'Mountain of the Lord's House," are common in Isaiah and Micah. One passage occurs in both prophets; but, as usual, every conceivable explanation of the coincidence is defended. Some think that Isaiah quoted Micah; others that Micah quoted Isaiah; and others again that both quoted some older prophet. What is of importance is that the expressions are not common elsewhere, and that Micah and Isaiah were contemporaries.

"Set up an ensign" (or "banner" or "standard"). It is found four times in the undisputed Isaiah, three times in the fragments," twice in the "second" Isaiah. It occurs very seldom elsewhere in the prophets, and is used in the Pentateuch in a different sense.

We are all familiar with the words "creep" and "creeping thing" in Genesis i. The same word occurs in Isaiah, where it means "to trample." It occurs seven times in the undisputed chapters and twice in the "fragments." Here, then, we have a sign of identity of authorship between Isaiah and the "fragments." In Genesis i the word is spelt differently and has a different meaning. It is therefore certain that Isaiah is not quoting Genesis in this case, nor can Genesis be quoting Isaiah; but there is evidence that Isaiah does quote Genesis i, and in such a way that his quotation of it disposes of the theory that Genesis i and ii are by different authors. The use of the three Hebrew words translated "create," "make," "form," in Genesis i and ii has been used to prove a difference in the authorship of the two chapters, but in Isaiah xlv, 18, both Genesis i and ii are quoted :

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"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens ;
God Himself that formed the earth and made it;
He hath established it,

He created it not in vain,

He formed it to be inhabited:

I am the Lord; and there is none else."

The words translated "created," "formed," "made,” are the words used in Genesis i and ii; and the word (tohu) translated void " in Genesis i, 2, is also used in Isaiah xiv, 18 (translated “in vain”). If they do not involve a different author in the last passage, neither can they in the former. The date of the "second" Isaiah is, it is true, brought down by the critics to the same period as that which they assign to Genesis i, but Genesis i and ii are now supposed to have been combined together in one volume at a later date still. Critics have not explained how it is that the "second" Isaiah quotes them as though they had already been combined at the time he wrote.

(7) The tendency to break suddenly into song. This is another feature common to all the portions of the book and altogether peculiar to Isaiah. It is true that Habakkuk has a song at the end of his poetry, but it does not break out in the midst of it. In the undisputed Isaiah there is a song in chap. v, 1-7

"Now will I sing to my well beloved

A song of my beloved touching his vineyard."

In the "fragments" we have (chap. xii, 1–6)—

"The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song;
He also is become my salvation."

And chap. xxvi, 1—4—

"In that day shall this song be sung in the Land of Judah; We have a strong city;

Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks."

while in the "second" Isaiah invitations to break into singing occur and many songs. Even the historical portion breaks out into poetry in Isaiah's message to Hezekiah, and it includes Hezekiah's song of thanksgiving, and this in the space of four chapters.

(8) The piling up of ideas or imagery is a peculiarly Isaianic feature the building up of ideas, sometimes of a similar and sometimes of a contrary nature, with a most powerful effect. Take the three following instances from the undisputed Isaiah, from the "fragments," and from the "second" Isaiah respectively:

"The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be
Upon every one that is proud and lofty,
And upon every one that is lifted up;
And he shall be brought low;

And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and
lifted up,

And upon all the oaks of Bashan," etc. (chap. ii, 10-17).

"It shall be

As with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master;
As with the maid, so with her mistress

(chap. xxiv, 2).

"Behold my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; Behold my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty ; Behold my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed (chap. lxv, 13-14).

Shorter passages of a similar kind occur in every page. No other writer but Isaiah supplies us with such examples.

(9) Closely connected with the above is the unique way in which parallelism, a characteristic of Hebrew poetry in general, is used by Isaiah.

Usually poetic parallelism consists simply in the repetition of the same idea in different words. But in Isaiah's hands parallelism is a most powerful instrument of emphasis. Two or three examples out of a thousand must content us here. We will take from the undisputed Isaiah, chap. ii, 10–12:—

"Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust,

For fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty.
The lofty looks of man shall be humbled,

And the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down,

And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
For the day of the Lord of Hosts

Shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty,
And upon every one that is lifted up;
And he shall be brought low."

And from the "fragments," chap. xxiv, 3-5:

"The land shall be utterly emptied,
And utterly spoiled:

For the Lord hath spoken this word.

