis for society before Isaiah's time was tribal
or national ; and by nation one usually meant a single
city, a city-state. Each little kingdom in Palestine,
for instance, was a fortified city, with a small prov-
ince lying immediately about it, and the tribal idea
still dominated the thinking of those peoples, in spite

6 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of their ocasional contact with larger units like
Egypt or Assyria. War as they understood it
was tribal or limited to strife between small cities
or kingdoms, situated for the most part in their
immediate vicinity. This provincial state of mind,
encouraged by their limited conception of religion,
prevailed with hardly a check until the middle of the
eighth century b. c.

At that time, however, which coincides with Isaiah's
call, great and rapid changes took place; the con-
ception of a world organization quite different from
the familiar national idea was brought to full con-
sciousness, and was occasioned as it usually is by the
menace of a terrible and devastating war. The
small city-state found itself confronted by the big
state, and little nations were threatened with ex-
tinction by a great empire.

It seems almost inevitable that great social and
political changes such as are occasioned by war
should set men to thinking of entities larger and
more enduring than those associated with national-
ism. Sometimes it leads to the substitution of ideal
conditions for visible relations as with the Stoic con-
ception of universal brotherhood, which came to him
when Alexander the Great knocked his little world
to bits ; or when the persecutions of Antiochus
Epiphanes set the devout Jew to dreaming of a
catastrophic establishment of the kingdom of God.
Such changes of view rarely come without altered

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 7

social conditions and painful experiences. The
breaking in of this tremendous idea on the Hebrew
consciousness was an essential element in education,
but it was a costly and painful experience, the con-
sequences of which were never forgotten.

Such a change has come over the modern world.
A great and terrible war has once again driven
peoples out of their racial seclusion and national iso-
lation to contemplate a League of Nations which
shall make wars to cease and bring in that era of
brotherhood, the advent of which has haunted the
n)ind of man since the dawn of history.

While we had long been familiar with the idea
of empire, we still held this in harmonious relation
to the notion and the right to exist of the small
state. But since Germany with Assyrian-like bru-
t^dity asserted the right of world dominion, to-
gether with the heathenish doctrine that small states
have no rights which strong states are bound to
respect, we have again reached a position where the
small state can no longer hope to exist without power-
ful and offensive alliances with larger and stronger
entities.

So was it in Isaiah's time. Beginning with
Ass3'ria's ruthless assertion of the right to rule the
world, the peoples of Palestine definitely and per-
manently came within the sphere of world politics,
and to the end of their national career the chosen
people were under the dominion of one or the

8 THE CONSUMING FIRE

other of great world empires whose history covers
the last seven centuries of the pre-Christian period:
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. This
was the meaning, dimly understood by the states-
men of Isaiah's time, of the half-century of prepara-
tion on the part of Assyria. The people did not
see it, any more than most of us understood the sig-
nificance of Germany's military policy; and even
when it was apprehended, the threatened nations
did not like to admit it; but Isaiah saw it clearly
and concretely. lie knew exactly what it would
mean to these little kingdoms, hiding there in fancied
seclusion in the deep valleys of Palestine. The age
of the small, isolated state was gone forever; the
chosen people, for weal or woe, were about to leave
the nest of provincial seclusion for the terrible arena
of world politics. They were drifting blindly into
dangerous waters, without pilots or adequate knowl-
edge of navigation. They were especially barren of
great ideas and singularly obtuse to the most glaring
facts of the time. In any event it meant that they
were going into a larger world; a vaster experience
awaited them with grave consequences to their re-
ligious destiny ; and it was his clear intuition of the
momentous change impending that gave to our states-
manlike seer his tremendous command over a world
situation. This was enough to make him a states-
man, a diplomat, or even a great ruler ; but not
enough to make him a prophet. Another idea was

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 9

required to fit him for the role of spiritual leader,
an idea that was to come into the sharpest collision
with the notion of world expansion, and that is to
be found in Isaiah's God.

From the days of Moses the chosen people had
been theoretical monotheists ; that is, they believed
in one God but they were slow to follow up their
opportunity by the assertion of the non-existence and
worthlessness of other gods ; nor were they able save
in vague and inchoate ways to divine the meaning of
a w^orld providence. Idolatry existed side by side
with the religion of Jehovah ; it was a constant
and always a disturbing element in the popular re-
ligion ; and the ordinary Hebrew, be he prince or
peasant, was quite content to regard Jehovah as a
private and tribal Deity. So long as they were con-
tent with this view, it was practically impossible for
them to think of a Divine providence effective in re-
gions beyond the promised land. It was enough
that Jehovah was their private Deity, the guardian
of their land, and this selfish notion shrunk the
notion of God to their own small dimensions. In
their tribal wars, which were many, they saw chiefly
a struggle between their God and those of other peo-
ples. The idea of a ruling providence, co-extensive
with the world, was not then a vital element in their
faith, and this of course in spite of their prophets
and lawgivers.

One reason why the faith of the ordinary Hebrew

10 THE CONSUMING FIRE

broke down so soon as the terrible Assyrian invaded
Palestine was the fear, that after all, the gods of
Assyria were more powerful than the God of the
chosen people. It seemed to cast suspicion upon the
ancient tradition that Jehovah would care for His
people; it drove into their weak minds a disturbing
doubt as to God's power; and in those days a God
without power would soon be a God without worship-
pers. To some, like Ahaz, it seemed expedient in the
interest of greater national security to add the gods
of other and successful nations — Damascus, for in-
stance — to their own religion.

When the Assyrian storm broke upon the land
it at once raised the question : Who is the real God
of the world? Who controls events beyond the fron-
tiers of the land of promise? Is it Jehovah, or some
other deity? The question could not be fully an-
swered by reaffirming the old tribal idea, for the
domain of the tribal deity had been invaded from
without. What was wanted, though inchoately un-
derstood was some assurance that Jehovah was the
ruler of the world; not of Palestine only, but also
of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

How then did Isaiah meet this demand? We must
keep clearly in mind that the essential element in
deity for the ancient mind was power. Character
as we learn from Greek mythology was a non-essen-
tial; but power a god must have, if he was to have

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 11

devotees ; and it was because the power of Israel's
God seemed broken by the Assyrian menace that the
people were prostrate before it. Now Isaiah's bold
originality lies in this, that while he clearly asserts
a world providence, calmly speaking of Assyria as
God's ax, God's rod, God's razor for the pruning
of Israel's superfluous growths, he nowhere bases
his faith in providence on the old pagan doctrine
of bare power, but goes back behind power to the
character which conditions its exercise, and derives
his conception of power from the righteousness of
God. Other prophets of course had held this view;
it had always been the faith of Israel's spiritual
leaders, but it was left to Isaiah to apply it vigor-
ously to the interpretation of a world situation; he
made it concrete, practical, and terribly realistic.
He affirmed the truth that world-control was based
not upon material successes but moral reality. He
held the supreme faith that God was righteous, and
that righteousness only was reality; he summoned
to that changeless tribunal all nations and peoples
and boldly founded his doctrine of providence upon
the character of Jehovah. He held to this faith
in the face of all the changes and trials of forty
years of Assyrian ruthlcssness. This made him the
greatest constructive statesman of the chosen people,
but it also made liim the supreme prophet of all time ;
and it is immensely illuminating in the present crisis

12 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of social readjustment, when so many of the prob-
lems of Isaiah's time are calling for present-day
solution to notice the basis of his faith.

Isaiah's statesmanship rested squarely and con-
sciously on his religion. His faith in providence —
which controlled events and used the policies of na-
tions for purposes of the Divine will — rested upon
two great convictions : righteousness and grace ; and
both these ideas, as we have seen, sharply distin-
guished his conception of God from that not only of
the pagan, but also from that of the masses of the
Hebrew people.

The pagan believed that sovereignty rested on
force, and force only. A god was worshipped,
feared and served in proportion to his ability to
demonstrate his power over men. But while Isaiah
asserted the fact of God's power, he grounded it
always upon God's character. God must rule the
world, said the prophet, because He is righteous.
Only righteousness is real, and only that which con-
forms to righteousness can last. Everywhere the
world was moving, apparently in accord with the will
of man ; but over and beyond it he saw the righteous
purpose of Jehovah. Righteousness was not con-
ceived as a static quality of an absentee deity, living
in some Epicurean paradise far above the flaming
walls of the world ; but it was dynamic, intensely ac-
tive, and close to man's heart and life. The eyes of
glory were looking in upon the council chamber,'

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 13

scanning every state paper, and noting the thoughts
and intents of the soul.

This faith in the all-pervasive power of righteous-
ness was linked to another great conviction that
God was gracious. The stern unapproachable holi-
ness of Jehovah was tempered by the marvelous loving
kindness of the Lord. No prophet has spoken with
greater positiveness of the righteousness of God, yet
none has excelled him in the tenderness and gracious-
ness of his appeal. Over and over again he asserted
that evil nations like Assyria might, owing to the
accidents of power, do any amount of harm to
weaker peoples; injustice and wickedness might, for
a season, be successful, but it was only temporary.
The real test of a nation was not actuality, measured
by material accumulations and brute force ; but real-
ity, a state determined by moral relations. The only
reality on this planet was righteousness. Because
God was righteous. He was sovereign ; because God's
people were under His protection, they could not
be destroyed. Only the real, what was in harmony
with the nature and purposes of Jehovah, was per-
manent. With God, visible accumulations, athe-
istic impudence, and arrogant pride, were but mate-
rials for a judgment day bonfire.

Isaiah assured the people of his country that no
matter how deeply they might become involved in
the terrible struggle, he was certain that righteous-
ness would prevail in the end because it was guided

14 THE CONSUMING FIRE

by the spirit of grace, by the loving kindness of the
Lord. God was controlling this mighty world move-
ment in behalf of the spiritual interests of His peo-
ple; He was sifting the chaff from the wheat. As-
syria with her boundless ambitions, her seemingly
irresistible armies, her arrogant claim to world do-
minion was just God's ax, an instrument in the Divine
hand. When He finished with it. He would discard
it : Assyria could not move a step beyond the Divine
purpose. It was this tremendous faith that made the
prophet the rallying point in those terrible times ;
how he gained this faith we shall have occasion to
see later; it remains now to ask: How so unimportant
a people as the Israelites became involved in world
politics? And the answer is found in the peculiar
geographical position of the Palestinian states.

The world of the eighth century before Christ
was dominated by two entirely different conceptions
of civilization: one founded upon mind, the other
upon matter.

The civilization of Egypt was based upon the mind,
that of Assyria upon a machine-like organization of
material forces ; and it was inevitable that these two
conceptions should eventually come into deadly con-
flict. The distance between the Nile and the Mesopo-
tamian valleys, homes of these antagonistic civiliza-
tions, was only four hundred and ninety miles, and
the only possible line of communication between them
passed through Palestine. Now Palestine, owing to

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 15

its peculiar topography, was singularly constructed
for the production of great liistoric results. It
could not be invaded from the east since it was pro-
tected by a mountain barrier, flanked by the Arabian
desert; neither could it be approached from the sea
because there was no natural harbor south of Mount
Carmel. The only possible way through it ran
from north to south, around the sea of Galilee,
across the great plain of Esdraelon — the battle-
field of Palestine — and down the maritime plain.
Northern Israel lay close to this natural highway,
and was the first to become involved, while Judah,
more remote in its mountain fastness, was the last
to feel the pressure of the world movement. The
people of God were by these peculiar topographical
features placed between the upper and nether mill-
stone of the Nile and Mesopotamian valleys. The
only way for an army of conquest to reach Egypt
from Mesopotamia was to hammer its way through
these little Palestinian states. The position of Israel
and Judah was in many respects like that of Bel-
gium, and each country in its own way has furnished
battlefields on which have been decided the fate of
civilizations.

For many years Assyria had been quietly getting
ready for the unavoidable conflict; the sinful lust
for world power dominated her evil heart, and she
slow^ly but surely accumulated men, munitions, and
treasure, and made plans for the subjugation of the

16 THE CONSUMING FIRE

only remaining empire capable of disputing the
claim, namely Egj^pt. But to reach Egypt she was
compelled to pass through Syria and Palestine.
What would be the attitude of these small nations
towards such a movement? It is clear from a con-
sideration of the whole campaign that Assyria began
her forward movement with a fatal miscalculation.
Small states have little offensive power, but in their
own territory they have an immense defensive force.
In all probability Germany's miscalculation with
reference to Belgium was one of the prime causes of
her ultimate defeat. And what took place in Bel-
gium at the beginning of the war, happened in Pales-
tine in the opening of the Assyrian campaign. She
began her westward thrust toward Egypt in b. c.
745, five years before the call of Isaiah, under the
lead of king Tiglath-pileser, but she did not reach
her objective until b. c. 672, seventy three years later.
Her slow progress was due in large measure to the
immense defensive power of the small states of Pales-
tine. It is true that only one of these kingdoms had
any sort of autonomy when the eighth century closed ;
still the campaign against Assyrian aggression is
a glorious page in Palestinian history. Judah's
successful resistance of this world movement was
largely due to the statesmanlike leadership of her
great prophet.

The policy of Assyria was of the most ruthless
sort. A great brute of a nation, coarse and sen-

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 17

sual, believing only in force, of slow moving mentality
and little creative imagination, all her methods of
warfare and notions of national development were
dictated by the lowest propensities of human nature.
Her policy was to make war with Teutonic fright-
fulness. We read of chariots with scythe blades and
horsemen swimming in blood, of mutilations and tor-
tures unbelievable until our day. Her aim was not
the subjugation of nations, but the destruction of
peoples ; her common method was the deportation
of inhabitants of conquered territories and the
thorough elimination of races. The small nations
against which she first hurled her forces were utterly
incapable of successful resistance, lacking in diplo-
matic resource and military skill. In such a crisis
as this Isaiah was raised up to preach the everlasting
reality of righteousness and the certain doom of all
peoples who based their hope of success upon material
efficiency and godless ambitions, and who made their
plans without regard to the rights of other nations
and in utter contempt for moral reality.

The likeness of this to our present world is simply
astounding. The more carefully one reads the his-
tory of Assyria the more profoundly is one convinced
that Germany in the great war was simply Assyria,
plus the resources of modern civilization. No nation
of past times, so far as I know, had so closely followed
the Assyrian model as this nation that boasted it-
self as the most cultured in existence. Germany

18 THE CONSUMING FIRE

has displayed the same coarse passions, the same
bovine stupidity in diplomacy, the same faith in
brute strength and material efficiency, and has enter-
tained the same egoistic aim at world dominion ;
and in order to cover the crude materialism of her
purposes with a religious veneer changed the God of
our Lord Jesus into the image of an old brutal
Assyrian deity. Confronting her were precisely the
same moral and spiritual interests that faced As-
syria ; what happened in Palestine in the eighth cen-
tury B. c. has happened in Belgium in the twentieth
century a. d.

The modem world was upset by the same collision
of great ideas — this explosion of different and
utterly antagonistic conceptions of life, social order,
morality, and religion. The great war has been a
struggle, not between nations, but between peoples
and civilizations. With all her boasted culture the
civilization of Prussianized Germany was based upon
matter. She used the resources of mind and soul
in behalf of a purely materialistic conception of real-
ity. The civilization of the Allied peoples is based
upon the mind : upon the human spirit ; and now that
the war is ended, and fearful retribution has fallen
upon the aggressor, it would seem as if this civili-
zation of mind and spirit is to dominate the world.
Life would not be worth living under any other con-
ditions ; and that the civilized world was willing to
fight through four years of terrible suffering for

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 19

the establishment of its aims, is one of the best guar-
antees that this ideal conception of human relation-
ships, in the days of readjustment, shall not perish
from the earth.

Our times, too, have revealed many of the charac-
teristic weaknesses that were common to Isaiah's age.
We have suffered from the same hesitations, futili-
ties and inaptitudes ; more than all else the great
war developed a need for understanding the spiritual
roots of the moral passion which made the Allied
nations capable of endurance until victory crowned
their efforts ; for it has been essentially a war between
enlightened self-interest, relying chiefly on organized
materialism, and moral principle ; and this gives to
the teaching of Isaiah an immense and significant
importance for the proper adjustment of our minds
to the enlarged conceptions of social duty and politi-
cal responsibility, to say nothing of religious oppor-
tunity, which properly belong to the period of recon-
struction.

Isaiah's root principle, let it never be forgotten,
is that righteousness only is permanent. God is real
because He is righteous, and it was from this simple
principle that Isaiah deduced his doctrine that God
must control the world. Nations as well as individ-
uals are in His hands ; He uses one nation to chastise
another nation, yet above all the hardships and
changes incident to world disturbance, it becomes
increasingly clear that the Divine purposes are tern-

20 THE CONSUMING FIRE

pered by grace and loving kindness. It is quite clear
to my mind that God has used Germany to chastise
the modern world for the same specific purposes as
He used the Assyrian rod to discipline His rebellious
and indifferent people in the long, long ago. But
Germany, with all her proud complex of arrogance,
brutality, and greed has been in God's hand nothing
more than an ax in the hands of the woodman, which
He has discarded, now that His righteous purposes
are fulfilled.

Whatever is contrary to righteousness in prin-
ciple or practice cannot last. This tremendous
truth, hurled against the coming centuries by Isaiah,
reafl5rmed in an immortal expression by Habakkuk
a century later, and sounding like the voice of eter-
nity over all the noise and pain and confusion of the
great war is this, that a nation that bases its hopes
upon unrighteous exploitation of other peoples in dis-
regard of their legitimate rights is a swollen, putres-
cent thing; it cannot last because it is impossible
for material efficiency and atheistic pride to live in
a world of moral reality.

Germany was doomed, not simply because of what
the Allies were capable of doing to her, but because
she was in conflict with a Power which history has
vindicated over and over again. Long before her
final collapse and while the moral passion of the Allied
peoples was growing more pure and unselfish through
the cleansing discipline of their suff'erings, the world

THE ARENA OF WORLD POLITICS 21

was filled with the foul stench of her bursting carcass.
Her doom was written in flaming letters across the
sky. An invisible line had been drawn between Ger-
many's ambitions and her goal ; on it had been
written : " They shall not pass " ; and when she
reached it, she collapsed. She has been at war with ' ^

God; and like Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, the ^ /f«fo
star of her military autocracy has set never to rise
again.

Whence came Isaiah's vivid consciousness of God's
realistic and dynamic holiness, faith in which enabled
him in the long struggle with Assyrian ruthlessness,
to believe in the ultimate triumph of righteousness?
It came, as we shall see, from his prophetic call : the
consecration of the times.

CHAPTER II

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES

Isaiah vi : 1 : "In the year that king Uzziah died 1 saw . . .
the Lord."

Isaiah's influence over the children of Israel during
the Assyrian war was due, as we saw in the last chap-
ter, to his faith in God. He believed that God was
the sovereign of this world because God alone
was real. This conception was based upon two
great convictions: righteousness and grace. Isaiah
founded his doctrine of providence upon the character
of God. God v/as regnant because He was right-
eous ; but righteousness was everywhere tempered by
grace, by loving kindness. The power of Assyria
was limited by the Divine purpose; the misfortunes
and sufferings resulting from this heathenish out-
break were by grace to be turned into disciplinary
mercies, fatherly chastisements. We have now to
ask: What was the source from which Isaiah de-
rived this conception of God?

All great convictions grow in a certain soil ; they
do not rise suddenly in the mind, but develop slowly
until they reach explosive force, whereupon they ap-

22

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 23

pear as a compelling intuition of truth, an imperative
call to service, an unescapable vision of duty. Fol-
lowing their ordinary duties there suddenly emerges
in the consciousness of the prophets an irresistible
belief that they must do a certain thing; they be-
come convinced that God is calling them. " I was
patiently following my lowly occupation as a vine-
dresser and a fig pincher, when suddenly," says
Amos, " God called me to go, prophesy to His people
Israel." " I was bowed down in sorrow, my home was
desolate and my heart was broken," says Hosea,
" when suddenly it became clear to me that this was
a calling of God." And so it was with Isaiah.
" In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord ; "
that was the beginning of his conscious authority
as a prophet ; and it was this imperative sense of a
Divine calling that developed in his mind the great
convictions about God.

Yet there is nothing irrational about such an ex-
perience. It can be explained in part at least, be-
cause it has a definite relation to past experience.
In fact one is impressed at all points with the sanity
of the prophets. They know definitely that God
is calling them, yet they realize that their call is
intimately related to their past experience; and this
is due to the reaction of outward events upon states
of mind. God uses the events of a man's life to
develop a consciousness of mission ; that is why Isaiah
could associate his spiritual vision with a great

M THE CONSUMING FIRE

secular event : " In the year that king Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord."

Political and social changes often make men con-
scious of spiritual needs. This striking reaction of
outward events upon states of soul may be illus-
trated over and over again. Many a spiritual Jew
could say : " In the year that Antiochus Epiphanes
sacked Jerusalem, I saw the Lord " ; as many a
spiritual man of our time can say : " In the year
that Germany invaded Belgium, I saw the Lord."
The reason in each case is plain. Bitter disillusion-
ment is often the moment of superior spiritual vision.
Change teaches the spiritual man to fear God. When
we become aware of the instability of political institu-
tions we are apt to realize our spiritual necessities;
our souls are set on fresh quests for peace ; and if we
be righteously inclined we come sooner or later to
have a more satisfactory knowledge of God.

With Isaiah the awakening to a consciousness of
a prophetic mission coincided with a bitter disillu-
sionment. He was twenty five years of age, and
doubtless up to that time had been a nation-centered
man ; religious, of course, but patriotic too ; and
sharing in the illusions of his age. Although later
he was to learn the bitter but salutary truth that
his nation was degraded and godless, yet now to his
young and unstained nature there was something
pure, lofty, and ideal about this people. He greatly
admired the king, who for fifty years had reigned

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 25

over Judah, as great a man as Solomon, possessing
many traits of character likely to attract the ad-
miration of a youth. It was a time of prosperity
and progress ; when suddenly the great king died, a
leper, rejected of God. It must have been a terrible
moment to the young man; it was one of those mo-
ments common to inexperienced youth when utter
desolation overtakes the soul. His ideal world had
suddenly dissolved leaving him alone and friendless
in the garish light of day.

Even then, both Israel and Judah were feeling the
influence of the terrible Assyrian advance, which had
begun five years before. Israel's confidence in meet-
ing her enemies was largely based on the power and
prestige of great kings ; but when Uzziah died, the
nation drifted towards anarchy; its guidance was
committed to weak and sinful men. The young man
felt that he was living in a very unstable world. In
a very real sense, the death of Uzziah marked the
end of Isaiah's youth; it was a time when he felt
that he must leave his ease to assume his responsi-
bilities, but how.P True such an experience made
him more mature, but less confident all the same of
the future and infinitely less sure of himself and of
his time ; but in the hour of prostration the devotional
habits of his life came to his aid, and led him to the
house of God. He dare not try to think it out alone ;
it was too painful to him ; he would go into the sanc-
tuary and seek the consolation of worship. When

26 THE CONSUMING FIRE

he came within the Temple courts, sensitive, recep-
tive, disillusioned, with every avenue to his soul open
to spiritual impressions — when he came into the
sanctuary he saw — God. Seeing here means some-
thing more than sense perception; what it means
is that this was the moment, a definite period in his
conscious life, when he transferred his faith from the
nation to God alone. He learned for the first time
a lesson he never forgot — the essential difference
between a nation and a divine kingdom, between a
patriotic passion and a spiritual relationship. It
was the moment when his life became God-centered;
and high above nations, peoples, and political move-
ments he saw the greatness and the glory and the onli-
ness of God. Life, which in the hour of disenchant-
ment had become a terrible experience, now takes on
a deep and glorious solemnity. Breaking out on all
sides of the Temple, cutting into shreds the ritual
screen which had hitherto hidden the Divine glory
from his soul, Isaiah saw God " sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up." Here and not in Judah, nor
yet in Assyria, nor yet anywhere on homely earth,
but amid the ineffable glories of the eternal world
was the real sovereignty controlling destiny. Thus
to the receptive soul come moments of realization;
material screens become transparent and man sees
spirit touching spirit and knows the meaning of
reality.

This conception lies at the basis of Isaiah's preach-

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 27

ing; to miss it is to miss the secret of his constancy
and of his strength ; above all, it is to miss the secret
of his great peace. I think he had this sense of
divine reality more deeply impressed upon him than
any other prophet. Jeremiah alone of others is
fit to stand beside Isaiah. His task was in many re-
spects far more difficult and discouraging ; still he had
the same advantage of knowing the greatness of God ;
yet we remember how he complained, hesitated, and
sometimes doubted. But Isaiah never faltered; he
never doubted or complained because he was consist-
ently loyal to the pole-star of his soul. His immense
superiority appears best on the dark background of
discouragement and defeat which overtook his nation.
He stood among them in the hour of disaster the
only great believer in God ; facing the terrors of the
Assyrian advance with a calm and confident spirit
because he knew experimentally that God alone was
real. He had seen the Lord.

