This generation is boasting or complaining that old landmarks are
blotted out, ancient paths broken, footmarks obliterated, stars hid,
and mist shrouding the desert. But Christ still guides, and His promise
still holds good: 'He that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness,
but shall have the light of life.' The alternative for each 'traveller
between life and death' is to tread in His footsteps or to 'wander in
the wilderness in a solitary way, hungry and thirsty,' with fainting
soul. Let us make the ancient prayer ours: 'See if there be any wicked
way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'
WHAT LIFE'S JOURNEY MAY BE
'The redeemed shall walk there: And the ransomed of the Lord shall
return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their
heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall
flee away.'--ISAIAH XXXV 9,10.
We have here the closing words of Isaiah's prophecy. It has been
steadily rising, and now it has reached the summit. Men restored to all
their powers, a supernatural communication of a new life, a pathway for
our journey--these have been the visions of the preceding verses, and
now the prophet sees the happy pilgrims flocking along the raised way,
and hears some faint strains of their glad music, and he marks them,
rank after rank, entering the city of their solemnities, and through
the gates can behold them invested with joy and gladness, while sorrow
and sighing, like some night-loving birds shrinking from the blaze of
that better sun which lights the city, spread their black wings and
flee away.
The noble rhythm of our English version rises here to a strain of
pathetic music, the very cadence of which stirs thoughts that lie too
deep for tears, and one shrinks from taking these lofty words of
immortal hope--which life's sorrows have interpreted, I trust, for many
of us--as the text of a sermon. But I would fain try whether some of
their gracious sweetness and power may not survive even our rude
handling of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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