let us go on and on/ i.e., perseveringly until we attain the blessed goal)[1] to entreat the favour (literally, to entreat the face ) of Jehovah[2] and to seek Jehovah " to which the ready and glad response of those invited will be, " / will go also and many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek Jehovah of hosts in Jerusalem, and to entreat the face of Jehovah" all which is but an iteration by the central figure in the group of post-exilic prophets of the glorious announcements concerning " the latter days " made by the former prophets. Thus, for instance, we read both in Isaiah and in Micah, " And it shall come to pass in the latter days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and zve will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem" (Isa. ii. 2, 3, R.V.).
The allegorising commentators, according to whom " the literal fulfilment of such passages is a sheer impossi bility "[3] as if it had not been foretold in this very scripture that the fulfilment of the great and glorious things which are here prophesied would appear too " wonderful " and impossible in the eyes of men would have us believe that what is predicted by Isaiah, and Micah, and Zechariah (indeed, by all the prophets) in
- ↑ Pusey wrongly applies this, as all the other great promises in this chapter, to the present; yet there is some truth in his observation that " the words seem to speak of that which is a special gift of the gospel, namely, continued pro gress, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, to press forward toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us go on and on; whence it is a Christian proverb, Non progredi est regredi Not to go on is to go back. Augustine observed, The whole life of a good Christian is a holy longing to make pro gress; and again, The one perfection of man is to have found that he is not perfect., If thou sayest it sufficeth, thou art lost. Nolle proficere deficere est To be unwilling to increase is to decrease." St. Bernard, quoted by Pusey.
- ↑ See footnote on this phrase in the exposition of chap. vii. p. 213.
- ↑ C. If. H. Wright.
