Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.
Parallel Translations
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Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.
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Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
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Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the rugged shall be made level, and the rough places a plain;
Cross-references (12)
Passages linked to Isaiah 40:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Luke 3:5 Every valley will be filled. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth.
- Ezekiel 21:26 the Lord Yahweh says: “Remove the turban, and take off the crown. This will not be as it was. Exalt that which is low, and humble that which is high.
- Luke 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
- Isaiah 42:15-16 I will destroy mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs. I will make the rivers islands, and will dry up the pools. I will bring the blind by a way that they don’t know. I will lead them in paths that they don’t know. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight. I will do these things, and I will not forsake them.
- Isaiah 45:2 “I will go before you and make the rough places smooth. I will break the doors of bronze in pieces and cut apart the bars of iron.
- Ezekiel 17:24 All the trees of the field will know that I, Yahweh, have brought down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree flourish. “ ‘I, Yahweh, have spoken and have done it.’ ”
- Job 40:11-13 Pour out the fury of your anger. Look at everyone who is proud, and bring him low. Look at everyone who is proud, and humble him. Crush the wicked in their place. Hide them in the dust together. Bind their faces in the hidden place.
- Psalms 113:7-8 He raises up the poor out of the dust. Lifts up the needy from the ash heap, that he may set him with princes, even with the princes of his people.
- Isaiah 2:12-15 For there will be a day of Yahweh of Armies for all that is proud and arrogant, and for all that is lifted up; and it shall be brought low: for all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, for all the oaks of Bashan, for all the high mountains, for all the hills that are lifted up, for every lofty tower, for every fortified wall,
- Luke 1:52-53 He has put down princes from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things. He has sent the rich away empty.
- 1 Samuel 2:8 He raises up the poor out of the dust. He lifts up the needy from the dunghill to make them sit with princes and inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are Yahweh’s. He has set the world on them.
- Isaiah 42:11 Let the wilderness and its cities raise their voices, with the villages that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of Sela sing. Let them shout from the top of the mountains!
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (12 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Whatsoever may let or hinder this deliverance, shall be…
Whatsoever may let or hinder this deliverance, shall be removed.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every…
Isa 40:4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
Ver. 4. Every valley shall be exalted.] Terms taken from the custom of princes coming into a place - viz., to have their way cleared, and passages facilitated. See on Mat 3:3.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This is only a more particular explication of that…
This is only a more particular explication of that which was generally expressed Isa 40:3. The sense is, All obstructions shall be removed, and the way made in all respects convenient and easy for the passenger.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and…
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,.... Which is not to be understood literally, but, as Kimchi says, parabolically and mystically: the meaning is, that in consequence of John's ministry, and our Lord's coming, such who were depressed and bowed down with the guilt of sin, and were low and humble in their own eyes, should be raised up and comforted; and that such who were elated with themselves, and their own righteousness, should be humbled; their pride and haughtiness should be brought down, and they treated with neglect and contempt, while great notice was taken of lowly minded ones; see Luk 14:11 and Luk 18:14,
and the crooked shall be straight and the rough places plain; what before was dark and intricate in prophecy should now become clear; and such doctrines as were not so well understood should now become plain and easy.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 4. Crooked] The word עקב akob is very…
Verse 4. Crooked] The word עקב akob is very generally rendered crooked: but this sense of the word seems not to be supported by any good authority. Ludolphus, Comment. ad Hist. AEthiop. p. 206, says "that in the Ethiopia language it signifies clivus, locus editus:" and so the Syriac Version renders it in this place, ערמא arama: Hebrew, ערמה aramah, tumulus, acervus. Thus the parallelism would be more perfect: "the hilly country shall be made level, and the precipices a smooth plain."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Every valley shall be exalted - That is, every…
Every valley shall be exalted - That is, every valley, or low piece of ground, shall be filled up so as to make a level highway, as was done in order to facilitate the march of armies. This verse is evidently designed to explain what is intended in Isa 40:3, by preparing the way for Yahweh. Applied to the return of the Jews from Babylon, it means simply that the impassable valleys were to be filled up so as to make a level road for their journey. If applied to the work of John, the forerunner of the Messiah, it means that the nation was to be called on to put itself in a state of preparation for his coming, and for the success of his labors among them. Vitringa, and others, have endeavored to specify what particular moral qualities in the nation are meant by the ‘valley,’ by the ‘mountain and hill,’ and by the ‘crooked’ and ‘rough places.’ But the illustrations are such as cannot be demonstrated to be referred to by the prophet. The general sense is plain. The language, as we have seen, is taken from the march of a monarch at the head of his army. The general idea is, that all obstructions were to be removed, so that the march would be without embarrassment. As applicable to the work of John also, the language means in general, that whatever there was in the opinions, habits, conduct, in the pride, self-confidence, and irreligion of the nation that would prevent his cordial reception, was to be removed.
