Halfrepentance Author:Samuel Wilberforce Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A SERMON, SfC. Isaiah xlii. 18,19. " Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind, but My servant ? or deaf, as My messenger that I ... more »sent ? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord's servant ?" The figure of speech here employed by the prophet is of frequent occurrence in holy Scripture. St. Paul, when addressing those who would not believe in Jesus, exclaimed, " Well spake the Holy Ghost, by Esaias the prophet, to our fathers, saying, Go to this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive3." And a greater than St. Paul had employed a similar expression : with reference to the Jews, our Lord had said, " In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive15." These warnings are addressed, be it observed, to those who possessed the light, and were capable of employing their eyes; their not doing so beingthe very ground of the censure;—whose ears were sensible of sound, but who, nevertheless, were both deaf and blind. a Acts xxviii. 26. b Matt. xiii. 16. It is in the moral as in the physical world: there are many who can gaze with rapture upon the beautiful and sublime in a landscape, but from whom is hidden, for want of a microscope, the nicer mechanism of nature ; and the Physician of Souls does not deny that we may have an ear to take in the sweet strains of music,—He would only remind us that we must apply the stethoscope, if we would ascertain with accuracy the workings of the inner man. The prevailing sins when Isaiah wrote were idolatry and hypocrisy: some there were who openly forsook the worship of Jehovah, or, if they renounced idolatry, sympathised w...« less