men from Zidon-one of the oldest cities in the world. It is mentioned in Homer. Tyre is not. "Oppressed virgin," because conquered. A city that had never been captured was called a virgin. "Chittim" is variously referred to Greece, Rome, or European countries on the Mediterranean. The Tyrians founded colonies at various places on the shores of the Mediterranean, but they were exposed by their commercial position and prosperity, and had no rest, and all eventually, after the fall of Carthage, were conquered by Rome.

Verse 13. The Chaldeans were a wandering, unknown tribe, until Assur, king of Assyria, settled them in Babylon and the vicinity. "He brought it to ruin," seems to refer to what these same Chaldeans, raised up and strengthened by God,should do in the overthrow of Tyre.

Verses 14 and 15. It is computed by scholars to have been just seventy years from the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, to the time when Darius of Persia, by granting immunities, made way for its restoration. "The days of one king," seems to refer to the time of the duration of the Chaldean kingdom, which was just seventy years.

Verses 16 to 18. Tyre rebuilt, and continuing on to the time of the apostles (Acts xxi. 1 to 6), was the same luxurious, sinful and corrupting city as before. Verse 18 was in small measure fulfilled, when a church of Christ was established there, but we must look to the future for the full fulfillment. From Mr. Moody:

Some people say, "The prophecies are all well enough for the priests and doctors, but not for the rank and file of the church." But Peter says, "The prophecy came not by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," and those men are the very ones who tell us of the return of our Lord. Look at Daniel, where he tells the meaning of that stone which King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, that was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold. "The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure," says Daniel. Now we have seen the fulfillment of that prophecy, all but the closing part of it. The kingdoms of Babylon and Medo-Persia, and of Greece and Rome have all been broken in pieces, and now it only remains for this stone to smite the image and break it in pieces, and to become a great mountain and fill the earth. Text for the day, verse 18.

Monday, January 24th.

Isaiah xxiv. 1 to 12.

Verse 1. From chapters xxiv. to chap. xxvii. inclusive, we have one prophecy or vision, that has the inhabited earth for the scene of action, and all of time for the period of its fulfillment. Israel and its desolation under its Babylonian and Roman conquerors is in the foreground of the vision, but towering behind these events the rising of the antichrist of the last days is seen, and his oppressions of Israel, and his power over the nations delineated. The prophet sees in the abounding apos. tasy, a faithful remnant who are true to God and

who wait for Messiah. He sees the coming of Messiah to Israel their glorious deliverance,—the judgment of their enemies,-and the setting up of the kingdom of Christ at Jerusalem,-that kingdom that shall dominate all the kingdoms of this world. He sees a long and a dark night for Israel, but a glorious morning; He beholds desolations and ruin, but arising from them he beholds the splendor of a restored city and temple. He beholds the hills of Zion desolate and barren, lonely and forsaken, through long ages,-and then he beholds them covered with teeming harvests and fruitful vines, with joy and gladness ringing from a holy, happy and numerous people who have been brought back to God.

Verses 2 to 12. There seems to be no feature of sadness, sorrow, suffering or woe, that is lacking in these verses to picture forth the condition of Jerusalem and the land of Israel when God's judgments fell upon them, and the future condition of what we now call Christendom when His judgments shall fall upon us. Every past judgment of God is a prediction of future judgments. While sin is in the world and Satan unbound, judgments will continue, and each judgment is a type and pledge of the coming and most awful judgment the world has known. None, out of Christ, will be spared, all the world shall feel the hand of God. From George Muller:

Are we, then, to expect that things around us will gradually improve, or rather, that, as we approach the end of the age the darker they will become? True it is that one day, "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea," but this will never be until Jesus Himself comes. In the meantime lawlessness will increase, and the socialism, the communism, the nihilism, etc., of which we now hear so much will at last be headed up in the personal antichrist, the man of sin, who will be destroyed at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as in 2 Thess.,second chapter. Now, are we, as believers, all watching? Are we earnestly longing for the return of that blessed One? Do our hearts truly yearn after Him, and long for His glorious appearing? Are we also doing our part to hasten on His coming? The consecration of the saints has a close connection with the coming of the Lord.

Text for the day, verse 1.

Tuesday, January 25th.

Isaiah xxiv. 13 to 23.

