CHAPTER X.

ISAIAH, JEREMIAH, EZEKIEL, DANIEL

ISAIAH.

"I FELT," says Sir W. Herschel," after a considerable sweep through the sky with my telescope, Sirius announcing himself from a great distance; and at length he rushed into the field of view with all the brightness of the rising sun, and I had to withdraw my eyes from the dazzling object." So have we, looking out from our "specular tower," seen from a great way off the approach of the "mighty orb of song"-the divine Isaiah-and have felt awe-struck in the path of his coming. He was a prince amid a generation of princes-a Titan among a tribe of Titans; and of all the prophets who rose on aspiring pinion to meet the Sun of Righteousness, it was his-the Evangelical Eagle-to mount highest, and to catch on his wing the richest anticipation of his rising. It was his, too, to pierce most clearly down into the abyss of the future, and become an eye-witness of the great events which were in its womb inclosed. Ho is the most eloquent, the most dramatic, the most poetic-in one word, the most complete, of the Bards of Israel. He has not the bearded majesty of Moses--the gorgeous natural description of Job--Ezekiel's rough and rapid vehemence, like a red torrent from the hills seeking the lake of Galilee in the day of storm-David's high gusts of lyric enthusiasm, dying away into the low wailings of penitential sorrow-Daniel's awful allegory-John's piled and enthroned thunders; his power is solemn, sustained-at once measured and powerful; his step moves gracefully, at the same time that it shakes the

wilderness. His imagery, it is curious to notice, amid all its profusion, is seldom snatched from the upper regions of the Ethereal from the terrible crystal, or the stones of fire-from the winged cherubim, or the eyed wheels-from the waves of the glassy sea, or the blanched locks of the Ancient of Days; but from lower, though lofty objects—from the glory of Lebanon, the excellency of Sharon, the waving forests of Carmel, the willows of Kedron, the flocks of Kedar, and the rams of Nebaioth. Once only does he pass within the vail—“ in the ⚫ year that King Uzziah died"-and he enters trembling, and he withdraws in haste, and he bears out, from amid the surging smoke and the tempestuous glory, but a single "live coal" from off the altar. His prophecy opens with sublime complaint; it frequently irritates into noble anger, it subdues into irony, it melts into pathos; but its general tone is that of victorious exultation. It is one long rapture. You see its author standing on an eminence, bending forward over the magnificent prospect it commands, and, with clasped hands, and streaming eyes, and eloquent sobs, indicating his excess of joy. It is true of all the prophets, that they frequently seem to see rather than foresee, but especially true of Isaiah. Not merely does his mind overleap ages, and take up centuries as a "little thing;" but his eye overleaps them too, and seem literally to see the word Cyrus inscribed on his banner-the river Euphrates turned aside the Cross, and him who bare it. We have little doubt that many of his visions became objective, and actually painted themselves on the prophet's eye. Would we had witnessed that awful eye, as it was piercing the depths of timeseeing the To Be glaring through the thin mist of the Then!

How rapid are this prophet's transitions! how sudden his bursts! how startling his questions! how the page appears to live and move as you read! "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?" "Who is this that "Who cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ?” hath believed our report?" "Lift ye up a banner upon

the high

mountain!". "Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion;

:

put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!" "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters !" He is the divine describer of a divine panorama. His sermons are not compositions, but cries, from one who "sees a sight you can not see, and hears a voice you can not hear." He realizes the old name which gradually merged in that of prophet-" seer." He is the seer-an eye running to and fro throughout the future and as you contemplate him, you feel what a power was that sight of the olden prophets, which pierced the thickest vails, found the turf thin and the tombstone transparent, saw into the darkness of the past, the present, and the to come- -the most hidden recesses of the human heart-the folds of Destruction itself; that sight which, in Ezekiel, bare the blaze of the crystal and the eyes of the wheels-which, in Daniel, read at a glance the hieroglyphics of heaven-and which, in John, blenched not before the great white throne. of beauty, with its mirthful or the poet, rolling in its fine frenzy; that of the sage, worn with wonder, or luminous with mild and settled intelligence; but who shall describe the eye of the prophet, across whose mirror swept the shadows of empires, stalked the ghosts of kings, stretched in their loveliness the landscapes of a regenerated earth, and lay, in its terror, red and still, the image of the judgment-seat of Almighty God? Then did not sight-the highest faculty of matter or mind-come culminating to an intense and dazzling point, trembling upon Omniscience itself?

