: shall pass, which the Lord shall lay upon him, it shall be with tabrets and harps and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. (ver. 33) For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." The first of these verses declares that he shall endure until that voice of the Lord be uttered, which is thus described in the preceding verse; "And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones." This is, no doubt, identical with that "sword which proceedeth out of his mouth," and by which the slaughter of that fearful day is wrought (Rev. xix. 21). And if the Assyrian is to endure till then, it confirmeth one of the great conclusions running through this interpretation,-that under the name of the Assyrian is the great oppressing power of God's church, both Jewish and Christian, until the coming of Christ, prophesied of. The second of these verses connects his downfal with the downfal of all oppression: for as he falls, joy is to arise; as he is rooted out of his place with battles of shaking, the sound of the tabret and harp shall be heard. It shall not be any more to fall out of the hands of one oppressor into the hands of another; but out of the darkness of all oppression to emerge into the light and blessedness of everlasting joy and triumph. And this is true, whether by the words translated "grounded staff" we understand the staff with which the Great Builder lays the foundation of his everlasting structure; or whether we render them" the rod of correction," and understand by it the chastisements with which in the day of the Lord he shall be visited. And the last verse distinctly points out to us the very same event and act of God's wrath which in Rev. xix. 20 is expressed by the beast and the false prophet being cast into a lake of fire burning with brimstone; determining that the mystery of the Assyrian is coextensive with the mystery of the beast with seven heads; and that the "eighth head which is also of the seven❞—that is, the infidel head of Rome yet to arise, and bring the false prophet to be at his steps-is the person properly meant by "the Assyrian" in Isaiah. For surely it was not for Sennacherib that the fire of Tophet is ordained, nor for any man who hath yet appeared upon the earth. The man still hath to appear who is not to die by natural death, but to be cast alive quick into the lake of Tophet. The other passage in which the downfal of the Assyrian is described is in the xxxist chapter of Isaiah, where, at verse 8, it is thus written of a time when " every man shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold: "Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of 66 a mean man, shall devour him but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. (verse 9.) And he shall pass over to his strong hold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace in Jerusalem." There is an enigma in the description here given of the person by whose sword he falls, who is at once represented as "not a mighty man," and "not a mean man.' Now, in our text he is described as a mighty man. Is there a contradiction in this? Not a contradiction, but an enigma. For in our text, after he has been denominated a mighty man, he is immediately described as growing like a despised branch, a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness : so that he is at once not mighty, and not mean:" having the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, he is the despised branch," not mighty;" having the identity of Adon-Jehovah, he is" not mean." With respect to the event which is contained in the 9th verse, I know not well to what it refers. It may perhaps be a glance at the historical fact of the first Assyrian, who, after his troops were destroyed by the breath of the Lord, fled to Nineveh, his strong hold, and there ended his days; as we are informed, Isa. xxxvii. 36-38: "Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Armenia: and Esar-haddon his son reigned in his stead." Or it may refer to some event connected with the last Assyrian, which is not elsewhere, that we can see, spoken of. Inasmuch as it points out a different end to him from those who are joined with him, it is indeed particularly referred to in Rev. xix. 20: inasmuch as it points out a different locality, we have not been able to find any note of it elsewhere. Let these illustrations from other parts of Scripture explain to us what is meant by the Assyrian's falling by the hand of a Mighty One. That Mighty One is doubtless Adon-Jehovah-Sabaoth, who does the action of lopping the bow with terror: the Mighty One who has been already described as the El-gibbor, the God-hero; "the mighty God;" the mighty One whose anointing of the Holy Ghost in his generation of the virgin doth destroy the yoke. He is the person celebrated in this Divine song of his conception, name, and action; and therefore every great event introduced is declared to come to pass by His might and power: under whatever figure it is set forth, the glory of the exploit is his. The whole prophecy is the testimony of him. It is Immanuel's great and wonderful birth, and name, and work which the prophet is given to set forth, as the assurance to the faint heart of Ahaz and the sign to his wavering faith that the line and the throne and the exploits of David's house should never have an end. The Assyrian, and with him all the oppressors of Israel, being thus brought to an end, that aspect of the subject is concluded; the aspect which concerns Israel's transgressions, Israel's punishment, and the punishment of all her oppressors together. And straightway the spirit of inspiration changes, and another form of the One Person is introduced to us; which might be entitled, The view of him as the Regenerator of the world, and its Redeemer from all the woes and miseries, the warfare and confusion, with which it hath been so long deluged. The prophetic harp ever closes with a strain of hope and blessedness; because all the severe inflictions of God are only to the end of destroying the enemies of peace. He maketh war, only to scatter them which delight in war, and to make wars to cease unto the ends of the earth his desolations are only to cast out the desolator: he roots up the forest, and reverses the surface of the ground, only that he may turn it into the smiling garden and the fruitful field as it is written in the xlvith Psalm, "Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.' That stillness, that peace, that exaltation and blessedness of the world under Immanuel, the strain doth now