2 worship of Christendom, and which expressed that He was there who bore the great Name by which God was specially known in the period of the Jewish monarchy and in the Prophetical' order—the Lord of HOSTS.' The sound rang like thunder to the extremity of the Temple. The pillars of the gateway trembled, as if in another earthquake-shock, and the whole building within grew dark as with the smoke of a vast sacrifice. It was a sight and sound which the youthful Isaiah recognised at once as the intimation of Divinity. It was the revelation of the Divine Presence to him, as that of the Burning Bush to Moses, or of the Still Small Voice to Elijah-the inevitable prelude to a Prophetic mission, couched in the form most congenial to his own character and situation. To him, the Royal Prophet of Jerusalem, this manifestation of Royal splendour was the almost necessary vesture in which the Spiritual Truth was to be clothed. All his own sins we know not what they were-and the sins of his nation—as we know them from himself and the contemporary Prophets-passed before him, and he said, 'Woe is 'me, for I am lost, because I am a man of unclean lips, and 'I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes ' have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.' A Rabbinical tradition, probably baseless, took possession very early of the Christian Church, that his sin had been an acquiescence in the sin of Uzziah, and that the gift of prophecy then removed from him was now to be restored.3 But his own words rather lead to the impression that it was his language, and the language of his countrymen, that was to blame: 'a foul'mouthed son of a foul-mouthed race.' On these defiled lips, therefore, the purifying touch was laid. From the 1 The word is used 13 times in the Books of Samuel, 62 times in Isaiah, 65 times in Jeremiah, but only 3 times in the Chronicles (Mr. Twisleton on the Books of Samuel, Dict. of the Bible). See Lecture XXIII. 2 It is supposed to be the Divine judgment and earthquake on Uzziah (Rashi in Gesenius, p. 121). 3 See Gesenius on Isa. vi., pp. 5, 6, 7, 120, 254, 261. 6 6 1 flaming altar, the flaming seraph brought a flaming coal. This was the creation, so to speak, of that marvellous style which has entranced the world; the burning furnace which warms, as with a central fire, every variety of his addresses. Then came the Voice from the sanctuary, saying, 'Whom shall I send, who will go for Us?' With unhesitating devotion, the youth replied, 'Here am I; send me.' In the words that follow is represented the whole of the Prophet's career. First, he is forewarned of the forlorn hopelessness of his mission. The louder and more earnest is his cry, the less will they hear and understand-the more clearly he sets the vision of truth before them, the less will they see. 'Make the heart of this people gross, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted and healed.' These mournful words, wellknown to us through their 3 fivefold repetition in the New Testament as the description of the Jewish people in its latest stage of decay, were doubtless true in the highest degree of that wayward generation to which Isaiah was called to speak. His spirit sank within him, and he asked, O Lord, how long-Usquequo, Domine?' The reply unfolded at once the darker and the brighter side of the future. Not till successive invasions had wasted the cities, not till the houses had been left without a human being within them, not till the land had been desolate with desolation, would a better hope dawn; not till the invasions of Pekah and Sennacherib had done their work, not till ten out of the twelve tribes had been removed far away, and there should have been a great forsaking in the midst of the land, would he be relieved from the necessity of delivering his stern, but 1 'Si quis penitus posset introspicere 'afflatus Prophetæ, videret in singulis verbis caminos ignis et vehe'mentissimos ardores esse.' (Luther, Opp. iii. p. 286.) 2 Isa. vi. 10. Matt. xiii. 13; Mark iv. 12; Luke viii. 10; John xii. 39; Acts xxviii. 25. fruitless, warnings, against the idolatry, the dulness, the injustice of his people. But widely-spread and deeply-seated as was the national corruption, there was still a sound portion left, which would live on and flourish. As the aged oak or terebinth of Palestine may be shattered, and cut down to the very roots, and yet out of the withered stump a new shoot may spring forth, and grow into a mighty and vigorous tree, so is the holy seed, the faithful few, of the chosen people. This is the true consolation of all Ecclesiastical History. It is a thought which is but little recognised in its earlier and ruder stages, when the inward and outward are easily confounded together. But it is the very message of life to a more refined and complex age, and it was the keynote to the whole of Isaiah's prophecies. It had, indeed, been dimly indicated to Elijah, in the promise of the few who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and in the still small whisper which was greater than thunder, earthquake, and fire. But in Isaiah's time it first, if we may say so, became a living doctrine of the Jewish Church, and through him an inheritance of the Christian Church. 