Messages from the Lord are always true and seasonable, whether his words are those of rebuke or those of comfort. In each case too, the authority of the message is divine, and should not therefore be challenged. And the tenor of the messenger’s feelings must be according to the words which he speaks in the name of the Lord to his own generation, which was in a sadly degenerate condition. Its spiritual state, and the kind of message which the Lord gave him to deliver, caused his being distinguished as “the weeping prophet.” In times of backsliding, all who speak in the Lord’s name, and according to His mind, must be like him. The view which they have of the times they live in, and the kind of message which the Lord directs them to deliver combine to make them sad. The woeful condition of things around them casts its dark shadow on their face, and causes the gloomy and austere aspect for which they are condemned by those whom the Lord constrains them to rebuke.
Of the Prophet Isaiah, we are told by himself that he prophesied concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. By referring, therefore, to the history of these reigns, as they are recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles, we may form a correct estimate of the character of the age in which he lived, and of the state of religion among the people whom he addressed;
I am now far from you in bodily presence; but I can with truth say, that my heart is nearer to you than before, as my eye turns joyfully, from the awful contemplation of sin and ungodliness around me, in this poor town, to those favoured spots of my dear native land, on which the Holy Ghost has lately been pouring out his quickening grace. I lately sent you, in print, a letter on the all-important subject of “THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN;” and as I have many duties pressing on me here, I must fulfill my promise of writing to you in a very hurried way, hoping that you will read the letter I have alluded to, as if sent to you in writing, and addressed to you alone. I shall, then, say a word to the following classes among you.
There is a vast difference to be put betwixt a time wherein the church is advancing in a course of reformation, and a time wherein she is declining and sliding back from that degree of reformation unto which she had already attained.
