To our Zion, to the Church of Christ, are promised explicitly such gifts as those of the text unity, truth, success. Of which of them, it may be asked, can we make our boast?
I. The unity of the Church was to be one chief note of its Divine origin. What is our state? Visible unity seems to be no more a mark of the Church of Christ. Of those whose faces are all turned one way, to the place where Jesus the crucified sits on the right hand of God, the east and west have been rent asunder, so that none can re-knit the torn garment of the Lord. And west and east are again divided, each within itself; and we, that are but a section of the Western Church, are torn and torn again. Where is the one fold, whose sheep in one flock follow the leading footsteps of the one Shepherd into green pastures that never fail? God's promise cannot have been in vain. Man must have hindered it; God hath not forgotten it.
II. But if unity has been lost, truth has been preserved to us. And this is our consolation. If the Church be not the great ocean vast, bright, fresh, a counterpart of the blue heaven above it still she is like the hundred lakes that nestle among the sheltering hills; they know not each other, but every one of them reflects, and truly, the firmament above. So far as salvation by Christ is brought home to men by the teaching of the churches, so long there is an underlying bond of agreement which outward misunderstanding cannot cancel.
III. Humiliating to us are those promises of great success which are a part of our charter. The power of the truth we teach, the presence of the Holy Ghost, to turn the outward word into an inward life, seem to assure us of great success in gathering in souls to Christ. If, instead of conquering evil in the heathen nations round us, our missions are almost standing still, and round about our doors at home much heathen ignorance prevails, here is one more disappointment, one more source of perplexity in understanding the ways of God. But God is very good to us. We are broken; our lips stammer over the truth; we labour feebly for the good of souls. Yet God is with us still. If we have refused to be blessed according to His plan, He has blessed us in another. There is much love amongst us, even with our strife; there is a warm and growing zeal in works of good. Without the presence of the Spirit these things could not be.
Archbishop Thomson, Life in the Light of God's Word,p. 3.
References: Isaiah 33:20-23. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 489. Isaiah 33:21. Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 329. Isaiah 33:22. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xi., p. 330. Isaiah 33:23. Forsyth and Hamilton, Pulpit Parables,p. 217.