'A remnant - the 2 ' remnant.' This was his watchword. The remnant shall return (shear-jashub).' This was the truth constantly personified before him in the name of his eldest son. A remnant of good in the mass of corruption, a remnant saved from the destructive invasions of Assyria, a burst of springtime in the Reformation of Hezekiah; and, far away in the distant future, a rod out of the stem, the worn-out stem of Jesse-a branch, a faithful branch, out of the withered root of David; and the wilderness and the solitary place shall be 'glad, and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose; it shall blossom abundantly, even with joy and singing, and 'sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' 3 1 See Isa. vi. 13. 2 Ibid. x. 20, xi. 11, 16, xxviii. 5. Dr. Newman's Sermons, On Subjects of the Day, 218. Ewald, Propheten, 169. 3 Isa. xi. 1, xxxv. 1. The mission of Isaiah. Such was the hope and trust which sustained the Prophet through his sixty years of toil and conflict. In the weakness of Ahaz, in the calamities of Hezekiah, under the tyranny of Manasseh, Isaiah remained firm and steadfast to the end. Wider and wider his views opened, as the nearer prospects of his country grew darker and darker. First of the Prophets, he and those who followed him seized with unreserved confidence the mighty thought, that not in the chosen people, so much as in the nations outside of it, was to be found the ultimate well-being of man, the surest favour of God. Truly might the Apostle say that Isaiah was very bold '— 'bold' beyond' all that had gone before him-in enlarging the boundaries of the Church; bold with that boldness, and large with that largeness of view, which so far from weakening the hold on things divine, strengthens it to a degree unknown in less comprehensive minds. For to him also, with a distinctness which makes all other anticipations look pale in comparison, a2 distinctness which grew with his advancing years, was revealed the coming of a Son of David, who should restore the royal house of Judah and gather the nations under its sceptre. If some of these predictions belong to that phase of the Israelite hope of an earthly empire, which was doomed to disappointment and reversal, yet the larger part point to a glory which has been more than realised. Lineament after lineament of that Divine Ruler was gradually drawn by Isaiah or his scholars, until at last a Figure stands forth, so marvellously combined of power and gentleness and suffering, as to present in the united proportions of his descriptions the moral features of an historical Person, such as has been, by universal confession, known once, and once only, in the subsequent annals of the world. The task laid upon the Prophet was difficult, the times 1 Rom. x. 20, ἀποτολμᾷ. were dark. But his reward has been that, in spite of the opposition, the contempt, and the ridicule of his cotemporaries, he has in after ages been regarded as the messenger not of sad but of glad tidings, the Evangelical Prophet, the Prophet of the Gospel, in accordance with the meaning of his own name, which he himself regarded as charged with Prophetic significance1- the Divine Salvation.' No other Prophet is so frequently cited in the New Testament, for none other so nearly comes up to the Spirit of Christ and the Apostles. No other single teacher of the Jewish Church has so worked his way into the heart of Christendom. When Augustine asked Ambrose which of the sacred books was best to be studied after his conversion, the answer was 'Isaiah.' The greatest musical composition of modern times, embodying more than any single confession of faith the sentiments of the whole Christian Church, is based in far the larger part on the Prophecies of Isaiah. The wild tribes of New Zealand seized his magnificent strains as if belonging to their own national songs, and chanted them from hill to hill, with all the delight of a newly discovered treasure. And as in his age, so in our own, he must be preeminently regarded as 'the bard rapt into future times.' None other of ancient days so fully shared with the modern philosopher, or reformer, or pastor, the sorrowful yet exalted privilege of standing, as we say, 'in advance of his age,' before his time.' Through his prophetic gaze we may look forward across a dark and stormy present to the onward destiny of our race, which must also be the hope of each aspiring soul-when the eyes of them that see shall not 'be dim-when the ears of them that hear shall hearken'when the vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor 1 Isa. viii. 18. See Gesenius, i. p. 3. 2 So I have been informed by Sir 3 |