Isaiah 21:11-12 The burden of Dumah. He calls to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?… I. The first thing which, in reference to this inquiry, the words before us suggest, is, that IT IS OF THE LORD HIMSELF THE INQUIRY MUST BE MADE. His eye alone seeth under the whole heaven; and He only knoweth the end from the beginning. Nothing can be more utterly fallacious than any mere calculation of human probabilities in regard to the future progress of Divine truth — in regard to the course it may be destined to run. When Jesus of Nazareth had been put to an ignominious death, His few and obscure disciples dispersed in terror, and when the handful of peasants and fishermen who had been the companions of His ministry were shut up, unnoticed and unknown, in an upper chamber at Jerusalem, who could have foreseen that the blast of the trumpet, blown by this small and feeble band, was to shake down the mighty Jericho of that universal heathenism which then overspread and enslaved the benighted earth? When, fifteen hundred years thereafter, a poor, emaciated Augustinian monk was wearing himself out in his gloomy cell in the terrible conflict of an awakened conscience, which all his self-righteous austerities could not satisfy or soothe, who could have foreseen that in that single man the Lord was training a soldier, who should confront, single-handed, the gigantic power of the man of sin, and liberate the half of Europe from his galling and destructive yoke? But if human sagacity would thus have been baffled on the one hand by unlooked-for triumphs to the cause of truth, would it not have been equally confounded on the other by unexpected defeats? When the day of Gospel light was breaking forth in such glorious splendour upon the world in apostolic times, who would have ventured to anticipate that so bright a day was to be succeeded by the dark ages, the long, dismal, dreary centuries during which the few remaining witnesses prophesied in sackcloth, amid bonds and stripes, and imprisonments, and death? Again, when the Lutheran Reformation, like a strong wind out of the clear north, was sweeping off from the nations the dense cloud of papal superstition, and revealing once more to their wondering eyes the long-hidden Sun of righteousness, who would have thought that the horrid cloud would again return to spread its murky folds over so many of its ancient fields, and that men, choosing darkness rather than the light, would love to have it so? It is to the Lord we must turn if we desire to know what is in the womb of time. II. However discouraging the aspect of things may, in many points, appear, "THE MORNING COMETH" — a day of unprecedented brilliancy and joy, when the kingdom and dominion under the whole heaven shall be given to the Son of man, and when, emancipated from the strife and turmoil of incessant wars, and enjoying and exhibiting a foretaste and emblem of the heavenly state, the rest of Zion shall be glorious. III. WE MUST REJOICE WITH TREMBLING, FOR WHILE THE MORNING COMETH, THERE COMETH ALSO THE NIGHT. When the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion shall have come, it will be a night to her adversaries and oppressors; but to Zion herself it will be a bright and glorious day. (R. Buchanan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? |
    |