Every mountain and hill - They shall be dug down so as to make the journey easy. All obstructions were to be removed.
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And the crooked - The word used here, (עקב ‛âqob) is usually rendered ‘crooked;’ but perhaps not by any good authority. The verb עקב ‛âqab usually denotes to be behind; to come from behind; or, as Gesenius supposes, to be elevated like a mound, arched like a hill or tumulus, and is hence applied to the heel from the figure (see Gen 25:26; Hos 12:4). According to this, the word would denote properly a hill, mound, or acclivity, which would put back those who attempted to ascend.
Shall be made straight - Margin, ‘A straight place.’ The Hebrew word (מישׁור mı̂yshôr) denotes properly “evenness,” a level region, a plain. The hilly places would be reduced to a level.
And the rough places - Those which are hard, bound up, stony, difficult to pass. Such as abounded with rocks and precipices, and which presented obstructions to a journey. Such places abounded in the region lying between Palestine and Babylon.
Plain - Margin, ‘A plain place.’ A smooth, level plain.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Plain. For the captives, or the conversion of the…
Plain. For the captives, or the conversion of the world, Baruch v. 6.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Eastern monarchs send heralds before them in a journey…
Eastern monarchs send heralds before them in a journey to clear away obstacles, make causeways over valleys, and level hills. So John's duty was to bring back the people to obedience to the law and to remove all self-confidence, pride in national privileges, hypocrisy, and irreligion, so that they should be ready for His coming (Mal 4:6; Luk 1:17).
crooked--declivities.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 4. and the crooked … plain] More literally: and…
4. and the crooked … plain] More literally: and the uneven shall become a plain, and the rugged places a valley. rough places is a word of somewhat uncertain sense, which does not occur elsewhere. straight and plain are nouns in the original.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (4) Every valley shall be exalted.—The figure is drawn…
(4) Every valley shall be exalted.—The figure is drawn from the titanic engineering operations of the kingly road-makers of the East, but the parable is hardly veiled. The meek exalted, the proud brought low, wrong ways set right, rough natures smoothed: that is the true preparation for the coming of the Lord, and therefore the true work of every follower of the Baptist in preparing the way. (Comp. Mat_3:5-7; Luk_3:3-9.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Every valley shall be exalted, etc.; rather, let every…
Every valley shall be exalted, etc.; rather, let every valley be exalted. The prophets are to see that the poor and lowly are raised up; the proud and self-righteous depressed; the crooked and dishonest induced to change their ways for those of simplicity and integrity; the rude, rough, and harsh rendered courteous and mild. "In general, the meaning is that Israel is to be made take care that the God who is coming to deliver it shall find it in such an inward and outward state as befits his... purpose" (Delitzsch, "Comment. on Isaiah," vol. 2. p. 142).
Vers. 4-8. God"s promises sure.
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With Isaiah it is enough that "the month of the Lord has spoken" a thing. (Isa_1:20 Isa_40:5) "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent". (Num_23:19) What he has promised, he will perform; what he has said, he will do, in the sense in which he said it. It is true, his promises are of two kinds
(1) unconditional, and
(2) conditional; and, though both kinds are sure, they are not sure in the same way.
I GOD"S UNCONDITIONAL PROMISES ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT. God has promised that he will never again destroy mankind by a flood. (Gen_9:11) He has pledged himself that "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease". (Gen_8:22)
By his Son he has declared that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church", (Mat_16:18) that he will send his Son to earth a second time to judge the quick and dead, (Mat_25:31-45) and that then the wicked "shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal". (Mat_25:46) These are unconditional promises, and are absolutely certain of fulfilment. Nothing can come in their way. God"s veracity is pledged to them, and, as he is true, he must and will bring them to pass.
