Note 1 — ISAIAH. (continued 8)

Zion was the name of a high mound situated upon a bed of rock enclosed within the walls of Jerusalem, and making the finest and strongest part thereof. Here was first the Tabernacle, and then the Temple, and concerning it great things are declared (Ps. cxxxii. 13–18). If we look through the literal description to the spiritual glory discernible, we shall soon see that it was typical of a higher state, and a shadow of good things to come. I need hardly remind you that, by a figure of speech, Zion is used in the New Testament as significant of the Church of the Living God (Heb. xii. 22).—Jay.

Such are the encouragements that consoled the ancient city of God in the day of her trouble. Harassed, her garrisons stormed, her armies scattered, her very sanctuary threatened with violation, she was bade remember her Eternal King, and take comfort in the thought of that watchful Guardian who sooner or later would assuredly avenge her wrongs. Often was she taught the same lesson; and often, in despite of her own froward and unbelieving heart, was the prediction realised. The Lord still “loved the gates of Zion;” the streams of His holy “river still made glad the city of God;” and He was “known in her palace for a refuge.” But a gloomier hour at length arrived; even Divine patience has its limits; and the last dread crime of Zion could only be expiated in her ruin. Blood had flowed beneath her hands, every drop of which was worth a universe, and she had invoked its curse upon her own head and the head of her children. And now, behold, in the fearful words of her own prophets, “the lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way,”—Jerusalem is ruined and Judah is fallen, because their tongues and their doings are against the Lord to provoke the eyes of His glory. “But what?—is this the city of which such glorious things are spoken—that the Highest Himself should establish her, that she should not be moved?” Where are His mighty promises of perpetuity? Where is that foundation which no power should ever shake—that Zion, in which the poor of His people were to trust?

Brethren, look around you, and you behold the evidences of its existence, and of the eternal faithfulness of Him who is pledged to its immortality. A greater than Zion inherits her name; a greater than Zion bore it in the far-reaching scope of the prophetic vision. That “city of the great King” was but a perishable emblem of a “city whose builder and maker is God.” It is true she was honoured by His symbolic presence and sanctified by His sacred worship; it is true that for ages she alone, in a world of darkness, held the precious lamp of His truth; but what are these characters of honour to hers, whose every living stone is quickened by His indwelling energy, whose worship is no more in type and shadow, but in spirit and in substance; whose preaching and teaching, no longer shrouded in obscurity and limited to a corner of the earth, spreads over all lands, embraces the whole family of mankind, and makes even the course of that sun whose “going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it, and from whose light nothing is hid,“ a faint image of the power with which she diffuses through all nations “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”? (See also 2 Cor. iii. 10, 11.)—Archer Butler.