July 9
Companions of the Way (Evening)He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper.
ISAIAH says nothing of the Temple, the Shechinah, the Altar, or the Scripture, but he points out how much the exclusive confinement of religion to forms and texts has deadened the hearts of his countrymen towards God. In your real life, he says to them, you are to seek, and you shall find, Him. There He is evident in miracles, not physical interruption and convulsions, but social mercies and moral providences. The quickening of conscience, the dispersion of ignorance, poor men awakening to the fact that God is with them, the overthrow of the social tyrant, . . . the growth of civic justice and charity—In these, said the Hebrew prophet to the Old Testament believer, Behold your God!
GEORGE ADAM SMITH
LIFE A SACRAMENT