Verses 13 to 15. Here we have the Jewish remnant that pass through the tribulations, kept by the power of God, to be His witnesses on the earth. They are few in number, like the few olives on the tree after its shaking,-and the few grapes on the vine when the vintage is done. But like Noah and his family preserved in the ark, they are the seed for the millennial kingdom of the future earth. It is the view that Isaiah always has of this righteous remnant, and of the glory they share with Messiah in the latter day, that causes him to frequently burst into praise even when he is giving the darkest portrayals of Israel's apostasy and of God's judgments.

Verse 16. In this verse we have the joy and glory of the future, joined to a vivid realization of present misery. With the songs of praise that the prophet in vision heard ascending from converted Gentiles and saved Israelites, came the groans of those in present captivity to sin. This is now the individual believer's experience, as set forth in Ro. viii., where the same Spirit that witnesses that we are the sons of God (verse 16), causes us to groan, "waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body" (verse 23). We see "the glory of God, and Jesus at the right hand of God" (Acts vii.55), and hear the songs of heaven, and feel, as we meet with the cares of life, the sorrows of the world and the burden of the flesh, to cry out with the prophet, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!"

Verses 17 to 20. The prophet saw the terror of the people as they fled from Nebuchadnezzar and afterwards from the Romans,-and then, with enlarged vision, the terror of the earth in that great day of God's wrath, described by our Lord in Luke xxi 25-36, of which these events were types.

Verses 21 to 23. If it is accepted in the study of the prophets that the expression, "In that day," uniformly means the day of Messiah's coming to set up His kingdom upon the earth, much light will be thrown upon the word. Certainly in these verses nothing that occurred in the captivity in Babylon and the restoration of a remnant after seventy years, that fulfills the language used. We must look to Rev. xix. 11 to 21 for the full exposition. The tares are burned; and the righteous shine forth in the kingdom. (Matt. xiii. 40-43).

From C. H. Spurgeon:

The saints are waiting for the day of Christ's appearing, and He is waiting also. The very earth in her sorrow and her groaning travaileth for His coming, which is to be her redemption. The creation is made subject to vanity for a little while; but when the Lord shall come again, the "creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." We might question whether He would come a second time if He had not already come the first time; but if He came to Bethlehem, be assured that His feet shall yet stand upon Olivet. If He came to die, doubt not that He will come to reign. If He came to be despised and rejected of men, why should we doubt that He will come to be admired in all them that believe?

Text for the day, verse 15.

Wednesday, January 26th.

Isaiah xxv. 1 to 5.

Verse 1. This is the song of restored Israel after they have seen God's great judgments upon their enemies, and have experienced His grace and power in their own miraculous preservation and deliverance. Just as Moses, and Aaron and Miriam, led the people in triumphant song on the shores of the sea after the destruction of Pharaoh, so Israel shall sing again, when Jesus shall appear in the hour of their calamity, and shall destroy antichrist, their awful enemy, by the brightness of His appearing, and shall reveal Himself unto them as

their

Jehovah Redeemer (Zec. xiv. 1 to 5; Luke xiii. 34, 35; 2 Thess. ii. 8). The "wonderful things," that are the theme of this anthem of praise, are the things that are mentioned in verses 21 to 23, of ch. xxiv. Satan and his host have been cast down from on high (Rev. xii. 7 to 10), and the kings of the earth who had served Satan, had met with their doom. God is faithful to His promises, and His truth shall prevail.

Verses 2 to 5. The overthrow of Babylon was the immediate event, but the words are intended to embrace not only all that Jehovah ever had done for Israel, in the destruction of Pharaoh, the defeat of Sennacherib, the fall of Babylon, etc., but also the overthrow of the New Testament Babylon, the capital of antichrist. The fall of Babylon by the Euphrates, led Cyrus and his successors to glorify God; and much more shall the fall of the future Babylon bring Him praise and glory. "The branch of the terrible ones shall be brought low." "The city of the terrible ones shall fear thee." Let us remember these promises when we are confronted by the enemies of Christ and truth. However great their power may seem, and however fierce and terrible their threatenings, they can do nothing against us except as God permit, and when the cup of their iniquity is full, and they have made themselves conspicuous by their boastings, they shall go down, as Pharaoh of old went down, like a stone beneath the waters. The word "strangers," in verse 5, means heathen, or Gentiles. Gentile power now dominates Judah and the civilized world. Soon Israel shall be restored to their land, and Judah shall dominate the kingdoms of this world (Rev. xi. 15-18). Whatever the furnace of affliction that the Jews are to pass through before they are restored, and con verted to Christ, God will preserve them until Hi word is accomplished.