II GOD"S CONDITIONAL PROMISES ARE CERTAIN OF ACCOMPLISHMENT, IF THE CONDITION REFULFILLED. The bulk of God"s promises to mankind are "covenant promises," and, by the nature of a "covenant promise," they depend on a condition or conditions which have to be fulfilled. The promises to the Israelites that they should possess Canaan, to David that his seed should sit upon his throne, and to captive Israel that it should be restored, were of this nature. So are all promises of temporal and spiritual blessings to individuals. Even where the condition is not expressed, it is understood. A single example will suffice to show the nature of this kind of promise. A covenant was made with David to establish his seed for ever, and set up his throne to all generations. (Psa_89:3, Psa_89:4) This covenant was to stand fast, so long as his children walked in his ways. If, however, they forsook God"s Law, and walked not in his judgments; if they broke his statutes, and kept not his commandments, then their transgressions were to be visited with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. The Anointed of the Lord was to be cut off and abhorred; the covenant with him was to be made void, and his crown to be cast to the ground. (Psa_89:30-39) In these cases God"s part of the covenant remains sure; it is man"s which is uncertain. If man fails, then God is, by his very faithfulness, bound to mark his sense of the failure by non-fulfilment of the promises which were made conditional on a certain course of human action. Unless man fails, God"s promises remain firm. No one can pretend to point out any case m which the covenant has been observed by man, and God"s part in it has been that of a defaulter.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and…
Isa_40:4-5
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low
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Christianity an essential element in true civilisation
I.
THE WORLD IS STILL FULL OF THINGS NEEDING TO BE SET STRAIGHT. So far as the economy of our earth is concerned a period of confusion has immediately preceded the establishment of Divine order. Chaos preceded Paradise. Egyptian bondage was the precursor of the exodus, which was the beginning of a national life Divinely ruled. Judaism was at its worst and Paganism in its most corrupt condition when the voice of the preacher of righteousness was heard, preparing the way of the Lord. Isaiah here compares the social and religious condition of a people awaiting a revelation of Divine glory to the condition of a country, barren as a desert, and impassable by reason of mountains and valleys; and the preparation of a highway amongst these physical obstacles represents the exaltation of what is base and the abasement of some things that are high in human life before the coming revelation of God. Around us here in England, as well as in those foreign countries to which missionary enterprise addresses itself, is a wilderness, in which what is good cannot and does not grow. The bodily and moral degradation of some of our own people, if it were revealed in all its nakedness, would startle the Church from its stately propriety. A wilderness is a fit emblem of a large section of our own population. Yet in this land we have had the Gospel for centuries. How much more, then, do the heathen want and deserve your sympathy! Another phrase in our text, which speaks of valleys, may remind us further of depths in our social life in which corruption hides. Meanwhile pride covers us, as with a garment. We talk of the progress of the age, we boast ourselves of our achievements and discoveries. There are mountains of pride to be brought down, as well as valleys of degradation to be exalted. And how many crooked things are yet to be made straight! What distortions of truth are yet to be found in England, as well as elsewhere! The orderliness of Divine progress in the natural world is a truth so contorted that some argue from it that all things seen were originally made of things that do appear, and chat there was no Divine Creator in whom they found their origin. The mercifulness of God is used as an argument against the possibility of punishment for sin.