This is the essence of religious faith. It is not to
believe in certain theories of religion, or to possess
certain habits and relationships ; but essentially to
believe God and to believe in God, that is to trust
Him because you know that He alone is real and only
the real is permanent. Once to believe this is to gain
that foothold beyond time, which Carlyle says, gives
a man a foothold within time. Isaiah could proclaim
during the forty years of trial and disaster which
tormented even the most spiritual of his generation:

28 THE CONSUMING FIRE

in the year of bitter disillusionment when men's
hearts were failing and old ideals were shattered;
when the fair fabric of our civilization was rent
asunder by the ruthless teeth of the Assyrian boar;
when God's people were sunk in lethargy and so be-
fogged with delusions that they had no notion where
they were drifting, in that terrible unforgetable
year " in the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the
Lord, sitting upon a throne." The throne was the
essence of reality.

It was from this tremendous intuition of the essen-
tial nature of God that Isaiah drew his great con-
victions that God was both righteous and gracious.
He heard the heavenly singers, singing of the holi-
ness of God. It was no mere static, inactive holiness,
but something intensely dynamic, potent and terribly
close to man's life. The whole earth was full of
God's glory, and glory was nothing else but mani-
fested holiness. Here we come upon the most radical
and original notion of the prophet that holiness is
an atmosphere of fire. It burned about the uni-
verse like a great devouring flame, it consumed every-
thing that was unlike itself, and refined and purified
everything that resembled it ; therefore holiness was
the essence of reality. The righteous was the real,
because it alone was fitted to live in the fire. What
was Assyria then, with all her proud claims, but
just God's ax, God's thing, to be discarded when the
Divine purposes were fulfilled.'^ Assyria was doomed

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 29

because she could not live in the fire; but the right-
eous man, the man of faithfulness should survive, be-
cause he alone was fitted to live in the atmosphere
of reality.

Is it any wonder, then, that the young man was
overcome by this terrible, glorious truth, for he saw
rising between him and God a great smoke screen.
This smoke was occasioned by the contact of reality
with unreality, of fire with that which could be con-
sumed. The work of destruction was already be-
ginning. Clouds and darkness were rising to hide
the glorious throne from the eyes of the worshipper.
The vision of God's reality was also the discovery of
his unfitness ; need we wonder then at his words :
" Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man
of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people
of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the
Lord of hosts."

This dark night of the soul overtakes a truly peni-
tent man ; it is the hour of austerity and searching
self-examination ; it is the moment when the awakened
soul exchanges the episodic terror of unknown forces
for the constant fear of a God who is being progress-
ively known. Such an experience is always painful,
but unless we pass through it we can never understand
the glory of God's holiness, nor the greater glory of
His mercy.

Disillusion was followed by self-knowledge. Thus
began the practical realism that made Isaiah a man

30 THE CONSUMING FIRE

tremendously in love with facts ; a root-and-branch
sort of a man whose soul had been searched by this
terrible, this remorseless reality. He felt himself un-
done, paralyzed, and helpless. Most of all his very
lips were unclean. Here had this soul-awakening
truth come to him ; it waited to be proclaimed from
the house tops, yet he dare not declare it because
his lips were soiled. He had a passion to worship
and to adore, he longed to join in the hymn of praise,
yet between him and God was this terrible smoke
screen, and on his lips such defilement as to make
him dumb forever. He had a truth for which the
world was waiting, but its very possession made him
an alien, a wanderer among men. There was nothing
in environment to aid him for he dwelt in the midst
of a people of unclean lips.

He had knowledge of God enough to kill the soul
with too much light, but he dare not speak of it;
and then when he felt himself lost amid clouds and
darkness there came out of the mist a messenger
with a living coal and touched his lips and made
them clean. It was the keen awakening of this sen-
sitive soul to that other truth about God which
was the foundation of his faith, namely, that God
is merciful and full of loving kindness. No prophet
has equaled Isaiah's insight into the Divine mind,
for here in this symbolism of the altar is a clear
intimation of the cross and the atoning mercy of
Jesus. I think we see this clearly, but do we as

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 31

clearly apprehend the other implication, that of the
ordeal by fire? Isaiah believed that God was real
because He was holy ; but holiness was an unescap-
able atmosphere of fire, burning around men, and
nations, and things. It made men aware of their
unrealit}^, of their utter helplessness before God,
their unfitness to live in the fire. How then could
man dwell in the midst of this devouring flame.'*
The answer is here. The fiery essence may,
through the mercy of God, as here, become a
cleansing medium ; but do we realize that such
cleansing by fire is always painful.? God's mercy
is mediated by the same agent that destroys the
wicked. The righteous fire would eventually destroy
Assyria, but the long, painful discipline resulting
from the war would become to the righteous, a
cleansing fire of mercy ; but do we yet see that
the ways of mercy may be as painful in their opera-
tion as are the ways of judgment.'*

The realization of this that the pains and disci-
plines of the time were intelligible through the dis-
covery of active holiness is the basis of Isaiah's
unfaltering faith that God is working for Israel a
" far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
It took Israel a long time to see this ; I wonder if
we see it yet.^*

Here then is the source of Isaiah's great con-
victions. When holiness and sin touch each other
there is first, mist, the destruction of that which

32 THE CONSUMING FIRE

is unholy; then, mercy, with its painful ordeal by
fire ; and then, this — the opening of the ears and the
awakening to a consciousness of mission. We talk
a great deal of understanding God, of spiritual dis-
cernment, but the only way to it is through the
cleansing of the soul. When Isaiah's lips were
cleansed, he got his ears open and heard the common
but fundamental demand for service. The call to
service is the authentication of the cleansing process,
that without which the process is an illusion. This
is the certain test of religious reality ; not that
Divine mercy relieves man from responsibility, but
definitely transfers his interest from himself and the
world about him to God, and shuts him up to a clear-
cut dedication of life to the Divine will ; hence we
need not be surprised to hear the prophet's response :
" Here am I, send me."

There is no suggestion here of argument, such as
took place between God and Jeremiah; no questions
are asked about the nature of the service required.
It is utter self-devotement, and I think that is the
most active expression of the human spirit. When
a sense of such a mission comes to him a man is
reduced to pure action. Something he dare not
resist possesses the soul, and when he hears the im-
perative voice calling, he is obliged to answer:
" Here am I, send me."

If we may know the exact moment when a man
is fully grown, it is in such an experience. That

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 33

is the meaning of a call; the assumption of a life
task. When hardships are discounted and fears and
hesitations are put behind him, and the man comes
forth and gives himself — that is the moment when
he is wholly God's. And from this moment Isaiah
was definitely on the Lord's side. He never, as was
the habit of some prophets, questioned his calling,
neither did he ever find fault with the Divine
program; his surrender was complete, final and
absolute.

We have now to consider the nature of his com-
mission. Indeed it was a disappointing task, and
one that would have broken the spirit of a weaker
man. He is to deliver a message that will harden
the people. Instead of finding them ready for it,
he must be prepared to see them disbelieve it, reject
it contemptuously and under his ministry grow less
instead of more receptive. Their eyes it will gum
up, and their ears it will stop, and their hearts it
will becloud. The first discovery of a true prophet
is the obstinacy of the people. The first illusion
he loses is that because a thing is true, the people
will believe it. Paul thought so, on his return
to Jerusalem after his conversion ; the young
minister believes it about his first congregation ;
every great servant of society has begun his career
with this illusion, and lost it just as Isaiah did.
Truth in some quarters has no market value ; the
voice of wisdom cries unheeded on the corners of the

34 THE CONSUMING FIRE

street. No wonder the young man exclaimed when
he realized the nature of his mission : " 0 Lord,
how long? " and was told a more distressing thing:
until the nation is worn out by wars and disasters,
and nothing is left but a remnant, a mere stump
of the parent tree. This was a discouraging pros-
pect, but it has ever been the role of prophets to
face this very thing. People are often obstinate,
vain, and foolish in the presence of their real leaders ;
they love delusions, and like Israel, prefer the hot
wadies of Palestine to the cool snows of Lebanon
that never fail. Above all they fear the austerity
of truth and love to take refuge in a world of make-
believe. Isaiah's people would not think; more
stupid than the ox and the ass, they had no sense
whatever of gratitude for the Divine mercies.
Even their religion was offensive to God — this
temple treading, senseless shouting, and vain postur-
ing in the house of worship — making the fact that
they were the chosen people a reason for shutting
their eyes to what might happen to them in the
Assyrian war. Sterner measures were needed.
They must be forced to live in a harder, more uncom-
fortable world ; they must be driven out of their nests
into the arena ; above all they must be made to feel
the heat of the tremendous fire that was even then
burning about them.

Isaiah must prepare himself for misunderstand-
ing; he must face the contempt of the crowd, stand

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 35

in jeopardy of his life, and for a season be content
to fail. He must resolve to put his young feet on
the steep path of holy devotion that leads to the
heights ; he must accept the role of loneliness and
glory ; stand there on the frontiers of eternity and
see things clearly which the people saw not at all,
until that holy seed, for which and in whose interests
God was then sifting the wheat from the chaff, had
been brought to a state of spiritual soundness and
sturdy faith.

There is much here of timely importance for our
age. The chief defect of our religious life — a
characteristic of the activities of the modern church
— has been ignorance of God. We have almost lost
the sense of God's glorious austere holiness ; and so
abused the idea of love that we have behaved as if
God were indifferent to moral distinctions. Our
worship has been vitiated by unreality, irreverence
and unconscious hypocrisy; and in rare moments of
spiritual sensibility we have endeavored to escape
the influence of Divine holiness by riotous indulgence
in revivalism or ritual performances which put the
conscience to sleep with sacramentarian anodynes.
Like the people of Isaiah's time, we did not care to
think much about religion, preferring impressionis-
tic titillations of the emotions to the spiritually
transforming power of deep and sustained reflection.

Making little of the holiness of God it is not sur-
prising that we have persistently undervalued the

36 THE CONSUMING FIRE

saving mercy of Jesus Christ. It is useless to
preach a gospel of salvation to a people who do not
believe they need it ; and nothing has ever made men
conscious of this need like a fresh sense of Divine
holiness. Because our knowledge of holiness has
been small, our estimate of Christ has been defec-
tive. We have permitted Him to reign over a rather
remote and ineffective world we call the future; but
we have not allowed Him to govern or be sovereign
in the work-a-day world of conduct, or in the con-
trol of our deeper allegiances. On this account all
sense of austerity has gone out of modern life. We
have believed in a comfortable world because we
liked to live at ease in Zion. We have grown fat
and sleek in body, but lean of soul ; and put outside
activities and noisy propaganda in place of the inner
sanctities of life.

All this have we done, and been all the while in-
different to God's gentler measures. Was ever a
passage more descriptive of the delusions of a
democracy infatuated with unregulated idealisms,
intoxicated by its superficial successes, and blind to
the deeper implications of modern political history,
than this of Isaiah of a people whose eyes are
gummed up, and whose ears are stopped, and whose
understandings are befogged by truth that was
meant to save them? There seems to be in this
country a well-defined notion that God exists solely
for our own purposes and ends. Have we not been

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 37

told in recent days by an adventurous young doctor
of philosophy that if God wishes to retain the
allegiance of humanity, He must adapt His ways
to the requirements of modern democracy?

It has been a good world for predatory ani-
mals, but no fit place for spirits who are to live
forever. And then came the German ax crashing
down through our flimsy shelters, and our ease and
security left us. The cold clean winds are blowing
the sickly effluvia of our sensuous existence away
from the soul. The old comfort-loving world has
gone — for this generation — gone forever, and we
find ourselves in a more stimulating atmosphere.
Shall we imagine that God is going to withdraw this
purging discipline from us until we are clean.'*
Think you He cares more for our comfort than for
our spiritual satisfaction? Dare we go back to our
buying and selling, our eating and drinking and mis-
doing, when Europe has been bled white in holy
strife? I tell you. No! If you ask the prophet's
question: "O Lord, how long?" the answer is
plainly: until the holy seed is purged, cleansed, and
fitted for its spiritual mission. Isaiah calls the
holy seed a remnant, but he never uses this word
in a quantitative sense, as if the results of the sifting
process were small. In fact it is an idea of large
qualitative meaning, and is naturally developed in
the book of Revelation into a great multitude whom
no man can number. When we think of the variety

38 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of races and peoples who took part in the great war ;
when we consider the multitudes who are to-day ex-
perimenting with government in search of a more
legitimate self-expression we are really looking upon
an enlarged phase of God's educational work.

The world has not been inclined to consider this
aspect of its history, infatuated as it was with
private aims or restricted national ambitions, and
greatly taken up with notions of evolutionary
progress ; on which account it has been a lonely place
for the prophetic soul. Men were not willing to
heed gentler measures of correction; sterner trials
were required, and now they have come upon us.
In the tremendous changes incident to the world
convulsion we find ourselves without the old shelters
and sensible of the inaptitude of ancient traditions
and established customs ; but thank God with all
this, we are alive.

The German ax — God's instrument — has done
its work. Our flimsy shelters are destroyed, and we
have been surprised to learn that we are capable
of a hardier, sterner life in the wide open world of
thought and experience. At great cost have we
been permitted to come to ourselves, to discover our
inner fineness ; the war has given us an opportunity
of turning our inchoate idealism into sober fact, and
to holy souls who have staked their all upon a
spiritual view of life, and who are willing to follow
the Captain of Salvation even into the furnace of

THE CONSECRATION OF THE TIMES 39

dynamic righteousness, the times are bringing con-
secration robes ; they stand before us as awakening
ministers of grace, calling for sacrifice, and self-
devotement, but bidding us assume a task in the re-
construction of the Avorld which can have but one
ending, namely the permanent satisfaction of the
soul.

Through the sacrifices of the war, and in the
mighty problems incident to the period of readjust-
ment God once more is invading man's life in search
of a larger expression of His will. To those who
are sensible of this great opportunity there can be
but one attitude, that of intelligent and resolute
cooperation. Burn on, O Divine fire, until all dross
is purged away! Blow, ye icy winds from the cool
snows of Lebanon, until all poisonous atmospheres
are cleansed from the soul! Rise, O terrible smoke,
until the messenger of mercy comes through thee!
Make clean our lips and open our hearts that we
may have a sense of mission ! Call, us, O Lord, with
an unescapable imperative until we range ourselves
with those who are forever committed to a campaign
of righteousness ; and make us comrades with those,
who like Isaiah have exchanged the fear of man for
the fear of God, and have found in the vision of
holiness a pathway to the eternal peace !

CHAPTER III

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS

Isaiah v:l; "Now will I sing to my well beloved a song of
my beloved touching his vineyard."

The measure of a people's receptivity is ability to
understand direct speech. If one has to resort to
indirect methods, it indicates either a low grade of
intelligence, or a mentality calloused by moral ec-
centricity. There was no lack of intelligence in
Judah during Isaiah's time, but all the same the
people were quite incapable of understanding direct
speech simply because they did not like to think.
It was the lament of all the prophets of those times
that God's people were perishing for lack of knowl-
edge, not because the supply of truth was limited,
but on account of the low receptivity of the nation.
God plainly told Isaiah that his preaching would
harden the people ; their eyes it would gum up, their
ears it would stop, and their understandings it would
becloud. This was not a judicial blindness for God
meant the prophet's preaching for the people's good ;
the hardening was the direct result of their mental
condition. Truth is after all more deadly than

40

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 41

falsehood, for if you determine not to receive it,
especially when you suspect that it is truth, it will
harden the mind more quickly than falsehood. God
has no respect for the swinish mind, and when such
a condition results, the only thing left is to look
to the painful logic of facts to awaken the people.

This was Isaiah's task, as indeed it was that of
his contemporaries. He was obliged to teach for
years, often by the most indirect methods, since it
was useless to make a frontal attack on the people's
ignorance, without seeing any result save the hard-
ening of the mind, and the shutting of the ej^es to
facts, so plain they seem to us that a child could
understand them.

Tv\'o facts of portentous significance distinguish
this period: one the presence of such prophets
among the people, the other the Assyrian invasion
of Palestine. Amos and Hosea in the north, Isaiah
and Micah in the south, agreed in their teaching
and met with the same rejection. Amos argued:
" Shall two walk together, except they have
agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he
hath no prey.'* . . . Surely the Lord God will do
nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His serv-
ants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will
not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but
prophesy? " The presence of men with such a
message was significant of great events impending;
yet these people remained defiant, contemptuous, and

42 THE CONSUMING FIRE

indifferent to every effort made to enlighten them.
The other fact, equally significant, was the presence
of the Assyrian in Palestine. Long before the ter-
rible armies of that ruthless foe had entered the
promised land, these prophets saw what it would
mean to the country, and they labored in and out
of season to rouse the people. Any one can see the
danger now, but they did not see it then because of
the peculiar state of their minds. And if they ap-
pear to us singularly obtuse, what shall we say of
Britain and America which persistently failed to see
anything dangerous in the military preparations of
Germany? We too had our prophets, still it is clear
that Germany took the world by surprise, and for
precisely the same reason that made both Israel and
Judah blind to the menace of Assyria.

We have then to inquire into the pre-war stage
of Judean life; we must seek an explanation of this
culpable blindness in a peculiar state of mind.
More than a century after Isaiah's time, Habakkuk
used a phrase that accurately describes it. He
called it the staleness of the years; that is, a state
of mind originating in a condition of life that had
continued for such an indefinite time as to become
familiar, customary, and routine; wherein all vital
forces had gone out of the thinking of the age, where
its habits of life and manner of thought were ac-
cepted as matters of course, in which its status in
the world was taken for granted. The result of such

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 43

a condition is that a kind of staleness comes over the
human spirit, a loss of initiative, an inability to
criticize one's self; especially the unwillingness to
change one's habits of living. This does not imply
the absence of vitality in a nation, but only that
the currents of life run in clear-cut, well defined
channels, and by refusing to seek new outlets, become
sluggish and dull of apprehension.

The practical effect of such a state of mind is to
close it to all new impressions. It becomes parochial
and provincial, the slave of tradition. Its creed is :
" As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be, world without end." If this state of mind was
characteristic of the people of Judah before the
Assyrian invasion, it was also common to the peoples
of Great Britain and America before the German
outbreak. A great, world-devastating war, men
said, w^as impossible in the enlightened twentieth
century; this was asserted, not on the ground of
careful investigation, but in obedience to certain
customary ways of thinking and feeling about our-
selves. The stale mentality of our time refused to
entertain any conception that was contrary to
custom, or disturbed our comfortable view of the
world. We measured ourselves by ourselves, and
compared ourselves with ourselves, and were simply
indifferent to any new truth that might destroy our
placid, Boeotian contentment. The attitude of
these countries towards the few enlightened men who

44 THE CONSUMING FIRE

tried to arouse them to the danger, is proof of this.
Men like Lord Roberts preached preparedness in
Great Britain for years ; the great giant was slightly
disturbed, enough perhaps, to be thoroughly angry
with her faithful servant, and then complacently
turned over and went to sleep again, until she was
thoroughly aroused by the German guns on the
Belgian frontier. Zephaniah describes this condi-
tion of mind in a trenchant criticism of his time:
God " will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish
the men that are settled on their lees ; that say in
their heart, ' The Lord will not do good, neither will
He do evil.' "

This disease was epidemic in Isaiah's time. Ma-
terial for its proof is abundant: I can only here
select certain characteristic features of the life of the
age to show what I mean, and in doing so, must
treat the problem and the prophets of Israel and
Judah together, for what Isaiah found in Judah
was common in Israel also. The great souls, stand-
ing on the frontiers of eternity, seeing only God and
His mighty ways in history, were obliged to labor
with a people so calloused by custom as to be in-
different to the facts before their eyes ; so muddled
as to the nature of God and meaning of religion
as to offer themselves to a cleansing discipline as a
parched field begs for rain.

Isaiah understood the issue of events ; the Assyrian
ax was coming to cut off superfluous growths on the

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 45

beloved vine, but before he could bring home this
tremendous truth to the calloused conscience of the
people he must awaken them to their internal
dangers; he must justify the ways of God by con-
vincing them that their social, moral, and spiritual
condition demanded a purging discipline. That he
was obliged to take indirect methods in doing this
clearly indicates the widespread epidemic of this
stale mentality, this contented dullness, which all but
proved the destruction of the chosen people.

Isaiah traced the staleness of mind to the long
peace which the Israelites had enjoyed. Until the
Assyrian advance, Palestine had never, save in one
instance, been invaded by a great world power. The
people knew nothing of world politics, nor had they
ever had experience with a mighty empire seeking
conquest by actual destruction of small nations.
They were familiar of course with war, but it was
tribal war, either with their heathen neighbors, or
with themselves. Such disturbances were familiar,
commonplace, and therefore to be taken for granted ;
because of familiarity with this sort of strife, tribal
wars were comparatively unimportant. In fact war
meant to this people, episodic conflicts of a small
and inconsequential character; of war on a great
scale they knew nothing. On this account it was
easy to ignore such things, and practically to form
their views of national and political life on a peaceful
model.

46 THE CONSUMING FIRE

We understand this sort of thing. You will re-
call how common it was a few years ago to refer
to the twentieth century as the peaceful century ;
it was frequently asserted that war among great
nations was rapidly becoming impossible; how arbi-
tration, peace conferences, and the general excellence
of human nature so highly developed under the in-
spiring forms of modern government, were soon to
make war unthinkable; yet there were certain events
that were not considered at all. There have been
many wars among civilized peoples in the past thirty
years ; they could be ignored, however, because we
could afford to take them for granted ; they were all
little wars, with which we were quite familiar, mere
colonial affairs, which did not affect the general
viewpoint. Because we were accustomed to this
type we could afford to dismiss it from our calcula-
tions. Now this was the way Judah felt about war.
Discounting tribal strife, for all intents and pur-
poses Isaiah's generation had grown up without
knowing defeat, invasion, or any of the privations
of real war.

The long peace had coincided with the reigns of
two great men whose military and constructive
genius had raised their nations to a higher standard
of external excellence than had been enjoyed by the
chosen people since Solomon's time. Uzziah in
Judah for fifty years, and Jeroboam the Second in
Israel for over forty years had dominated the

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 47

imagination and shaped the patriotic ideals of their
age. During such a long period of tranquillity,
the nations were able to live in comparative secur-
ity; men's thoughts tended to move in fixed chan-
nels, they became accustomed to certain ways of
thinking about themselves ; and as the period was
prolonged these habits fixed the character of the
age, and closed its mind to all disturbing impres-
sions.

This stale mentality was further encouraged by
another factor which coincided with the era of peace.
For more than a century Israel and Judah had
been undergoing profound and subtle changes.
This people, originally nomads, vinedressers, and
shepherds gradually developed through an agricul-
tural to a commercial stage of life. They became
aware of the natural resources of their country,
especially its singularly favorable location on the
world's greatest trade routes ; villages became towns,
towns grew into cities, and the population passed
from a rural to an urban state of life. The long
peace, under the direction of their able rulers
brought this development to a climax and ushered
in an era of great prosperity. As Isaiah remarked,
the whole land was full of silver and gold ; traders,
merchants, directors of caravans, foreign business
men, developers of infant industries, and the rapid
expansion of material interests in all directions
tended to conform the life of the times to a com-

48 THE CONSUMING FIRE

mercial mold; moreover it determined the concep-
tion of the state. The sturdy peasant of former
times disappears and the well-dressed pushful city
man takes his place. Isaiah's description of the
life of that age reminds us of our modern cities.
There are the crowded streets, the strange noises, the
fashionable processions through the highways, the
traffic in the bazaars ; and most significant, the pres-
ence here of a motley crowd of foreigners, for it is
an inevitable consequence of commercial develop-
ment that there should be a mixing of races. If
you have wares to sell you must find markets ; the
need brought Israel into the closest possible con-
tact with other nations, and this in turn caused
other nations to react in the most effectual way
upon the manners and customs of this hitherto iso-
lated people. We witness the rapid infiltration of
foreign fashions, dress and modes of living, in one
word — luxury. The old life had been rude, simple,
close to the soil ; this new life was more delicate,
refined, and complex, and of course more expen-
sive; and this developed needs of an aesthetic kind,
hitherto foreign to the Hebrew taste: for adorn-
ment, luxurious homes, and house furnishings, for
splendid equipage and lavish entertainment. In
short we see in the middle of the eighth century the
rapid transformation of the descendants of the rude
old settlers of the land into a polite society of a
strikingly modern type. This fixed the dominant

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 49

passion of the people to refine, improve, and culti-
vate the outside of life; to mold it after that of
other nations, to the neglect and inevitable corrup-
tion of the inner life. It was an age in which men
moved heaven and earth to make money, while the
women did all they could to spend it in lavish and
extravagant ways. We meet here for the first time
with the shrewd trickster in business, the parasite
woman, and the gilded follies of a smart set.
Well did Hosea describe it in a mordant epigram:
" Ephraim is a cake not turned," a state of society
divided into hostile classes, " with large appetites
and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners
and no appetites at the other," The land was full of
the extravagant pageantry of society, state and
even the church; for here too was a chance to make
religious custom conform to the expanding life and
the true religion was mixed up with much that was
foreign and false. It is true that Israel had done
this before, but never with such passionate eager-
ness and aesthetic subtlety as now. The Temple was
crowded at all hours — Temple treaders — Isaiah
called them ; there was lavish display, and much
singing and posturing; while you could hardly look
in any direction without seeing in the streets, the
soothsayer, the diviner, the priest of a foreign
superstition, or some wandering philosopher with
strange intellectual wares for sale ; while yonder on
the hills were the pillars and groves of many an

50 THE CONSUMING FIRE

obscene cult. The land was full of silver and gold;
full too of foreign idols, of men with lofty looks and
women with haughty eyes ; and everywhere the talk
was the same, of optimism, prosperity, millenniums
of glory and the golden age just ahead.

