LIFE.-Littleness developable into greatness, or collapsable into

leastness.

GRACE.-The health of nature brought back by the Great Physician.

GOD IN CHRIST.-A less mystery than God out of Christ.

GOD OUT OF CHRIST.-The unknown and unknowable Something.

HEAVENLY PLACES.-Wherever there are happy faces through Christian graces.

MONTAIGNE.-Intuition too strong to be weighed down by a weak memory, and a chaos of material.

CARLYLE.-A Sampson in green spectacles.
COLERIDGE.-An intellectual somnambulist.
BYRON.-Passion red-hot set to music.
MILTON-Cathedral music in "diapason full.”

SIR WALTER SCOTT-A prose Shakespeare, a poetic rhymster. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON-Kant's mind without his "verge and room enough"; or, Kant's quality without Kant's quantity.

"By a microscopic examination of the retina and optic nerve and the brain, M. Bauer found them to consist of globules of 1-2800th to 1-4000th of an inch in diameter, united by a transparent viscid coagulable gelatinous fluid." Power of littles! no doubt. But can any one bring himself reasonably to suppose that such an amalgam, under any conditions purely material and mechanical, could be made of itself to see and think?

One flash of true intuition is better than ten men who can render a reason merely syllogistical.

CHALMERS-Common sense inspired-Christianity on fire.
DR. JOHN DUNCAN-Socrates born again.

ROUSSEAU-The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, and seeing nothing but Jean Jacques in his coat of many colours.

VOLTAIRE Diogenes the Second in his tub, laughing at things in general, but extremely mindful of No. 1.

"SYSTEME DE LA NATURE"-Atheism made easy, by sophistry made plausible.

LOCKE-The key to all true philosophy; the pillar and ground of all that has come after him of the nature of mental metaphysics.

NEWTON Industry rewarded, and humility glorified.

J. S. MILL-A great nature spoiled by a vile education. SECULARISM-Christianism without its religious element; having

promise of this life only.

POE-Intellect of diamond with heart of cold iron. "Bells" ringing out the morals of Pandemonium.

HEGEL-Genius minus its chief element, common sense.

voyance of nothing.

Clair

HUMBOLDT-Could not see God for the universe.
SPINOZA-Could not see the universe for God.

FICHTE Could see neither God nor universe for the ego.
The only right authority is the authority of right.

Better be above your position than your position above you; as a poet-exciseman like Burns might say to a "Laird o' Cockpen," "whose scant domain," and scanter brain,

noticed."

66

geographer ne'er YOUNG-Sublimity sublimized by genuine religious sentiment. Too good for a sceptical generation.

SHELLEY-Great poetry metaphysicized into strained sentimentalism, and pantheistic bombast.

BUNYAN-The tinker who soldered with gold. Fiction true and strange as fact. Dreamer of true dreams.

BRIEF NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Class Meeting: How its usefulness may be promoted. An address by the Rev. G. E. BUTT, of Oxford. Second Edition. Price One Penny. London: G. Lamb.

A SENSIBLE, judicious, well-written address, which every leader and member of the Connexion ought to read.

Pulpit Earnestness; or, the ministry

of earnestness and power the great want of the sacred Desk. By SILAS HENN. Fourth Edition, enlarged. London: G. Lamb.

FROM the reading of this pamphlet young ministers can scarcely fail to receive many useful hints, and to

catch more or less of the spirit of earnestness which breathes in every page.

Primitive Methodism versus Church Teaching. Letters between the Rev. James Hall, Primitive Methodist Minister, Pocklington, Yorkshire, and the Rev. Allan Brodrick, M.A., Rector of Huggate, near Pocklington. Price Twopence. London:

G. Lamb.

IN the trenchant exposure here given of the dangers to which the children of village Methodists are liable in Church schools, Mr. Hall has rendered good service to the cause of religious equality.

THE

CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR.

ART. I.-THE PROPHET ISAIAH.*

By D. FRIEDRICH DUSTERDIECK. Translated from the German by the Rev. JOHN WATSON.

THERE is only one book in the Old Testament to which our pious affection is drawn more strongly and directly than to the prophetical book of Isaiah—that is the Psalter. The psalms are prayers which the entire community of the Church repeats in a thousand-fold harmony of voices and tongues; and every individual soul which would speak to its God finds in the book of Psalms the right words for every exercise: praise and thanksgiving, prayer and intercession, confession of sin and believing desire for redeeming and forgiving grace, sacred joy and sacred sorrow. After the book of Psalms, however, the book of the prophet Isaiah has ever been esteemed in the Christian Church as the most precious jewel among the sacred books of the Old Dispensation. Isaiah is called the evangelist of the Old Testament. His consecrated lips proclaimed the Old Testament Christmas-Evangel of the virgin's son, the Immanuel; his book contains the gospel for Good Friday and Easter-the wonderful prophecy of the sufferings and death of God's holy servant, who shall, nevertheless, prolong His days, and divide the spoil with the great. And at the end of all the wonderful ways of God the prophet shews us the eternal consummation, namely, the irrevocable separation between the ungodly, whose worm dieth not, and the blessed citizens of the New Jerusalem, whose light and life will be the Eternal One Himself.