II. THE WORLD IS NOT ESSENTIALLY THE BETTER FOR THE HUMAN INVENTIONS OF WHICH THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IS SO BOASTFUL. Much of the misery of modern life is due to the fact that moral and religious advance has not kept pace with mechanical advance, and our danger is lest developed mechanism should be to our age what a complicated and resistless machine would be in the hands of a child who knows not the ends for which it is designed. Trains and steamers carry us over land and sea with a swiftness which, to our grandfathers, would have seemed incredible. Our daily bread is often the product of labour done in the far-off fertile fields of California. There has been a literal fulfilment of these words, which speak of conquering mountains and valleys, and overleaping all obstacles, such as Isaiah never dreamed of. But the question is fairly asked, Are we the better for all this? Are we wiser, are we happier, are we nobler, are we more Christ-like, than our fathers were? We have greater appliances than our fathers, but it may be fairly doubted whether we surpass them either in capacity or in enjoyment. When you go for a holiday you can rush up the Rhine, through Switzerland, and back across France in a fortnight, but probably, in a dozen journeys of that sort you see far less than poor Oliver Goldsmith did when, with a fife as his companion, he trudged along the highways of Europe. Scientific instruments are marvellous in power and in accuracy, but scientific men have not advanced in genius beyond Newton or Herschel. Music is heard on every hand; but it is not better than the music of Handel, or of Bach, or of Haydn. In short, we have not a higher life because we have higher material appliances, and you and I are not one whit the nobler men because we can read all the news of the world in a penny paper, and transact our business with the other ends of the earth in a few hours. What do we all gain if, in covering our land with factories and steam engines, we are covering it also with want and wretchedness? In spite of all scientific discoveries and mechanical appliances, it is evident that the world wants something more than these can give. It wants freedom from its sins, and a Redeemer who can set it free. It wants love amidst its cruelties, and rest amid its weariness.
III. THE WORLD REQUIRES MOST OF ALL A REVELATION OF THE GLORY OF GOD. Many say, Let our trade and our railways and all our conveniences first find entrance to a heathen land, and then the people there will be prepared for the Gospel. A grosser delusion could hardly be promulgated. Our own social condition might show its fallacy, and experiment in heathen lands has confirmed it. When this so-called civilisation has preceded Christianity, idolaters have become atheists, and their last state worse than their first. The great object we Christians are to keep in view, in all our achievements, is that the glory of God may be revealed--not the glory of man, nor of a society, nor of a sect, but the glory of God. As a king, a man finds his glory in the contentment of his people; as a father, a man finds his glory in the well-being of his children; and so the great King and Father of us all finds His glory in our contentment and well-being. And how can that be brought about? It is by the work and words of those who speak comfortably to the sinners, who proclaim a reconciled God revealed in Jesus Christ.
IV. GOD IS LOOKING TO THE CHURCH TO BRING ABOUT THIS CHANGE. He is addressing His people here, and, instead of saying I will comfort, He says Comfort ye. No angel messengers now wing their flight from heaven to announce the glad tidings of great joy. The message has been entrusted to us. Let us have patience, though the results of our work at home and abroad seem sparse and small. The upraising of valleys and the levelling of mountains is no childs play, even in the physical world, and it is harder still in the spiritual realm. When we remember the cost at which some modern discoveries were won, and see the patience and skill and risk which accompany the driving of tunnels through mountains, or under the sea, we are ashamed of the ease with which Christians give way to disheartenment. In preparing the highway here spoken of we must work on the plan the Norwegians adopt for keeping up their roads. Each occupier of land, in proportion to his acreage, has his own allotted portion of road to maintain, and for that he is responsible. So, in proportion to your capacities and opportunities, you have your work to do--in your home, in your class, in your sphere of thought or activity, and from that responsibility none can release you. (A. Rowland, B. A.)
The prospects of the Church
I. SOME OF THE MOST FORMIDABLE OBSTRUCTIONS TO THE DIFFUSION AND PROGRESS OF TRUE RELIGION AND THE CERTAINTY OF THEIR REMOVAL.
1. The defective character of personal religion. There are many features of the Christian character scarcely ever brought out to public view; and others whose nature is so misapprehended as to lead to a misshapen exhibition of the spirit and precepts of the Gospel of Christ. Have you never been pained when at the close of the day you have endeavoured to ascertain the character of your thoughts, feelings, and actions? Have you never been surprised at the moral personage who has presented himself to your view at such seasons? There is much of secularity mingled with the religion that prevails. What has religion done for us if it has not so elevated the tone and order of our feelings as to render us indifferent to the pleasures of sin? As a natural consequence of this defective piety much is withheld from the service of God. There is so much of self mingled[with our religious engagements. The purposes of God embrace the agency and co-operation of man. If, then, the piety of the Church be defective, if the body that acts for God be enfeebled by disease, or misguided in its operations, how fatally must its efficiency be counteracted! But assuredly an end will be put to this state of things, for every valley shall be exalted, etc.