The nation was proud and stifF-necked ; it had
outward reason to be so, for was it not a great
country? Did it not have able rulers, and was it
not rich, prosperous and well groomed? There was
always something going on ; there was much noise
of the builders, the streets were crowded with traffic,
there was plenty of amusement and pleasure; above
all, plenty of religion : for was not Israel and Judah
the chosen of God? Did not Jehovah exist pri-
marily for the protection of these elect peoples?
What then should they care about the Assyrian
advance, for the ravings of an inexperienced youth
who mistook his adolescent moods for prophetic
insight? Had they not subdued Gaza, and some-
times Damascus ; and was Assyria any more danger-
ous than these? Precisely as if one had said in our
time: Did we not subdue the Boers, or Spain, and
is Germany to be feared more than these peoples?

Indeed it was a difficult task to enlighten such
people as these, whose eyes were gummed up and
whose ears were stopped because their minds were
stale. As one reads the story of Judah's social
decay, together with her appalling lack of recep-
tivity, it makes one feel as if one were looking into

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 51

a modern banquet hall after the feasters have left
it. The atmosphere of staleness is over all; the
foul stench of cigarette smoke, the sickly animal
smell of congested chambers, the paralyzing dull-
ness of the after-dinner speeches still clogging the
mind — the staleness of the years with Assyria
rolling down upon the land one hundred miles away,
and round it all to the vision of the prophet, the
blinding fire of that holy atmosphere — God !

Let us see what Isaiah and his contemporaries
thought of this condition of affairs. Take his
description of the seven-fold wickedness of the peo-
ple. There is the land-sin — the passion to add
house to house and field to field for the purpose of
acquiring an added importance in the community ;
the desire for the summer house and the winter
house ; the wish for the small farm-steading of the
sturdy peasant who is away to the wars, that 3'ou
may have an estate and call it after your name and
be one of the great of the land. Then too, there
w^as the inevitable effect of idleness — drunkenness
and dissipation. In a refined society no gentleman
will get drunk before dinner, but these near-gentle-
men of a parvenu aristocracy got drunk in the morn-
ing and remained so until late at night, using music
and dancing — that last resort of vacuous minds,
the cabaret show of modern times — to stimulate
the passion for pleasure. These people were draw-
ing iniquity with cart ropes, and in their drunken

52 THE CONSUMING FIRE

frenzy saying, " Let the Assyrian come on, that
we may see him; fetch him out that we may smash
him," and even with sodden leers winking at God
over their shoulders, as if He enjoyed the scene!
There were others who called evil good, and good
evil; the peddling dilettanti of ancient times, who
with Nietzsche-like subtlety knew how to substi-
tute cleverness for truth, preferring the making of
an obscene epigram to the doing of a decent thing:
insectiferous minds whose maggot thoughts are bred
in the tropical atmospheres of corrupt society.
There were men who made a god of prudence ; sharp
fellows on the stock exchange who knew how to get
hold of a good thing. There were judges, too, who
never gave decisions unless they were bribed, and
gossipers whose tongues ran like fire among stubble ;
whose mouths, to use Heine's phrase, were " veritable
guillotines of reputations ; who never closed their
incisive jaws that some venerable head did not fall
into the basket." And among them all, encouraging
the loose tendencies of the time, were despisers of
the word of God. Amos saw other things; men
panting after the dust on the heads of suppliants,
so land hungry were they; ready to sell the needy
for a pair of shoes, and sleeping in the house of
God on garments torn from the shivering backs of
widows, whose men had died in defense of the land.
A strangely modem world, this, my masters, and
here is a remarkable thing. The sins denounced

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 53

by the prophets are the sins of aristocrats, of the
successful of the earth. The human race may be
divided into shepherds and sheep. Most people have
to remain sheep all their lives, and God has never
been greatly concerned about their behavior. But
He has been particularly interested in the behavior
of the shepherds, the leaders of men. Christ was
interested in the doings of the sheep, and the mis-
doings of the shepherds. He praised the widow's
mite ; His parables abound in the doings of the poor ;
He talks a great deal of the least, the last, and the
lost. But when He speaks of the shepherds, the
leaders and molders of public opinion, He is con-
cerned with their misdoings ; and solemnly warns
them against the deadly sins of hardness, licentious-
ness, hypocrisy, and slackness; and these are sins
to a large extent of cultured leisure.

This point of view is common to the Bible as a
whole ; and it was this that prompted Isaiah to test
the nation's character by three types of leaders:
the rulers, the women, and the ministers of religion.

It is probably true, as Lord Palmerston observed,
that a nation gets as good a government as it de-
serves. Isaiah's time witnessed the passing of the
old-fashioned ruler, and the coming in of the push-
ful brazen type, whose only claim to notice was
founded upon success. A certain Shebna had, with
Tammany-like shrewdness, got himself elected to
the office of mayor of the palace. Nobody had

54 THE CONSUMING FIRE

ever heard of him before, nor could any one dis-
cover his family relationships. His name did not
appear in the social register of the time, but there he
was, symbol of a besotted materialism, and this
brazen, impudent creature was actually building for
himself a magnificent tomb over against the tombs
of the prophets ; so that he might achieve posthumous
fame, as well as earthly success ; and why should
he not? If success be a criterion of virtue, was he
not just as good as David? Isaiah thought not and
said to him : " God will hurl thee out of thy posi-
tion, thou great bladder of a man, and roll thee
out into the desert where thou shalt burst with a
great noise and disappear ; and in thy place He will
put a man of character. He will hammer him in,
as a nail in a strong place, but beware," said he to
that generation, " lest the children of this man hang
too much on the overburdened nail and pull it
out to their undoing." Here you see the aristoc-
racy of brass pushed out by the aristocracy of
brains, which in turn is displaced to the hurt of
the nation by the aristocracy of birth. This was
the sort of government the people were content to have.
Isaiah's criticism of the fashionable women of the
time is very pointed and just. Amos, a rough
countryman, had very severe words for the women
of Israel, calling them " fat cows of Bashan, that
are upon the mountains of Samaria," selfish to the
last degree and ready at a moment's notice for

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 55

panic. Isaiah was a cultured gentleman and his
description is more refined ; still it reads like an ac-
count of Paris fashions out of Vogue or Vanity Fair,
and what he describes you ma}^ see any spring day
on the principal streets of our American cities.
The point is, not that Isaiah condemned refinement
or personal adornment ; but that these women
thought of nothing else ; they lived in an artificial
atmosphere of vanity and futility — parasites fat-
tening upon the overstimulated sensuality of a cor-
rupt society ^- and if the mothers of Israel were to
be like this, what w^as to become of the children?
His criticisms of ministers of religion are even
more pointed. Micah with the clarity of a country-
bred mind, had cleverly described them as those who
for a tangible consideration, were ready to conse-
crate any enterprise. " Feed us," they seemed to
say, " bestow upon us riches, and we will bless your
plans," but if you by an}'^ chance should withhold
the bribe, they stood ready to call down God's curse
upon you. Isaiah, more penetratingly shows the
false prophet and priest as creatures of a corrupt
society, ready to endorse all manner of wickedness,
provided it did not interfere with their vested rights
and special privileges. Amos gives a striking pic-
ture of his encounter with Amaziah, priest of Bethel,
and the point of view of Amaziah in contrast with
that of the true prophet, throws a vivid light upon
the moral confusions of the time. Amaziah has no

56 THE CONSUMING FIRE

conception whatever of a divine mission; prophecy
with him is only a means to a good living; it has
given him a superior social position, and he resents
the intrusion of a competitor, especially this rude
countryman from Tekoa, into his private preserve.
He assures Amos that he is the minister of the first
church of Bethel, it is the king's sanctuary, let
him never forget that, and a royal house; that is,
the king had a pew in that church, came there occa-
sionally and gave it special distinction. He insists
that Amos respect the rights of the craft, return
home to Tekoa and make his living there, and come
no more to disturb Israel, meaning of course Ama-
ziah and his special privilege. To him Amos re-
plied in an immortal phrase : " I was no prophet,
neither was I a prophet's son ; but I was an herdman
and a dresser of sycamore trees ; and the Lord took
me from following the flock, and the Lord said unto
me. Go, prophesy unto my people Israel."

Such criticisms show that the real sin of Israel
and Judah was callousness of soul. They were not
grieved for the affliction of Joseph; they had
neither pity for the weak, nor sense of responsibility
to the dependent. Is it any wonder then, that Isaiah
should find it difficult to arouse them from this con-
tented stupor? Their notion of religion blinded
them to their danger. Instead of regarding God's
favor as an opportunity for righteous service of the
nation, they used it as a cloak for all manner of

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 57

wickedness. It was upon this essential hardness of
heart which Isaiah traced to their stale minds, that
he based his prediction of a coming judgment. The
moral and social condition of Judah made the As-
syrian invasion a necessity.

Again we are impressed with the modernity of all
this, for our nation in most respects has passed
through a similar stage of development. Like
Israel and Judah, we have known nothing, until
recently, of real war. Such wars as we have had
were mere colonial affairs, like that of the Revolu-
tion or with Spain. The war that has made the
deepest impression upon us, the Civil War, has left
lines of cleavage and sustained sickly sentimental-
ities it were wisest for us all soonest to forget.
We have been compelled to create a mythology
about our past, and surround our favorite heroes
with a cloud of myths and legends of an almost
supernatural gravity in order to indulge the pleasant
illusion that we have had real experiences on the
tented field.

Until quite recently, our patriotism has been sec-
tional, capable of expressing itself in episodic ways,
and usually in association with some favorite preju-
dice. The present generation grew up in an atmos-
phere of peace, unfamiliar with defeat, invasion or
any of the horrors of war. Inheriting a series of
traditions highly favorable to our self-conceit it is
not to be wondered at that we have at times been

58 THE CONSUMING FIRE

bombastic, self-assertive and full of pride. Most of
the errors about ourselves have come from this
source, notably the fixed attitude, until recently,
assumed towards entangling alliances and foreign re-
lations. We had adopted the curious delusion that
to say a thing was about the same thing as to do it ;
because for instance the Monroe Doctrine had never
been successfully challenged, we assumed that this
bulwark of the Western Hemisphere was based
squarely upon our power to sustain it; overlooking
of course the painful but salutary truth that had not
the policy of Great Britain coincided with ours, the
doctrine would have been challenged long ago. As
a leading authority on American history. Dr. Latane
has recently said: "Had Great Britain adopted
a high tariff policy and been compelled to demand
commercial concessions from Latin America by
force, the Monroe Doctrine would long since have
gone by the board and been forgotten."

This singular satisfaction with ourselves — this
fixed belief that we had the best political institu-
tions, the most deserving people, and the highest
type of civilization blinded us to our true provin-
cialism, and encouraged the growth of a parochial
phase of mind which enabled us to measure ourselves
by ourselves, and to compare ourselves with our-
selves until it was difficult to learn anything from
older and more cultured nations.

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 59

This curious obsession grew with our passing from
an agricultural to a commercial stage of life, lead-
ing as it did to an enormous increase of w^orldly
prosperity, and with it unavoidable contact with
other nations and the reaction of foreign fashions
upon the provincial point of view.

Thus has it come about that with an eager adap-
tation of our provincial society to foreign customs
we have developed a cosmopolitan life characterized
by the splendid vices and loose moralities of Euro-
pean countries, rather than by their more worthy
and desirable qualities ; and the nation has rapidly
filled up with all sorts of clever people: vagabond
philosophers hawking the rejected wares of older
civilizations ; frantic females intoxicated with
emotional vagaries ; attractive immoralists pro-
claiming a millennium of unrestrained animalism
tempered by aestheticism ; irresponsible adventurers
in the domain of the spirit, advocating political
sophistries, strange cults, and curious religions : until
it is possible to see in any large American city to-
day what Isaiah saw in Jerusalem in the eighth
century b. c.

This intense interest in the outside of life blinded
us to the essential fineness of the inner nature. It
was God's vision of the submerged fineness in Judah
that caused Him to send Assyria on her fell mis-
sion of destruction ; such an experience was needed

60 THE CONSUMING FIRE

to discover it; the gold was there, but it required a
refining fire.

Such an awakening has taken place among us ; we
have become aware of the need of closer relations
with the spiritual world, simply because we have
learned that we are spirits; unhappily just now
we are more interested in impressions than in essen-
tial reality ; still the newly discovered fineness which
has resulted from the sacrifices of the war is a great
gain. We have the truth about ourselves, and it
will grow; in spite of our superficial materialism
we know beyond doubt that the nation is idealistic.
The war has purged us of mental staleness, and men
everywhere are thinking intensely and thinking
straight.

But there is no necessary reason why we should
be a better nation as the result of the war; on the
contrary if history teaches anything, nations are
subject to violent reactions. If this is not to be
said of our nation, we must see to it that we make
full use of our great but passing opportunity; and
that opportunity essentially is neither social nor
political, but spiritual. We must rid ourselves of im-
pressionism as quickly as possible, forsake all unsafe
guides, have done with half measures ; above all we
must not fall back into the old ways of thinking
about ourselves, but have the courage to face with
bare souls, the great cleansing fires of God.

I believe we are sound at heart; I believe in our

THE STALENESS OF THE YEARS 61

capacity for true religion ; I have faith that we
shall successfully meet the great issues of the war;
but my chief ground for hope is that God loves us
enough to hurt us, and is willing to bring us through
fire and water into the large place of the soul, that
we may be fitted for His society.

We must wash our gummed-up eyes Avith the
tears of penitence that we may see; we must open
our ears to hear what may give us pain ; we must
accustom ourselves to the most searching self-exam-
ination ; we must try to understand the times until
we are freed from the tyranny of loose impres-
sions and come in contact with essential reality ; we
must be willing to leave the frail shelters which the
German ax has crushed and live in the cold but
invigorating atmosphere of God's austerity. By so
doing, we shall exchange the crude provincialism
of an earth-centered mind for the true cosmopolitan-
ism of a God-centered personality. It is by great
and terrible things that God has answered us. We
have sinned against our essential fineness — our
spirituality of nature — and it is for this that God
has sent us through the cleansing fire. Once accept
this discipline with a firm determination to see it
through, and we are brought into the spacious at-
mospheres from which the great prophet is speak-
ing; it is in returning and rest we shall be saved;
in quietness and in confidence shall our strength be.

CHAPTER IV

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD

Isaiah xxviii:13: "Therefore shall the word of the Lord be
unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line
upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little; that
they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared,
and taken."

The ruling classes in Jerusalem were at first dis-
posed to ignore the prophet's warnings, but circum-
stances soon changed their feeling into one of toler-
ant interest.

In the middle of the eighth century, b. c. Pales-
tine, after a long and prosperous peace, was drawn
into world politics by the invasion of Assyria.
After many years of preparation she began her
westward thrust in b. c. 745, with Egypt as her ob-
jective. She did not reach her goal, however, until
B. c. 672, her military activities covering a period
of seventy three years ; but during that time her
armies were almost constantly in Palestine, and only
one kingdom remained at the end that had anything
resembling independence. This was due in great
measure to the statesmanlike leadership of Isaiah.

62

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 63

Five years after the beginning of the westward
movement Isaiah was called to the prophetic office.
In the year that king Uzziah died he saw the Lord,
and became convinced of the onliness of God and the
universal scope of His providence. He believed that
sovereignty was rooted in righteousness, and by
righteousness he meant no mere static quality of
an absentee deity, but an intensely active and dy-
namic force — an atmosphere of holy fire burning
round men and nations and things. Only the real
could live in the fire.

From this notable conception he derived two of his
most effective convictions. One was that while As-
syria could do a great deal of harm to weaker na-
tions, she was doomed to destruction in the end be-
cause she was not real ; she could not live in the fire.
She was therefore just an instrument in the Divine
hand ; God's ax to carry out His disciplinary pur-
poses. This purging judgment, admittedly terrible
in its visible effect, was by virtue of his second con-
viction, really a manifestation of loving kindness to
the chosen people. Judah must go through the
fire, but she would come out of it, a refined and
beautiful thing.

Still the prophet found it almost impossible in
the beginning to rouse the nation to its danger.
The long peace, under the administration of Uzziah
had coincided with a remarkable commercial and
material expansion. The whole land was full of

64 THE CONSUMING FIRE

silver and gold, and as a consequence of luxury and
splendid vice. Moreover this development had cor-
rupted the true religion and exposed the people to
the machinations of time-serving priests and false
prophets. All classes of society were venal. This
was particularly true of the rulers and leaders of
public opinion. The upper classes were wholly dis-
inclined to take a serious view of the situation.
Isaiah's severe condemnation of the fashionable
women of the time was not based upon a dislike
of culture or outward refinement of life, but because
this rank extravagance was a symptom of a deeper
disease ; it was the sign of a shallow mind and spirit.
If the mothers of Israel were content to live for
the outside of life, and remained indifferent to its
inner soundness, what would the future he? The
glittering pageant of outward prosperity blinded
the nation to its internal dangers. Its mind was
stale and set in fixed channels ; it was incapable of
receiving instruction; its eyes were gummed up and
its ears stopped; even its notion of religion was an
additional element of weakness. Nothing short of
a terrible experience : something that would hurt and
wound, could rouse the nation to its higher mission,
for it was deliberately sinning against the light,
and in missing truth was wronging its own soul.

As has been indicated the sins denounced by the
prophet were those of the aristocrats, leaders, and
shepherds of the nation. Instead of using their ad-

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 65

vantage for the benefit of the people, they had
squandered their resources on pleasures, and were
not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. In love
with lies, terribly afraid of truth, they had become
so familiar with religious observances as to forget
the very nature of God. The condition of the whole
land was such that it called for a purging judg-
ment, as a parched field begs for rain.

Isaiah saw this coming in the Assyrian advance
upon Palestine ; how then could he awaken the people
to their danger.^ He enjoyed certain advantages
not possessed by his contemporaries. Prophets like
Amos, a rude countryman, or Micah, a native of a
provincial town, had no opportunity of mingling with
the influential classes. The people paid little atten-
tion to these rank outsiders at the time ; only when
in the midst of the terrible experiences of the As-
syrian invasion did they recall the preaching of these
unknown men. But with Isaiah it was different.
An aristocrat himself he had close contact with the
ruling classes and understood their mental attitude.
He was an associate of the king, the intimate com-
panion of princes, diplomats and soldiers, and in
full possession of the small talk of their dinner tables.
He could form an accurate estimate of their thoughts
by considering the unconscious by-play of their
minds, in conversations heard or overheard at their
social entertainments.

Moreover, in addition to his supreme endowment

66 THE CONSUMING FIRE

as a prophet, Isaiah had a mind of vast range and
power; he was a statesman of the first rank and
had a clear insight into his times. He could fore-
cast the drift of events before they ripened. More
than any of his age, he saw the essential signifi-
cance of the Assyrian advance, and consistently
held up to that generation the danger growing out
of its geographical position. Midway betw^een the
upper and nether millstone of the Nile and Mesopo-
tamian valleys he was fully alive to the fact that
Palestine must become the battleground of mutu-
ally antagonistic civilizations. Above all, he knew
the weakness of these Palestinian states, complicated
as it was by the obstinate stupidity of the rulers,
and rightly regarded the policies of his own people
as worthless.

These things being so, events developed to the
point where it was possible for him to offer sug-
gestions as to what should be done. Then, as now,
men settled many important matters around the
dinner table, and this twenty eighth chapter is an
account of what took place at one of the great state
dinners held in Jerusalem.

Certain things had happened to arouse the rulers
to their danger. The fall of the great northern
fortress at Hamath, the conquest of Damascus, the
siege of Tyre which had now been going on for two
years, and the gradual approach of Assyria to the
walls of Samaria finally forced the rulers of Jerusa-

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 67

lem to consider the possibility of a siege of their own
city also. At first the slow progress of the Assyrian
army, the immense difficulty it encountered in ham-
mering its way to the approaches of Palestine, and
the fact that revolts in Babylon required a suspen-
sion of the movement from time to time, encouraged
the people of Judah to dismiss their fears and shut
their ears to the prophet's warnings. Under such
conditions it was easy to remain contemptuous and
indifferent. But circumstances now altered this
view. Assyria's progress was slow but sure, and
the people were beginning to be afraid; they began
to speak of Assyria as an overflowing scourge, a
mighty tidal wave of death and destruction rolling
over the land. Measures must be devised for meet-
ing it someway; so the rulers had a dinner party
in Jerusalem to discuss the matter, and fortunately
for us, Isaiah was present.

An interesting side light is thrown upon their
mental condition by the means selected for the settle-
ment of so serious a matter. It is safe to say that
these people were as yet quite hopeful and opti-
mistic, otherwise they would not first have cloyed
their bodies with much eating and their brains with
much drinking before taking hold of such a prob-
lem; and yet, as Isaiah tells it, the fact is plain
that these priests, statesmen, and soldiers were drunk
before they began their discussion. It was even
so with Samaria now within three years of cap-

68 THE CONSUMING FIRE

tivity and destruction ; this shows how unfit these
men were for leadership in such a crisis.

We shall consider the measures proposed by the
rulers, Isaiah's criticisms of them, his remedy, and
their final attitude towards his advice.

Four policies were advocated round that dinner
/ table by the soldier, the merchant, the diplomat,
and the priest, respectively : fight, pay, parley, pray.
The soldier said : " Let us fight the Assyrian," and
among them all, he was the best representative of
the manhood of the nation. There was, too, some
justification of this advice because Hezekiah had
then come to the throne and had displayed some
military skill and administrative talent, among other
things he had materially improved the defensive
power of the city. The man of business said: " It
is not necessary to fight, it will disturb business too
much. It will be better for us all to bribe the As-
syrian; it is just a question of money anyway;
let us pay him a great tribute and he will pass us
by." Now this scheme had worked in the days
of Ahaz, who against Isaiah's advice, had invited
Assyria to protect him against an invasion from his
neighbors. Assyria had promptly accepted the in-
vitation and exacted an enormous tribute; which,
while it proved burdensome was regarded by the
business interests of the country as the less of two
evils. Better, they thought, to be in bondage to
Assyria than have war with their neighbors, and the

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 69

weak king was willing to have peace at any price.
The men of business now proposed to continue this
policy even though they had to increase the bribe,
rather than jeopardize the business interests of the
country by a war-like resistance of the Assyrian
thrust. The diplomat, however, was willing neither
to fight nor pay. He had another scheme and pro-
posed an alliance with Egypt. This old nation
under the leadership of a resourceful king had re-
cently taken on new life and was making a great
deal of superficial preparation for war. It seemed
quite the proper thing for Judah to ally herself with
Egypt especially as ambassadors from that country
had been in Jerusalem advocating this new thing;
and in all likelihood some were sitting at that very
table. The priest, however, was of the opinion that
nothing should be done ; it was better to let well
enough alone. Everybody knew that Judah was
under the protection of God; He had never in the
past permitted a heathen nation to destroy the
chosen people and there was no reason why they
should think so now. To assert such a possibility
was blasphemy ; besides were they not even then
living in a glorious time? Were they not prosper-
ous, cultured and religious, and did they not have
plenty of accomplished priests to guide them? Let
the people trust in God and all would be well. Such
were the views of national policy discussed between
courses at this banquet in Jerusalem.

70 THE CONSUMING FIRE

Whether he was there by invitation or not, we have
no means of knowing; but Isaiah was present and
listened patiently to all that was said; and then he
ventured to offer some criticisms of the policies pro-
posed.

To the soldier he said : " I admire your cour-
age but I cannot praise your judgment, for you
ought to know that Judah is not in a position to
meet Assyria in the open. We are a small people,
our army is accustomed only to tribal warfare, but
this Assyrian campaign is something entirely dif-
ferent. It is a movement of a first class world power,
with methods of unusual warfare and almost bound-
less resources ; our soldiers cannot successfully resist
it on any terms." To the suggestion of the business
men that the danger be met by tribute, he said:
" I am in favor of continuing the tribute promised
by Ahaz, since to withhold it will invite disaster;
but I am opposed to increasing it, for it is useless
to expect this dishonorable and truce-breaking na-
tion to keep its promises. No amount of money can
check the Assyrian's headlong passion for world
dominion; and any treaty we might make with him
would be only a " scrap of paper." As for the sug-
gestion that we make an offensive alliance with
Egypt, nothing could be more unwise. Can you not
see that Egypt even under the most favorable con-
ditions is no match for Assyria in the field? Are
you not aware that Assyria's objective is the

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 71

conquest of Egypt and that we are involved only
because we happen to be in the way of this movement?
Is it not clear to you that it is to Egypt's advan-
tage to retard the Assyrian advance as much as
possible, and that it is highly expedient for her
to use us as buffer states? You think she is strong
because she is old; you are doubtless impressed with
her feverish military activity, and the specious elo-
quence of her ambassadors ; but do not be deceived ;
the purpose of Egyptian diplomacy is to involve
us with Assyria and slow up her advance ; besides,
Egypt is a moribund nation, a blustering braggart
whose strength is to sit still. She excels in prom-
ises and seems quite capable so long as she is in-
active ; but when her armies meet those of Assyria
she will prove her utter ineffectiveness ; her strength
is to sit still, to remain inactive as long as possible ;
but when she moves she will break in pieces, and if
you fall in with this alliance you will break with
her." As for the advice of the priests he said:
" On the face of it, it is good counsel, for nothing
is so important just now as a genuine return unto
the Lord ; but can you not see that this priestly
advice carries with it no promise whatever of re-
form ; that the corruption of the nation, the rank
hypocrisy of priest and prophet, the complete sec-
ularization of religion are unmistakable evidences
of your profound ignorance of God ; and that the
fact so greatly trusted in by these false religious

72 THE CONSUMING FIRE

guides — that Judah is under the protection of
Jehovah — so far from giving you immunity from
the coming discipline, makes you tenfold more the
object of it? Because you are the Lord's chosen
people, He will punish you for all your sins. Do not
put your trust in any of these policies, for I tell
you plainly they will lead to your destruction."