From the book of Isaiah our Lord quoted the text of his first discourse at Nazareth (Luke iv. 17); our prophetical book contains a divine warrant for John the Baptist, who, with the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepared the way of the Lord (Mark

* This paper is the substance of a discourse delivered by Düsterdieck at the Evangelical Union, Hanover, and published in part 3rd of the "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie" for 1873.

i. 3; John i. 23); and our Lutheran Church has rendered into song the prophet's testimony respecting his call to his office, at which he heard from the lips of the seraphim the praise of the thrice Holy One, and appointed it to be used in the highest ordinance of its worship, the Supper of the Lord.

Even if we were able to disregard its decided religious interest, the prophetical book would retain, in a literary and æsthetical respect, the highest value. The book presents itself to us as the truly classical model of Hebrew composition. In the perfect form of prosaic and poetical speech, which has at its command the arousing power of the word no less than the tenderest love and sweetness, there meets us an inexhaustible fulness of the deepest thoughts and purest feelings. We hear the soft, peace-breathing murmur of the well of Siloam; but we hear also the roaring of the river overflowing its banks, and sweeping everything before it. Isaiah is not a man of many words, but he has much to say, and every word hits its mark. He does not repeat what is once sufficiently expressed; but against the unceasing sins of the impenitent people he addresses again and again, in the name of his God, denunciations and threatenings; and when we hear, time after time, the words, "For all this his anger is not turned away, his hand is stretched out still" (v. 25; ix. 12, 17, 21; x. 4), a rising fear comes over us, and we begin to yearn for a final word of consolatory promise. And none of the Old Testament messengers of God have set forth the free, the all-sufficient, the sin and death conquering grace of redemption more thoughtfully, and, at the same time, with words of sweeter invitation. Isaiah may be called the John of the Old Testament; he resembles the New Testament Son of Thunder, who lay, however, upon the bosom of the Lord. None of the Old Testament men of God have expressed, with such certainty and confidence, as are evinced in the book of Isaiah, the paternal name of the everlasting One (lxiii. 16), and proclaimed His love, which is more faithful than a mother's love (xlix. 15).

but

What has been said affords us an introductory glance at the wealth of prophetical ideas which are treasured up in the book of Isaiah. I consider it my main task to exhibit to you, as clearly as I am able, the solemn, and yet the withal mild grandeur of these thoughts, which are, indeed, divine thoughts, proclaimed unto us through the illuminated mind and consecrated lips of God's chosen instrument. But this can only be done after I have given you a description, though a brief one, of the circumstances under which the prophetical discourses were delivered, and to which they continually refer. Such a delineation of the moral as well as many other important circumstances under which Isaiah had to exercise his office, I must, therefore, in the first place attempt.

And with this I shall be able to communicate the little that we know of the person of the prophet, and what pious tradition has added to it.

Isaiah was the son of a man, in other respects unknown to us, of the name of Amoz, the confounding of whom with Amos, the third of the minor prophets, arises solely from ignorance of the Hebrew. In the year of the death of Uzziah, king of Judah, that is, in the year 739 B.C., Isaiah was called to be a prophet by God appearing to him, as described in the 6th chapter of our book. His public ministry extended through the reigns of the three following kings of Judah,-Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He witnessed the destruction of the northern kingdom and its metropolis Samaria, in the year 722, by the Assyrians, under Shalmaneser. It is also certain that Isaiah was with king Hezekiah when Jerusalem was besieged, in the year 718, by the Assyrian army under Sennacherib, but which, through the sudden destruction of 185,000 men, was forced to take to flight. Isaiah was in Jerusalem exercising his prophetical office at the time of king Hezekiah's sickness (to whose life God added, however, other fifteen years), and the embassy connected with it from the king of Babylon, who at that time still belonged to the Assyrian empire. We may, accordingly, assume with certainty that the public ministry of the prophet lasted about fifty years. That he lived under Manasseh, the son and successor of Hezekiah, is by no means certain. Of the time and manner of his death we know nothing. An old legend says that the idolatrous king Manasseh, provoked by his exhortations to repentance, resolved to put him to death. Then a cedar opened to conceal the man of God. But Manasseh caused the cedar to be sawn through; and when the saw touched the prophet's lips, which the seraph had once consecrated with the live coal from the heavenly altar, life fled.

Another tradition says that Isaiah lost his prophetical gift for a long time, on account of his not warning Hezekiah of a sin for which he was punished with leprosy.

Other legends, according to which Isaiah was of the royal race, a blood relation of King Uzziah, and held high public offices under king Hezekiah, are only important in as far as they express due acknowledgement of the spiritual majesty of the prophet.

Finally, I have also to mention here that Isaiah was married, and had several sons, to whose significant names I must afterwards return.

The entire fifty years' ministry of the prophet was devoted to the kingdom of Judah, and especially to the city of Jerusalem. He looked out, indeed, from his prophetical watch-tower, not only upon the northern kingdom of Israel, but also upon the kingdoms of the Gentiles, which lay farther or nearer within his field of