Isaiah 52:1-6 Awake, awake; put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city… The Church, by reason of the heavenly element in it, like a tree of the forest — tenacious of its life; when the old trunk dies a fresh twig springs from its roots; and when this decays another fresh twig aprils up in its turn. So Luther and his collaborators, by the grace of God, evoked from the dead Church of the Middle Ages a fresh and vigorous Protestantism. So Wesley and his co-workers evoked from the deadness of the later Anglicanism a still fresh and vigorous Methodism. The Presbyterian Church of John Knox also grew old, and has had its athletic offshoots. "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion" — and Zion after the awakening is never the Zion of the pro-awakening. (R. V. Foster, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. |
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