" What then," asked these well fed gentlemen,
" is your remedy for these evils ? " And Isaiah an-
swered : " A real return unto God. Do you not see
that these things are coming on you because of
your wickedness? Your silver has become dross, and
your wine is mixed with water ; your princes are
rebellious, and companions of thieves ; everyone
loveth bribes, and followeth after rewards ; they
judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of
the widow come unto them. Why should ye be
stricken anymore? The whole head is sick and the
whole heart faint; from the sole of the foot even
unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds,
and bruises and putrifying sores : they have not been
closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with oint-
ment. Wash you, and make you clean, put away
the evil of your doings; learn to do well; seek judg-
ment, and relieve the oppressed. Come now, and let
us reason together, saith the Lord ; though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Your
safety lies in repentance : in returning and rest shall

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 73

ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall
your strength be ; for God has laid in Zion a chief
cornerstone, elect, tried and precious ; through you
as with no other people can He realize His righteous
purposes in the world; therefore He will not permit
Assyria to destroy a nation with such responsibility
as this. The Assyrian will do much mischief; you
will suffer loss of goods, you will be driven out of
the comfortable shelters that have proved your
spiritual undoing, into the cold clean winds of God's
austerity; but it will arouse you to the essential
fineness of your nature, which in quieter times you
have despised ; it will bring you back to holiness and
righteousness, to love and loyalty; and in these
things shall your strength be. God will burn you
with the same fire that shall ultimately destroy As-
syria; but you will come out of it a refined and beau-
tiful thing, fit for His society and ready for your
great religious mission. Do not then shrink from
this discipline like a lot of cowards, do not run from
the Hand whose very heaviness just now proves its
love; accept the discipline bravely and openly, and
3^ou will become a people worthy of Divine confi-
dence."

This was great advice and we can easily see how
wisely presented. How did they receive it.? They
rejected it with the utmost contempt on the ground
that it was childish, familiar, and commonplace.
" You speak to us," they said, " as if we were a lot

74 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of nurslings ; precept upon precept, precept upon
precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little,
and there a little ; " mere kindergarten talk. The
contemptuous monotony of this reply can best be
realized if we use Professor Whitehouse's translation :
" law on law, law on law, saw on saw, saw on saw ;
a bittie here and a bittie there."

Their objection was that instead of novel ideas
to meet an admittedly great situation the man of
God came with something that had been familiar
from childhood: a foolish suggestion about repent-
ance, and the like; religion forsooth and church
going, and prayer and faith, as if they did not know
all about this sort of thing.

Now while it is true that they were familiar with
Isaiah's words, they did not comprehend the first
.principles of what he meant ; and they missed it,
as we usually do, simply because truth had become
familiar and nothing else. Most of the fundamental
principles of life, especially those that have to do
with moral and spiritual experience are common
and familiar truths ; but they are not on that account
less important. In some ways the commonness of
a truth is the measure of its value to mankind.

Cicero remarked of the men of his time, " that
instead of trying as they ought to make themselves
strange to the familiar, they strive on the contrary
to make themselves familiar with the strange ; " and
this is a good description of the mental attitude

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 75

taken towards religious advice by the cultivated peo-
ple of Isaiah's age. They did not know what the
prophet meant by religion ; for religion to them had
come to mean, first and last, novelty, newness, ritual
and ceremony; something fresh, splendid and or-
nate.

They went among foreign peoples with a disordered
imagination and borrowed new religious customs ;
new kinds of incense and new altars, and new fangled
church decorations. There were high church and
low church and broad church notions abounding;
and new gods and goddesses from Damascus and
Tyre, and Gaza and Egypt. They patronized all
sorts of frauds : soothsayers and diviners, wandering
philosophers and unfrocked priests, and delighted
in the knavery and humbuggery that goes with a
cloyed intelligence and a besotted soul; while such
fundamentals as truth telling and cleanness of mind,
righteous dealing with neighbors and a saving sense
of the reality of God were dismissed because they
were familiar and commonplace. Dives was such a
man. He was quite familiar with Moses and the
prophets, and demanded some new thing — a man
rising from the dead — for instance as an evidence
of religious reality. Such people who perish from
excess of light, expect a private entrance to the king-
dom of heaven ; but for truth, and righteousness and
purity of soul, they have no taste, and usually dis-
miss the prophet because he is dealing with some-

76 THE CONSUMING FIRE

thing so trite and familiar that it savors of nursery
talk.

And for the moment Isaiah's hearers tried to get
rid of him and his unpleasant advice. But he came
back at them : " Very well : you do not like my
message; you reject it because you have heard it
before ; then listen : the time will soon come when God
will speak to you in another way. When you hear
the steady thump of the battering rams on your
mud walls, and the stammering tongues of a strange
and mighty people about your city — the Assyrian
at your gates, and you, in spite of your tribute and
your Egyptian alliance, in utter paralysis — then
O proud people, you will recall my words, and be-
come aware of their truth; then you will discover
the terrible realism of the commonplace and familiar,
the strange irony of God: law on law, saw on saw,
a bittie here and a bittie there ; and when you realize
it you will stumble and fall backward ; your military
policy will collapse, your diplomacy will disappoint
you and your religion will prove a refuge of lies."

Isaiah's teaching amounts to this that if men will
not learn God's will by precept, they must realize
it through bitter experience. That is why disillu-
sion plays so large a part in practical education.
The contemptuous attitude often taken towards
familiar truth, so far from indicating superior cul-
ture, is in reality a symptom of fear. It is the
habit of the coward to boast of his courage as it

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 77

is of the ignorant to brag about his knowledge. An
impressionist who is afraid to face the deeps of life
may dismiss the prophet's words, but he must reckon
eventually with the disillusioning fact. The word
of truth may stop the ears, but the commonplace
event will open them again : that is why true prophets
must wait for the vindication of history.

Twenty five years later the impressionists of Jeru-
salem were brought face to face with the disenchant-
ing fact. Assyria did everything Isaiah said she
would do. The soldiers with the aid of Arabian
mercenaries tried to meet her in the field and were
put to rout ; the business man endeavored to bribe
her: she took his money, but the treaty turned out
to be a covenant with death and hell; the diplomat
made his alliance with Egypt ; Egypt broke down
and chaos arrived on schedule time; while the priest
was among the first to abandon all hope, counsel
the people to a " riotous folly of despair " and
vanish into outer darkness. The streets of the holy
city were filled with a disorderly crowd of soldiers
without arms, of diplomats who had forgotten their
dignity, of business men without their strong boxes,
and false prophets with white faces and palsied limbs ;
while everywhere were mobs of frantic fools shout-
ing, " Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die ; "
and the great prophet looking upon it all with noble
scorn and saying: "What aileth thee now, O Ju-
dah? Hath it not come to pass even as I said? "

78 THE CONSUMING FIRE

Isaiah had insisted that some of God's most im-
portant revelations come through the medium of the
commonplace. What for instance could be more
familiar than the word " holiness," but the idea it
conveyed in the prophet's teaching was entirely new.
Holiness, to the impressionistic Hebrew meaning lit-
tle more than ceremonial purity, had to do with a
familiar ritual ; but holiness in Isaiah's teaching
meant an active, dynamic rig'hteousness — an atmos-
phere of fire, burning ceaselessly about men and
nations and things, which was the only test of
reality. This vital element stood like a curtain of
flame between Assyria and Judah ; it was the sole
guarantee of Jerusalem's inviolability; but Judah's
rulers refused to believe in it on the ground that it
was commonplace, and because they preferred the
more novel suggestions of hypocritical diplomats
and time-serving priests. There was nothing left
but to wait for the issue of events. What they re-
fused to learn from commonplace precepts, they
came to understand through commonplace experience.

In ordinary times it is the habit of impressionists
to prefer what is new or novel, to that which is
familiar. This is the peculiar vice of the cultivated
intellect. When it leaves the narrow domain of its
professional interests to range the spacious at-
mospheres of the world, it is often cursed with exces-
sive credulity. The common mind, that has not en-
joyed the doubtful advantage of a utilitarian culture

THE IRONIC REALISM OF GOD 79

is usually conservative ; it is accustomed to find vital
wisdom in the familiar facts of life. Experience
teaches it caution. But under certain conditions a
modern doctor of philosophy will believe anything.
The easiest place to develop a new cult or novel
superstition is a university campus. As a rule
modern educational methods produce trained minds
rather than disciplined personalities ; and such, for
want of something to vary the monotony of profes-
sional pursuits will often fall into the error that
Cicero condemned when he said that the disposition
of cultured men of his time was " instead of trying
as they ought to make themselves strange to the
familiar, they strove, on the contrary to render
themselves familiar with the strange."

But suppose we exchange the commonplaces of
religion for the novelties of modern skepticism, what
do we gain? We leave a w^orld wherein the familiar
is occasionally lit with the gleam of eternity ; where
commonplace experience is glorified by personal re-
lations to the living and holy God; where intellectual
progress is sanctified by reverence for a Being
whose will and ways are becoming intelligible, for
the deadly routine of general laws, or the cold com-
panionship of abstract principles, camouflaged here
and there with such vagaries as psychical research:
which leaves the soul under the malign spell of un-
known forces, and at the mercy of spook doctors,
and neurotic adventurers in the domain of the spirit.

80 THE CONSUMING FIRE

The exchange of a prophet's commonplace advice,
for the irresponsible novelties of a spiritualistic
medium is a very poor bargain ; yet this was done
by many apparently balanced minds when caught
unawares in the terrible storm of a world war.

Impressionism is responsible for the fact that Ger-
many took the world by surprise. We were so oc-
cupied with illusions about the progress of twentieth
century civilization that we could form no reason-
able estimate of what was going on. Germany's
collapse was due, in great measure, to her failure
to reckon with the constant pressure of moral forces ;
she ventured into the domain of the spirit blindly
trusting to organized materialism; and she failed
because experience, whether for nations or in-
dividuals, is always on the side of truth. Life brings
home its meaning at the last; and we shall do well,
in the reconstruction period, to give force to this
tremendous fact. The world is in an atmosphere of
fire, which determines the reality of all created
things ; it may for the moment be ignored or for-
gotten because it manifests itself in familiar ways ;
but if we are to meet successfully the responsibilities
of the present time we must learn how to make our-
selves strange to the familiar, that is to consider the
hidden significance of the ordinary processes of life,
and derive our strength and encouragement from
belief in a God whose ways are commonplace only be-
cause they are constant.

CHAPTER V

THE DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY

Isaiah x: 12: "Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when
the Lord hath performed his whole work upon Mount Zion
and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart
of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks."

In the last chapter we reviewed some of the ways by
wliich the rulers of Judah proposed to deal with the
Assja'ian, should they be so unfortunate as to fall
into his hands. Four measures were suggested:
fight, pay, parley, pray. Isaiah rejected them on
the ground that they did not meet the situation,
and proposed reliance upon the fundamental prom-
ises which God had made to the chosen people: God
had laid in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, tried and
precious ; the spiritual destiny of the world having
been entrusted to this nation, it was not the purpose
of God to permit Assj^ria to destroy its autonomy
at this time. But Judah must mend her ways and
return unto the Lord. " Come back," said the
prophet, " to the old simplicity of life and faith,
and God will sustain you."

The rulers scornfully rejected this advice on the
ground that it was familiar and commonplace ; they
denounced the prophet for treating them as if they

SI

82 THE CONSUMING FIRE

were children : precept upon precept, line upon line,
here a little and there a little, mere kindergarten
talk. The prophet reminded them that a time was
coming when God would speak to them in another
way. When they heard the strange voices of the
Assyrian host about their city, then it should be
to them : precept upon precept, line upon line ; they
should go, and fall backward, and be taken.

Such reasoning in the light of subsequent events
is quite convincing, but for the moment it did not
interest the rulers in Jerusalem, because the danger
seemed far distant. It is true that the Assyrian
was slowly but surely advancing; already he had
overrun northern Syria, taken Damascus and was
even then besieging Tyre and feeling the approaches
to Samaria; but up there in her remote mountain
fastness Jerusalem felt herself secure.

Four years later the situation had materially
changed. After a prolonged and terrible siege
Samaria had fallen. The bulk of her population
was taken away captive to Mesopotamia and her
political autonomy completely destro3^ed. The
Assyrian army intoxicated with victory now lay
only two days' march from the borders of Judah and
a little more than two days from Jerusalem itself.
It was a terrible awakening for the complacent
rulers of the city, and they feverishly began to de-
vise measures for meeting the crisis.

The most popular measures suggested were a

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 83

treaty with Assyria based on tribute, and an alliance
with Egypt. Some years previously, Ahaz had
made a treaty with Assyria for self-protection
against his northern neighbors, and, since then, the
nation had been paying an annual tribute ; many said
that the easiest way of avoiding trouble was to trust
to this agreement. Assyria must keep her covenant
promises, even though it might involve an increase in
the yearly bribe. But Isaiah had called this agree-
ment a " covenant with death and hell," Assyria was
not to be depended upon, and where her interests
were involved, the most solemn treaties were but
" scraps of paper," to be torn up at her convenience.
It is clear that this was the secret fear of the rulers,
for the more popular policy advocated was an of-
fensive alliance with Egypt; and whatever military
campaigns were determined, were made on the as-
sumption that Judah would be supported by an
Egyptian contingent. But of Egypt Isaiah had
plainly said : " She is a blustering braggart, whose
strength is to sit still." The outstanding feature
of the situation was that the rulers had no idea of
reliance upon God. The moral aspect of the crisis
made no appeal to them, neither had the prophet's
advice impressed them. They were without adequate
religious supports and their mental state was so
confused that they were incapable of understanding
or following the only man who could have led them
out of the difficultv.

84 THE CONSUMING FIRE

We turn now to consider how Isaiah faced the
crisis. All great convictions begin with visions :
first by a flash of intuition a man gains insight into
truth, then events develop intuitions into conscious
and workable convictions, which in turn may be used
to interpret a situation. This is what we see in the
notable tenth chapter.

The source of Isaiah's convictions was his
prophetic call. In the year that king Uzziah died
he saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, and by a
flash of insight, came to understand the true sov-
ereignty of the world. God alone was sovereign,
because He alone was holy. But holiness, let it
be remembered, with Isaiah was never a static
quality, but an intensely active and dynamic force;
an atmosphere of fire burning ceaselessly around
men and nations and things. Holiness being the
essence of reality, he affirmed the truth that God
controlled the policies of nations and set the bounds
to man's ambitions, because God only was real. On
this account righteousness either in a people or an
individual was the sole standard of permanence on
this planet. The prophet's criticisms of Judah's
policies were based not only on his belief that they
were foolish and ineff'ective ; but because he saw them
always in relation to the righteous purposes of
God. All the suff'erings and hardships that should
result from the Assyrian war were in Judah's case
to become disciplines ; which while austere in eff'ect,

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 85

were instinct with loving kindness. Judah was safe,
because God had committed to her the religious
future of the race; Jerusalem was inviolate at that
time, because therein Jehovah had laid the chief
cornerstone of the world's spiritual hopes.

But the holy fire which was to refine Judah was
also burning about Assyria, and if Assyria were
wholly false, as Isaiah believed she was, she was
doomed : " wherefore it shall come to pass, that when
the Lord hath performed his whole work upon
Mount Zion and Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit
of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the
glory of his high looks." From the highlands of
spiritual vision the prophet calmly awaited the de-
velopment of events. So long as Assyria was far
from the borders of Judah, the danger seemed vague
and inchoate; but now that her armies were but
two days' march from the city the situation assumed
a terrible and concrete simplicity. It was his
tremendous faith in God as active holiness that gave
the prophet the courage to meet the crisis in a truly
great way.

In a passage of immense imaginative force Isaiah
showed how easy it would be for Assyria to march to
the walls of Jerusalem. He takes his stand on his
watch tower and beholds in vision, the advance of
the invading foe, and forecasts the probable route
of the march. Palestine was a land of peculiar
topography; of deep defiles and hills, broken at the

86 THE CONSUMING FIRE

center by a great range of mountains. Jerusalem
was situated on the top of the central range, and
could be approached only through a series of ascend-
ing pathways, over which it was difficult to carry
heavy baggage, and almost impossible to manipulate
horses and chariots. On this account an attack
upon it would always be hazardous and chiefly the
work of foot soldiers. But the Assyrian was master
of a new sort of warfare, and had learned from
experience in this country, how to overcome difficul-
ties, which in the border wars of past • times, had
been Jerusalem's chief protection. Thus the holy
city had lost most of its natural defenses and lay
at the mercy of the invading foe. The route lay
through deep defiles, flanked here and there by little
towns ; while above them on the heights were watch
towers from which sentinels looked out over the
rolling country and gave warning of the enemy's
approach.

In a dramatic imaginary account the prophet de-
picts the probable route of march, and the eff^ect
it would have on the exposed countryside. You
see the Assyrian, flushed with victory, driving his
army up through the deep gorges, now and then
becoming visible as he reaches some well known pass.
Cowering like birds before the fowler are the little
villages, the people panic stricken and, fleeing with
their belongings to places of safety. He lays up
in one place his heavy baggage and moves with

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 87

greater swiftness until he is seen by the watchers
on the heights, whose fearful cries now" fill the land.
At last he is at Nob, three miles distant from the
holy city, and defiantly waves his hand at Zion,
virgin daughter of God. Do not miss the force of
this, for here Isaiah sees no defending army, no
Egyptian hosts to keep the promises made and
covenanted ; no respect for treaties on the part of
the invader. Humanly speaking, there was nothing
in the visible aspect of the case to prevent Assyria
from doing this very thing. As a matter of fact
this particular army did not invade Judah ; neither
did Sennacherib's hosts follow this route ; but so
far as Judah is concerned there was no reason why
Assyria should not have invested her capital city
also ; for it was not Judah's military strength, nor
her Egyptian alliance, but political disturbances at
home that prevented Sargon from finishing the con-
quest of the land after the fall of Samaria.

But the point of greater consequence is that
events fully justified the prophet, for when Jeru-
salem finally faced a siege, things turned out pre-
cisely as he had predicted. The soldiers, especially
the Arabian mercenaries, threw down their weapons
and fled the field ; the diplomats and foreign am-
bassadors flung aside their ofl^cial robes lest they
be taken and slain, while the city streets were filled
with frenzied crowds that could think of nothing
better to do than to give themselves up to de-

88 THE CONSUMING FIRE

bauchery and despair. The remarkable feature of
these terrible times was the courage and calmness
of the man of God; he is a striking example of his
own saying : " He that believeth shall not make
haste."

This was the impending event — a possible siege
of Jerusalem — that developed the prophet's in-
tuition of God's active holiness into a tremendous
principle for the interpretation of history. Holi-
ness became the touchstone of reality, and with it
he tested out the purposes of men and nations be-
fore the judgment seat of God.

We shall understand this more clearly if we con-
sider Assyria's view of the case. A nation's ambi-
tions are greatly influenced by its experience in war.
If reverses prevail over successes a nation will be-
come less egoistic and self-reliant; under the severe
discipline of adversity it frequently modifies its
ambitions ; but if it meet with a series of unbroken
successes, if nothing check its headlong course it
will become selfish, arrogant and reliant until it
becomes a swollen, inflated thing. Now this was
what happened to Assyria. She began her west-
ward thrust for the purpose of subjugating Egypt;
but at the outset this was a vague, inchoate dream,
without form or content. After twenty years,
however, of successful campaigning Assyria had a
great record to her credit, and her self-confidence
grew apace. " It is now in her heart," says the

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 89

prophet, " to destroy and cut off nations not a few."
The purpose of the ruthless invader has changed
from a simple conquest of nations into a determina-
tion to destroy whole peoples. Already Meso-
potamia was filling up with captives and spoil of
war. Her pride was tremendous, for she said in
her heart: " Are not my princes, all of them kings?
Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as
Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? As my hand
hath found the kingdoms of the idols whose graven
images did excel them of Jerusalem and Samaria ;
shall I not as I have done unto Samaria and her
idols, do so to Jerusalem and her idols ? " Well, why
not? She could reckon her successes in terms of
treasure, captives, and territory — in the prestige
of a terrible name — and it was an added element in
her satisfaction to believe that in subduing peoples,
she also conquered their gods. All this is fully in
accord with the boastful inscriptions found on As-
syrian monuments of the period. Sennacherib
speaks of shutting up Hezekiah in Jerusalem as a
bird in a cage ; he boasts of overpowering him by
the might of his magnificence ; and this is a demon-
stration of the truth that the nation is basing its
hopes of permanence and importance, upon brute
force and material efficiency, and nothing else.

So far as I know, no nation since those times
has so strikingly followed the Assyrian model, or
believed in the Assyrian creed of material efficiency

90 THE CONSUMING FIRE

as autocratic Germany. Aware as we are of the
collapse of both nations before the power of spiritual
reality, it were easy to confess the futility of such
a creed; but to the nations standing immediately
in front of this tremendous force, listening to these
boastings and beholding the awful effects of these
arrogant policies on weaker peoples the situation
would have another aspect. There is a terrible
plausibility about visible successes, for outwardly
Assyria had done all that she claimed to have done.
She could not be beaten in the field, and the whole
world knew it. She had gained results ; her gains
were actual and visible, but were they real? Could
she hold on to them, when she came in touch with
moral reality? It was difficult for the oppressed
and spiritually destitute nations that lay directly
in her path to think otherwise. As her policies
rapidly took form it was difficult indeed for the
people of Judah to resist raising the question : Was
Jehovah the true sovereign of the world? Was He
real? and did He control events? If so what was
the reason for delay in punishing the wicked and
vindicating the righteous? Thus men felt during
the great war when they saw Germany standing
with ensanguined feet upon the fairest lands of
Europe. They asked a question that must be
answered : Is righteousness in control of the world ;
can a spiritual view of life's values be maintained
in face of material successes?

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 91

Such questions are fully answered, neither by the
conflict of visible forces, nor by the arrangements
of statesmen and diplomats. What is required for
the adequate understanding of such problems is to
match visible forces with invisible ; to bring material
actuality, measured by captives, spoil and terri-
tory into contact with moral reality through the
medium of a tremendous truth — which Judah had
at first despised and then forgotten — and this
truth could not appear efl'ectively among visible
events until it had been born in the human heart.
In other words it must first develop in human con-
sciousness as a mighty faith before it can become
the assessor of events on the field of history. Judah
at present, was without religious supports ; she did
not understand her experience because she knew
nothing of spiritual realit}^ ; but Isaiah did know —
that is the significance of this great chapter.

We have become so familiar with the prophet's
conception of God that we need only note how he
applied it to the present situation. His funda-
mental doctrine of God's active holiness enables us
to understand what he means by reality. Reality
was what could live in the fire. If there were but a
little of this in a nation the hardships it might ex-
perience would develop it into more harmonious rela-
tions with the supreme reality which conditioned all
life; if on the contrary the whole nation were false,
then it was doomed. Military reverses or social dis-

92 THE CONSUMING FIRE

orders might determine the external aspect of the
disaster, but its essence would be fixed by its inner
unsoundness; it would perish because it could not
survive the ordeal by fire. Everybody was much
occupied at this time with actual events; with visi-
bilities of one sort and another; and to the natural
mind the balance was greatly in favor of Assyria;
but according to the inspired vision of Isaiah reality
would be what remained when the fires of God's
righteous judgment passed over it.

From this fundamental doctrine Isaiah developed
two principles which underly his teaching about
providence. First he affirmed that God alone must
control events simply because He was real; He
directs the policies of nations in accord with His
own will. The prophet called Assyria God's ax.
Now an ax is a thing, and remains a thing to the
end; its use is always determined by the intelligence
that wields it. Could anything more properly
classify that proud complex of atheistic arrogance
and brute force making up Assyria than to describe
her as God's thing? Secondly, the prophet taught
that God's providence has two purposes : one of
judgment, the other of moral discipline. He be-
lieved that the Assyrian war was a conflict between
organized selfishness and moral principle. So soon
as God had finished with Assyria, He would punish
her for her wickedness ; on the other hand while the
prophet knew that the moral principle which was

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 93

slowly but surely bringing Assyria to the judg-
ment seat did not reside in Judah, he believed that
the spiritual responsibilities which had been placed
on the chosen people were the guarantee of their
survival. God had chosen Judah for the spiritual
advantage of the future. On this account he could
but regard the sufferings of the Assyrian campaign
in the light of disciplinary mercies ; and see in the
terrible actualities of the time evidences of loving
kindness. The hardships were real of course ; they
had to be if discipline was to be effective. They
were, moreover, justified because Judah was ignorant
of her spiritual responsibilities. She still clung to
the old tribal idea of a deity that could be placated
with animal sacrifices, pleased with ornate cere-
monies, and cajoled and befooled at will. She must
pass through the fires of God in order to know His
nature and power ; she must be made to realize the
Divine sovereignty by a fresh apprehension of holi-
ness and grace. What Isaiah had gained in knowl-
edge of God from his prophetic call, and matured
into a spiritually uplifting conviction through years
of loneliness and isolation, Judah must experience
through a refining and purging discipline.

Such convictions enabled the prophet, in the
hour of her greatest triumphs, to predict the fall
of Assyria ; upon them he based his faith that As-
syria was not only limited in the scope of her am-
bitions, but also doomed to certain destruction be-

94 THE CONSUMING FIRE

cause she was in conflict with the righteousness of
God.

In this notable utterance the prophet pronounced
the failure of every form of material efficiency when-
ever it comes into conflict with moral reality. Effi-
ciency is mere deadness in the hands of God ; like the
mole it works blindly without any idea of its goal;
but moral reality — that which can live in the tre-
mendous fires which burn around the earth — is
vital, self-conscious and self-determining because it
is inspired by communion with the living God.

Such faith as this has an important bearing on
the present world situation, for one of our clearest
convictions is that the great war was a trial of
strength between material efficiency and moral real-
ity; the same issues were at stake and the inevitable
result has been accomplished.

Germany in most aspects of her life, especially in
her military policy and political ambitions has been
the legitimate successor in the modern world of
ancient Assyria. Her faith in destiny was founded
on organized force, thinly disguised by a series of
mistaken political and religious ideals ; her idealism
in fact was ever the bondservant of her material-
ism. She stood in our day in place of Assyria,
and performed the same disciplinary service for
modern peoples that Assyria rendered to the nations
of Palestine.

Great outbreaks like the war may be occasioned

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 95

by events, but they are caused by the explosive
force of ideas which grow up within the traditions of
a nation. The political philosophy of autocratic
Germany was based on a very simple principle,
namely that the individual exists solely for the well
being of the state. From this naturally developed
such ideas as that the end of the state is power ;
that weakness in the state is the unpardonable sin,
in Treitschke's phrase " the sin against the Holy
Ghost of politics." It was a system of pure egoism ;
the people of that country were taught to believe
tb.at implicit and unreasoning obedience of the state
is the highest duty of the subject; that war is the
normal expression of the state's vitality, and that
small states by reason of their weakness have no
right to exist.

Germany's confidence in her political philosophy
w^as sustained by two things : obvious material effi-
ciency and a false theory of divine providence, and
both conceptions were encouraged and at the same
time falsified by her military successes. As noticed
above the aims of a nation will be determined in
large measure by its history and traditions ; and the
political traditions of the Teutonic peoples seem to
have predestined them to tread in the dangerous
path of world dominion, until they confronted the
righteous indignation of the civilized world.

The phrase, " Germany over all " expressed at the
outset of the war a vague and inchoate dream;

96 THE CONSUMING FIRE

but early military successes served to enlarge it,
and give it a concrete meaning, until she stood in
the same relation to modern peoples as Assyria did
towards the nations in Palestine. She no longer
made war on particular nations but upon whole
peoples ; until her aim was to destroy the autonomy
and influence of Latin and Anglo-Saxon civilization.
The issue between the contending forces was sharp-
ened to the simplest terms. It was nothing less than
this : Which civilization was to dominate the world?
Was it to be one based upon the machine or upon
the mind.f^ Was organized and enlightened self-
interest or moral reality to become the goal of the
race.? And this was precisely the same issue at
stake on the hills of Palestine in the eighth century
before Christ.

Germany supported her political ambitions by a
false religious philosophy. The root principle of
this, the most pernicious form of pragmatism, was
that God was obliged to follow the lines of a nation's
development. Germany took it for granted that a
nation's destiny being determined by its successful
exploitation of other peoples, fixed unalterably the
ways of providence; God must always be on the side
of the strongest nation, for was not the survival of
the fittest one of the laws of nature? And if of
nature, why not also of nations ? That God was the
supporter of the successful nation has been one of
Germany's fixed obsessions; in fact the morality of

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 97

a nation was always determined by its successes.
If a nation could conquer other nations, exploit
peoples and take territory, this demonstrated the
truth that God was with her. In precisely the same
fashion Assyria reasoned : " Is not Calno as Car-
ohemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria
as Damascus? As my hand hath found the king-
doms of the idols, whose graven images did excel
them of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall I not as I
have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to
Jerusalem and her idols? " As Assyria, encouraged
by her military successes felt that she could afford
to ignore the moral principles of other nations, so
Germany took the position that she could discard
and offend against the standards of political mor-
ality which hitherto had characterized civilized peo-
ples ; and that too not only because she believed
herself successful in the field, but also because she
believed that her successes were signs of Divine
favor. " Onward with God," was the Kaiser's cry ;
but there was nothing in this German god that re-
sembled the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ ; but rather something like an old pagan
deity with a hammer in his hand. The misguided
people believed profoundly in this peculiar product
of Germanic theological genius, and therein lay their
doom.

The hostile attitude towards Christianity taken
by such philosophers as Nietzsche was due in great

98 THE CONSUMING FIRE

measure to the fact that Christianity is favorable
to democracy ; the fierce denunciation of the doc-
trine of survival of the unfit, whom he contemptu-
ously called the " botched of mankind," through re-
deeming love, and the defiant assertion that Chris-
tianity must be destroyed in order that democracy
might fail are illustrations of a machine civilization
coming into deadly conflict with a civilization
founded on the mind. After all the most important
issue that has been decided by the war is that the
society of the future shall rest not on matter but on
mind, not on material efficiency but on moral reality.
The stunting effect of this egoistic system on the
masses of the people is sufficient to discredit it.
In military text books designed for the training
of officers, careful instructions are given for " smash-
ing the spiritual life of the common soldier." He
must be trained in a different code of morals from
that to which as a private subject, he has been
accustomed. When he enlists he becomes a unit in
a machine; he must learn to do things that are re-
volting to human nature, that offend the conscience
and is justified in doing them because the state,
a part of which organization he is, can do no wrong.
This is efficiency at its maximum power — a system
that turns man into a thing, because it is designed
to take out of the individual all autonomous
thought and feeling such as sympathy for the dis-
tressed, pity for the weak, and kindness toward the

DOOM OF MATERIAL EFFICIENCY 99

dependent. It makes might the sole test of morals,
and weakness the only sin ; it turns a man into a
thing of brawn and callousness and sends him out on
a mission of frightfulness. This killing of babies,
violation of helpless women, bombing of hospitals,
destruction of churches, and ruthless disregard of
the sacred rights of mankind, what has this been
but a riotous outbreak of depersonalized things,
manipulated by the powers of darkness in high
places ?

The policy of turning men into things has had a
twofold effect on the German character. In the
first place it destroyed the personal autonomy of
the individual, and this, in my judgment, is the
greatest of crimes.

" Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
The reverence living in the minds of men."

For if it be a more culpable thing to destroy the
sanity of the mind than to injure the body, what
can be said of a political system that destroys the
moral autonomy of the soul! It is a terrible thing
we have seen, my masters, this destruction of the
human personality ; and the hour of Germany's doom
struck when those things she had made of her sub-
jects were by an imperious necessity made to think;
and the product of such thinking we now see, when a
whole people, not with unrestrained passion, but
with keen intelligence sustained by the memory of an

100 THE CONSUMING FIRE

age-long wrong, have turned upon the iniquitous
system and consigned it to deserved oblivion. It
means that no government can exist, or will be per-
mitted to exist, in the future that interferes with the
normal development of the human personality.

The second consequence of the system was to
make cowards of men. This is shown by the fact
that Germany believed she could break the morale
of the Allies by a policy of frightfulness ; and faith
in this method was sustained by the feeling that such
a policy would be quite successful with her people;
and was not fear of invasion a potent reason why
she was so eager to bring the struggle to a close,
even when she knew that she could expect nothing
but drastic terms from her justly indignant oppo-
nents ?

Efficiency was doomed, not only because it was
in conflict with moral reality, but also because it
violated the sacred rights of human personality.
The civilization that shall issue from the war will
be based upon the mind; it will give the fullest
possible opportunities to the individual; and if it
can adjust itself to the spiritual implications of the
great struggle, it will through its very hardships
and losses have attained to finer quality; and be
better fitted to live in the tremendous fires of holi-
ness which are burning round this planet, and which
in the end must determine for all nations and peoples
the nature of reality.

CHAPTER VI

THE REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH

Isaiah xxviii:16; xxx:15: "Thus saith the Lord God, Be-
hold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a
precious cornerstone, of sure foundation: he that believeth shall
not make haste. ... In returning and rest shall ye be saved;
in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength."

In the last chapter we saw how Isaiah met the crisis
which arose in Judah through the fall of Samaria.
Humanly speaking, there was no reason why Sargon
should not have taken Jerusalem also ; but domestic
troubles called him home, and the siege was post-
poned for twenty years.

Before taking up the interesting series of prophe-
cies concerned with the deliverance of Jerusalem,
we must pay some attention to Isaiah's method of
dealing with the godly people in Judah. So far we
have been taken up with the destructive phase of the
story : the successful advance of Assyria through
Palestine ; the ineffective policies of the rulers to
check it; and the disordered social life of the peo-
ple. We have touched but lightl}^ upon the con-
structive aspect of the story. Now the destructive
forces of life are usually the noisy forces, which

101

102 THE CONSUMING FIRE

seems to justify Carlyle's remark that history " is
not the record of the doings, but of the misdoings
of men." Human nature is more interested in de-
struction than in construction, for it is easier to pull
down than to build up ; and while our study so far
has satisfied this Adamic instinct, still a too pro-
longed reflection on the destructive phases of the
time is apt to leave one discouraged. It raises the
question: Were all the people of Judah in this evil
case? Were there no devout and holy folk there,
who while suffering with the guilty, had no word of
consolation or of encouragement from the great
prophet .P We turn to this more attractive side of
the story in this chapter.

Isaiah had a band of disciples, to which in appeal-
ing asides and little artless remarks as he goes
along, he gave most helpful messages. Good people
can always be found in Zion, since God never leaves
Himself without witness ; and it was on account of
the godly element in Judah that we have some of the
most beautiful and important teachings of the
prophet.

Let us for a moment recall the three convictions of
Isaiah, which determined the character of his message
and the consistency of his predictions throughout
that terrible time. First he fully understood the
nature of the Assyrian advance. Long before the
politicians realized what was coming he saw in
vision the desolation of the land. He held no illu-

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 103

sions concerning the power or intentions of that
ruthless foe ; she was well nigh irresistible, and her
campaigns would work havoc in the whole region
of Palestine. Secondly, he as fully comprehended
the incapacity of the nations called upon to dis-
pute the sovereignty of the land with the invader.
The}^ were " stumps of smoking fire-brands "
without diplomatic or military leadership, devoid
of faith in God and entirely at the mercy of im-
pressionists who wanted to follow the easiest way.
None of their policies were adequate, for " the
bed was shorter than that a man could stretch him-
self on it, and the covering narrower than that he
could wrap himself in it." The most dangerous
polic}^ of all — that of alliance with Egypt, the
blustering braggart whose strength was to sit still
— was growing in popularity and destined to lead
Judah into a trap, from which the mercy of God
alone could deliver her. Isaiah knew perfectly well
what would ha])pen as soon as Ass^^ria invested the
capital. The nation would break under the strain,
the people lose heart, and the situation would be-
come intolerable. There were others in Zion that
saw this, and they were among the best people
of the land ; and as Isaiah's ministry grew in im-
portance he devoted increasing attention to this
class ; and opposed to the hopeless aspect of the
case a third great conviction, that Jerusalem was
inviolate at that time. There was a reason why God

104 THE CONSUMING FIRE

was not ready to abandon her to her enemies. The
times were serious ; the nation was to be sifted as
v/heat; but all through destruction Isaiah saw con-
struction at work. The great fire of holiness was
already consuming unreality; but the fire that was
to destroy Assyria would eventually reveal in Zion
an indestructible element. The godly would come
out of it refined like gold. The great prophet does
not take a small view of spiritual results. He calls
the godly element in Zion a remnant, but it is a
word of quality, it stands for God's finest product;
and in all his passionate denunciations of the pre-
vailing follies of the time he never permits himself
to forget the needs of this holy and believing people.
At this stage he could not deliver all of his message.
Not until the actual trial and deliverance, twenty
years later, could he open his mind without reserve;
but as the Assyrian with relentless precision ad-
vanced through the land ; as one after another of the
popular measures failed to avert the crisis, the
prophet found occasion to speak home to the heart
of the believing remnant. His message is essentially
taken up with the present inviolability of Jerusalem,
and the advent, be it soon or late of a great spiritual
leader. His Messianic prophecies were developed in
connection with the peculiar needs of the spiritual
element. We shall have occasion to consider them
in a subsequent chapter ; here we are concerned with
the first of the great conceptions.

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 105

Isaiah had a reason for believing that God would
not permit Assyria to destroy Jerusalem at this
time. It was the dwelling place of the Holy One;
it was the home of the spiritually alert; the time
had not yet come to lead them forth on that greater
adventure known as the Bab^^onian captivity ; still
the devout people were well aware of the possibility
of dispersion. Was not Samaria even then desolate?
Were not the people of Northern Israel scattered
abroad in Mesopotamia? Should this happen to
them what would become of their spiritual hopes ?

Isaiah met this legitimate demand in a truly great
way. In advance of events, and in face of a hope-
less outlook he proclaimed the inviolability of the
holy city with a confidence born of a faith whose
spiritual passion was sustained at all points by pro-
found and reasonable conviction. God had laid in
Zion, a chief cornerstone, elect, tried, and precious.
In spite of her unworthiness Judah was the chosen
of the Almighty, elect unto a certain mission,
and the spiritual hopes of the world depended upon
her continuance as an independent nation. Assyria,
ambitious for world dominion ; Phoenicia whose
sordid imagination embraced the commercial oppor-
tunities of the sea ; and Egypt, dreaming on her hot
Nile sands had been passed over; and Divine provi-
dence had selected this insignificant remnant of a
slave people to deliver the world from spiritual bond-
age.

106 THE CONSUMING FIRE

It was Germany's habit, during the war, to justify
her ruthless disregard of the rights of weaker peo-
ples on the ground that the world had gained little
or nothing from the influence of small nations. This
however is contrary to fact. That rare culture
which like a volatile essence has spread its sweet-
ness over the earth ; that conception of ordered
liberty which is the foundation of modern democra-
cies ; and the religion that has created and sustained
the altruistic purposes of enlightened civilization in
the greatest of moral struggles — all came from
small nations ; while those huge masses of conceit,
arrogance and egoism known as mighty empires, are
now but piles of archeological debris, the study
of whose dusty records affords employment for
sleepy old gentlemen, who dream away their lives
in the cloistered seclusion of the university
campus.

The inviolability of Jerusalem was based upon the
religious destiny of Judah. The other side of this
great affirmation was the Divine intention of check-
ing and controlling Assyrian ambition. Somewhere,
and somehow, he does not specify, God would stop
the advancing hosts. " He will punish the fruit of
the stout heart of the king of Assyria and the glory
of his high looks." On this ground Isaiah made
his great appeal to the godly remnant. Let them
trust in the fact ; let them not be dismayed because
their leaders had no policy ; the situation was not

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 107

in their hands, but in God's, and sooner or later He
would vindicate them.

It was an unstable time. The feverish prepara-
tions, foolish arrangements and abortive remedies
devised by the rulers would avail nothing. Judah
was like a silly dove, fussed and excited; in a word,
full of haste and waste; but said the prophet:
he that believeth shall not make haste ; he shall never
be in a hurry. Over and over again he rings the
changes on the great words : in returning from all
these foolish measures and in rest upon the promises
of the eternal God shall ye be safe ; in quietness and
in confidence shall be your strength. The godly are
urged not to be dismayed by the popular clamor.
" Fear not their fear," said he, " nor trust in their
preparations, but put your confidence in the Holy
One and He shall deliver you."

The essence of his message was : the repose of a
settled faith. He urges his generation to examine
its life, acquaint itself with its spiritual responsi-
bilities, to think through the times to a real and
abiding peace: in Zion is laid a chief cornerstone,
elect, tried, and precious : he that believeth shall
not make haste.

History has abundantly fulfilled this prediction.
From the middle of the eighth century b. c. Jeru-
salem was in the hands of one after another of great
empires : — Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and
Rome ; and although the Jewish people passed

108 THE CONSUMING FIRE

through many vicissitudes, they were able to sus-
tain their spiritual supremacy until they had finished
their mission, and given Christ to the world.
Throughout that long period of discipline the holy
Jews could have joined in the song of Ben Ezra:

" God spoke, and gave us the word to keep.
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
'Mid a faithless world — at watch and ward,
Till Christ at the end relieve our guard."

When Christ fulfilled the Jewish mission, the na-
tion was no longer important; but during the long
period of preparation for the Lord's coming the
people never lost their spiritual supremacy.

Isaiah v/as very frank with his generation. He
tells the godly people that they must get ready
for more serious trials, for the time is set for a
consummation, but the end of it all shall be a stable
peace. The overflowing Assyrian scourge shall
make way for overflowing righteousness ; but this
deeper experience is possible only through a real
knowledge of the character and purposes of God.

We recall Isaiah's ruling conception of holiness
as an active force. The unreality of his times ap-
palled him. Assyria was hopelessly involved be-
cause she did not understand the meaning of her
successes. Setting out as she thought to overcome
the world, it turned out that God was using her as
a means for chastising Judah. She was simply the
unintelligent agent in a scheme of vast import.

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 109

Judah was unreal too ; anybody could see that : but
underneath the accumulated rubbish there was some-
thing fine, and beautiful and ideal ; a capacity for
spiritual experience and heroic devotion unsuspected
in the Laodicean days of the long peace.

The hopeful element was the godly remnant ; but
its trouble just now was mental distress due to the
anxieties of the time; for no matter how much faith
one has, it is exceedingly difficult to live in harmony
with it, when you have no confidence in your rulers,
when you know the instability of the social organi-
zation, and especially when your country is threat-
ened with invasion by a cruel and ruthless foe.
What is wanted is not simply faith, but ideas which
sustain faith with reasonable convictions, and afford
one the opportunity of understanding the signifi-
cance of events.

Isaiah laid down the proposition that a long disci-
pline was needed to fit the nation for its religious
mission, and urged the righteous to have faith in
God; but he sought to put behind their faith the
clarity and courage of rich and deep convictions ;
not only that they might understand God, but also be
able to discern the signs of the times. His aim was
not simply to proclaim a faith, but to propagate it
through the medium of great ideas about God. He
built up his theology around three conceptions,
which the times were capable of illustrating: God
is wise, God is austere, and God is kind ; conceptions

110 THE CONSUMING FIRE

which will be seen to underly a valid knowledge of
God to-day.

God is wise, but what do we mean by wisdom?
It is not, as many suppose, the mere possession of
knowledge, but ability to use knowledge for some
practical purpose. Wisdom is active knowledge,
working towards constructive ends ; and on that
account is often present in the most commonplace
affairs of life; its voice is heard on the street cor-
ners and men ignore it because it is so familiar.
Isaiah's world was filled with conversation about or-
ganization, efficiency, and diplomatic arrangements.
Such novelties as treaties based on tribute, Egyptian
alliances and the like were called wisdom by the rul-
ers ; while the prophet's pointed advice was scornfully
rejected because it was familiar and commonplace.
His hearers overlooked the fact that because wis-
dom consistently works towards certain very practi-
cal ends, it must of necessity soon lose all character
of novelty ; it is not on that account however unim-
portant; in fact the commonness of a truth may
be the measure of its value to mankind. That is
why Isaiah insisted that God also was wise; He too
had His plans about things ; as a wise man sees
his objective and proceeds by the most direct route
to it, so were events rapidly moving towards a Divine
consummation.

It is very easy to believe the abstract doctrine that

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 111

God is wise; but in practice it is very difficult to
believe in it. Science has compelled us to accept
its canon of order for the natural world ; but we are
still disinclined to its vigorous application to the
affairs of the soul; not through lack of evidence,
but simply because the natural man is indisposed
to live in such a world. We prefer to believe in a
Deity who works by fits and starts — a haphazard
God, who touches life in episodic wa^'s, by signs and
wonders of one sort or another. We confess our
preference for this haphazard Deity whenever we
act on the supposition that God can be influenced
by ceremonies and ritual performances. The people
of Jerusalem were great church goers ; they offered
praise and sacrifice, according to the most approved
conventions, but their interest in God was occa-
sional and external. They were quite willing to
offer bribes in order that He might overlook their
misdoings. But such a conception will always break
down when it meets a first class test ; and when the
Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold the faith
of Judah gave way ; the rulers could see nothing
but dire disaster, haphazard mischief running loose,
and could meet it only with what they called wisdom :
some suggestion of tribute or alliance with Egypt.
It was their preference for such haphazard concep-
tions that led to the rejection of Isaiah's advice;
it was highly offensive because it was a sane plea

112 THE CONSUMING FIRE

to seek salvation in the orderly processes of life,
rather than in some novel scheme devised by drunken
diplomats or time-serving priests.

In face of this, the prophet pressed home to the
heart of his generation the truth that God was wise,
ruling the world according to a plan both constant
and consistent; and which could be understood by
any who would take the trouble to consider the
common experiences of life.

The tribal notion of a Deity wedded to a land of
a certain people had degenerated into a belief that
God could be compelled to walk in a path of man's
devising. The false prophets had affirmed that God
must care for Judah no matter what its moral con-
dition might be. The Assyrian also held this perni-
cious doctrine and imagined that in overcoming na-
tions, he was also conquering their gods. And it
is just possible that some of the devout people were
influenced by this view. It lay in the mind as a
formless doubt, it tormented the heart as an inchoate
fear, for the course of events — the plausible secu-
larities of the time — such as Assyrian success and
Judah's prostration gave force to the notion. But
to this Isaiah opposed his great idea of order.
God's control of this movement would be demon-
strated in the course of time ; Judah needed a whole-
some discipline, but she would emerge from it a
finer and holier people. God had summoned As-
syria, the " rod of His anger " to do a certain

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH US

work; when that work was consummated He would
break the rod and burn it in the fires of His holiness.
The terrible flood of visibilities then rolling over the
land was of Jehovah's devising; in His own good
time, He would check it.

He urged the devout people to associate this
visitation with their spiritual hopes. Fear not their
fear, nor be moved by their anxieties ; but break with
the impressionism of the time and base your faith in
the future on the stately orderliness of providence ;
for the Divine will is discoverable in experience, and
eventually will become manifest on the field of his-
tory when His righteous purposes are accomplished.

God is austere. The hardships of the Assyrian
campaign could not be ignored. The innocent were
suffering with the guilty, and righteousness did not
give one immunity from physical discomfort or loss
of goods. Personal liberty and life itself were en-
dangered: what could be said of this? If God con-
trolled the world and was mercifully inclined
towards His people, why do the righteous suffer?

This problem was not as acute then as it became
later, when through the long discipline of the Baby-
lonian captivity the Jew gained an enlarged sense of
personal significance ; still it was serious enough, and
Isaiah met it with the teaching that God's methods
must sometimes be painful. Suffering offered no
problem for the guilty, but for the devout Jew it
was a very serious matter ; and Isaiah's teaching an-

114 THE CONSUMING FIRE

ticipates that of Jesus : " Every branch in me that
beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth
more fruit." This strange work of God is seen in
all ages. Under trial the good become better ; some-
times a whole nation like our own will through the
hardships of war cast off its materialism and be-
come fully conscious of its idealistic spirit; the
processes are always painful, but the consequences
are beyond question beneficial.

The purpose of this painful experience according
to the prophet was a closer intimacy with God. He
taught the truth in principle that without the shed-
ding of blood there can be no remission of anything.
This truth of atonement — the basic principle of
Christianity — cannot be learned out of a book, but
must be evolved from actual experience. If there
had been no unmerited sufferings in the prophet's
age, there had been no fifty third chapter of Isaiah.

Pain is the great quickener of the soul ; from it as
from no other teacher do we learn the sacramental
character of life. We are beginning to think vitally
again about the atonement of Christ, because the war
brought the opportunity to large masses of people
of becoming aware of the awakening character of
sacrifice. Our sons have shown us Christ ; as they
shed their blood to put away the German evil, so
has Christ through His atonement put away our
sins and made us fit to become the sons of God. One
of the great gains of the war has been the calling

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 115

forth of a spirit of sacrifice which has enabled us
the better to comprehend the death of Jesus Christ.

This is the meaning of the Divine austerity ; the
permanent gains of life come to us through suffering.
We forget our pleasures quickly but our pains we
remember forever ; and it was because Isaiah saw
Jehovah's orderly purposes manifesting themselves
through pain, that he was enabled to say a third
thing about God.

God is kind. The object of painful experience is
to bring man into closer intimacy with the parent
source of life. Like a mother bird, hovering over
Jerusalem — that is Isaiah's conception of loving
kindness. Suffering was not punishment, neither was
it limited to discipline ; its final purpose was com-
munion with the eternal in the deepest experiences of
the Divine life ; for suffering for others is the very life
of God ; and perfect communion with Him is possible
only through a like experience.

