The promised future: a missionary sermon.
I. THAT DIVINE TRUTH WILL KNOW A TIME OF GLORIOUS ELEVATION. The "last days" (Isaiah 2:2) may be distant days, may be "afar off" still, but they are coming; we are steadily advancing to them. The "mountain of the Lord's house" may be low down today, but it will rise; it may be but as a hill of sacred truth obscured among the mountains of error. But God's high purpose shall surely be fulfilled in time; the day will dawn when they who gaze upon the spiritual scenery of the world will see Zion lifting up its head far and high above all those little hills into which the proud peaks of falsehood will have diminished. There is a power that can raise the hills and that can "thresh the mountains" (Isaiah 41:15).
II. THAT ITS POWER SHALL HAVE THE WIDEST POSSIBLE EXTENSION. "All nations shall flow unto it." The river of human thought, faith, hope, shall set in a strong current to this high mountain. Divine truth shall not only gain a formal triumph over the idolatries, superstitions, infidelities of the world, but human hearts everywhere will rejoice in its salvation.
III. THAT ONE SIGN OF ITS EXALTATION AND EXTENSION WILL BE A PREVALENT SPIRIT OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY. (Isaiah 2:3.) Men will be convinced of the hollowness of their old faiths; of the unsatisfying character of their present pleasures; of the insufficiency of the light in which they have been walking to lead them into wisdom and blessedness. And they will turn to the one and only source of illumination and joy; they will say, "Let us go up," etc. (Isaiah 2:3). The hungry heart will cry out for the Bread of life; the thirsting soul will pant for the living streams. When men have round—and are they not finding more and more largely?—that the errors into which they have wandered are but ashes in their mouth, they will seek and they will accept the bountiful provision which awaits them in the "Father's house," in the gospel of the grace of God.
IV. THAT ONE RESULT OF IT WILL BE THE PREVALENCE OF THE SPIRIT AND OF THE INSTITUTIONS OF PEACE. (Isaiah 2:4.) The love of war, the institutions of war, the readiness to have recourse to war, the pride and glory in military achievements which even Christian nations are not ashamed to own,—this will disappear as the will of God takes its due, its exalted place among mankind. The sword will give place to the ploughshare, not only in the use of the nation's metal, but in the honor and estimation of the people's mind. And instead of a country wasting its strength and lavishing its energy in the cultivation of the science and in the construction of the enginery of war, it will devote its mental power to the acquisition of those arts which heal and bless and raise.
V. THAT ONE CONTRIBUTION TO ITS COMING WILL BE FOUND IN OUR OWN FAITHFULNESS. (Isaiah 2:5.) If we would be sure of the dawn of this blessed future, let us take our part, however humble it may be, in the work of enlightenment; let us walk in the light of the Lord. It is the critical and the censorious whose faith fails them; it is they who have no bright visions of a coming day of glory; they are only conscious of the clouds, and see no light in the far horizon. But those who study the will of God as revealed in his Word, who make haste to keep his commandments, who live the Master's life, and illustrate his Word by deeds of helpfulness and love,—it is they who have the assurance in their hearts that "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established, "that the day will come when truth will be crowned, and "universal peace" shall
"Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year."
For it is
"Unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."