The earth mourneth and fadeth away,

The world languisheth and fadeth away,

The haughty people of the earth do languish.

The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof;

Because they have transgressed the laws,

Changed the ordinance,

Broken the everlasting covenant."

And from the "second" Isaiah, chap. liii, 3–5 :—

"He is despised and rejected of men;

A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief :
And we hid as it were our faces from Him ;
He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
Surely He hath borne our griefs,
And carried our sorrows:

Yet we did esteem Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted."

It is absolutely impossible, in the space allotted to me, to convey the cumulative force of this line of study to my hearers and readers. A most convincing treatise might be written on the subject of the use of parallelism in Isaiah as compared with

its use by the other writers of the Old Testament; but it would be open to the drawback that few would read it; some would pass it by because they had never doubted the unity of Isaiah, and others because they would not attend to an investigation which might prove in conflict with conclusions at which they had already arrived.

Some of my hearers may ask, "What is the use of these discussions of mere words?" My answer is that the critical argument is for the most part comprised in just this dissection of words and phrases. The only other argument offered, if argument it can be called, is one that we must reject; it is the assumption that miracles and prophesy are both impossible.

TWO ARGUMENTS FROM HISTORY.

In conclusion let me offer two arguments based on historical facts. The first is to be found in one of the latest sermons of Canon Liddon. He is speaking of Isaiah's prophecies of the bringing in of the Gentiles. I will quote the passage:

"Before our Lord came, the force and beauty of this teaching was warped and withered by the intense and, it must be added, narrow feeling of nationality which set in after the Captivity. The close contact with the heathen in the Captivity did more than anything else towards limiting the range of love in Jewish hearts by the idea of the nation. The law said, 'Love thy neighbour,' but the later Jew answered the question, Who is my neighbour?' in the narrowest sense. He even excluded the Samaritan."

The four great evangelical prophets, and most of the minor prophets, insist on the superiority of the spirit of the Law to its letter, the spread of the knowledge of the truth far and wide among the Gentiles, and the coming of One Who by stripes and suffering should bring in the long-promised dispensation of the Spirit. The cruel oppression of the Captivity made the later Jews lose sight of these bright prospects for humanity, and they hardened themselves into a bitter hatred of all nationalities but their own, a hatred which, as Juvenal, Tacitus, and other Gentile writers record, was repaid with interest.

A consideration which has occurred to myself, looks in the same direction. The critics of the Wellhausen school refer the "second" Isaiah to the period of the Captivity; the present Regius Professor at Cambridge to that of the Maccabees. But after the Return, the Jews had become so narrow in their national spirit that the glowing pictures of a glorious future

for all the peoples of the world would have repelled them, and have found no acceptance. As for such condemnations of the worship of idols as we find in many passages of "second" Isaiah, they could not have been written in post-exilic times. would have been regarded as unfounded and unjust attacks upon a blameless and suffering people. For the outward observances of idolatry had become utterly abhorrent to the Jews of the Return.

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It is but fair to add that some of the characteristics ascribed to the book of Isaiah are to be found-though not to the same extent in other prophetic writings. It was inevitable that Isaiah, who was not only the greatest of the prophets, but one of the earliest, should influence those who came after him. The most striking example of this is found in the forty-eighth chapter of the prophecy of Jeremiah, the denunciation of Moab, in which he largely quotes the Burden of Moab recorded in Isaiah xv and xvi. Much of it is verbal quotation, some of it an amplification of Isaiah's words.

CONCLUSION.

The effect of German destructive criticism is to lower the general credit of the Scriptures. The critics divide by centuries the various authors from the events they profess to describe; the authors, according to them, are not men intimately acquainted with the events they record, and their sources of information are vague traditions, true or false-probably false, except when they are assertions having no particular religious value. Historical statements are supposed to have been "worked over" by men of later date; prophecies must have been written after the event.

But the Bible, throughout all its books, professes to be the communication by God to man of His Divine Will. The Pentateuch may not be all the work of Moses, but it must either have been written under his direction, or be a deliberate and indefensible forgery. The historical books were clearly the work of members of the schools of the prophets, who became the government scribes; the books of Chronicles speak of the works of Nathan and Gad, of Jehu the son of Hanani, and other persons well known in Jewish history. I cannot stop to quote any of the prophecies contained in Holy Writ, not connected directly with revelation, which could not have been written after the event. I can only refer to the one great fact that the prophecies of the setting aside of the Mosaic