2 Kings 20:19-20 Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which you have spoken. And he said, Is it not good… The text is susceptible of two propositions. First, that peace is a blessing only on a basis of truth. "He said, Is it not good if peace and truth be in my days?" Secondly, that the godliest celebration of peace is to resume the social and religious benefactions interrupted by war. Hezekiah's "might" was diverted to the construction of "the pool and the conduit of water" for the relief of his people. I. THAT PEACE WITHOUT TRUTH IS NOT THE PEACE OF GOD IS CAPABLE OF ABUNDANT EVIDENCE AND ILLUSTRATION. As in a religious sense there may be "a cry of Peace, peace, where there is no peace," except the unnatural stillness of a moral stupefaction, a stifling of the voice of conscience, and a compromise of principle with "the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience," and under whose influence, when the "strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace," such as it is — but it is at the best only the torpor of sordid subjection to spiritual bondage, the tranquillity of a dungeon, or the quiescence of a corpse, dead in its trespasses and sins — so in the political moralities of nations there may be a peace that has no truth in it, neither in the reality of its foundation, the assurance of its continuance, nor the uprightness of its conditions. That is a peace at the expense of truth which is not true to the eternal and inalienable principles of international rights — which is bought by the ignoble subsidy of subjection to wrong and injustice, or which consents to spare itself the possible cost and sacrifice of a generous intervention on behalf of the weak against the strong — which ignores the great plea of national brotherhoods, and asks with the first fratricide, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and which entails upon itself the malediction written against those who were "not grieved with the afflictions of Joseph." That is a peace without truth which "looks every man to his own things, and not every man to the things of others also"; and if this maxim be a canon binding on any one man in reference to any other man, it is equally binding on any one nation in reference to any other nation. II. Our second deduction from the text is, THAT THE GODLIEST CELEBRATION OF PEACE IS TO RESUME THE SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS BENEFACTIONS INTERRUPTED BY THE WAR. Hezekiah so improved even a period of respite. "He made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city." If God condescended to put twice on record the mere municipal zeal of this pious prince; if, the pool, the conduit and the water are counted worthy of a place in the compendious annals of Inspiration, we may be sure the activities of Christian benevolence in the same direction will meet with His gracious approval. It is a miserable mistake to suppose, that Christianity has nothing to do with the common tenements, the daily vulgar wants and homespun miseries of our fellow-men. It stirs our sympathy to listen to the recital of the far-off dark places of the earth and their habitations of cruelty; but it is not so easy to extort a sigh over the dark back lanes and more noisome and cruel abodes in the next street behind us. There are no Hezekiah's pools, except in fever-brewing abominations of the cesspool, nor other conduit except the constant exhalations of disease and death from the sluggish gutter, nor better homes than the vile hovels where in guilt and penury alike seek a covert to sin, and suffer and die. If the bitter mass of gratuitous suffering and mortality arising from a defective commissariat in the Crimea should drag into reluctant notice the amount of misery dally endured from a similar neglect of sanitary provisions in the crowded courts and alleys of the metropolis, the poor battalions will not have perished in vain. They will have incidentally achieved an involuntary victory on behalf of their fellow-citizens, attended perhaps with more comfort than glory, but none the less precious for the public welfare. Oh! there is more hope of the Gospel gaining audience of the wild Indian in the cheerful freedom of his native forests, than of its penetrating the gross darkness of the denizens alongside the Thames, or the purlieus of the city. If we would speak with any hope of evangelising effect of "the pool of Siloam," and of "the Fountain of living waters," we must first tread in Hezekiah's footsteps, provide the pool and the conduit of sanitary necessities, the possibilities of popular decency and comfort, the practicableness of a family hearth and home, the humble means of health and cleanliness, of light and air and water, freely as God bestows them, and fully as a seasonable adoption of remedial agents would supply them. Such a celebration of the peace abroad would afford the happiest prospect of more peace at home, and co-operate with city missionaries and ministers of religion with the most hopeful pledges of success, in their more directly spiritual efforts for the evangelisation of our fellow-citizens. (J. B. Owen, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said Hezekiah unto Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. And he said, Is it not good, if peace and truth be in my days? |
    |