Brother and sister, this is not a matter only for social reformers, and
to be dealt with as bearing upon wide movements that influence
multitudes. It comes home to you and me. Some of you do not in the
least degree know what I am talking about when I speak of the hunger of
men's hearts; for you have lost your appetites, as children that eat
too many sweets have no desire for their wholesome meals. You have lost
your appetite by feeding upon garbage, and you say you are quite
content. Yes, at present; but deep down there lies in your hearts a
need which will awake and speak out some day; and you will find that
the husks which the swine did eat are scarcely wholesome nutriment for
a man. And there are some of you that turn away with disgust, and I am
glad of it, from these low, gross, sensuous delights; and are trying to
satisfy yourselves with education, culture, refinement, art, science,
domestic love, wealth, gratified ambition, or the like. There are
tribes of degraded Indians that in times of famine eat clay. There is a
little nourishment in it, and it distends their stomachs, and gives
them the feeling of having had a meal. And that is like what some of
you do. Dear friends, will you listen to this?--'Why do ye spend your
money for that which is not bread?' Will you listen to this?--'I am the
Bread of Life,' Will you listen to this?--'In this mountain will the
Lord make unto all people a feast of fat things.'
II. Where does the unveiling that gives light to the world come from?
My text, as I have already remarked, emphatically repeats 'in this
mountain' in its next clause. 'He will destroy in this mountain the
face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread
over all nations.'
Now, of course, the pathetic picture that is implied here, of a dark
pall that lies over the whole world, suggests the idea of mourning, but
still more emphatically, I think, that of obscuration and gloom. The
veil prevents vision and shuts out light, and that is the picture of
humanity as it presents itself before this prophet--a world of men
entangled in the folds of a dark pall that lay over their heads, and
swathed them round about, and prevented them from seeing; shut them up
in darkness and entangled their feet, so that they stumbled in the
gloom. It is a pathetic picture, but it does not go beyond the
realities of the case. For, with all our light on other matters, with
all our freedom of action, with all our frequent forgetfulness of the
fact that we are thus encompassed, it remains true that, apart from the
emancipation and illumination that are effected by Jesus Christ, this
is the picture of mankind as they are. And you are beneath that veil,
and swathed, obstructively as regards light and liberty, by its heavy
folds, unless Christ has freed you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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