arred, their weapon a staff, their
garments the leather coat, their provisions pieces of moldy bread, and
their path fifteen hundred miles of sands, across the desert. To such
an end had come a disobedient and sinful generation!

In that hour, beholding these exiles and captives, a flood of emotions
rushed over the poet; he saw those bound who should conquer; he saw
that men were slaves who should be kings. Then, with a rush, an
immeasurable longing shivers through him like a trumpet call. Oh, to
save them! To perish for their saving! To die for their life, to be
offered for them all! In an abandon of grief and sympathy, he began
to speak to them in words of comfort and hope. At first these exiles,
dumb with pain and grief, listened, but listened with no light
quivering in the eye, and no hope flitting like sunshine across the
face. Their yesterdays held bondage, blows and degradation; their
tomorrow held only the desert and the return to a ruined land. Then
the word of the Lord came upon the poet. What if the night winds did
go mourning through the deserted streets of their capital! What if
their language had decayed and their institutions had perished? What
if the farmer's field was only a waste of thorns and thickets, and the
towns become heaps and ruins! What if the king of Babylon and his
army has trampled them under foot, as slaves trample the shellfish,
crushing out the purple dye that lends rich color to a royal robe?
"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people." Is the way long and through a
desert? "Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall
be made low." Has slavery worn man's strength to nothingness until he
is as weak as the broken reed and the withered grass? The spirit of
the Lord will revive the grass, trampled down by the hoofs of war
horses. Soon the bruised root shall redden into the rose and the
fluted stem climb into the tree. And think you if God's winds can
transform a spray and twig into a trunk fit for foundation of house or
mast of ship, that eternal arms can not equip with strength the hand
of patriot?

Is the Shepherd and Leader of His little flock unequal to their
guidance across the desert? "Behold the Lord will come with a strong
arm; he shall feed his flock like a shepherd and he shall gather the
lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom." What! Man's hand
unequal to the task of rebuilding Jerusalem? Hath not God pledged His
strength to the worker, that God whose arm strike