Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 57 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 6 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 57 – The offspring of the adulterer and the whore jeer at the devout. They offer child sacrifice. “You have struck a pact with those whose bed you love, whoring with them often” (57:8). You put on oil for Molech.

Why have you disowned Yahweh? “When you cry, let your hateful idols save you! The wind will carry them all away, a breath will take them off. But whoever trusts in me shall inherit the land and own my holy mountain” (57:13). The Lord lives in a high and holy place but he lives close to the contrite and revived the hearts of those who are sorry. The Lord will comfort the contrite and will heal him.

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:

6. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention

Who weeps for Babylon, who mourns for Tyre,

Who worships proud imperious Caesar now?

The wreath, woven to fit a tyrant’s brow

So soon is trampled in oblivion’s mire.

Buried the ash of Moloch’s dreadful fire,

Withered and lost Astarte’s golden bough,

And turned beneath the lonely peasant’s plough

Lie splintered shards of heathen altars dire.

Victorious lava sears the mountain side,

And leaves a cicatrice among the green,

But sun and frost and rain, and roots unseen

Advance the slow, resistless verdant tide.

Through all events runs one repeating rule,

That life may grow, but wrath and hatred cool.