Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 62 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 11 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 62 – I, the prophet, will not grow weary of Jerusalem until her “integrity shines out like the dawn” (62:1).

“The nations will see your righteousness. World leaders will be blinded by your glory. . . The Lord will hold you in his hand for all to see—a splendid crown in the hand of God” (62:2-3).

She will be like a crown in God’s hand. No longer “forsaken” or “abandoned”, she will be the Lord’s delight, wedded to Him like a bride. “[O]n your walls, Jerusalem, I set watchmen. Day or night they must never by silent” (62:16). She must be the “boast of the earth” (62:7), the “city not forsaken” (62:12).

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:

11. So it conceives none in thought to any other

Is there indeed a river that can clean

The stable of my thought? Can I not hide,

Behind the glittering wall of outward pride

In virtuous act, the dismal inward scene?

Not what we think, but what we do has been

The standard of the world: so have I tried

To wall out God with deeds. And yet inside

My soul blazes His light despite my screen.

Ah! Blinding Union! Now falls away

The shelly life of outward righteousness.

Torrential seas of brightness round me press,

Turning my secret night to open day,

Till in the fullness of Thy light no room

Is left for any cherished walled gloom.