There is a remarkable contrast between the stately prelude to the section of the prophecy in Isaiah 49., and the ideal in this text. There the Servant calls the isles and the distant peoples to listen, and declares that His mouth is like a sharp sword'; here all that is keen and smiting in His word has softened into gentle whispers of comfort to sustain the weary.
A mission addressed to the weary' is addressed to every man, for who is not weighed upon with sore distress,' or loaded with the burden and the weight of tasks beyond his power or distasteful to his inclinations, or monotonous to nausea, or prolonged to exhaustion, or toiled at with little hope and less interest? Who is not weary of himself and of his load? What but universal weariness does the universal secret desire for rest betray? We are all pilgrims weary of time,' and some of us are weary of even prosperity, and some of us are worn out with work, and some of us buffeted to all but exhaustion by sorrow, and all of us long for rest, though many of us do not know where to look for it.
Jesus may have had this word in mind, when He called to Him all them that labour and are heavy laden.' At all events, the prophet's ideal and the evangelists' story accurately correspond. Christ's words have other characteristics, but are eminently words that sustain the weary and comfort the down-hearted. Who can ever calculate the new strength poured by them into fainting hearts and languid hands, the all but dead hopes that they have reanimated, the sorrows they have comforted, the wounds they have stanched?
What a lesson here as to the noblest use of high endowments! What a contrast to the use that so many of those to whom God has given the tongue of them that are taught' make of their great gifts! Literature yields but few examples of great writers who have faithfully employed their powers for that purpose, which seems so humble and is so lofty, the help of the weary, the comfort of the sad. Many pages in famous books would be cancelled if all that had been written without consideration for these classes were obliterated, as it will be one day.
But Christ not only speaks by outward words, but has other ways of lodging sustenance and comfort in souls than by vocables audible to .the ear or visible to the eye on the page. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' He spoke by His deeds on earth, and in one and the same set of facts, He began to do and to teach,' the doing being named first. He now speaketh from Heaven by many an inward whisper, by the communication of His own Spirit, on Whom this very office of ministering sustenance and comfort is laid, and whose very name of the Comforter means One who by his being with a man strengthens him.