2. The division and animosities amongst Christians. A sectarian character has thus been given to the Church, a fictitious and morbid zeal has been engendered, and those resources which ought to have been expended in the evangelisation of the world have, on many occasions, been laid out for party and sinister purposes.
3. The connection that subsists between religion and State politics. The Christianity that has been patronised by the State--that has been adopted as the stepping-stone to emolument and power, this has been mistaken for the religion of the Bible.
II. THE RESULTS WHICH THE PROPHET REPRESENTS AS CONSEQUENT UPON THE REMOVAL OF THESE OBSTRUCTIONS. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Nothing can be more inspiring than this prospect. If it is gratifying to see the boundaries of science enlarged, or the elements of human happiness increased; if the political resurrection of a nation inspires us with joy; if it invigorates our hearts to see the spirit of an age awakening from its slumber and preparing itself for wise and virtuous action, what should be the emotion of our hearts in contemplating such a consummation as is represented in my text? It is not the mere promise of an approaching good by which the prophet here seeks to inspire our mind. It contains the elements of all conceivable happiness. It will embody and secure to the inhabitants of our world the highest enjoyment of which their nature is susceptible. The glory of God has hitherto been but partially unveiled. The sun is still behind the cloud, and a shadow is in consequence thrown on our path. But when the piety of the Church shall be freed from its present stains, when her divisions are healed, then shall she arise and shine, for her light will have come, and the glory of the Lord will be risen upon her. But we are informed that all flesh shall see it together. The Evangelist slightly,, varies the latter part of the prophecy--All flesh shall see the salvation of God. As yet the salvation of God is known to but a limited portion of the world. But the salvation of God all are yet destined to see. (T. Price.)
The levelling force of Christianity
There are and ever have been in the soul of society opinions, prejudices, feelings, conventional notions which, like mountains and valleys, have separated men into classes, and prevented the free-flowing interchange of soul. Those mountains rear their frowning heads and throw their chilling shadows in every district of society. Those valleys yawn everywhere, and form an impassable gulf between the brothers on either side. Christianity has a power to remove those mountains, fill up the valleys, etc. How does Christianity do this? In two ways--
I. BY THE LEVELLING TRUTHS WHICH IT REVEALS.
1. A common God.
2. A common nature.
3. A common obligation.
4. A common depravity.
5. A common salvation.
II. BY THE LEVELLING SPIRIT WHICH IT GENERATES. The spirit which Christianity generates in the human soul is such that raises a man above all those prejudices of the heart and conventionalities of life that divide men. What is the spirit? It is a spirit that has supreme regard to three things--
1. The spiritual in man.
2. The right in conduct.
3. The eternal in destiny. The socially levelling force of Christianity, however, does not involve spoliation. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The crooked shall be made straight
The prophet and the picturesque
There is much in us which would instinctively resent and repudiate this ideal that he has put before us. Take, for instance, that sensitive faculty in our century receiving so peculiar and overwhelming a development, the sense of the picturesque. The words of my text break in with a very surprising emphasis. This vehemence of the prophet clashes with all the primary instincts of this sentiment of ours. Mountains flattened out, valleys filled in, highways levelled from end to end, every broken piece of rough ground repaired, every turn and twist in the path straightened--what a picture to portray with such rapturous enthusiasm! Could any result be more deplorable? It is the very murder of the picturesque! The picturesque asks only that the mountains should rise yet higher, be more pathless, more craggy, more perilous; that they should be torn by glaciers and scoured by avalanches and wasted by storms and bemoaned by winds, and be aghast with lonely desolation--that is what it prefers, that is what excites it,--and the valleys shall plunge yet deeper, more gloomy vaults, sunless, with hoarse torrents buried in awful black gulfs and roaming along in anger out of sight. There should be no roads if possible; at least, never level or straight for two yards together; and there should be cliffs that are frowning and overhanging and ruinous and threatening, and high and fierce and solitary rocks. Everything should be rough, everything should be crooked, for the sake of the picturesque! (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
Picturesque abuses
