MINISTERIAL SOLICITUDE.

BY REV. E. M. MARVIN,

OF THE ST. LOUIS CONFERENCE.

"Therefore, said I, Look away from me: I will weep bitterly; labor not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people: For it is a day of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, breaking down the walls, and of crying to the mountains."-Isaiah xxii, 4, 5.

The denunciatory prophecies of Isaiah, and some of the minor prophets, are denominated "burdens "-a most expressive title. The curse of God is heavy-it is intolerable.

Isaiah, commissioned by God himself, stood upon the heights of Judea, and hurled thunderbolts here and there against the most powerful and prosperous nations in existence. Babylon, Moab, Edom, and other nations and cities, were the objects of malediction. The prophet seemed an angel of destruction, as the lightning leaped out of his terrible words, eager for its guilty prey. He stood, the agent and embodiment of vengeance, with features unrelaxed, as he saw empires overthrown by the headlong violence of the wrath which his lips pronounced. Scene after scene of national crime and its sanguinary denouement passes before his vision, and finds expression from his tongue. But he weeps not, shudders not-he simply sees and denounces. The man is lost in the prophet.

At last a burden comes that wakes the man. The tension, even of prophetic strength, is insufficient to support the enormous load, and it lies on the prophet's soul. Grief clamors for utterance, and puts tears into the eyes of the seer to make the glaring vision less intolerable. Words of anguish shriek amid the thunders of prophetic vengeance: "Look away; I will weep bitterly: labor not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people." It is the "burden of the valley of vision."

We are to understand by the valley of vision, Judea, or, as some

suppose, Jerus ilem. The subject of the prophecy is the invasion of Judea by Sennacherib, and perhaps its conquest by Nebuchadnezzar. The latter is probably referred to in the first part of the prophecy. Both these invasions, and especially the latter, brought heavy calamity upon the Jews. The bloodshed, the starvation, the violation of Judean homes, the brutal bearing of the savage soldiery, the consternation of Hebrew women delicately raised, the defilement of the temple, the desecration of the altar, the long procession of weeping captives, torn from their own vine and fig-tree, and hurried away into the land of the idolator, presented to the Jewish seer a panorama the most appalling his eyes had ever looked upon. It was his fatherland, and he was none the less a patriot for being a prophet. On the contrary, his prophetic character gave him an intense Jewish heart. In Judea, religion was an element of patriotism. To all the other considerations that endear a country to its citizens, there were added here the promises and strange providence of God which had brought the seed of Abraham into the land flowing with milk and honey; the memories of a thousand divine interpositions on behalf of their oppressed and endangered country; the solemnities of their faith, that brought them near to God; their national election, by God himself, to be his peculiar treasure, and the consciousness of a faith and worship infinitely purer and sublimer than those of the nations surrounding them. Thus the full strength of their religious character entered into their patriotic sentiments. The land was consecrated, in their eyes, by every sacred consideration that could fix affection or excite emotion. Around Jerusalem, especially, the place where Jehovah was worshipped, these sentiments clustered. There the smoke of continual incense and sacrifice went up to the God of their fathers; and there, from between the cherubim, did He shine forth" and answer their supplications.

In an eminent religious character, such as Isaiah, these sentiments would be doubly strong. Every stone in the mountains that were round about Jerusalem would be dear to him; every vessel in the temple would be sacred. The utmost strength of his emotional nature would take hold of the city of God, and the tread of idolatrous feet upon its pavements would grind his heart. He would "love Jerusalem above his chief joy," and to witness her desolation would be the consummation of his own.

Armies might come and go, depopulate cities and ravage empires,