This is a profound truth, slowly developed by
the prophets, and fully expressed in the atoning
mercy of our Lord: but I wonder if we have yet
realized it.^* Discipline, even for the best and most
obedient, is a sorry business, unless it yield some
kind of fruit. If discipline is to be acceptable, we
much pass through it to some sort of fellowship,
since what is wanted by the heavy laden spirit is
encouragement. Not suffering of itself, but suffer-
ing without explanation, in loneliness and isolation,

116 THE CONSUMING FIRE

which seems to yield no fruit — that is the real prob-
lem of life. It was then, it is now. Discipline is
and remains under all explanations, a hard word;
for it stands at best for resignation towards a uni-
verse you do not understand. What man requires
is to believe that the universe is friendly, that its
most austere processes are instinct with kindness ;
and that is what we get here. Grant that suffering
has meaning, that it has been and always will be the
royal road to Divine intimacy, and we may accept
it and bear it with a sort of enthusiasm ; and this is
Isaiah's argument: and most beautifully does he
illustrate it at the end of the twenty eighth chapter.

The farmer does not always plow ; when the ground
is ready he plants the seed, and when the harvest
comes, he deals with each growth according to its
nature. He does not thresh the fitches with a thresh-
ing instrument lest he bruise them; neither does he
turn a cart wheel over the cummin lest he crush it;
but he beats out the one with a staff and the other
with a rod. So is it with God. His wisdom is
austere, but its issue is loving kindness : " He know-
eth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust."
Thus Isaiah appealed to the righteous in his day.
He urged them to believe in God in face of an austere
situation because He was both wise and merciful ;
and his message is valid for our time.

The common defect of life before the great war
was a partial view of God. Science had given us

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 117

a positive conception of order in the natural world;
its method was adopted for the study of religious
and social problems; but we have been unwilling to
vigorously apply the concept to the individual life,
or accept it as a sanction for private conduct.

We have thought of God too much from the point
of view of theory. He was a dogma written in a
book, to be disputed about, analyzed and developed
into a philosophy barren of practical value. To
many He was little more than a departmental Deity,
presiding over some restricted domain of life. He
was interested only in what men wanted done: to
one He was a zealot for temperance, to another for
political reform or social service. Some nations like
that of Germany, regarded Him as a tribal Deity,
concerned with the development of a particular peo-
ple; while many simply took Him for granted and
thought no more about it. To the man in the street,
the traditional notion of religion often seemed little
more than a belief in a haphazard Deity, revealing
Himself in the form of interference with human
progress, or touching life only in episodic ways.
But of God's holiness — that tremendous fire which
burns round this planet, and determines the meaning
of reality for men and nations, we have thought
but little. Life was settling on its lees ; the mind was
becoming stale and dull, in religious matters in-
capable of moving out of fixed channels ; we measured
ourselves by ourselves, and compared ourselves with

118 THE CONSUMING FIRE

ourselves and were quite unwilling to take an im-
partial view.

Then came the war and we gradually awoke to
reality ; we became aware of the monstrous power of
evil let loose in the world — the Satanic possibilities
of human nature even when developed under the
highest type of civilization ; we discovered the funda-
mental difference between right and wrong; if right
was to prevail we must fight for it, and if need be,
die for it ; and this forced us to abandon a super-
ficial view of ourselves ; we learned the deep truth
that only by shedding blood can evil be put away ;
and as the nation responded to the sacrificial im-
peratives of its mission, it grew in mental and moral
stature. We discovered above all the need of deep
and sustained beliefs ; we felt that we must have a
better conception of God and His relation to what
was going on here. We knew from the start, that
He could not be indifferent, but it was left for us to
discover, so soon as the progress of the war had
reduced the issues to one — a conflict between good
and evil — not that God must take our side, but that
we must take His side.

Who can now doubt but that the issue of the war
was determined by moral principle struggling with
and finally overcoming organized evil; or fail to ac-
cept the clear implication that the strength and vi-
tality of moral principle, even under the severest tests
was due to the influence of Christianity on the Allied

REPOSE OF A SETTLED FAITH 119

nations? A lie cannot live, neither can a truth die;
and if the Allies have triumphed over a system
founded on falsehood it has been due to the fact
that they could in some fashion survive in the
tremendous fires of reality which have been burning
round this planet; some deposit in these nations of
value to mankind, which it was God's purpose to
refine and preserve. Isaiah maintained that Judah
was inviolate simply because she had a spiritual
commission for mankind. The supreme revelation
of the war has been the discovery that God had
laid among the Allied nations a chief cornerstone,
elect, tried, and precious. So far as we can see,
the spiritual future of the race depends on the per-
sistence of that sort of civilization German
autocracy tried to destroy. If Germany failed,
it was because she was unreal; she could not live
in the fire; the Allied cause survived, and came out
of the war a refined and beautiful thing, because
it was in some measure in harmony with God's pur-
poses for the future.

In working out this great task, there has been
hardship, suffering and death ; it was necessary
that through our pains and sacrifices we should
realize the spiritual meaning of the struggle. The
war was not an accident ; it was part of a plan of
vast significance for mankind ; and our faith in the
future will be intelligent and consistent if we accept
the three truths about God, that He is wise, austere,

1£0 THE CONSUMING FIRE

and kind. We must not shrink from the element
of austerity, for its acceptance is necessary to the
morale of reconstruction. We must cheerfully put
up with our losses, and learn from our sacrifices
how to direct our hearts into deeper spiritual in-
timacies.

From wisdom, which is the world's order, through
austerity, which is the essence of discipline, we shall
advance to loving kindness, which is the world's
peace; fear shall lose its power and life shall gain
its inspiration from communion with the eternal
God.

CHAPTER VII

THE STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE

Isaiah xxxvii:6-7: "And Isaiah said unto the servants of
king Hezekiah, Thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the
Lord: Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, where-
with the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
Behold, I will put a spirit in him, and he shall hear a rumor,
and shall return unto his own land."

This is the culmination of Isaiah's great career.
For forty years he had consistently maintained the
inviolability of Jerusalem ; and his confidence in-
creased as the deadly menace of Assyria developed
into series of successful campaigns against Pales-
tinian states. Humanly speaking, as early as b. c.
721, when the fall of Samaria brought home to
Jerusalem the fear of captivity, there was nothing
to prevent the taking of the holy city. Yet the
prophet did not hesitate to predict the failure of
that ambitious scheme. His faith, as we have seen,
was not based on human measures, for he had as
little confidence in the military ability of his people
as he had in the promises of Egypt; neither did he
underestimate the power of the enemy. His faith
was grounded upon the conviction that God would
not permit the captivity of the chosen people at that

121

122 THE CONSUMING FIRE

time because He had committed unto them the
spiritual future of the world. In Zion had been
laid a chief cornerstone ; whosoever believed in this
spiritual fact should neither falter nor fail.

When Sargon took Samaria in b. c. 722, instead
of advancing as he desired to the walls of Jerusalem,
he was obliged to return home to put down a revolt
in Babylon, and the siege of the city was postponed
for twenty years. During that period Sargon's
successor, Sennacherib, was occupied with domestic
affairs, but in b. c. 701, the westward offensive was
resumed.

During this interval Judah had rest from war,
and the pernicious Egyptian policy which Isaiah
had condemned was allowed to ripen and bring forth
evil fruit. Egypt knew perfectly well what Assyria
was about ; she could not hope to meet her success-
fully in the field, and her only chance was to wear
down her spirit by keeping her continually involved
with the little Palestinian states. While the dis-
tance from Assyria to Egypt was only 490 miles
it had taken Assyria 45 years to reach the heart
of Palestine and she was still far from her real ob-
jective. It was highly expedient therefore to en-
courage revolutions in the Palestinian kingdoms,
chiefly by promises of aid which was never given.

During this period Ekron, a city of Philistia, en-
couraged by Egypt revolted, withheld its tribute,
and dethroned the Assyrian vassal king Padi and

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 123

sent him in chains to Hezekiah for safe keeping.
This was a cunning Egyptian trick to involve Judah
with her powerful enemy and the result was a fore-
gone conclusion ; for in b. c. 701 Sennacherib at the
head of a huge army appeared in Palestine, re-
captured Ekron, met a small Egyptian force at
Eltekeh, defeated it and then turned back to punish
Judah for her share in the mischief. He took forty
six walled towns, shut up Hezekiali in Jerusalem
like a bird in a cage ; and the nation was completely
prostrated by the turn of events.

The besieging force, a detachment of the main
army, was accompanied by a certain civilian chan-
cellor known as the Rabshakeh, a sort of devil's
orator. His negotiations with the ambassadors of
Jerusalem bring into strong relief the characteristic
views of the situation.

The Rabshakeh was a resourceful man, and well
he might be with an army at his back. His speeches
betray considerable acquaintance with the lower
aspects of human nature, a fair knowledge, too, of
the world. In fact he acts and talks like a Ger-
man and his demeanor reminds one of Von Beth-
mann-Hollweg at the head of the Prussian legions.
He is contemptuous of small nations and despises
provincial peoples ; he had shrewd insight into
character of a certain sort which enabled him to pass
for a wise man ; but of knowledge of the spirit of the
people with whom he is dealing he shows not a trace.

124r THE CONSUMING FIRE

He stands there — this hammer of a man — with
an army at his back, in full view of the people ; about
their mud walls they could hear the stammering
tongues of a strange and mighty race. The over-
flowing scourge had at last reached their gates.
Was not this what Isaiah had predicted at a mem-
orable dinner party some twenty five years be-
fore : — precept upon precept, line upon line, here
a little and there a little — this monotonous pound-
ing of battering rams on their defenses, yea too, on
their weak and fearful hearts?

The Rabshakeh keenly sensed the situation and
took the opportunity to heighten the effect of his
discourse by speaking in the Jews' language, over
the heads of the ambassadors, directly to the panic

stricken folk on the walls a vile example of open

diplomacy — and this is what he said : —

" Your Egyptian policy has disappointed 3'Ou,
for you now know what we did to her at Eltekeh ; and
do you expect aid from your god? Well, how do you
think he likes having his sanctuaries removed from
the high places and all his influence concentrated
in this insignificant town ; can you expect his protec-
tion when you treat him in this fashion? Besides
have I not come up against you in spite of him?
And if he did not stop me at first, do you suppose
he can stop me now? " At this point the cowardly
ambassadors besought him not to speak any more
in the Jews' language, but rather in the Syrian

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 125

tongue for fear of spreading panic in the city.
But he replied, with characteristic Teutonic ef-
frontery, in a louder voice than ever : " You are
a contemptible people anywa}^, but after all what
is the use of making all this trouble for us? Why
not remain quietly here, every one eating his own
food and dwelling under his own vine and fig tree
until we clean up this Egyptian muddle, and then
we will take you back to our glorious country where
you will enjoy the civilizing influence of our
* kultur.' What a wonderful thing it will be to be-
come good Assyrians like ourselves. Do not believe
what your king tells you about your God aiding
you, for you ought to know what we have done to
other gods, and what happened in Samaria will as
certainly happen to you if you do not submit to our
wishes."

All this would have a remote interest if it did not
accurately illustrate the temper of Germany in
dealing with the small nations that have stood like
stone walls in her path to world dominion. This
man talks and reasons like a German diplomat; and
betrays the same ignorance of the power of a racial
spirit to triumph over material sufferings, which has
characterized German policy in recent years. The
Assyrian did not believe that the people of Judah
would expose themselves to anything so expensive
and painful as a siege ; and was not this Germany's
notion about Belgium? Why should they risk

126 THE CONSUMING FIRE

physical ruin for something so intangible and un-
marketable as national honor? Great Britain
would not fight for a mere " scrap of paper " ;
neither would America come into the war because it
was against her material interests. This is the low
level to which a nation will descend when it stakes
everything on brute force and material efficiency ;
and overlooks what Bismarck called the " value of
the imponderables." The imponderable thing here
was Judah's spiritual destiny — her religious and
racial spirit ; it was upon this intangible rock that
Assyrian hopes were wrecked, as it was upon the in-
visible but potent moral idealism of the Allied
peoples that Germany dashed herself to pieces.

But Judah's great spirit did not animate the
hearts of those craven diplomats, " squeaking, gib-
bering shadows of men " who so fearfully conducted
the negotiations. They frankly confessed that they
had no policy. Perhaps they remembered what
Isaiah had been saying of all their wise schemes,
or recalled their frenzied optimism when a short
while ago poor old Padi had been brought in chains
to Jerusalem to make a Jewish holiday ; and how
the town went wild with delight and expected the
speedy advent of a political millennium. Even the
king was not altogether certain of the issue. He
was a man of faith, and had refused to yield to
Assyria's threats. He went into the Temple to

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 127

pray, and very wisely appealed to Isaiah to clear
the atmosphere and suggest a suitable policy.

Prophets do not predict events, but eventualities.
Isaiah did not tell the king when or in precisely
what manner the Assyrian would come to grief;
he plainly said that in God's good time he would
be turned back. And while the Rabshakeh was bawl-
ing Teutonic blasphemies under the walls of Jeru-
salem, wliile the king lay prostrate in the house of
prayer, God stopped the main army of Assyria at
Pelusium on the borders of Egypt ; and one morn-
ing the watchers on the walls were amazed to note
the departure of the besieging force.

We need not trouble ourselves with the secondary
causes that brought about this astonishing volte-
face. The truth is that the fire of reality had
reached the vitals of the Assyrian. He came to an
invisible line on which was written : " They shall
not pass " and he had to turn back. It is significant
of much that Sennacherib said nothing about it ; he
did not even venture to call it a " retreat to victory."
The fact of immense consequence is that when suc-
cess was almost within his grasp, he abandoned the
campaign, returned to jNIesopotamia, and came no
more to trouble the land.

At first the inhabitants of the city could not
believe in their good fortune ; it was too good to be
true ; but when the people found voice they expressed

128 THE CONSUMING FIRE

their feelings according to their bent. The
spiritually minded gave vent to their joy in the
forty sixth Psalm: "God is our refuge and
strength, a very present help in trouble." Jeru-
salem, after years of stress and strain had become
a quiet habitation.

But first impressions are of little value; our
interest is in the vindication of the prophet and the
final effect of the great deliverance on the nation.
We shall then be in a position to estimate its value
for our time.

The deliverance of Jerusalem was plainly an act
of God, and this event was the logical culmination
of the spiritual interpretation of history which had
characterized Isaiah's long ministry. He believed
that God was an active righteousness, that men and
nations and things dwelt in an atmosphere of holy
fire; and that ability to live therein was the sole
test of reality. God had brought the Assyrian into
Palestine for certain disciplinary purposes. The
great event had transpired according to program,
not because the prophet was gifted with a magical
revelation of the future, but as the direct result of
spiritual insight. To understand God's nature is
to be in a position to say how His providence will
affect history. If God were a consuming fire and
Assyria unfit to live in it, then Assyria was doomed ;
and the historic vindication of the prophet's
ministry was a clear demonstration of his unique

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 129

conception of the righteousness and universal
providence of the Lord of Hosts.

This principle is still valid. God has not changed,
neither has human nature. We are made of the
same red clay ; the same forces are working in the
modern world as made up the history of the eighth
century before Christ ; and until God changes or
man's constitution is fundamentally altered history,
destiny, national and individual life will be subject
to the same laws. That is why autocratic Ger-
many failed. No nation has ever been able to live
in the holy fires on other terms than moral reality.
It may last a long time and do immense harm to
the spiritual interests of humanity, but its doom is
certain.

Let us not be impatient with God, nor count His
long suffering as slackness. One day with Him is
as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
da}'. He cannot be hurried, neither do His plans
develop prematurely; and the reason is that all
racial experiences are designed to make Him known.
Knowledge of both God and man can come only
through a prolonged conflict between good and evil,
such as was illustrated by the struggle of Assyria
with Judah. The Hebrews gained greatly in
knowledge of God through their Assyrian discipline;
so have we in our conflict with Germany ; but whether
such knowledge is to result in a permanent or tem-
porary gain will depend on our receptivity; and

130 THE CONSUMING FIRE

that is the standard by which to measure the value
of this deliverance to the generation to which Isaiah
belonged.

On the ruling classes the chief impression of the
experience was that religion after all had a place in
social and political life. It led to certain reforms,
for even the most thoughtless were disposed to admit
that it had been a good thing for the nation to have
religious people in it.

This often happens ; social disturbances turn
men's thoughts towards God; political changes set
them on fresh quests for peace, while even skeptical
statesmen are disposed to confess in such crises
that religion is needed to furnish sanctions for gov-
ernment. But the danger, ever present in abnormal
times, is that interest in religion will be limited to
what is expedient. When the Assyrian was far
from their gates, the rulers had ridiculed the
prophet's advice, on the ground that religion as he
understood it had no value for the diplomat or
statesman, because it offered no solution for their
problems; was in fact mere childishness: precept
upon precept, and line upon line; but now that
events had vindicated the prophet they were dis-
posed to agree with him. It was a mighty good
thing after all that God was on their side. Such
a position often leads to false security and self-
deception ; for many will speak well of religion,
urge it on their neighbors, and even use it super-

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 131

ficlally as a social or political panacea without the
slightest intention of becoming religious themselves.
The superficial interest in religious reform de-
veloped a line of cleavage among the people ; it af-
forded a fitting background for the sterling worth
of the godly remnant. They were profoundly and
gloriousl}^ impressed with the turn of events. They
saw in religion no temporary expedient for safe-
guarding a nation's material well being, but an abid-
ing relationship to a holy and gracious God. They
had passed through the purging fires along with
their neighbors, but had come forth refined and puri-
fied. They had discovered God afresh; as it had
been in former times so had they seen the Divine
power in the holy city. It set them to thinking of
the loving kindness of the Lord in the midst of the
temple. In the days of their trouble they had
earnestly prayed for deliverance, and now they
realized that it was by terrible and glorious things
that God had answered them. They had learned
the painful but salutary truth that God was not
conducting the world in the interests of their happi-
ness but for the satisfaction of their spiritual
natures, and that such satisfaction could not be
obtained apart from pain and sacrifice. They had
lost most of their worldly goods, and all their com-
fortableness, but had grown in mental and moral
stature. They had left the nest, but were beginning
to love the arena, and were greatly alive to the spirit-

132 THE CONSUMING FIRE

ual implications of their race. They no longer at-
tached primary importance to outward events, but
found their peace and joy in the deep river of God
flowing through their souls. Had Judah been made
up solely of such people, there had been no need
of further discipline. They were the reason why
Jerusalem remained inviolate, but unfortunately
they composed but a minority as they always do,
of a given generation.

The majority was subject to reaction, the first
phase of which was a fear of God untempered by
faith. The sinners in Zion, that is the careless
ones, began to reflect upon the deeper significance
of that destructive providence which had checked
the Assyrian in his headlong course; they were
beginning to feel the heat of that tremendous fire
of holiness which burned round the nations, and dis-
covered their liability to its power; fearfulness sur-
prised the godless ones and they began to say:
" Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire ?
who among us shall dwell with everlasting burn-
ings ? " Isaiah replied : " Learn to walk up-
rightly, despise the gain of oppression, have done
with the taking of bribes, stop your ears to the
hearing of blood and shut your eyes from the
seeing of evil, and you shall see the king in his
beauty."

One would think that this ought to lead to repent-
ance but it never does. It was just a craven fear

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 133

of unknown forces ; terror of God had overtaken
them in their sins, and their supreme wish was to get
rid of it without changing their life; and being in-
capable of learning from experience a second phase
of reaction set in: they grew weary of outward re-
forms ; Isaiah and Hezekiah died and Manasseh, a
man of their own heart, came to the throne. They
lost their spiritual guides, prophets ceased among
them ; and having nothing left of the great deliv-
erance but unpleasant recollections, they were con-
tent to drift; so that in less than fifteen years the
nation had lost all its spiritual advantages, and had
fallen into a condition of godlessness worse than be-
fore. They even began to praise Assyria's methods,
for had they not made her rich and successful? A
deadly calm came over the land, minds grew stale
again and the whole nation settled on its lees.

The holy religion lost its attraction, simply be-
cause it was common and familiar, and since Isaiah
had put the fear of God in their hearts, the thought
of religion made them uncomfortable; besides many
thought that it might be a good thing to adopt the
gods of Assyria along with her methods ; while others
were in favor of reviving interest in the old Canaan-
itish cults with their colorful and sensuous attrac-
tions. Along with the passion for idolatry there
developed hatred for tlie godly, and as George Adam
Smith remarks, the " holy remnant became a suffer-
ing remnant." The presence of such people in the

134 THE CONSUMING FIRE

nation was a standing rebuke; they served only to
remind the masses of a God whom they would like
to forget ; and they varied their heathenish practices
with the persecution of the saints. The temple was
neglected and fell into disuse ; finally they lost their
Bible, and inevitably drifted towards ruin.

This was the doom of the Hebrev/ nation, for
from that hour God determined to rid the spiritual
remnant of the godless incubus. You see this in the
contrast between the ministries of Isaiah and Jere-
miah. One said that Jerusalem was inviolate be-
cause God had laid there a chief cornerstone; the
other that Jerusalem must be taken and destroyed
because God had determined to abandon her. It
was Isaiah's mission to preach deliverance ; seventy
five years later it was Jeremiah's mission to proclaim
captivity. In Jeremiah's time, the remnant, not the
nation, was the unit of God's thought. Nothing
short of national ruin could deliver the spiritual
forces of the race from their secular limitations,
and from that time onward the dominant concep-
tion of the prophets was not the Hebrew nation but
the Jewish church.

God's ways are sometimes strange, always lei-
surely, but wonderfully effective. History vindi-
cated Jeremiah as it did Isaiah, but it took six hun-
dred years to do it. The Judaism that was the
parent of Christianity came from those holy Jews
who had refused to sell their birthright for a mess of

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 135

pottage, even though they knew that they were pre-
destined to share in the hardships and sufferings
growing out of the final rejection of the nation.

The lesson here for the United States is this, that
no nation, not even one specifically selected for a
great spiritual service, is immortal. A nation is
only a containing vessel. The pathwa}^ of the race
is littered with discarded containers : Egypt,
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Judea, and
now autocratic Germany. What gave importance
to the container was the spirit of the people.
Archaeology is the study of discarded containers ;
history is the scrutiny of the spirit that gave them
life. The spiritual quality of the people is the es-
sential element in the durability of an organism
which shares in the changeableness and mortality of
all earthly things.

We must try to think of our nation in this way.
There can be little doubt but that the moral well
being of humanity depends in great measure on the
civilization represented by Great Britain and the
United States. The social and political fruits of
Christianity in the western world would have been
lost if Germany had won the war. To share in the
preservation of such a civiliz?ation is an opportunity
that comes to few peoples ; but it is an opportunity,
the value of which in the period of reconstruction,
will depend chiefly on ourselves.

We must get rid of the popular delusion that be-

136 THE CONSUMING FIRE

cause a nation passes through a period of trial and
sacrifice, it must necessarily become a better nation.
This notion is based on the assumption that spiritual
effects follow from material causes ; but it is con-
trary to the logic of history. The rapid degener-
ation of the Hebrew nation after the deliverance of
Jerusalem ought to convince us that this pleasant
supposition is a dangerous delusion. If the nation
is to derive from its war experiences any permanent
gains it will be because we are determined to accept
the moral obligations which are the finest oppor-
tunities of the reconstruction period.

Righteousness has triumphed over organized evil
only because the Allied nations determined that it
should prevail. It had our approval, and our vote ;
we believed in the right and sustained it with intense
moral passion. The sacrificial attitude towards the
sacred rights of humanity was a mighty confession
of faith that righteousness is the law of nations and
the standard of civilizations.

The visible results of victory are obvious, but the
moral fruits are quite intangible ; they belong to the
realm of the imponderables ; and the precise relation
of the successful nations to the spiritual reality that
has made their triumph an assured fact appears to
many uncertain and inchoate. During the stress
of war moral phases appear fundamental; but when
the strain is removed, there is danger of loss of vi-
sion. But if the destruction of autocratic Germany

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 137

was in the last analysis due to the inability of or-
ganized materialism to compete with moral reality ;
if Germany failed because she could not live in the
consuming fire, which conditions all life, the su-
preme question for us to decide is, whether we can?
Do we understand the spiritual atmosphere in which
we are obliged to live? Are we aware of the right-
eous obligations involved in the terms on which we
have been permitted to survive? And are we will-
ing, in view of responsibilities to mankind, to live
in harmony with moral reality, now that we are fac-
ing the unromantic but immensely important tasks of
reconstruction? That will depend upon whether we
are ready to put at the service of these obligations
the same unselfish passions and sacrificial enthusi-
asms that made the winning of the war one of the
glorious achievements of the nation.

Certain errors are to be avoided ; one is that of
confusing religious impressionism with a genuine
spiritual change. The great war, involving as it
did a fundamental moral question, called forth the
somnolent idealism of the people, and through sacri-
ficial experiences immensely increased the popular
interest in religion ; but is this something more than
the old belief that religion is an expedient in the
way of good government? We have fought for
righteousness among nations, but are we determined
to be righteous ourselves? Unless we turn these
impressions into clear-cut convictions and accept

138 THE CONSUMING FIRE

them as definite canons for conduct, we shall lose
one of the best personal opportunities of the great
struggle.

