It was said above, that, as light breaks to visibleness either from a mirror or a wick, so God _breaks to glory_ either from the witness of men,--that is His mirror,--or from their sacrifice--that is His wick. Of both of these ways of glorifying God is the Servant conscious. His service is Speech and Sacrifice, Prophecy and Martyrdom.
Concerning his service of Speech, the Servant speaks in these two passages--ch. xlix. 2 and l. 4-5:
_He set my mouth like a sharp sword,_ _In the shadow of His hand did He hide me,_ _And made me a pointed arrow;_ _In His quiver He laid me in store._
_My Lord Jehovah hath given me_ _The tongue of the learners,_ _To know how to succour the weary with words._ _He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear_ _To hear as the learners._ _My Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear._ _I was not rebellious,_ _Nor turned away backward._
At the bidding of our latest prophet we have become suspicious of the power of speech, and the goddess of eloquence walks, as it were, under surveillance among us. Carlyle reiterated, "All speech and rumour is short-lived, foolish, untrue. Genuine work alone is eternal. The talent of silence is our fundamental one. The dumb nations are the builders of the world." Under such doctrine some have grown intolerant of words, and the ideal of to-day tends to become the practical man rather than the prophet. Yet, as somebody has said, Carlyle makes us dissatisfied with preaching only by preaching himself; and you have but to read him with attention to discover that his disgust with human speech is consistent with an immense reverence for the voice as an instrument of service to humanity. "The tongue of man," he says, "is a sacred organ. Man himself is definable in philosophy as an 'Incarnate Word;' the Word not there, you have no man there either, but a Phantasm instead."
Let us examine our own experience upon the merits of this debate between Silence and Speech in the service of man. Though beginning low, it will help us quickly to the height of the experience of the Prophet Nation, who, with nought else for the world but the voice that was in them, accomplished the greatest service that the world has ever received from her children.