Many eyes are glorious; that melancholy meaning; that of

Exultation, we have said, is the pervading spirit of Isaiah's prophecy. His are the "prancings of a mighty one." Has he to tread upon idols?-he not only treads, but tramples and leaps upon them. Witness the irony directed against the stock and stone gods of his country, in the 44th chapter. Does he describe the downfall of the Assyrian monarch ?—it is to the accompaniment of wild and hollow laughter from the depths of Hades, which is "moved from beneath" to meet and welcome his coming. Great is his glorying over the ruin of Babylon. With a trumpet voice he inveighs against the false-fastings and

other superstitions of his age. As the panorama of the millennial day breaks in again and again upon his eye, he hails it with an unvaried note of triumphant anticipation. Rarely does he mitigate his voice, or check his exuberant joy, save in describing the sufferings of Christ. Here he shades his eyes, holds in his eloquent breath, and furls his wing of fire. But, so soon as he has passed the hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come upon him with twofold force, and no pean, in his prophecy, is more joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings like a marriage bell.

The true title, indeed, of Isaiah's prophecy is a "song." It is the "Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's," and many of its notes are only a little lower than those which saluted the birth of Christ, or welcomed him from the tomb, with the burden, "He is risen, he is risen, and shall die no more!"

From this height of vision, pitch of power, and fullness of utterance, Isaiah rarely stoops to the tender. He must sail

"Can a woman for

Yet, when he does descend, it is gracefully. get her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget; yet I will not forget thee." Tears in the eye of a strong man, move more than all other human tears. But here are tears from a "firearmed angel," and surely there is no softness like theirs.

The uniform grandeur, the pomp of diction, the almost painful richness of figure, distinguishing this prophet, would have lessened his power over the common Christian mind, had it not been for the evangelical sentiment in which his strains abound, and which has gained him the name of "the Fifth Evangelist." Many bear with Milton solely for his religion. It is the same with Isaiah. The cross stands in the painted window of his style. His stateliest figure bows before Messiah's throne. An eagle of the sun, his nest is in Calvary. Anticipating the

G#

homage of the Eastern sages, he spreads out before the infant God treasures of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The gifts are rare and costly, but not too precious to be offered to such a being; they are brought from afar, but HE has come farther " "to seek and to save that which was lost."

Tradition-whether truly or not, we can not decide-asserts that 698 years before Christ, Isaiah was sawn asunder. Cruel close to such a career! Harsh reply, this sawing asunder, to all those sweet and noble minstrelsies. German critics have recently sought to imitate the operation, to cut our present Isaiah into two. To halve a body is easy; it is not quite so easy to divide a soul and spirit in sunder. Isaiah himself spurns such an attempt. The same mind is manifest in all parts of the prophecy. Two suns in one sky were as credible as two such flaming phenomena as Isaiah. No! it is one voice which cries out at the beginning, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth" -and which closes the book with the promise, “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come and worship before me, saith the Lord."

JEREMIAH.

Criticism is never so unjust, as when, while exaggerating one undoubted merit in a writer, she denies him every other. This is unjust, because a great merit is seldom found alonethere has seldom, for example, been a great imagination without a great intellect; and because it is envy which allows the prominence of one faculty to conceal others which are only 2 little less conspicuous. Burke was long counted by many a fanciful, showy writer without judgment; although it is now universally granted that his understanding was more than equal to his fancy. It was once fashionable to praise the prodigality of Chalmers' imagination, at the expense of his intellect; it seems now admitted, that although his imagination was not prodigal, but vivid-nor his intellect subtile, though strong