We must be particularly on our guard against
reaction. The times have put fear into many hearts ;
but it is not the constant fear of a God who is being
progressively understood and loved, so much as an
episodic terror of suddenly unmasked and unknown
forces, latent in human nature, and breaking out in
spectacular manifestations of evil. It is a kind of
fear of man; of unimaginable possibilities for our-
selves; of vast social changes issuing from the war
— ■ of labor troubles, commercial rivalries and eco-
nomic readjustments; — and sometimes too a sus-
ceptibility to the awful fires of moral reality that
are sweeping through the world; a fear of an un-
known holiness whose searching tests no man can
escape. These are the anxieties that assault the
mind now that we are obliged to think out the mean-
ing of the great struggle. It is a terribly uncom-
fortable world we are living in, and the contempla-
tion of the future offers little solace.

This sense of undefined fear, this terror of un-
known forces, tempts men to rid themselves of it by
some form of forgetfulness. Some advocate the
adoption of the German method of social organi-
zation as the only safeguard of civilization. No
matter how thoroughly she may have been defeated
the political traditions of Germany will remain for

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 139

some time a source of anxiety. Autocracy may re-
turn again, and if so, how shall we meet it? Some
will suggest a similar social discipline, others will
advocate a strong military program. But we
must remember the precise effect of the German
method on the personality of her subjects. It turns
men into things ; it destroys the moral autonomy of
the soul. Such a conception is absolutely opposed
to the spirit of personal initiative upon which our
social order is based. Political scientists, trained in
universities organized on the Teutonic plan will be
tempted to say that if we are to stand up against
the German state we must adopt the German method.
It is unthinkable. The Teuton yoke can never be
imposed on the neck of the Anglo-Saxon.

But what have we got to put in its place? The
Teutonic sj'stem, bad as it was, had the great merit
of developing the individual into an efficient unit
in social organization ; it educated him in public
duties, and sustained respect for constituted au-
thority. If we are to entrust government to the
free spirit of the peoples, to what shall we look for
sanctions and upon what shall we depend for obedi-
ence to established law?

The world is not going back to autocratic sys-
tems ; its supreme task will be to render more effi-
cient the democratic type ; but the most difficult
duty of the statesman and legislator will be to edu-
cate the citizen in his public responsibilities. De-

140 THE CONSUMING FIRE

mocracy, if let alone, settles upon individual rights
rather than responsibilities. The social passion of
men is now running far ahead of social discipline.
The tidal forces of human desire were by the war
turned into unselfish and sacrificial channels. The
magnificent response of the people to the heavy re-
sponsibilities of that struggle, is an encouraging
sign of a latent capacity for further development in
the right direction ; only the question remains : are we
aware that the discipline of the citizen is even more
necessary to stable government during a period of
social and economic readjustment, than it was dur-
ing the stress of war? If we have made the world
safe for democracy, is not our present task to make
democracy safe for the world? To save democracy
from itself?

It is a paramount duty of the United States to
take the lead in this educational movement. In,
speaking of the need for ordered liberty among the
recently enfranchised peoples of Central Europe,
President Wilson finely said : " We must hold the
light steady, until they find themselves." If the fer-
menting masses in the war devastated countries,
smarting with a sense of age long wrong, and urged
on by an intensified sense of individual right are to
learn the lessons of restraint and respect for con-
stituted authority, without which their liberty will
prove self-destructive, they must be made to see,
not through the medium of abstract argument, but

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 141

of public example, how a great democracy conducts
itself in the face of equally great temptations. That
is preeminently our present task: to deserve the con-
fidence and to inspire the emulation of other peoples,
for whose enfranchisement we are jointly respon-
sible with other nations. We must not only oppose
all reactionary tendencies that would revive faith
in the discarded S3^stems, but resolve to provide sanc-
tions for government and respect for constituted
authority, without which democracy is a profound
delusion.

This, in my judgment, is at bottom a religious
question; it is a question of the real beliefs of a
people about themselves and about God. " Where
there is no vision, the people perish " ; they perish
because they cast off restraint. Historically speak-
ing, where there have been no beliefs sufficiently
powerful to affect the conduct of individuals, peoples
have found it impossible to resist the destructive in-
fluences of unregulated desire; that is why even the
most skeptical philosophers have held that religion
of some kind was essential to the stability of society.
It was the lack of religious beliefs that led to the
downfall of Judah ; and it will be our duty to make
them vital elements in protecting the nations of the
world from the reactionary tendencies of the times.

This constitutes the great opportunity of the
Christian Church. The war was won because the
moral principles of the Allied nations were more

14g THE CONSUMING FIRE

effective than the organized materialism of Germany ;
and these moral principles had their source and sanc-
tion in the Christian religion. Religious principles
will be even more important in the period of read-
justment. It must be recognized that the Christian
stands in a different relation to society, from that of
the ancient Jew ; for whereas the Jew was a member
of a chosen race, engaged in a work of preparation
and therefore capable of living in a state of de-
tachment from other peoples, the Christian is by
virtue of his larger responsibilities, in the best sense
of the term a citizen of two worlds ; this world and the
next. He has responsibilities to both. During the
stress of the war, some as was natural were too much
occupied with a false apocalyptic ; dreaming of a
speedy end of the world, and on that account taking
up an attitude of indifference towards public duty.
This is not only a weak position, but it is also highly
reprehensible ; for Christ plainly said that the
Christian was the light of this world, and the salt of
this earth, and not of some cloud capped heaven,
where there is abundance of light and salt is not
needed.

We must have the courage to assume the bolder
attitude and frankly accept the responsibility of
the present. It will be our duty to increase the
volume of spiritual life among men ; and the mission
of the church will be to compel belief in the primacy
and present importance of a spiritual view of the

STATELY MARCH OF PROVIDENCE 143

world. We must aid in consecrating the industrial
democracy that has issued from the great struggle,
to the intellectual and spiritual requirements of man-
kind: a tremendous task, truly, but one worthy of
all acceptance. We shall best do this if we can estab-
lish belief in the Dynamic Holiness which in the long
run must determine for all men and nations, the
nature of reality. Such a conviction will furnish
moral sanctions for government, stimulate respect
for established authority, and keep the sense of public
duty abreast of the social passions of the time.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE

Isaiah xxiii: 17-18: "It shall come to pass that the Lord
will visit Tyre, and her merchandise shall be holiness to the
Lord."

In order to understand the peculiar religious influ-
ence of the Hebrew people it is necessary to pay
some attention to their social and political develop-
ment; and especially to consider the influence of
other peoples upon their conception of themselves.
It is obvious that a great religious mission could
not be carried out by a people in a state of semi-
barbarism such as characterized their Egyptian bond-
age. Before they could undertake their predestined
task, they must undergo in some fashion a social
and political transformation. It was for this pur-
pose that they were brought to Palestine, and no
better country could have been selected.

Situated in close proximity to the Nile and Meso-
potamian valleys they were brought into immediate
contact with world movements at their most impres-
sionable period. The great trade routes passed
through their borders, and from their mountain sanc-
tuaries, they could look down upon world movements.

144

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 145

The consequence of this contact with other nations
was the beginning of a civilizing process.

Civilization is a flexible term but it usually stands
for a conception of social life larger than that of a
family or a tribe. It suggests a community of in-
terests wherein larger groups act and react upon
each other until certain ideas develop ; these ideas
become traditions which are expressed in the laws
of the land and form the basis of government ; and
from which there finally comes a consciousness of
race — an ideal for the whole people of immense in-
direct cultural influence.

This is what we see going on in Palestine during
the eighth and seventh centuries before Christ ; —
the slow and orderly development of a loose aggre-
gation of tribes into something like a nation, with
a powerful racial consciousness. This civilizing
process was largely influenced by contact with the
life and manners of other nations.

The religious mission of the people was the de-
cisive factor in their development; and the lead in
this civilizing process was taken by the prophets,
the greatest of whom appeared in the most critical
period of Hebrew life. Their mission was a double
one. First they were the preachers and spiritual
guides of the people. They came to warn, rebuke,
instruct and to console. But in addition to this, they
were charged with the larger task of interpreting
world forces in terms of Divine providence; of ex-

146 THE CONSUMING FIRE

plaining the significance of those transforming and
often painful contacts between the chosen people
and the gentile nations.

While most of them excelled in this kind of service,
Isaiah by reason of his extraordinary talents and
the singularly propitious times in which he lived,
stands preeminent and alone. He had a mind of
vast range and perfectly understood the significance
of world movements. The two forces acting most
directly upon the development of the Hebrew peoples
were war and commerce. We have hitherto been
concerned entirely with the first of these influences,
due to the advent of Assyria in Palestine. In this
chapter the prophet calls our attention to the other
force: commerce, as represented by the Phoenician,
centering in the maritime activities of Tyre, the
great seaport of Palestine.

This chapter is of the greatest importance to us
now, since the most serious problem confronting us
is the control of the industrial democracy which has
issued from the war. For more than a century the
life of western nations, particularly that of the
United States, has been increasingly influenced by
commerce and industrialism ; but the war has brought
this process to a climax ; and our supreme and all
but superhuman task will be to consecrate this tre-
mendous force to righteous ends, and compel it by
sheer idealistic strength to serve the needs of the in-
tellectual and spiritual man. Such a feeling seems

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 147

to have influenced Isaiah ; for he rightly understood
the formative influence of commerce on civilization ;
he was keenly alive to the corrupting eff'ect of Phoeni-
cian enterprise, but he shows his greatness in no
finer wa}^ than that he was able to see the immense
value of this force, if it could be consecrated to
spiritual uses. This is the significance of the Oracle
on Tyre. If Judah was to fulfil her spiritual mis-
sion she must not only overcome Assyria, but find
a medium which could carry her religious ideas to
other peoples. Here already fitted was the common
carrier. If God could control commerce, Isaiah saw
the world at His feet.

The role of Phoenicia was determined by her geo-
graphical position. If you will look at a map of
Palestine you will see a narrow strip of land not
wider at any point than fifteen miles, running from
Mount Carmel, north to the borders of Syria, to
the extent of one hundred and forty miles. To the
east is an impassable mountain range ; to the north
and south outlets only for trade routes, while towards
the west limited only by the imagination lay the sea.
Naturally a people so situated would be compelled
to find their future on the sea. Their location pre-
destined the Phoenicians to become a nation of mer-
chants and traders, and nothing else. Their land
was too poor in natural resources and too small in
extent to become either an agricultural or manufac-
turing country ; but lying midway as it were between

148 THE CONSUMING FIRE

Egypt and Mesopotamia ; in the closest possible con-
tact with the land trade routes it was inevitable that
they should become a trading people. And since
the chief need of a trading nation is markets, they
naturally sought to develop these in the lands touched
by the sea.

The Phoenicians developed the art of navigation,
learning how to steer by the stars, and sail at night
out of sight of land; and their ships covered the
bounds of the known seas. They were the first to
navigate the Mediterranean ; founded colonies in the
^gean Isles ; in Greece and in Northern Africa at
Carthage ; in Sicily and Corsica ; in Spain at Tar-
shish; and pressed through the pillars of Hercules
to Western Spain and as far north as Britain. They
had trading posts in every known country : in Egypt
and Mesopotamia and on the far Indian Ocean.

It is difficult to overestimate the extent and variety
of Tyrian commercial activity. No wonder the
prophet's imagination took fire when he saw this tre-
mendous force lying there at the disposal of religion.
The flag of the Hudson Bay Company has on it the
letters H. B. C. which are interpreted by the natives
as meaning " Here before Christ." It is histori-
cally true that religious influence has usually fol-
lowed the path opened for it by commerce ; the mis-
sionary comes after the man of business.

The Oracle on Tyre seems to have been called
forth by the danger of its extinction through As-

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 149

Syrian conquests. The genius of Assyria was purely
destructive ; that Isaiah well understood ; and when he
saw the Phoenician influence, bad as it was, at the
mercy of this destructive power, he came to the con-
clusion that God would not permit the dispersion
of a people whose activities were unconsciously of
immense value to the spread of religion and civili-
zation. He saw of course that Assyria would take
Tyre; but he confidently predicted her restoration;
and although she would continue to practise her
arts — prostituting her soul for worldly gain — God
proposed to use her for missionary purposes. The
Lord would visit Tyre, and her merchandise would
become holiness unto Him. She would continue to
be an unwilling servant, unaware of the larger im-
plications of her history ; but God designed to make
her influence a blessing to mankind.

A prediction of such large comprehensiveness was
bound to meet with the vindication of history. Phoe-
nicia remained to the end a nation of traders and
middlemen — " sea peddlers," and nothing more ; she
left no abiding deposit in the culture or civilization
of the world of her own creation; she was of no
more consequence than a train of cars, vital as a
common carrier, but of herself material, a thing and
nothing more; yet in the great days that followed,
after the Babylonian exile, and especially when Alex-
ander the Great opened the east to the west, the
trade routes and commercial connections established

150 THE CONSUMING FIRE

by Phoenicia became the arteries through which the
rich red blood of new ideas and transforming forces
passed swiftly over the world. Phoenicia was the
first to make the world smaller; to open communi-
cations between remote nations, to convey the edu-
cational and spiritualizing influences of different
peoples to each other, and make them the common
possession of the race. As such she was a civil-
izing influence of vast import, not on account of
anything she contributed of herself, but because she
made accessible what other peoples had ; above all she
opened the way for the spread of religion, and in
spite of herself she became a missionary of the Lord.
Her commerce became holiness unto God; and from
her blind, molelike striving after worldly gain, the
world derived vast spiritual advantages.

We are so accustomed to think of the Hebrews
as a commercial people that we overlook the fact
that in Isaiah's time commercial pursuits were by
them regarded with a certain amount of aversion.
This was the fixed conviction of the devout. They
looked upon Phoenicia as a harlot among nations,
ready to sell herself for hire. Isaiah was quite aware
of this but it was due to his spiritual genius that
he could look beyond the parochialism of his time
to see in this force, admittedly evil, an influence if
consecrated that would be of great service to spiritual
Israel. This is the significance of the Oracle on
Tyre. It suggests the duty of trying to understand

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 151

the force of commerce ; it must neither be destroyed,
nor wholly condemned, but used and consecrated
to high ministries for the soul.

The Christian people of our day have been accus-
tomed to an undiscriminating condemnation of com-
merce. If one listen to the preacher in his Sabbath-
day mood one would suppose that nothing could be
more evil or dangerous. The reason for this is
that the commercial spirit, if left to itself, soon de-
generates into pure materialism; but the responsi-
bility felt by Isaiah is precisely the one we should
awake to, namely to see beyond condemnation to
utility. Commerce is a dangerous, but useful force ;
the Christian cannot first make the world to fit his
mission, but he must take it as he finds it and try
to improve it; and we may as well face the fact that
the sort of world we are going to live in is one that
is to be increasingly occupied with commercial mat-
ters.

Our nation, idealistic as it is, has largely been de-
veloped by the commercial spirit. This was due in
part to our geographical position and in part to the
native energy of our people. Situated in a land
of enormous natural resources, midway between Euro-
pean and Oriental peoples, it was predestined that we
should become a commercial nation. Add to this
the native trading propensity of the people, the re-
sourcefulness, energy and audacity of the individual
— the splendid initiative encouraged by our free

152 THE CONSUMING FIRE

institutions and the additional advantage of a long
peace and comparative freedom from internal dis-
turbances — moving towards the future with few
hampering traditions, and you have the reason why
there should have been such a rapid industrial de-
velopment in this country. All these advantages
have made us masters of the material world, and
developed to an alarming degree business aspirations
and incidentally our ideals of life.

Industrial expansion has been enormously acceler-
ated in the reconstruction period, not only by the
extraordinary economic necessities of the war de-
vastated countries, but also because the great
struggle increased to an astonishing degree the
wants and desires of the masses. The intellectual,
moral and aesthetic requirements of the world
have been vastly augmented ; and life for every-
body is going to be more expensive, and unless
stabilized by access to the resources of the spirit,
it is going to be more feverish, discontented,
and dangerous. Our nation faces a problem such
as has not hitherto confronted it: how are we
going to meet it? Are we going to return to
the old materialistic ambitions which influenced
us before the war: fighting each other with ruth-
less competition, and organizing our resources solely
with regard to the animal necessities of life? Are
we to sacrifice the idealistic gains of the war — the
intellectual and moral awakening due to patriotic

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 153

devotion — for the sake of Mammon worship? If
so, the war is well lost. But if we are to avoid a
return to tlie old way of living we must learn how
to consecrate the augmented commercial activities
of the time to a spiritual end. We shall need
the courage and confidence of Isaiah, reenforced
at all points by a sturdy Christian faith. It is a
great task, and the time is calling loudly for great
men to meet it. But its complete solution will not
be found by political scientists, statesmen, labor
leaders or big business men; the unselfish labors of
all these will be required; we shall need in addition
prophets — pathfinders of the soul — who shall be
able to open the way to life's Supreme Reality, with-
out belief in which no adequate solution is possible.

The acceptance of this proposition will not be
easy, for it calls upon us to revise our conception of
religion, it urges us to a searching examination of
our public and private morality. Perhaps we shall
be able to do so, however, if we consider the danger
of the commercial spirit, estimate its present in-
fluence on public opinion, and then try to define our
relation to it.

The danger of the commercial spirit is, as Isaiah
points out, that it tests everything by profit and
loss. Its standards of value are of themselves ma-
terial. The Tyrians were merchants and traders,
and nothing else. They traveled about the ancient
world with packs on their backs, taking as little

154 THE CONSUMING FIRE

interest in the higher aspirations of the people with
whom they traded as a wandering peddler. They
manufactured nothing, they created nothing artis-
tic. They seem to have had no higher aim than to
" buy cheap and sell dear," the creed of Trimal-
chio, the story of whose clownish antics forms the
most amusing pages of the Satyricon of Petronius.
They developed markets in the west for the products
of the east by stimulating desire for these things ;
they were the common carriers of the world's wealth,
but they tested the value of everything, even of re-
ligion (for they bought and sold gods and religions
too), by profit and loss. Such a pursuit was bound
to destroy what little idealism they had; for their
business ambitions brought them in contact with
neither moral nor spiritual aspirations ; and so they
soon became for all intents and purposes thoroughly
material. They looked like money and talked of
money, and money became their god.

Has not this been one of the dangers inseparable
from our rapid industrial development: this passion
for gain, this limitation of standards of value to
profit and loss? As George Adam Smith remarks,
the artist, the teacher or even the artisan has other
interests in life than those associated with material
wealth; their callings furnish them with certain
ideal aims, and the satisfaction of the creative im-
pulse is often the most important. It is not so
with the merchant or trader ; his standard in business

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 155

is profit and loss ; and unless he can bring to his
calling ideals of one sort or another, which must
be formed in other and higher spheres, it is almost
impossible to resist the corrupting influences of trade.

So far the American people have succeeded in
checking this evil tendency; it is because we are at
heart an idealistic nation. Still the unconsecrated
commercialism of the time has had a decidedly vicious
effect on public opinion. There are many who value
everything in terms of money; they do not believe
that anybody can be influenced by any other standard
than personal gain, and regard those who profess
to be idealists either as fanatics or hypocrites.
This is the belief of all those who accept the standard :
business is business. If so, then as Sidney Lanier
says : " It is only war grown miserly."

Such a spirit influences the world as an atmos-
phere ; we live in it at least six days a week, and it
is difficult to escape its poisonous eff'ects, unless we
bring principles and ideals, formed in other and
higher regions to bear upon it ; and in spite of our
native idealism, it is rather discouraging to turn
to the general opinions of life that prevail among the
practical people. For instance we hear much of the
platitude that " honesty is the best policy " which
to most men means simply that honesty is better
than dishonesty because it pays better. A man who
has no higher aim than this will become dishonest,
so soon as it becomes more profitable. Or take the

166 THE CONSUMING FIRE

phrase : " truth in advertising " which, unless one de-
fine the terms may only mean that it pays in the long
run to tell the truth. Such a man cannot command
the confidence of his business associates on these
terms simply because his morality is founded, not on
any fixed principles of an ethical nature, but en-
tirely on unstable external conditions ; and if these
conditions should change at any time, he would in
all probability act on another principle.

This Phcenician morality is as untrustworthy to-
day as it was centuries ago, and yet if we are to be-
lieve Benjamin Kidd, it has had a decided influence
on our higher ethical judgments. For instance dur-
ing the past fifty years the civilized nations have been
condemning war ; have sought by means of courts of
arbitration to render it impossible ; and yet the usual
reason given was not that war is wrong in principle,
but that it is inexpedient, on the ground that it is
wasteful and very expensive. It does not pay. Ger-
many seems to have reasoned in this fashion about the
probable attitude of Belgium, Great Britain and
America towards her scheme of world dominion.
She did not believe that these nations would expose
themselves to such vast material waste, for so in-
tangible a thing as national honor. This intangible
ideal something we call honor — faith among nations
and such like conceptions — from the point of view
of materialism appear to be delusions. The im-
mense moral gains of the war have come from a dis-

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 157

covery that we are at heart idealistic, that we do
believe in the imponderables ; and so far we have been
able to escape the blight of commercialism.

Still there is little reason for optimism because
there were many Phoenicians among the patriots
during the war, who looked at it entirely from the
point of view of personal profit. There were some
whose souls were dead to idealism and sacrifice:
profiteers in capital and in labor, creatures of a ma-
terialistic age. Think of the output of shoddy
goods, the gouging and grinding that went on all
over the land, of the people who tried to turn the
misfortunes of the world to personal profit, and
nothing else; and then compare with this the splen-
did loyalty, and unselfish idealism of the greater
part of the nation, and you will see how ugly and
indefensible this spirit is. No wonder Isaiah called
Tyre a harlot, ready to barter everything she had,
even honor, for gain. Consider too the hideous ugli-
ness of modern civilization, these hot, foul, noisy
cities, corrupters of the imagination, destroyers of
the souls of men through crass utilitarianism; this
paralysis of the finer mental powers through a com-
mercialized conception of education, and you will
see a further effect of this spirit when uncontrolled
by principles of an idealistic sort.

The truth is that modern industrialism has been
founded upon the law of the survival of the fittest.
It was the ruling principle of Germany in the great

158 THE CONSUMING FIRE

war. She despised small nations, and reasoned that
their destruction or absorption into the Germanic
empire was fully justified on the ground that the
strongest have a right to survive. It has been
too the principle upon which modern capitalism and
organized labor have founded their hopes. If big
business could combine, even through ruthless dis-
regard of the rights of small concerns, its action
was justified on the ground of a larger public serv-
ice ; if labor could organize in such a way as to get
more for its product than it was entitled to, its
success fully justified the means — thus have men
reasoned about government, business and labor, and
brought the civilization of the twentieth century al-
most to destruction.

This is the danger that confronts us in the re-
construction period. Shall society return to the old
Phoenician morality; this tendency to act on the
supposition that there are no higher interests in life
than those of personal, material gain? Or shall
we make the unselfish and sacrificial ideals called
forth by the war the law of public and private ac-
tion, now that the war is over.? This will depend
upon our beliefs about ourselves, about the rights
and duties of mankind, and particularly about our
relation to God.

But here too we see the evil influence of commer-
cialism, on our estimate of religion. The general

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 159

opinion about religion, intensified by the great
struggle, is that it is a very good thing to have in
the community. It makes democracy safe for the
world; it furnishes sanctions for government, and
encourages respect for constituted authority ; it puts
the fear of God into the rich man's heart, and
makes the workman content with his wage. This is
tlie common view of religion as an expedient.

But while many are disposed to admit that re-
ligion has a utilitarian value, they act on the sup-
position that it makes very little difference what
the private individual believes ; and this view is com-
mon among those who are influenced by the com-
mercial spirit of the time. But if the molders of
public opinion — newspaper and magazine editors,
statesmen and law makers — are to hold no higher
view than this, they occupy, as little as they know
it, precisely the position of those foolish statesmen
and false teachers so severely condemned by the true
prophets of God ; for should you be able to convince
them that some other expedient for stabilizing so-
ciety could be found, they would be ready to adopt
it simply because it worked: that is, because it paid.
Such men are not the true friends of humanity.
We cannot trust the idealism of America, so greatly
quickened by the war, to unsafe guides ; it is too
precious, yet, for lack of reasonable religious sup-
ports, too unstable to be committed to unreliable

160 THE CONSUMING FIRE

leaders; it must be worked into worthy forms of
public service through the influence of definite re-
ligious beliefs.

It has been customary to maintain that it matters
little what one believes about God; but I think the
great war has convinced us that it does. The Turk
believed in God and yet on that account was able
to murder more than a million and a half of innocent
people. Could this have happened in a Christian
land? Why were the Allies able through four long
years of hardship, suffering and death to struggle
with Germany until their cause was won but that
they believed in the sovereignty of right, they hated
wrong, and they derived their moral passion from
their beliefs about God? Could such a war have been
originated in a country influenced by the ethical and
religious standards prevailing among the Allied
peoples? It is unthinkable. Germany began the
war because of certain beliefs about God; we won it
because we too had other and diff*erent beliefs. The
German god was as little like the God of Jesus
Christ as the brutal Assyrian deities resembled the
God of Isaiah.

If the winning of the war has been a triumph of
righteousness, if Germany has coUapsed because she
could not live in the fires of holy reality that con-
dition the life of men and nations: how shall we
escape in the reconstruction period if we neglect
so great salvation? Can we dwell in the midst of

THE HERITAGE OF TYRE 161

the devouring fire? Can we survive in the everlast-
ing burnings? That will depend upon the effective-
ness of our beliefs in controlling and consecrating
the great industrial movement that has issued from
the struggle. The hope of the future is with
Christian peoples.

