Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 56 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 5 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 56 – “Be just and fair to all. Do what is right and good, for I am coming soon to rescue you and to display my righteousness among you” (56:1).

The Lord will not reject foreigners or others rejected by you like Eunuchs. Those who will commit their lives to me will prosper. “I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices, because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (56:7).

The “leaders of my people—the Lord’s watchmen, his shepherds—are blind and ignorant. They are like silent watchdogs that give no warning when danger comes” (56:10). They are just watching after themselves.

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

5. In hope to enjoy its own in the end

Small flowers there are beside the stoniest way,

And on the seeming-endless journeying

Some breaths of air are sweet, and some birds sing,

And some new goal is reached in every day;

Yet for the unknown end we wait and pray,

When the last knot of this world’s tangled string

Is straightened out, and every evil thing

Redeemed in heaven’s undisputed sway.

We know not how the day is to be born,

Whether in clouds of glory, tongues of flame,

As once at Pentecost the Spirit came,

Or whether imperceptibly as dawn;

But as the seed must grow into the tree,

So life is love, and love the end must be.