It is important that we use the words which express the severe side of Divine dealings with great judgment and carefulness. We should resist the tendency of modern times to eliminate all the severer features from the conception of the Divine Being. Dr. Bushnell thus expresses it: "Our age is at the point of apogee from all the robuster notions of Deity." Our fathers made too much of t he Divine "wrath;" but we are in danger of making too little. There is a considerable variety of words that we may use to express this sterner side of the Divine dealing - 'wrath,' 'anger,' 'indignation,' 'fury,' 'vengeance,' 'judgment,' 'justice,' and the like, but they are all more or less defective. Wrath is the term most commonly used in our translation, and it is really the best, if only we can hold it closely enough to the idea of a moral, in distinction from a merely animal, passion; else, failing in this, it will connect associations of unregulated temper that are painful, and as far as possible from being sacred. It requires in this view, like the safety-lamps of the miners, a gauze of definition round it, to save it from blazing into an explosion too fierce to serve the purposes of light." Indignation is the most unexceptionable word, and it is to one point in connection with it that attention is now invited. It is especially suited to express the feeling of God, because it applies to wrong-doers rather than to wrong actions. It links on to the view that the essence of sin is not a wrong thing done, but the wrong will out of which the doing came. We cannot get up indignation merely at things done; our feeling settles and centers on the bad doers. In all cases of sin we should keep quite clearly before us that the Divine concern is not, supremely, the disturbed circumstances, but the sinners and the sufferers. Divine power can readjust and rearrange all our conditions and circumstances, just as that power can preserve the order, and put straight the broken or deflected order, of creation. It is God's own condition, laid upon himself, that moral states can only be reached by moral means. Divine indignations, as they concern moral beings, find expression in the persuasions of Divine judgments; these fall on the man himself, or they may fall on his substitute and representative; and so is opened up for treatment the mystery of Divine indignations resting on Christ for us, for our sakes. - R.T.

The text draws back the curtain which separates the visible world from the invisible. It reveals celestial regions, in which there are also great struggles going on. It lifts up our eyes to the grander movements of the world of spirits; and then it declares that the sword which is to be used in fighting what seem to be the petty wars of the Hebrews and the Edomites, is the same sword which has been used in these celestial conflicts; that the means and instruments of righteousness upon the earth must be the same with the means and instruments of righteousness in the heavens.

I. ALL GOOD STRUGGLE IN THE WORLD IS REALLY GOD'S BATTLE, and ought to recognise itself as such. Every special victory of human progress — the victory over slavery, superstition, social wrong, nay, even the victory over tough matter, the subduing of the hard stuff of nature to spiritual uses, — each of these is but a step in the great onward march of God taking possession of His own. Fight your battle with the sword bathed in heaven; so you shall make it victorious, and grow strong and great yourself in fighting it.

II. One of the most marvellous things about Jesus is the UNION OF FIRE AND PATIENCE. He saw His Father's house turned into a place of merchandise, and instantly the whip of small cords was in His hands, and He was cleansing the sacred place with His impassioned indignation. And yet He walked day after day through the streets of Jerusalem, and saw the sin, and let the sinners sin on with only the remonstrance of His pure presence and His pitying gaze. Only in God's own time and in God's own way can the battles of the Lord be fought. There is no self-will in Jesus. He is one with His Father, and lives by His Father's will. His sword was always bathed in heaven.

III. THE BATTLE WHICH GOES ON WITHIN OURSELVES IS GOD'S BATTLE, and is of supreme importance. If the battle be God's, it must be fought only with God's weapons. You want to get rid of your selfishness. You must not kill it with the sword of another selfishness, which thenceforth shall rule in its place. Selfishness can only be cast out by self-forget-fulness and consecration. To count sin God's enemy, and to fight it with all His purity and strength, that is what it means for us that our sword should be bathed m heaven.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)