Isaiah 26:21

For, behold, the Lord cometh out of His place

Associations in judgment

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Few circumstances of our life are more mysterious and few more important than the influence of associations.

2. The language suggests a subtle sympathy between the earth and the earth born; the earth, it is suggested, has been the reluctant witness of human guilt: within her bosom she holds the memorials of human crime, and in due course, when her Creator summons her to His bar, she will confess her fatal secrets.

3. This notion of the repugnance of nature to human crime underlies the constant association of physical portents and disturbances with exceptional crimes. They strain the tolerance of nature to breaking point; she proclaims her horror. This involuntary association emerges in the record of the Redeemer’s Passion. “The darkest hour that ever dawned on sinful earth” was dark naturally, as well as morally.

4. There is something higher than rhetoric, something deeper than poetry, in the prophetic habit of bringing into their moral witness appeals, earnest to the point of passion, to the familiar features of the country. The patriot’s affection is blended with the mystic’s sympathy and the seer’s insight Micah 6:1; Jeremiah 22:29; Joshua 24:26).

5. I have said that there is more in all this than rhetoric and poetry, and my justification lies in the power over men of associations, their origin in human volition, and the witness they are able to bear to men’s character and experience. The dramatic language of the prophet conveys, and perhaps, to modern ears, conceals, a truth which we can ill afford to forget. We may express it in this way. Every man is at once the author and the victim of the associations with which he invests material things; so that, if we could know what associations these possess for him, what thoughts they set in motion in his mind, what coercion they exercise upon his will, what appeals they address to his affections, we should be well informed as to his past life, and his present character. In truth, we may judge ourselves, we ought to judge ourselves, by habitual associations. What is the moral furniture of our earthly environment! Be sure it is the faithful reflection of ourselves. “To the pure,” says St. Paul, “all things are pure: but to them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” The prophet suggests that associations will appear as accusing witnesses in the day of the Lord. Here they are written in cipher, and each man keeps his own key; but then the cipher shall be open and manifest. The origin of associations will be confessed. “The earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.” Before us an lies exposure, inexorable and complete.

6. Associations so potent, so relentless, so minatory in their suggestiveness, may be redeemed, cleansed, transformed. The scenes we desecrated with our sins may be purged by our penitence, and reconsecrated by our sacrifice. History records the reclaiming of associations, the transmutation of the symbols and scenes of evil into the very beacons and homes of goodness. But do not underrate the cost of this great conversion. It is no light task to strip off one set of associations and to invest with another. Yet one final stage. Memories of evil may themselves become transmuted into allies of goodness. Christian history is full of this paradox. The protagonists of virtue are, not the flawless saints, but the great penitents. There are who find in their abandoned sins perpetual incitements to service, as she of whom He said, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” (H. H. Henson, B. D.)

The earth disclosing her blood

In a characteristic passage Lord Macaulay has described the impression made on observers by the rank growth of scarlet poppies on the battlefield of Landen. “During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road from St. Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain.” (C. H. Spurgeon)

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