From Bishop Ryle:

If the Jew could see nothing in Old Testament prophecy but Christ's exaltation and final power, has not the Gentile often seen nothing but Christ's humiliation and the preaching of the Gospel? If the Jew dwelt too much on Christ's second advent, has not the Gentile dwelt too exclusively on the first? If the Jew ignored the cross, has not the Gentile ignored the crown? I believe there can be but one answer to these questions. I believe that we Gentiles till lately have been very guilty concern. ing a large portion of God's truth. I believe that we have cherished an arbitrary, reckless habit of interpreting first advent texts literally, and second advent texts spiritually. I believe we have not rightly understood "all that the prophets have spoken" about the second personal advent of Christ, any more than the Jews did about the first. Text for the day, verse 1.

Thursday, January 27th.

Isaiah xxv. 6 to 12.

See in ch. ii., verses 2 and 3, that the expression "This mountain," refers to Jerusalem. With this settled we can study the verses as to what the Lord has promised to do "in the mountain."

1st. There is to be a feast. To the Jew the holy city

was specially the place of feasts. Three times a year all their males were commanded to gather there and keep the three great feasts of passover, Pentecost and tabernacles. They were very exclusive in these feasts: none but Israelites could partake of them. This coming feast is to be "unto all people." See Zec. xiv. 16; Matt. viii. 11; Rev. xix. 9.

2. "The vail that is spread over all nations," is to be rent "in this mountain." The fulfillment of this began when Christ was crucified, and "the vail of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom" (Matt. xxvii. 51), giving access to God to both Jew and Gentile, on the ground of the shed blood of Messiah (Heb. x. 9 and 10). The fulfillment went on when the Holy Ghost revealed that the church was to constitute one spiritual body in Christ, Jew and Gentile equally accepted in Him (Acts xv. 4 to 11; Eph. ii. 11 to 17). It shall be fully accom. plished when, at Jesusalem, the veil that is now upon the minds of the Jews shall be taken away, and they shall receive Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah (2 Cor. iii. 15, 16). The Gentile nations shall also at that time, as the result of Israel's conversion, be brought to Christ (Acts xv. 16, 17), and enter into light (Isa. lx. 1 to 3).

3. "He will swallow up death in victory." Connected with this conversion of Israel, there will be the first resurrection and the glorification of the saints (1 Thess. iv. 13 to 18; 1 Cor. xv. 51 to 57; Matt. xix. 27, 28).

4. The rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth." Changed in heart and serving Christ, used of the Spirit of God, the Jews shall be men like Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Peter, Paul and John, and shall be as universally honored over the earth as they have been execrated.

5. "In this mountain shall the hand of the Lord rest." That is, it shall be the seat of His government, the place of His power and rule. "The law of the Lord shall go out from Jerusalem."

From Dr. Scott:

There is no sinner of any nation who should not be invited to this feast and assured of a hearty welcome, if he come for it in the appointed way. At length the Lord will come to judgment, the dead shall be raised, the books shall be opened, believers shall be welcomed as the children of God, to their eternal inheritance, “death will be swallowed up in the victory," "God shall wipe away all their tears', and rebukes, and they shall "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." In the day when they shall arise from the grave, and see their divine Redeemer come to perfect their felicity; with what energy of gratitude, love, joy, and triumphant exultation will they exclaim, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him, and He hath saved us."

Text for the day, verse 8.

Friday, January 28th.

Isaiah xxvi. 1 to 9.

Verses 1 to 4. "In that day," i. e., the day referred to in the preceding chapter,-the day when Christ is revealed to Israel and the vail removed from their minds. In these verses we have a "song," a "city,"

a people prepared for the city that has been prepared for them; the "perfect peace" of this prepared people as they are in the prepared city, and "the Lord Jehovah their everlasting portion." Note that the song is composed before there is any one to sing it, and the city is prepared before there is any one to inhabit it. So God in the book of Revelation has given us the songs that are yet to be sung upon the redeemed earth, and has shown us the vision of the city of New Jerusalem that is yet to descend from God out of heaven. "Open ye the gates." Christ died upon the cross that He might do this. "Blessed are they that have washed their robes" (revised version) "that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city" (Rev. xxii. 14). "Everlasting strength" of verse 4 is, in the Hebrew, "Rock of Ages." Toplady found his celebrated hymn in this expression.

Verses 5 and 6. The thought of God's righteous judgments on Babylon (all-wicked God-opposing world power) is here, as in chap. xxv. 2, 3.

Verse 7. So the man that is made right by the grace of God in Christ will manifest uprightness in his ways before his fellow men. God, the upright One, will weigh (i. e., consider) his path, to guide, defend and uphold him.

Verses 8 and 9. These are beautiful verses, and are the outbreathings of a true child of God, adapted to all occasions and to all conditions. "The way of the just" in this world will often be "the way of judgments." The man who keeps erect before men and walks uprightly is a prominent mark for bullets, and they will often fly around him. At such times the desire of the soul is to the name of Christ, and He is earnestly sought for comfort and strength. "When thy judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the world will learn right. eousness. ." This will be true during Christ's reign, when sin finds immediate punishment and transgressors are immediately cut off. Isa. lxv. 20 and Psalm ii.

From Scott:

The prophet seems to still keep in view the whole series of predicted events which has been considered. The preservation of Jerusalem from the Assyrians, the return of the Jews from Babylon, and their deliverance from the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, if at all meant, could only be regarded as types, or earnests, of more spiritual and glorious events. For the day here especially intended, seems to be that future season, when the New Testament Babylon shall be laid low and levelled with the ground. Then this prophecy will be literally ac complished in the conversion of Israel and their re-establishment in the promised land.

Text for the day, verse 4.

Saturday, January 29th.

Isaiah xxvi. 10 to 14.

Verses 10 and 11. All through this long period of grace and mercy, God, for Christ's sake, has delayed judgment, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter iii. 9 and 10); but carnal men, blinded by sin, treat

this longsuffering of God with contempt, and "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily" (Eccl. viii. 11), go on in sin. There is no alternative but their destruction from the carth. They will not "learn righteousness," they will "deal unjustly," they "will not behold the majesty of the Lord." This is to be peculiarly true in the last days, when God will begin to fulfill His purposes for the deliverance and glorifying of Israel. His hand will be seen so plainly manifested in the rapid succession of events that shall culminate in the conversion of the Jews to Christ, that unbelief shall be without excuse (as practically it is now after the resurrection of Jesus Christ); but "Lord, when thy hand is lifted up, they will not see." "But they shall see and be ashamed of their envy towards thy people." How the world at large (and many professed Christians also) scoff at the idea of the future glory of Israel on this earth! But "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." These scoffers shall see it, but it will not be a saving sight to them. Those whom they have derided will be made the executioners of God's judgments upon them.

Verses 12 to 14. This is the cry of the righteous remnant of Israel who are to be exalted in the land. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?" (Ro. viii. 32). "Thou hast wrought all our works for us," therefore "Thou wilt ordain peace for us." If God has ever done anything for us, it is a pledge that He stands ready to do more. We should utter the words of verses 13 and 14 about our sins and worldliness, as we believe Romans vi. 3 and 4. "In the name of the Lord we will destroy them." Ps. cxviii. 11 to 14.

From Andrew Murray:

However wretched you are, just simply believe that it is truth that God has given His Son Jesus also to you to save you. Be willing and acknowledge Him as your Saviour. Rejoice in the thought: God has given Him to the sinner and thus also to me. And although you still feel nothing in yourself, grasp firmly this thought the whole day; carry it round with you in the midst of all your work and think over it: It is certainly true, God has given Jesus to me, to save me. This simple thought is faith. Hold fast by it, thank God for it: it will speedily send forth roots in you, and you shall rejoice in the assurance: Jesus is leading me to heaven. By this faith, you also, having been called, shall be obedient.

Text for the day, verse 12.

Sunday, January 30th.

Isaiah xxvi. 15 to 21.

Verses 15 and 16. Surely this is Israel's restoration at the last day, when from every part of the earth God shall gather them the second time to their land. See in Deut. iv. 29 and 30, how God through Moses told Israel how, in their trouble they would pray unto Him, and He would hear.

"They poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them." Piercing prayers come from piercing pain, and it takes eyes washed with tears to read God's sweetest promises.

Verses 17 and 18. Here we have Israel in their utter failure to be a blessing to the world, in their national capacity. Their prophets, priests and kings, to whom the word of God came, their godly men and godly women, have been the world's greatest blessings. But in their pride and self-righteousness, refusing to share their blessings with the Gentiles, and rejecting Jesus and the Holy Spirit, how vividly these words describe both the suffering and pain of the Jews, as they have clung to the empty shell of their ritualistic forms of worship, and also the barren results. "We have not wrought any deliverance in the world," must be the confession of Christless Judaism today. They make no converts, -they conquer none of the evils of sin.

Verse 19. This is a remarkable verse. Christ must be regarded as the speaker. He only of all who have been on the earth could speak of a dead body that had risen. He only has power to make the dead to live (Jno. v. 25 to 29). The humble confession of failure and helplessness on the part of Israel, has brought this response of resurrection hope; just as the humble confession of the individual sinner now, brings the immediate response of grace and mercy. 1 Jno. i. 9.

Verses 20 and 21. The great events of the past and of the future, in the history of redemption, are in the three wonderful verses that close this chapter. 1. Christ's death. "My dead body." 2. Christ's resurrection. 3. The resurrection of believers from the grave. 4. The resurrection of Israel as a nation, as in verse 15. 5. The church cared for in heaven (1 Thess. iv. 16 to 18 and 2 Thess. i. 7), and Israel cared for on earth during the outpouring of God's judgments on the world. Matt. xxiv. 22; xxv. 29 to 31; Rev. xiv. 14 to 18.

From Anon:

"Supposing that, after all, you should find that there is no God nor judgment, and that your life of self-denial had therefore been based on a delusion, what a fool you would feel!" said to me one who was revelling in health and wealth, and, alas! like the prodigal of old, "wasting his substance in riotous living," seeking, by present gratification, and the poisoned pleasures of sin, to close his heart to God and the truth. Answering him, according to his folly, I said, "Supposing that there should be both God and judgment,a judgment that consigns the sinner to an endless and hopeless doom, and a God who is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil,' and who will 'by no means clear the guilty.' In that case you would be the fool." But stay, reader; in such matters we are out of the region of opinion or supposition, of idea or speculation; we are in the domain of awful and eternal reality. For the revelation that God has given us, He has attested by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. If that be true all is true. If that be false, all is false. Matt. xii. 39, 40.

Text for the day, verse 20.

Monday, January 31st.

Isaiah xxvii. 1 to 6.

Verse 1. Rev. xx. 1 and 2 and Luke x. 18 must be taken as the explanation of this verse. The teaching of the Bible is very plain that sin and death came into this world by the direct agency of a malignant fallen angel called Satan. All the evil that afflicts the sons of men, and that now darkens and desolates the homes of earth has come from him. Certainly a vision of God's judgments upon sin that left out the author of sin, would be very imperfect, unsatisfactory and incomplete. It is therefore in perfect harmony with the exposition that in these prophecies Isaiah is looking beyond immediate events to the culminating judgments of the last day, that the death of the dragon is seen by him. "The sea" is a symbol in Scripture of nations and peoples. Rev. xiii. 1 and xvii. 15. Connecting this verse with the preceding verses of chap. xxvi. it is impossible to accept the theory that "Leviathan," "Piercing Serpent," "Crooked Serpent," "Dragon," means Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar or any other mere man. These all were agents of the devil, and their overthrow was a type and promise of his overthrow that shall surely come to pass "in that day."

Verses 2 to 6. As the vineyard of chap. v. 1 to 7 is Israel, so the vineyard here is Israel. The vineyard there brought forth "wild grapes." Here it is "A vineyard of red wine." With Satan in the pit, "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit." The cause of this fruitfulness is found in the third verse. They have been brought to Christ, and "moment by moment" are kept in His love. There is a beautiful gospel lesson

in verses 4 and 5. The husbandman is represented as cutting down the briers and thorns of his fields for burning. Some of them cling to his garments and are spared. So the sinner who clings like Jacob around the neck of the angel of the covenant shall find mercy and escape the judgments of that day.

From C. H. Spurgeon:

Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of it as if it were the independent source of your salvation. Our life is found in "looking unto Jesus," not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies. Grace is the locomotive engine, and faith is the chain by which the carriage of the soul is attached to the great motive power. The righteousness of faith is not the moral excellence of faith, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ which faith grasps and appropriates. The peace within the soul is not derived from the contemplation of our own faith; but it comes to us from Him who is our peace, the hem of whose garment faith touches, and virtue comes out of Him into the soul.

See then, dear friend, that the weakness of your faith will not destroy you. A trembling hand may receive a golden gift. The Lord's salvation can come to us though we have only faith as a grain of mustard seed. The power lies in the grace of God, and not in our faith. Great messages can be sent along slender wires, and the peace-giving witness of the Holy Spirit can reach the heart by means of a thread-like faith which seems almost unable to sustain its own weight.

Text for the day, verse 5.