In this contrast between the prophet and the picturesque is there nothing but of a light or superficial nature, nothing serious? I doubt it. The prophets thunderous intensity brings our sentiment to a check just at the point where it is apt to pervert the moral judgment. Where is that? At the point where it helps to blind us to the actual life, the actual needs and necessities of a living present. The feeling for the picturesque belongs always to those who are outside the object of their admiration. They are looking on as unconcerned spectators. That which they observe lies wholly outside their own living, personal experience, and that is why it touches them and startles them, and pleases because it startles. It is so odd, so unexpected, so dreamy, so old. That is the sentiment bred in tourists, in passengers tarrying the day, gazing from without at a scene, unaffected by its sorrows, aloof from its inner reality. We like these strange, huddled, dirty streets, and these swarming beggars, and these crumbling walls, and these crooked alleys, and all the oddities of decay, and all the quaintness of the obsolete. Abuses, so long as they do not hurt us, are much more picturesque than their remedies. In this mood what serious blunders we have made abroad--offences against our best English self, for the native English have a love for liberty, for a free people. How much has our love for the picturesque killed our sympathy for freedom in Rome or in Venice, shall we say? This error which we make again and again abroad is very apt to repeat itself here at home; for those who have leisure to enjoy the picturesque are bound, of course, to have already reached some comfort themselves, some security of position. That thatched cottage in the dell, in the hollow of the wood, could anything be more engaging? We have sketched it again and again. It is very damp, and those colours on it that we like so, the greens and the yellows, reveal the dampness. It is buried under the trees, it stands on soppy ground, and there is no drainage; there is a cesspool behind. But how raw the new brick four-roomed house would look without an offence in our rustic nook! There is a great deal more of this among us comfortable and educated people than we are at all aware of. It acts as a dead weight on us, it counteracts the force of our reforming zeal. We should never for one moment dream of letting the picturesqueness stand in our way if we had to sink into consumption through the damp or die of typhoid in some undrained, old-fashioned street; but somehow it puts in its plea with us with far greater power when others are concerned, and we are but spectators. It is against all this that the prophets zeal thunders. The picturesque may rightly widen our sympathies for the past; it may plead for gentle handling of what is so fair in the deposits of the past, it may rightly prompt us to do oar very utmost to save what is beautiful and natural from cruel, hideous misuse by commercial greed, but there is one supreme law which it never must gainsay, the law which is uttered in the cry of the recovered king, Hezekiah, when he recovered from his sickness: Death cannot celebrate Thee. The living shall praise Thee, as I do this day. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
Redemptive growth
Since the cloud and curse of sin, all this growth of ours, which is our life, is remedial, corrective, redemptive. It is won through strife over wrong, through struggling out of evil, and always, therefore, it must witness to its vitality by straightening the crooked, by making the rough places plain. It must always testify to its life. Always it must be bettering bad highways. It must be abasing mountains that obstruct and daunt. It must be filling up valleys that cramp and choke and darken. That is the necessity, the necessity of clearing the way for free motion towards a better day. But, again, even from inside this growing life, even after we have torn ourselves out of the ranks of unconcerned spectators and irresponsible tourists, and have thrown ourselves with heart and hope into this remedial work, and are keenly striving to bring the crooked straight and to loosen the terrible burden of wrong; even then this old perplexity and trouble will recur, and recur in a subtler and much deeper form. Perhaps in the very midst of our reforming zeal there will suddenly come a thought, a sight crossing our mind of all our hopes achieved. The crooked, now so cruelly wrong or disastrously distorted, has at last been made perfectly straight. What then? Are we better off? What a poor, stale, stupid place this world will have become. All wrongs redressed, all blunders rectified, all inequalities levelled; everybody on the same platform, decent, snug, comfortable--a dull, unbroken mass of average respect-abilities. Comfort for the comfortless--it was for that that we had hungered and toiled. But the comfortable! Look at those who have already attained it. Are they so encouraging a prospect? What if all were as they? After all, moral character is our sole aim; and will character have lost or gained when our efforts have succeeded? Where is character found now? we say. Is it found amid the comfortable? Hardly. Is it not always won through suffering, strife, anguish? Those rare simplicities of the poor, those generosities, those devotions--are they not worth all the smugger virtues? Would they not have vanished in a world where there was nothing crooked, no high lights and no dark shadows, no ups and downs? Perhaps we take up some industrial Utopia, some book like Looking Backward, and as we read we are chilled to the marrow. There is a dull recoil. How utterly repugnant; how fiat and stale and unprofitable! All that makes humanity dear and pathetic and glorious gone, died out! No room in such a world, we say, for high adventures, shining heroisms; no trumpet calls, no splendid risks, no holy indignation, no exaltation of sacrifice, no prophetic passion. Democratic equality has levelled all the roads straight as dies. They run between their kerbstones. All is smooth, orderly, equitable, and there is no material there for art, none for music. Where shall we seek for Schuberts songs that float like dreams? They were won, we say, by his tears. And where will be our Hamlets and our Lears in the romance? How will man ever display his higher capacities except through pain and struggle and sorrow? Yet those are the very conditions that we are labouring to deny him. Alas! our hearts sink, our imagination protests, our hopes flag, and the glowing passion of the prophet, as it catches sight of the very fulfilment of its dream, dies away in the wail of the preacher, Vanity, vanity, even this is vanity. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