We must consecrate the forces of civilization to
the spread of true religion. This will be done
first of all by preaching the saving gospel of Jesus
Christ ; but back of this is something more important.
There must be the testimony of the life — the ac-
tual application of God's will to the totality of in-
fluence. This means that all double standards of
morality must disappear. The world has had enough
of the double standard hypothesis in the immoral
principles of the German state. As men conduct
themselves in private life, so must they behave in
public affairs. Christian ethics must become the
standard of international relations ; the basis of
ordered liberty among peoples. Such an ideal mor-
ality based on the sound beliefs of the individual
must become the law for business combinations and
labor organizations, until the whole industrial move-
ment is inspired by the spirit of brotherhood and
made to serve the higher necessities of the soul.

We have seen what commerce did in the ancient
world for the spread of culture, civilization and re-
ligion. The merchandise of Tyre became holiness
unto the Lord. What it did then, it can do now.

162 THE CONSUMING FIRE

It was a potent force in aid of missionary enter-
prise; Christianity has always followed the trade
routes of the world, and it will continue to do so,
until the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth,
as the waters cover the sea.

Great believers — men of the single standard for
all private and public relations — have always been
the light of the world, the salt of the earth. They
are the hope of the democracy that is spreading over
the world ; and their influence upon society and gov-
ernment has been the direct outcome of personal
loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior; for
through Him alone has mankind access unto the
Parent Source of Reality, to live in harmony with
which is the safeguard of human rights, and the
sanction of human institutions.

CHAPTER IX

THE THREE QUESTIONS

Isaiah xxxiii: 30-22: "Look upon Zion, the city of our so-
lemnities : thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation. . . .
There the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad
rivers and streams. . . . For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is
our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us."

This beautiful prediction is the essence of Isaiah's
message. One of the purposes of his long ministry
was the consolation and encouragement of the de-
vout people who were called upon to endure great
hardships in the struggle of Judah with Assyria.
What they required as a basis of steadfast faith was
some assurance that their holy city was inviolate;
for should it be taken and the population scattered
over Mesopotamia, there appeared no possible way
of realizing their spiritual destiny. Was it to hap-
pen to them as it had happened to northern Israel?
Isaiah answered this reasonable question with the
doctrine of inviolability. God had laid in Zion,
a chief cornerstone, elect, tried, and precious. It
was impossible at this time for Assyria to take Jeru-
salem, because the spiritual future of the race de-
pended on the political autonomy of the chosen peo-
ple. This prediction was fulfilled by the great de-

163

164 THE CONSUMING FIRE

liverance. When Sennacherib abandoned the siege
of the city, and retired from Palestine at the close of
the eighth century, Jerusalem became a quiet habi-
tation ; and the spiritual element in the nation was
given an opportunity of reflecting on other signifi-
cant features of the prophet's teaching.

For some years before the deliverance of the city,
Isaiah had been speaking of a time coming, it might
be soon or late, when God would give Judah a great
spiritual leader, who should deliver them from all
their enemies. In the darkest hour of their history
he had confidently predicted that Jerusalem would
become a quiet habitation; the Lord Himself would
be unto them a place of broad rivers and streams,
their judge, lawgiver, and king. Above all things
He would become their deliverer.

Promises of this kind are frequently found in the
Old Testament prophets ; they are Messianic in char-
acter because they look forward to the coming of
Christ. A certain degree of caution, however, is
required for their interpretation. The prophets
usually speak of the Messiah in vague and general
terms ; His features are outlined in a few bold strokes
on the picturesque and mobile background of their
own times; and to do them justice we must avoid
the habit of making them teach too much. We must
not read into the Old Testament teaching the
clearly defined revelations of the New Testament.
Where such a mistake is made these prophecies,

THE THREE QUESTIONS 165

otherwise so suggestive and valuable, are rendered
wholly artificial and unconvincing. Having the
knowledge of the historic Christ, it is easy to in-
terpret prophecy in terms of this larger experience ;
still we must try to do what is almost impossible:
put ourselves in place of the prophets, who were
looking down the centuries and seeking as best they
could to use the materials at hand for the encourage-
ment of the people of their own age. We shall not
always find there what we should like to see, but at
least we shall be able to grasp the significance of
what these prophecies mean.

Messianic prophecies fall into three groups : some
are concerned only with the permanence of the Divine
kingdom. Isaiah's reference to the inviolability of
Jerusalem is an example of that ; a declaration of
God's purpose to safeguard the chosen people until
they could fulfil their mission and give Christi-
anity^ to the world. A second group is occupied
with the saving influence of God's people on other
nations, looking forward to the calling of the Gen-
tiles. A third group, by far the most interesting,
deals with Messianic prophecy from a personal
point of view. It describes the birth, growth, char-
acter and power of a great personality; and it is
to prophecies of this sort that we turn, when we
desire to know how the faith of the Jew was shaped
up to receive and understand the advent of Jesus
Christ.

166 THE CONSUMING FIRE

Messianic prophecy of a personal sort is char-
acteristic of Isaiah's teaching. This teaching is
necessarily sketchy, often hurriedly spoken to his in-
timate disciples in the midst of more pressing mat-
ters. Apparently it was not intended for the rulers
or the multitude, but only for those whose faith
was ready to receive it. It is therefore private
teaching. He presents his ideas in the form of por-
traits — sketched on time's horizon like Rembrandt
etchings — a few bold strokes and much left to the
imagination, and they must have powerfully
moved the sensibility of the newly aroused people.
The prophet's conceptions appear to have come
to him in the form of visions ; and two things,
as F. S. Oliver has pointed out are essential
to the power of a vision : " some exceptional gift
of presentment in the seer, and an eager pre-
disposition on the part of men." A genuine prophet
is not one who sees a thing for the first time,
but one who sees clearly what many are seeing dimly.
It is his business to fully open the eyes, to teach
the stammering tongue to speak plainly ; to strip the
wrappings of tradition from the face of truth, that
men may see it whole. And if we are to realize
the power and beauty of Isaiah's predictions con-
cerning the Messiah, we must dismiss at once the
popular notion of some magic gift of insight into
far distant futures, and seek the true understanding
in the needs and spiritual expectancy of the godly

THE THREE QUESTIONS 167

people of his time. For as Oliver finely says : " the
fabric of a vision which worketh great marvels is
the experience of common men."

What then was the fabric of Isaiah's Messianic
vision? Out of what materials was it woven? You
will find the elements partly in his own experience,
and partly in the spiritual expectancy of the na-
tion ; and it is not difficult to understand why the
conscious requirements of the people should prove
a decisive factor. Their provisional need, in the
days of political and social disorders, growing out of
the Assyrian invasion was assurance of Jerusalem's
inviolability; but the political independence of the
city was a means only for realizing a spiritual mis-
sion. The devout people knew very well that with-
out this they could never fulfil their destiny ; and
it was inevitable that satisfaction in the security of
the city should depend in great measure on their
confidence in the national leaders. We have seen
how little reason they had for trusting their rulers.
The nation was drifting rapidly towards complete
secularization, and their keen disappointment natu-
rally raised the question : How can we fulfil our
mission unless God gives us a man whom we can
follow and trust? This made the personal aspect
of Messianic prophecy intensely important ; and this
is why Isaiah took the opportunity of speaking of
the Messiah in such terms as to satisfy this expec-
tation.

168 THE CONSUMING FIRE

But a very definite personal need had grown up
in the religious experience of the people: a need for
a closer touch with God, a desire to be assured that
He in some experimental fashion shared their afflic-
tions; so that their interest in the Messiah tended
to center in their personal needs. No promise of
safeguarding their spiritual destiny could satisfy
their faith unless at the same time it could meet
the urgent and growing necessities of their souls.

They began to ask questions, first of each other,
and then of their prophet, and these questions would
finally resolve themselves into three, touching Mes-
siah's experience, character, and power.

The first question touched the experience of the
Messiah : Would He be like them, identified through
experience and race relationships with their strug-
gling life, so that from the first He would become a
sympathetic and discriminating friend? The second
question had to do with His character: was He able
to live in the devouring fire of holiness, which they
had been taught to regard as the sole condition of
reality for men and nations and things? The third
question would concern itself with His power, and
the mode of its operation: would He be able to pro-
tect, shelter and strengthen those that were weak and
ineffective until they had grown strong, and would
they be able through His fellowship to find a stand-
ard by which to test life, to sift out the true from the
false, and to know the real from the unreal?

THE THREE QUESTIONS 169

These were questions which Isaiah found in the
hearts of his generation, and they had a decisive in-
fluence on the form of his Messianic predictions.

The familiar prophecy concerning the birth of
Immanuel, contained in the seventh chapter was de-
signed to answer the question regarding the ex-
perience of Messiah. It was projected on the dark
background of poHtical intrigue and maladminis-
tration that had characterized the reign of Ahaz.
Threatened with invasion from his northern neigh-
bors, Ahaz, against Isaiah's advice had made a
treaty with Assyria, as destructive of Hebrew hopes
as was the treaty of Brest-Litovsk to Russia. Isaiah
understood what serious consequences would follow
this foolish alliance ; he also realized how it would
influence the believing remnant. They were caught
in a terrible predicament; hardship, suffering and
even death awaited them; besides their spiritual ex-
pectations were completely frustrated. Here was
a weak and wicked ruler, leaguing himself with
pagan powers, adopting foreign gods from Damas-
cus and Phoenicia, and ready for the sake of tem-
porary peace to expose the nation to final destruc-
tion. What could the godly do in such a time?
To whom could they turn for support? And to
them in this critical hour the prophet came with
the great conception of Immanuel, God-with-us.
Recall for a moment, Isaiah's doctrine of holiness,
as an all-pervading atmosphere — a devouring fire

170 THE CONSUMING FIRE

that burned round men and nations and things —
and you can understand with what fear and
trembling the spiritually sensitive people would re-
gard the doings of Ahaz, whose pagan alliances
seemed to expose Zion to a tempest of destructive
fire. They wanted assurance of protection and
safety, but most of all encouragement in order to en-
dure the hardships of that terrible time. But this
was just their difficulty: for God could not
sympathize with them unless He came in contact
with their experience, and how could He do this un-
less He shared their afflictions? God's omnipotence
was of course a familiar postulate of Hebrew
theology ; Isaiah's teaching had given them a fresh
sense of the awful, active holiness ; but these attri-
butes — elements in the Divine glory — seemed to
render the idea of suffering in God unthinkable.
Suffering was clearly weakness, and this was incon-
sistent with omnipotence ; it might also be a form
of punishment and how could this be reconciled with
the Divine holiness?

Such thinking was too painful for them, and they
brought the problem to Isaiah, who met it with the
doctrine that God intended to enter into the closest
possible contact with the human race. He would
become an experimental partaker in its natural
weaknesses : be born a helpless babe, grow up among
them as a tender plant. His nourishment should
be " butter and honey," the food of the poor and

THE THREE QUESTIONS 171

the oppressed — a wonderful revelation in that early
age. The Jew did not fully understand this
doctrine until after the Babylonian exile; but its
essence is in this prophecy of Isaiah. By taking
His share in the sufferings of the race God becomes
a place of broad rivers and streams : a Judge, Law-
giver, and King — essentially a Deliverer and
Savior.

All practical thinking about God should begin
here, for life as we know it is three-parts pain ; and
the most realistic contacts between the human and
Divine nature are made through the medium of
sacrificial experience. If our conception of God is
formal and abstract, it is because we have ignored
those attractive human elements which are mani-
fested in the incarnation. In Jesus Christ God has
joined the caravan of our life for weal or woe, and
cannot be separated from us until He has brought
forth judgment unto victory. How near and com-
prehensible He becomes when it is recognized that
there is no pain or agony of the human spirit, but
that He knows it already, and that through the
most effective of mediums — experience. This
great truth, that God can and does suffer with and
for man, Isaiah brought home to the hearts of his
generation — this amazing message concerning a
little child who should become " Wonderful Coun-
selor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God and Savior."

The second question concerning the character of

17^ THE CONSUMING FIRE

the great leader Isaiah answered with the prophecy
of Messiah's spiritual endowment contained in the
eleventh chapter. This prediction follows closely
that of the final destruction of Assyria. It is easy
to see that the declaration of Assyria's approaching
collapse aroused the keenest interest among the de-
vout. It was a demonstration of the power of Isaiah's
ruling conception that God was active, dynamic
holiness — an atmosphere of fire, burning round
men and nation and things. Assyria was doomed
because she was unreal; but how would it fare with
the people of Judah? Could they live in the holy
fire? Could they dwell amid the everlasting burn-
ings? Such thoughts were calculated to disturb the
most sincere and faithful people. A great fear took
hold of them, a dread of reality such as the prophet
himself had experienced on that vision day long
ago when he saw the Lord. In the year that king
Uzziah died Isaiah had learned the difference be-
tween the nation and a Divine kingdom ; he discov-
ered the distinction between religion and patriotic
devotion ; above all he was made to feel the unlike-
ness of God to the stereotyped conceptions of the
popular theology. God was essential reality; the
whole earth was full of manifested holiness — this
all-consuming, unescapable fire that determined the
nature of reality for men and nations. He felt his
utter unfitness to live in such a world, and from it
issued a supreme need of a deliverer, a savior.

THE THREE QUESTIONS 173

What Isaiah experienced in vision, the people of
Judah realized by the slow progress of events. The
approaching destruction of Assyria seems to have
roused this dread of the future to its maximum
power. How could they hope to live in the great
fire? And if they were unfit to survive, was not the
finding of a savior a prime necessity? Isaiah had
promised such a deliverer in the person of the
Messiah. It was a very consoling thought to re-
member that He would come into contact with man
through participation in his sufferings ; but it was
not enough to believe that Messiah understood
human life; the deeper question was: Can He live
above man's life and limitations? If He is to save
those who are utterly unfit to dwell in the everlast-
ing burnings, can He himself survive? This is a
supreme necessity for every awakened soul: not only
to be assured of the likeness of the deliverer to man,
but also to be convinced that He is unlike man in
those very attributes that fit Him for living in har-
mony with God; and Isaiah met the need with the
great prophecy concerning Messiah's spiritual endow-
ment. The essential truth in this prophecy is the
assertion that the fire of holiness is the very breath
of Messiah's life. He lives in the atmosphere of
righteousness, because He is in perfect harmony with
it. What is holiness but to feel God's reality ; to
feel it in some deep, elemental sense, as the founda-
tion of peace and safety? The absence of a sense

174 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of harmony with God is the source of all human
anxieties. It was this urgent necessity for peace
that brought Isaiah's generation to the point where
it could comprehend the essential fitness of the
Messiah for the role of deliverer. The Messiah
commands the spiritual world; He is not only able
to dwell in it, but He is fitted to enable others to
dwell there also — this is the essence of Isaiah's
teaching. It must have been a consoling thought
for his generation, as it is for ours ; for our con-
fidence in the fitness of Christ to save us, is based
not simply upon His experimental participation in
our life, but also upon the perception of His es-
sential difference from us, the sense of His perfect
harmony with God. It is the apprehension of His
holiness that enables us to believe in His love. It
was Isaiah's identification of the Messiah with God
in the highest of His attributes, that enabled him to
give to the devout people of his time a most power-
ful and personal motive for obedience. They were
made to realize that their strength and peace did
not rest upon an impersonal foundation, but upon
fellowship with a God who was to become increas-
ingly real to them as their faith was concentrated
on the coming Redeemer.

But a third question remained: How would
Messiah's power reveal itself, and what effect would
it have on human society? This question is an-
swered in the great prophecy of the thirty second

THE THREE QUESTIONS 175

chapter. The Messiah shall be unto men " the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." George
Adam Smith's description of this phrase is very sug-
gestive: In Palestine where the fertile land joins
the desert you often see this thing: some early spring
day a playful breeze will bring a seed out of the
deep, cool forest and drop it into a little patch of
fertile soil, on the edge of the desert. The seed
takes root, and becomes a little plant, pushing its
glad way up through the soil with the promise of
life. And then what happens? There comes a
wind — it may be the sirocco, it may be the Mediter-
ranean breeze — and drifts the sand slowly but
surely over the little plant, and smothers out its
young life. But if you set a rock there on the edge
of the desert, and drop the seed behind it, it will
grow just the same; but when the sand drifts, the
rock will catch it on its unsheltered side, and the
plant will become a great tree. That is a picture
of the Messiah's tender and thoughtful ministry.
There is too much glare and glitter in the world ;
too much exposure of sensitive surfaces to alien in-
fluences. What men need is protection and shelter
in the formative stages of life. Isaiah's disciples
felt this need keenly. They were ready for the
ordeal by fire ; but the}" dreaded a too sudden appli-
cation of its tremendous heat ; what they wanted
was something that would temper purging ministries
with kindness and compassion. The Messiah by His

176 THE CONSUMING FIRE

love and consideration would be unto them a great
rock in a weary land. In His strength they should
find shelter and quiet. The practical ministries of
Christ have abundantly fulfilled this prophecy.
One of the most destructive forces of life is a recol-
lection of a past blunder. The world quickly for-
gets our virtues, but has a long memory for our
falls. What would have become of Simon Peter,
who denied his Lord because he was afraid of the
chattering tongue of a servant girl, had it not been
for the protecting shadow of a great love? The
Savior put Himself between Peter's memory and
Peter's sin, and he could never after think of his
fall without thinking of Christ. This was Isaiah's
conception of the tenderness and consideration of
redeeming love.

The ideal of the promised leader, wrought partly
from the prophet's intuitions, and partly from the
urgent questioning of the people became the
standard by which to test the political and religious
leadership of the time. Isaiah's disciples were re-
sponsible members of the chosen race, they had posi-
tive relations to both church and state: how then
were they to judge their rulers? What were they
to think of politics? How estimate the worth of
social remedies? Above all else what were they to
think of world movements in relation to their re-
ligious destiny? In these prophecies, Isaiah lifts
the mind of his generation above the low level of

THE THREE QUESTIONS 177

political expediency to contemplate the permanent
gains that were coming out of the trials and tribu-
lations of the time. In the world convulsions God
was proving Himself an active, militant holiness, a
devouring and cleansing fire; but He will not leave
the nation comfortless or without leadership ; the
Messiah shall be one of the people, closely identified
with their sufferings and hardships, yet capable not
only of dwelling in the fire that was to determine
the reality of all created things, but able to cause
others to live in it also; knowledge of whose
character would fix the standard of value for all
practical affairs.

Under the influence of this Mighty Personality
one's view of life would be brought into harmony
with truth : " the eyes of them that see shall not be
dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
The heart also of the rash shall understand knowl-
edge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be
ready to speak plainly."

History bears this out. Martin Luther did not
cause the reformation ; there were multitudes all over
Christendom that wanted a change ; but they spoke of
it with stammering tongues because they could not
think clearly ; they had no courage until the iron-
jawed monk stood up before the world and uttered
the great word that coordinated their thoughts and
loosed their tongues. Luther taught the stammerer
to speak plainly. This was Isaiah's service to his

178 THE CONSUMING FIRE

generation. The Messiah was coming, be it soon
or late; and under the influence of this glorious ex-
pectation the people attained to a clearer under-
standing of the times, and were enabled to look
beyond the tumult of nations and the fall of
dynasties to the advent of a permanent kingdom,
in which all spiritual aspirations should be realized.
What is our generation to make of these things?
We have gained from our study of Isaiah and his
times, a simplified conception of the Almighty; he
has taught us to think of God as an active, dynamic
holiness — an atmosphere of fire that determines the
reality of all created things. Autocratic Germany
has fallen because she could not live in the devour-
ing flame; the Allied nations and the United States
have so far been permitted to survive because there
was in the purposes of those peoples an inde-
structible deposit of moral reality. Passionate
moral principle determined the issue of the struggle ;
it sustained the morale of the nations during four
years of exceptional hardships ; and it is impossible
to resist the conviction that this moral passion
was due to the direct influence of Christianity on
Western civilization. It has been a holy war, in-
volving many fundamental truths of religion. What
is national honor? What is right and what is
wrong? What are sanctions for governments?
What is the nature and value of personal sacrifice?
All these questions directed the mind into religious

THE THREE QUESTIONS 179

channels ; and the effort to answer them by personal
dedication to the cause led to something like a re-
ligious experience. All that was implied in the as-
sertion of the righteousness of our cause was a con-
fession of faith in the fundamental truth that only
the real can last ; and that reality was in every case
to be determined by moral relationships.

But are we aware of the implications of such a
belief? For if the successful issue of the war has
demonstrated the power of right over wrong, it has
done so only because there is a ruling Providence in
the world that makes it so. Moral experiences of
this elemental character bring individuals into direct
relations with God. It was true in Isaiah's time ; it
is true to-dsLY. If the dynamic holiness of God
determines the life of nations, it also conditions the
life of individuals. Whether we like it or not, we
are obliged to live in the atmosphere of fire ; and
only the real can survive it.

Survival in such an atmosphere may be of two
kinds. We may live in it if we are fit for it ; or
lacking this, we may survive if we find a redeemer
who can. This is the meaning of Isaiah's Messianic
prophecies. The supreme necessity for people in his
time was personal religion. The moral urgencies of
their experience forced them to realize the need for
a Savior; they wanted closer relations with God
which could only be gained through a Mediator and
Friend. Some such experience has come to our gen-

180 THE CONSUMING FIRE

eration. Once more the grave question rises in the
human heart: How shall we live in the cleansing
fire? How shall we survive the devouring flame?
What is our answer going to be?

Modern indifference to personal religion has been
due in great measure to ignorance of God's nature;
for without belief in the holy significance of life,
it is not worth while to talk about a Savior. But
once let men become aware of the holy atmosphere
that surrounds this planet, and realize their unfitness
to live in it, and the need for a Savior becomes im-
perative.

The war has taught us the monstrous power of
evil which the advance of civilization and the safe-
guards of intelligence have not been able to check.
If the Allied nations had been without moral prin-
ciple, they would have lost the war; but now this
principle has turned upon the individual life and be-
come a standard of criticism for the self. The
dangerous possibilities in human nature have set
many on fresh quests for peace and safety ; there is a
general feeling that such may be satisfied in closer re-
lations with God. On the whole the awakening due
to the war has brought to our generation a great
but fleeting opportunity ; our permanent gains will
depend upon whether we appreciate what God has
done to save the world from itself. The times are
bringing us face to face with Jesus Christ. The
heart of His gospel is suffering for others — the

THE THREE QUESTIONS 181

sacrifice of the One for the benefit of the many ; and
the sacrificial experiences of the war have enabled us
to comprehend the fundamental appeal of the Chris-
tian religion.

We have an opportunity of learning how to under-
stand the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world.
" Without the shedding of blood there is no remis-
sion." This means that without the sacrifice of life
no evil thing can be put away. The pathway along
which all the moral and spiritual benefits of the race
have come is marked by the graves of those who
lived and died for the right. Without shedding of
blood, there is no remission — this is the message
of the casualty lists. Our young men have given
their lives for us ; they have made the world safe
for democracy ; but this does not save the world from
its sins. The terrible outbreak in the German state
was but a manifestation of the power of evil over
human nature. The shedding of patriot blood has
put away an economic evil; but Christ alone can
deal with the fundamental cause, which is sin —
alienation from God. The blood of our young men
is calling loudly from the fields of France, to the
living, to put at the service of the nation during the
reconstruction period the same spirit of sacrifice and
devotion ; but above all else it calls us to consider
how we can fundamentally remove the cause which
produces such evil eflfects on states and peoples ;
and only faith in the sacrificial power of the Son

182 THE CONSUMING FIRE

of God can accomplish that. This urgently re-
quires the examination of motives and purposes;
especially does it compel us to think of ourselves as
spirits, fronting eternity, with primary responsibili-
ties to God.

Jesus Christ died on the cross to make the world
safe for our souls. Through Him alone can we be
reconciled to God and fitted to live in the consuming
fires of His holiness.

Great believers are the hope of the world in a
time of social readjustment. F. S. Oliver has
spoken of " some rare occasions scattered through
history, where as if by a common impulse, humanity
has paused in its work, and, leaning on its spade,
has looked round bewildered by a sudden hopeful-
ness ; aware dimly that something fortunate has
happened, that a new man has appeared in the world,
and that he is a friend." This is a fine description
of the present temper of peoples. Multitudes in all
nations are seeking a larger self-expression in demo-
cratic forms of government. The stabilizing in-
fluence in a democracy has always issued from the
spirit of the people whose sacrificial purposes
furnished sanctions for government and maintained
respect for constituted authority. This spirit is
always found in a certain class — the typical
product of God. The Christian is and always has
been this kind of man. Under his influence the eyes
of them that see shall not be dim: the ears of them

THE THREE QUESTIONS 183

that hear shall hearken ; the heart also of the rash
shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the
stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly ; and if
this generation is to deserve the benefits that have
come to it through the sacrifice of others ; if we are
going to keep the world a fit place in which to live,
we must give fundamental effect to the precepts of
the Christian religion in the domain of public service,
as well as in the sphere of private life. Where-
fore, seeing that we face such grave responsibilities,
" let us have grace, whereby we may serve God ac-
ceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God
is a consuming fire."

THE END

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