A New Translation

Just lately I was sitting on a strong piece of brick wall that somehow has got firmly fixed in the sand, facing the Atlantic Channel that beats on the end of the Exmouth Warren; Exmouth on the one side, and Teignmouth stretching out on the other. The sun was shining brilliantly on this, the calmest day in June we have had during the three weeks I have been here. The sea was lovely-covered with tiny wavelets incessantly breaking on the shore. Suddenly a loud whirring sound saluted my ears, and an aeroplane rode past, and gradually steered out of sight on its way, I suppose, to Plymouth. It was the sea that kept my thoughts upon itself, and the wondrous number of the wavelets, that each shone as a star in the mid-day light, thousands and thousands of brilliant points unceasingly shining forth ‘the brilliancy each one caught from the sun. It made me think, “Am I shining back the rays of the Sun of Righteousness ‘in my small corner’?” for He bids us shine. Are you shining, dear reader? And then I remembered an incident of my girlhood, when I heard a good missionary speak with enthusiasm on the shining of some Christians in Africa, and to my great delight he ended his speech by elucidating a text that had always seemed to me rather ambiguously translated in our English Bible. The text is in Isa. 11:99They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9).: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Dear reader, think a moment before I go further. Think, what are you doing to help the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to spread in the earth? Have you got, His Word―a Testament―yourself? Are you reading it? And are you helping that others may read it, too―specially the soldiers of Britain, France and Italy, and shall we not say Germans also, who are forced to fight? Oh, let us shine whilst we have the opportunity. Now the missionary who, shining for, Jesus in Exeter Hall at a C.M.S: meeting, ended his speech in a rapturous voice with the text to which I have alluded, only with this difference: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the sea is covered with waves.”
Emily P. Leakey