No fear of Utopia
We have invented a terror for ourselves. We need not be the least afraid. These visions of the future deceive us by suggesting a finality at which man will have arrived. These Utopias are just what will not be true. That is just what we are quite certain will never occur while this present age endures. The one thing that we know of the future is that it will not be like that, for we know that at each moment of his earthly career, until his Lord Jesus comes again to make earth and heaven anew, man will be found warring as a soldier--a pilgrim pressing on towards eternity with mountains still towering ahead, dark with unknown destiny, with valleys into which he must plunge, and moaning with perils through which he must dare his way; with tough tasks still set him to achieve; with nerves, therefore, still strung and prophet voices calling and eyes strained forward into the night, and loins girt, and heart on fire, and foes to fight, and deaths to die, and victories to win. But you will say, Is that a very encouraging message? Why waste our efforts, then, in struggling to set things right if the crooked will never be straight, if the high road will never be levelled? Why grind at smoothing down our present hills if always there will be fresh mountains beyond? Just because man is, in essence, a pilgrim, a soldier, a servant of Jesus crucified, and it is his very life to bring this to the front. He discovers himself in and through this struggle and pilgrimage, through the strain of the war. That is his mission in which he proves his courage and his nerve. Unless he is always correcting evil, unless he is always battling down wrongs, he is not himself, and he knows not of what spirit he is made. What the particular wrong may be which he is called upon to redress at this moment, or at that, is determined for him by the conditions of history, by God Himself, for God is in history-He directs, He allots, He distributes the task to man--there is a design clearly disclosed. One by one, God brings up to men the difficulties, the obstructions that He would have them encounter. Our forefathers had their own fight to fight, and they fought it. They were tested and proved in other ways. One fight at a time! They fought for liberty, they fought for free speech; they could not attend to underlying poverty. Now their part is played, their mountains are brought low, and their crooked things are made straight, and therefore there is time and opportunity for something else. There is another task for us, another test applied. We are not to enjoy what our fathers put straight without doing our own part to bend the crooked into line, to make rough places plain. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
The battle for to-day
Since God is in history, there is continuity in our pilgrimage, and there is purpose. The old wars, by healing some wrongs, prepared opportunities for new efforts. There is advance, after all, along this- highway, -however much there is still always a rough place just ahead, a cruel corner to put straight. We are farther along. There are wrongs righted and thrown behind us, and therefore the nearer we draw to the end. Enough for us that we know the spot on the road at which we stand, that we know what are the crooked things which it is our own special task to set straight. Let us look at them and leave the rest to God. Who can doubt at what spot on the road we stand to-day? Those crooked things on which the light of God has been turned in our day-there they are; we know them and we see them--the commercial pressure that falls on the weak, and that breaks and spoils the humanity under it, manhood, womanhood, home, joy; the heartless mechanism of an impersonal economic system which crunches the aged, the women, the children; the sorrows of those who labour on without any hope of reaching an end of their labour; men and women, jaded, bruised, disfigured, always under-fed, invalided by penury, unqualified for work, unfit for what they do; men and women tossed to and fro by blind tides of fluctuating markets over which they have no control; men and women accumulated in hordes, unsheperded and unregarded in squalid tenements, in sordid and mean dishonour, living environed by disease, born into a world too masterful for their infirmities, sustained at the edge of starvation by a competition that never improves them and yet never eliminates them, drawn under by demands which they are helpless to fulfil, bruised and damaged in trying to meet them. No one anticipated that our industries would create them or sustain in existence classes of this type. They are the signals of some defect in our system, of some perversion, of some disease,, of some disaster--that something that meant well enough has gone crooked, that the machinery of our civilisation is out of gear. We have got out of the track. That much is plain. Therefore a responsibility is laid upon us; a thing has got to be done. (Canon H. Scott-Holland, M. A.)
