gment. The Judge
ascends the stairs behind the throne. The hall of the last assize is
cleared and shut. The high court of eternity is adjourned forever.

THE LORD'S RAZOR.

"In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is
hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the King of
Assyria."--ISAIAH vii: 20.

The Bible is the boldest book ever written. There are no similitudes
in Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimes
seems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact is
that God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tame
and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While
there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the
morning cloud and the dove and the daybreak in the presentation of
truth, we often find the iron chariot, the lightning, the earthquake,
the spray, the sword, and, in my text, the razor.

This keen-bladed instrument has advanced in usefulness with the ages.
In Bible times and lands the beard remained uncut save in the seasons
of mourning and humiliation, but the razor was always a suggestive
symbol. David says of Doeg, his antagonist: "Thy tongue is a sharp
razor working deceitfully;" that is, it pretends to clear the face,
but is really used for deadly incision. In this morning's text the
weapon of the toilet appears under the following circumstances: Judea
needed to have some of its prosperities cut off, and God sends
against it three Assyrian kings--first Sennacherib, then Esrahaddon,
and afterward Nebuchadnezzar. Those three sharp invasions, that cut
down the glory of Judea, are compared to so many sweeps of the razor
across the face of the land. And these circumstances were called a
hired razor because God took the kings of Assyria, with whom He had no
sympathy, to do the work, and paid them in palaces and spoils and
annexations. These kings were hired to execute the divine behests. And
now the text, which on its first reading may have seemed trivial or
inapt, is charged with momentous import: "In the same day shall the
Lord shave with a razor that is hired--namely, by them beyond the
river, by the King of Assyria."

Well, if God's judgments are razors, we had better be careful how we
use them on other people. In careful sheath these domestic weapons are
put away, where no one by accident may touch them, and where the hands
of children may not reach them. Such instruments must