proceed to describe. "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." In order to describe the fulness of creation, as well as of Godhead, which is contained in the man Christ Jesus, it is the method of the Holy Spirit to take similitudes from every department of nature and of art, and by the perfection thereof to represent his all-inclusive perfection. Amongst reasonable men, he is Lord: amongst the captives, he is Redeemer: amongst the militant members of the church, he is the Captain of their salvation: amongst the beasts of the field, he is the Lion of the tribe of Judah: amongst the trees of the wood, he is the cherishing Vine, which supporteth as its branches all the fruitful creation; or the goodly Cedar planted upon the height of Zion, in the shadow of whose branches all fowl of every wing do dwell: of the great fabric of redeemed things, the great temple of the Holy Ghost, he is the Foundation-stone with its seven eyes, and the Chief Stone of the corner, which is to be brought out with shoutings, saying, Grace, grace, unto it: he is the Sun in the firmament of heaven, he is the Light of the circumambient air, he is the Resurrection from the grave, he is the Judge and the Restrainer of the nethermost hell and, in one word, he is the All in all of the creation, so far as its creationand redemption and eternal blessedness are concerned. In the glorious passage on which we are now entering, he is represented, in contrast with those stately and proud cedars of Lebanon who made their boast against God and therefore are brought low, as a Rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Sucker growing out of his roots; beginning his career in the greatest humility, and thence arising to greatest glory. The "rod" is by some taken in the secondary and figurative sense, of the sceptre or rod of government; which is not only not necessary, but violates the spirit and destroys the beauty of the contrast, which is to represent him as a slender shoot out of an ignoble and unnoticed stem (the stem of Jesse, not the stem of David), as a sucker from the same unseen and despised root. Jesse's was a family without name among the thousands of Judah; the Assyrian was the king of kings, before whom all the earth was silent: yet, while the Lord poured fury and destruction upon his stately pride, and all stateliness whatever, he would take his chosen one from the ignoble stock of Jesse. True it is, that this slender twig grows into the glory of being the rod of eternal and universal empire: but that is not here signified, as I take it, nor even hinted at, but waits to be opened in the progress of the description, when the Spirit of the Lord shall, out of this humble scion of a humble house produce the Branch of renown, the Branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious. The thing which under these words is taught answereth to that which is written in the liiid chapter of this Prophet: "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness: and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." (vers. 2, 3.) -In the twofold representation of his humility, as a rod from Jesse's trunk and a sucker from Jesse's root, there seemeth to be a contradiction: but it is one of those contradictions which will be found in all Messiah's names; as, "the First and the Last," "the Beginning and the Ending." Which contradictions arise, as we have shewn in our third Lecture on the Apocalypse, from the nature of all spiritual truth, which cannot be otherwise expressed than in an enigma, when expressed by means of human language and conceptions. The true form of the enigma before us is contained in Rev. xxii. 16: "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright and Morning-star." He is at once root and offspring; because, as Christ pre-existent, in whom all the election are chosen before the world was, he is that holy One of God out of whom David comes, and to figure whom David was fashioned; and yet, as Jesus the Son of the virgin, he is the offspring of David, of his seed, the issue of his loins. This truth, of his pre-existence as the Christ in the bosom of the Father, and of his afterexistence as the creature, when he became flesh; his all-inclusiveness and majesty and might as the former, his weakness and humility and narrow conditions as the latter; is that out of which the many enigmas and contradictions written of him arise. In a word, that great unit of all orthodox creeds, in which they are all contained-the proposition "Jesus is the Christ" is the greatest of all enigmas, and the parent of all the contradictory names by which Christ is expressed. But for clear and full light upon this subject we must refer to the “ Lectures on the Revelations," where we have opened these names at length. In the text he is called Adon-Jehovah-Sabaoth, a mighty one felling all trees to the ground; and forthwith the twig from Jesse's humble trunk, the sucker from Jesse's hidden root. To understand these things, and to explain them, is the great work of an interpreter and it cannot be done without the profoundest knowledge of the orthodox creed,-that the Christ of God, in whom, before the worlds, God saw his purpose accomplished, his election, his redeemed world, and every thing which shall have an eternal being; he whom he used in all working to and in and for the outward creation; is the very Person who took substance of Jesse's daughter, and was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, the humblest of the humble trees, the lowliest of the lowly shrubs of the forest. And yet misguided and misguiding men (God guide them into truth!) will say that he had another and a better sort of flesh than ours; that he was of an ethereal temper in his fleshly substance; a tree of paradise, and not the twig from Jesse's trunk; a graft upon Adam's glorious and unfallen stem, and not a scion from Jesse's root. Poor men! how ye are forsaken! and how vaunting of your ignorance, how boastful of your shame! "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord."-This verse standeth between the humility of his origin, the unworthiness of his stock, the want of all worldly advantages, and the destitution of all means of knowledge and instruction above the lowest peasant-between this, I say, and the glorious description of his wisdom and might and exploits which follow, standeth this verse, to reveal to us the cause of that glorious precedency of all kings and pre-eminence above all men which he obtained. No one doubts that the verse on which we have commented con |