And the rough places plain--
The rough places made plain
I. We may take this to be, in outline, THE DESCRIPTION OF GODS WORK WITH OUR WORLD AND WITH MANKIND, REGARDED AS A PREPARATION FOR THE FUTURE. It is the voice of history, of nature, of science, of revelation. The present is a preparation for the future, as the past was a preparation for the present, and as the future will be a preparation for a still coming and greater future. We know the history of religion; how slow its progress--how for centuries it was only successful in casting down obstacles, and preparing the hearts of men for the entrance of a faith which was worthy of its Author. It required not the labours of one prophet like John only, but the labours of many generations of prophets, to prepare for the advent of Jesus Christ. Religion passed through numerous forms before it arrived at that form which Christ gave it. And as this was the work of God in the religious thought and life of man, so was it the work of God in the world. The kingdom of heaven did not come until the world was in a measure ready for it.
II. So we may say that this is AN INDEX TO THE COURSE OF HIS PROVIDENCE IN EVERY AGE AND COUNTRY. This lesson may be learned--that in all cases the spiritual is above the material; and that all progress and improvement in the material world are but means to an end, and are intended to serve far higher interests. All these benefits of rapid intelligence, of conveniences, of comforts, are but the removal of hindrances out of the way of the progress of what is spiritual and Divine. If they leave men devoid of better aims--if they leave us selfish, earthly, false--they are no blessings after all! If we use the gifts of nature and invention and discovery merely to attain our own ends, and if there is no growth of the spirit of truth and charity, we have gained nothing: we have merely added to our former powers the power to increase our selfishness. But such is not the use for which these new acquisitions are designed. If there are more facilities for reaching the human mind by thought and speech or writing, all the more carefully ought everyone who has influence over his fellows to see that that influence is wholesome, and not hurtful. The material is the servant of the spiritual. What John the Baptist was to Christ, such is all the world to the Christ. All nature was a preparation for Him, all knowledge, all discovery. The world did not see this at the time; but the fact is true for all that. People say that the growth of human wisdom and the increase of human blessings are adverse to the Gospel; but on looking back on history we see that all these things were in the hands of God, and were all made to prepare the way for the kingdom of God. So it is, and so ought it ever to be.
III. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN MAKING THE PATH TO GOODNESS EASIER.
IV. THIS IS OUR WORK AS CHRISTIANS IN THE WORLD AND FOR THE WORLD. This is part of our task for those who are finding the road to goodness and right living hard and rough. Each of us has something in his power to prepare the way for the kingdom of God in the lives and hearts of others. To many, the difficulties of a right life are very great, and it is no easy task for them to carry it out. Everything is against them: training, circumstances, companions, habits. From their youngest years they have been familiar with evil. It comes to them naturally to deceive, to lie, to do all manner of misdeeds. How can such a youth ever open into a manhood of worth or goodness? He must be helped by education, by guidance, by living examples of affection and well-doing. Christian society, the Church, must come to his aid. And what is all this but doing the work of Christ, the work of prophets and evangelists, the work of the Gospel, preparing a highway, helping those who cannot walk, making the rough places plain, making it easier for a man to stand in goodness and truth? After all is done, however, both for nations and individuals, there will be difficulties to overcome. You can never for yourselves, or for those whom you most love, so arrange things that all personal need for care and effort shall cease. There will be for every man the cross to carry, and for many men the thorn to trouble them. (A. Watson, D. D.)
Rough places
I. ROUGH PLACES.
1. In general human history.
2. In individual human life.
II. ROUGH PLACES MADE PLAIN.
1. The supreme power of Jesus Christ.
2. The supreme power of Jesus Christ used for the advantage of mankind.
3. The advantage of mankind identified with the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ.
III. THE TRANQUIL AND BLESSED FUTURE OF THE WORLD. Christianity is good news. Inequalities are to be rectified. Relations are to be adjusted. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.