Renewing Forces are Silent and Gentle
H. W. Beecher. Isaiah 1:16 Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil;… Nature itself gives us an illustration of it. When the spring draws the sap out of the ground into the trees the actual force which is exerted is greater than that of all human machines put together. Never was there an engine built that could for one mingle moment compare with the development of actual physical power in an oak tree standing in a field, acre broad, every spring. Yet you see nothing and hear nothing. But it has been measured and estimated. There is in the silent influence of the seasons more power than in all the storms that ever swept over the earth since creation. The invisible forces of nature are mightier than the visible. Look into a household. The bustling husband who drives the children here and there, and will have order, has nothing but disorder; while the mother sits still, and loves, rules over every child in the family, and secures perfect obedience. The silence of love is mightier than all the physical or moral force of boisterous strength. Now, this truth, which we discern even in the lowest forms of matter, and which grows more and more striking as you ascend along the line of human society, meets the great declaration of the Divine Word, that God has given the Holy Spirit, and that this invisible and silent force in the universe is such that more are they that are for a man who wants to turn than are they that are against him. The whole heaven is God's apparatus for helping men to unharness their faults, to lay aside their habits, to change mightily their whole internal economy, yea, to so revolutionise themselves that, whereas before the animal, the physical, was in the ascendency, now the angel, the spiritual, is. Is there, then, such an influence existing in every community? Yes, in every community. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; WEB: Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil.