Expositor's Bible: The Book of Isaiah Part 11

Isaiah foretells a great event and some details. The event is a double one: the reduction of Jerusalem to the direst straits by siege and her deliverance by the sudden disappearance of the besieging army. The details are that the siege will take place after a year (though the prophet's statement of time is perhaps too vague to be treated as a prediction), and that the deliverance will come as a great natural convulsion--thunder, earthquake and fire--which it certainly did not do.

The double event, however, stripped of these details, did essentially happen.

Now it is plain that any one with a considerable knowledge of the world at that day must easily have been able to a.s.sert the probability of a siege of Jerusalem by the mixed nations who composed Sennacherib's armies. Isaiah's orations are full of proofs of his close acquaintance with the peoples of the world, and a.s.syria, who was above them.

Moreover, his political advice, given at certain crises of Judah's history, was conspicuous not only for its religiousness, but for what we should call its "worldly-wisdom:" it was vindicated by events. Isaiah, however, would not have understood the distinction we have just made.

To him political prudence was part of religion. _The LORD of hosts is for a spirit of judgement to him that sitteth in judgement, and for strength to them that turn back the battle to the gate._ Knowledge of men, experience of nations, the mental strength which never forgets history, and is quick to mark new movements as they rise, Isaiah would have called the direct inspiration of G.o.d. And it was certainly these qualities in this Hebrew, which provided him with the materials for his prediction of the siege of Jerusalem.

But it has not been found that such talents by themselves enable statesmen calmly to face the future, or clearly to predict it. Such knowledge of the past, such vigilance for the present, by themselves only embarra.s.s, and often deceive. They are the materials for prediction, but a ruling principle is required to arrange them. A general may have a strong and well-drilled force under him, and a miserably weak foe in front; but if the sun is not going to rise to-morrow, if the laws of nature are not going to hold, his familiarity with his soldiers and expertness in handling them will not give him confidence to offer battle. He takes certain principles for granted, and on these his soldiers become of use to him, and he makes his venture.

Even so Isaiah handled his ma.s.s of information by the grasp which he had of certain principles, and his facts fell clear into order before his confident eyes. He believed in the real government of G.o.d. _I also saw the Lord sitting, high and lifted up._ He felt that G.o.d had even this a.s.syria in His hands. He knew that all G.o.d's ends were righteousness, and he was still of the conviction that Judah for her wickedness required punishment at the Lord's hands. Grant these convictions to him in the superhuman strength in which he tells us he was conscious of receiving them from G.o.d, and it is easy to see how Isaiah could not help predicting a speedy siege of Jerusalem, how he already beheld the valleys around her bristling with barbarian spears.

The prediction of the sudden raising of this siege was the equally natural corollary to another religious conviction, which held the prophet with as much intensity, as that which possessed him with the need of Judah's punishment. Isaiah never slacked his hold on the truth that in the end G.o.d would save Zion, and keep her for Himself. Through whatever destruction, a root and remnant of the Jewish people must survive. Zion is impregnable because G.o.d is in her, and because her inviolateness is necessary for the continuance of true religion in the world. Therefore as confident as his prediction of the siege of Jerusalem is Isaiah's prediction of her delivery. And while the prophet wraps the fact in vague circ.u.mstance, while he masks, as it were, his ignorance of how in detail it will actually take place by calling up a great natural convulsion, yet he makes it abundantly clear--as, with his religious convictions and his knowledge of the a.s.syrian power, he cannot help doing--that the deliverance will be unexpected and unexplainable by the natural circ.u.mstances of the Jews themselves, that it will be evident as the immediate deed of G.o.d.

It is well for us to understand this. We shall get rid of the mechanical idea of prophecy, according to which prophets made exact predictions of fact by some particular and purely official endowment. We shall feel that prediction of this kind was due to the most unmistakeable inspiration, the influence upon the prophet's knowledge of affairs of two powerful religious convictions, for which he himself was strongly sure that he had the warrant of the Spirit of G.o.d.

Into the easy, selfish politics of Jerusalem, then, Isaiah sent this thunderbolt, this definite prediction: that in a year or more Jerusalem would be besieged and reduced to the direst straits. He tells us that it simply dazed the people. They were like men suddenly startled from sleep, who are too stupid to read a message pushed into their hands (vv.

9-12).

Then Isaiah gives G.o.d's own explanation of this stupidity. The cause of it is simply religious formalism. _This people draw nigh unto Me with their mouth, and with their lips do they honour Me, but their heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me is a mere commandment of men, a thing learned by rote._ This was what Israel called religion--bare ritual and doctrine, a round of sacrifices and prayers in adherence to the tradition of the fathers. But in life they never thought of G.o.d. It did not occur to these citizens of Jerusalem that He cared about their politics, their conduct of justice, or their discussions and bargains with one another. Of these they said, taking their own way, _Who seeth us, and who knoweth us?_ Only in the Temple did they feel G.o.d's fear, and there merely in imitation of one another. None had an original vision of G.o.d in real life; they learned other men's thoughts about Him, and took other men's words upon their lips, while their heart was far away. In fact, speaking words and listening to words had wearied the spirit and stifled the conscience of them.

For such a disposition Isaiah says there is only one cure. It is a new edition of his old gospel, that G.o.d speaks to us in facts, not forms.

Wors.h.i.+p and a lifeless doctrine have demoralized this people. G.o.d shall make Himself so felt in real life that even their dull senses shall not be able to mistake Him. _Therefore, behold, I am proceeding to work marvellously upon this people, a marvellous work and a wonder! and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the cleverness of their clever ones shall be obscured._ This is not the promise of what we call a miracle. It is a historical event on the same theatre as the politicians are showing their cleverness, but it shall put them all to shame, and by its force make the dullest feel that G.o.d's own hand is in it. What the people had ceased to attribute to Jehovah was ordinary intelligence; they had virtually said, _He hath no understanding_. The _marvellous work_, therefore, which He threatens shall be a work of wisdom, not some convulsion of nature to cow their spirits, but a wonderful political result, that shall shame their conceit of cleverness, and teach them reverence for the will and skill of G.o.d. Are the politicians trying to change the surface of the world, thinking that they _are turning things upside down_, and supposing that they can keep G.o.d out of account: _Who seeth us, and who knoweth us?_ G.o.d Himself is the real Arranger and Politician. He will turn things upside down!

Compared with their attempt, how vast His results shall be! As if the whole surface of the earth were altered, _Lebanon changed into garden-land, and garden-land counted as forest_! But this, of course, is metaphor. The intent of the miracle is to show that G.o.d hath understanding; therefore it must be a work, the prudence and intellectual force of which politicians can appreciate, and it shall take place in their politics. But not for mere astonishment's sake is _the wonder_ to be done. For blessing and morality shall it be: to cure the deaf and blind; to give to the meek and the poor a new joy; to confound the tyrant and the scorner; to make Israel worthy of G.o.d and her own great fathers. _Therefore thus saith Jehovah to the house of Jacob, He that redeemed Abraham: Not now ashamed shall Jacob be, and not now shall his countenance blanch._ So unworthy hitherto have this stupid people been of so great ancestors! _But now when his_ (Jacob's) _children behold the work of My hand in the midst of him, they shall hallow My name, yea, they shall hallow the Holy One of Jacob, and the G.o.d of Israel shall they make their fear. They also that err in spirit shall know understanding, and they that are unsettled shall learn to accept doctrine_.

Such is the meaning of this strong chapter. It is instructive in two ways.

_First_, it very clearly declares Isaiah's view of the method of G.o.d's revelation. Isaiah says nothing of the Temple, the Shechinah, the Altar, or the Scripture; but he points out how much the exclusive confinement of religion to forms and texts has deadened the hearts of his countrymen towards G.o.d. In your real life, he says to them, you are to seek, and you shall find, Him. There He is evident in miracles,--not physical interruptions and convulsions, but social mercies and moral providences.

The quickening of conscience, the dispersion of ignorance, poor men awakening to the fact that G.o.d is with them, the overthrow of the social tyrant, history's plain refutation of the atheist, the growth of civic justice and charity--In these, said the Hebrew prophet to the Old Testament believer, Behold your G.o.d!

Wherefore, _secondly_, we also are to look for G.o.d in events and deeds.

We are to know that nothing can compensate us for the loss of the open vision of G.o.d's working in history and in life about us,--not ecstasy of wors.h.i.+p nor orthodoxy of doctrine. To confine our religion to these latter things is to become dull towards G.o.d even in them, and to forget Him everywhere else. And this is a fault of our day, just as it was of Isaiah's. So much of our fear of G.o.d is conventional, orthodox and not original, a trick caught from men's words or fas.h.i.+ons, not a part of ourselves, nor won, like all that is real in us, from contact with real life. In our politics, in our conduct with men, in the struggle of our own hearts for knowledge and for temperance, and in service--there we are to learn to fear G.o.d. But there, and wherever else we are busy, self comes too much in the way; we are fascinated with our own cleverness; we ignore G.o.d, saying, _Who seeth us? who knoweth us?_ We get to expect Him only in the Temple and on the Sabbath, and then only to influence our emotions. But it is in deeds, and where we feel life most real, that we are to look for Him. He makes Himself evident to us by wonderful works.

For these He has given us three theatres--the Bible, our country's history, and for each man his own life.

We have to take the Bible, and especially the life of Christ, and to tell ourselves that these wonderful events did really take place. In Christ G.o.d did dwell; by Christ He spoke to man; man was converted, redeemed, sanctified, beyond all doubt. These were real events. To be convinced of their reality were worth a hundred prayers.

Then let us follow the example of the Hebrew prophets, and search the history of our own people for the realities of G.o.d. Carlyle says in a note to Cromwell's fourth speech to Parliament, that "the Bible of every nation is its own history." This note is drawn from Carlyle by Cromwell's frequent insistence, that we must ever be turning from forms and rituals to study G.o.d's will and ways in history. And that speech of Cromwell is perhaps the best sermon ever delivered on the subject of this chapter. For he said: "What are all our histories but G.o.d manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken, and tumbled down and trampled upon everything that He hath not planted!" And again, speaking of our own history, he said to the House of Commons: "We are a people with the stamp of G.o.d upon us, ... whose appearances and providences among us were not to be outmatched by any story." Truly this is national religion:--the reverential acknowledgment of G.o.d's hand in history; the admiration and effort of moral progress; the stirring of conscience when we see wrong; the expectation, when evil abounds, that G.o.d will bring justice and purity to us if we labour with Him for them.

But for each man there is the final duty of turning to himself.

"My soul repairs its fault When, sharpening sense's hebetude, She turns on my own life! So viewed, No mere mote's breadth but teems immense With witnessings of providence: And woe to me if when I look Upon that record, the sole book Unsealed to me, I take no heed Of any warning that I read!"[45]

[45] Browning's _Christmas Eve_.

CHAPTER XIII.

_POLITICS AND FAITH._

ISAIAH x.x.x. (ABOUT 702 B.C.).

This prophecy of Isaiah rises out of circ.u.mstances a little more developed than those in which chap. xxix. was composed. Sennacherib is still engaged with Babylon, and it seems that it will yet be long before he marches his armies upon Syria. But Isaiah's warning has at last roused the politicians of Judah from their carelessness. We need not suppose that they believed all that Isaiah predicted about the dire siege which Jerusalem should shortly undergo and her sudden deliverance at the hand of the Lord. Without the two strong religious convictions, in the strength of which, as we have seen, he made the prediction, it was impossible to believe that this siege and deliverance must certainly happen. But the politicians were at least startled into doing something.

They did not betake themselves to G.o.d, to whom it had been the purpose of Isaiah's last oration to shut them up. They only flung themselves with more haste into their intrigues with Egypt. But in truth haste and business were all that was in their politics: these were devoid both of intelligence and faith. Where the sole motive of conduct is fear, whether uneasiness or panic, force may be displayed, but neither sagacity nor any moral quality. This was the case with Judah's Egyptian policy, and Isaiah now spends two chapters in denouncing it. His condemnation is twofold. The negotiations with Egypt, he says, are bad politics and bad religion; but the bad religion is the root and source of the other. Yet while he vents all his scorn on the politics, he uses pity and sweet persuasiveness when he comes to speak of the eternal significance of the religion. The two chapters are also instructive, beyond most others of the Old Testament, in the light they cast on revelation--its scope and methods.

Isaiah begins with the bad politics. In order to understand how bad they were, we must turn for a little to this Egypt, with whom Judah was now seeking an alliance.

In our late campaign on the Upper Nile we heard a great deal of the Mudir of Dongola. His province covers part of the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia; and in Meirawi, the village whose name appeared in so many telegrams, we can still discover Meroe, the capital of Ethiopia. Now in Isaiah's day the king of Ethiopia was, what the Mudir of Dongola was at the time of our war, an ambitious person of no small energy; and the ruler of Egypt proper was, what the Khedive was, a person of little influence or resource. Consequently there happened what might have happened a few years ago but for the presence of the British army in Egypt. The Ethiopian came down the Nile, defeated Pharaoh and burned him alive. But he died, and his son died after him; and before their successor could also come down the Nile, the legitimate heir to Pharaoh had regained part of his power. Some years ensued of uncertainty as to who was the real ruler of Egypt.

It was in this time of unsettlement that Judah sought Egypt's help. The ignorance of the policy was manifest to all who were not blinded by fear of a.s.syria or party feeling. To Isaiah the Egyptian alliance is a folly and fatality that deserve all his scorn (vv. 1-8).

_Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, executing a policy, but it is not from Me; and weaving a web, but not of My spirit, that they may heap sin upon sin; who set themselves on the way to go down to Egypt, and at My mouth they have not inquired, to flee to the refuge of Pharaoh, and to hide themselves in the shadow of Egypt. But the refuge of Pharaoh shall be unto you for shame, and the hiding in the shadow of Egypt for confusion!_ How can a broken Egypt help you? _When his princes are at Zoan, and his amba.s.sadors are come to Hanes, they shall all be ashamed of a people that cannot profit them, that are not for help nor for profit, but for shame, and also for reproach._

Then Isaiah pictures the useless caravan which Judah has sent with tribute to Egypt, strings of a.s.ses and camels struggling through the desert, _land of trouble and anguish_, amid lions and serpents, and all for _a people that shall not profit them_ (ver. 6).

What tempted Judah to this profitless expenditure of time and money?

Egypt had a great reputation, and was a mighty promiser. Her brilliant antiquity had given her a habit of generous promise, and dazzled other nations into trusting her. Indeed, so full were Egyptian politics of bl.u.s.ter and big language, that the Hebrews had a nickname for Egypt.

They called her Rahab--_Stormy-speech_, _Bl.u.s.terer_, _Braggart_. It was the term also for the crocodile, as being a _monster_, so that there was a picturesqueness as well as moral aptness in the name. Ay, says Isaiah, catching at the old name and putting to it another which describes Egyptian helplessness and inactivity, I call her _Rahab Sit-still_, _Braggart-that-sitteth-still_, _Stormy-speech Stay-at-home_. _Bl.u.s.tering and inactivity, bl.u.s.tering and sitting still_, that is her character; _for Egypt helpeth in vain and to no purpose_.

Knowing how sometimes the fate of a Government is affected by a happy speech or epigram, we can understand the effect of this cry upon the politicians of Jerusalem. But that he might impress it on the popular imagination and memory as well, Isaiah wrote his epigram on a tablet, and put it in a book. We must remind ourselves here of chap. xx., and remember how it tells us that Isaiah had already some years before this endeavoured to impress the popular imagination with the folly of an Egyptian alliance, _walking unfrocked and barefoot three years for a sign and a portent upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia_ (see p. 199).

So that already Isaiah had appealed from politicians to people on this Egyptian question, just as he appealed thirty years ago from court to market-place on the question of Ephraim and Damascus.[46] It is another instance of that prophetic habit of his, on which we remarked in expounding chap. viii.; and we must again emphasize the habit, for chap.

x.x.x. here swings round upon it. Whatever be the matter committed to him, Isaiah is not allowed to rest till he brings it home to the popular conscience; and however much he may be able to charge national disaster upon the folly of politicians or the obduracy of a king, it is the people whom he holds ultimately responsible. To Isaiah a nation's politics are not arbitrary; they are not dependent on the will of kings or the management of parties. They are the natural outcome of the nation's character. What the people are, that will their politics be. If you wish to reform the politics, you must first regenerate the people; and it is no use to inveigh against a senseless policy, like this Egyptian one, unless you go farther and expose the national temper which has made it possible. A people's own morals have greater influence on their destinies than their despots or legislators. Statesmen are what the State makes them. No Government will attempt a policy for which the nation behind it has not a conscience; and for the greater number of errors committed by their rulers, the blame must be laid on the people's own want of character or intelligence.

[46] Chap. viii. 1 (p. 119).

This is what Isaiah now drives home (x.x.x. 9 ff.). He tracks the bad politics to their source in bad religion, the Egyptian policy to its roots in the prevailing tempers of the people. The Egyptian policy was doubly stamped. It was disobedience to the word of G.o.d; it was satisfaction with falsehood. The statesmen of Judah shut their ears to G.o.d's spoken word; they allowed themselves to be duped by the Egyptian Pretence. But these, says Isaiah, are precisely the characteristics of the whole Jewish people. _For it is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the revelation of the LORD_. It was these national failings--the want of virtues which are the very substance of a nation: truth and reverence or obedience--that had culminated in the senseless and suicidal alliance with Egypt. Isaiah fastens on their falsehood first: _Which say to the seers, Ye shall not see, and to the prophets, Ye shall not prophesy unto us right things; speak to us smooth things: prophesy deceits_. No wonder such a character had been fascinated by "Rahab"! It was a natural Nemesis, that a people who desired from their teachers fair speech rather than true vision should be betrayed by the confidence their statesmen placed in the Bl.u.s.terer, _that bl.u.s.tered and sat still_. Truth is what this people first require, and therefore the _revelation of the LORD_ will in the first instance be the revealing of the truth. Men who will strip pretence off the reality of things; men who will call things by their right names, as Isaiah had set himself to do; honest satirists and epigrammatists--these are the bearers of G.o.d's revelation. For it is one of the means of Divine salvation to call things by their right names, and here in G.o.d's revelation also epigrams have their place. So much for truth.

But reverence is truth's other self, for reverence is simply loyalty to the supremest truth. And it is against the truth that the Jews have chiefly sinned. They had shut their eyes to Egypt's real character, but that was a small sin beside this: that they turned their backs on the greatest reality of all--G.o.d Himself. _Get you out of the way_, they said to the prophets, _turn out of the path; keep quiet in our presence about the Holy One of Israel_. Isaiah's effort rises to its culmination when he seeks to restore the sense of this Reality to his people. His spirit is kindled at the words _the Holy One of Israel_, and to the end of chap. x.x.xi. leaps up in a series of brilliant and sometimes scorching descriptions of the name, the majesty and the love of G.o.d. Isaiah is not content to have used his power of revelation to unveil the political truth about Egypt. He will make G.o.d Himself visible to this people.

Pa.s.sionately does he proceed to enforce upon the Jews what G.o.d thinks about their own condition (vv. 12-14), then to persuade them to rely upon Him alone, and wait for the working of His reasonable laws (vv.

15-18). Rising higher, he purges with pity their eyes to see G.o.d's very presence, their ears to hear His voice, their wounds to feel His touch (vv. 19-26). Then he remembers the cloud of invasion on the horizon, and bids them spell, in its uncouth ma.s.ses, the articulate name of the Lord (vv. 27-33). And he closes with another series of figures by which G.o.d's wisdom, and His jealousy and His tenderness are made very bright to them (chap. x.x.xi.).

These brilliant prophecies may not have been given all at the same time: each is complete in itself. They do not all mention the negotiations with Egypt, but they are all dark with the shadow of a.s.syria. Chap. x.x.x.

vv. 19-26 almost seem to have been written in a time of actual siege; but vv. 27-33 represent a.s.syria still upon the horizon. In this, however, these pa.s.sages are fitly strung together: that they equally strain to impress a blind and hardened people with the will, the majesty and the love of G.o.d their Saviour.

I. THE BULGING WALL (vv. 12-14).

Starting from their unwillingness to listen to the voice of the Lord in their Egyptian policy, Isaiah tells the people that if they refused to hear His word for guidance, they must now listen to it for judgement.

_Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel: Because ye look down on this word, and trust in perverseness and crookedness, and lean thereon, therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, bulging out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant._ _This iniquity_, of course, is the emba.s.sy to Egypt. But that, as we have seen, is only the people's own evil character coming to a head; and by the breaking of the wall, we are therefore to suppose that the prophet means the collapse not only of this Egyptian policy, but of the whole estate and substance of the Jewish people. It will not be your enemy that will cause a breach in the nation, but your teeming iniquity shall cause the breach--to wit, this Egyptian folly. Judah will burst her bulwarks from the inside. You may build the strongest form of government round a people, you may b.u.t.tress it with foreign alliances, but these shall simply prove occasions for the internal wickedness to break forth. Your supposed b.u.t.tresses will prove real breaches; and of all your social structure there will not be left as much as will make the fragments of a single home, not _a sherd_ big enough _to carry fire from the hearth, or to hold water from the cistern_.

II. NOT ALLIANCES, BUT RELIANCE (vv. 15-18).

At this point, either Isaiah was stung by the demands of the politicians for an alternative to their restless Egyptian policy which he condemned, or more likely he rose, unaided by external influence, on the prophet's native instinct to find some purely religious ground on which to base his political advice. The result is one of the grandest of all his oracles. _For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not. But ye said, No, for upon horses will we flee; wherefore ye shall flee: and upon the swift will we ride; wherefore swift shall be they that pursue you! One thousand at the rebuke of one--at the rebuke of five shall ye flee: till ye be left as a bare pole on the top of a mountain, and as a standard on an hill. And therefore will the LORD wait that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He hold aloof that He may have mercy upon you, for a G.o.d of judgement is the LORD; blessed are all they that wait for Him._ The words of this pa.s.sage are their own interpretation and enforcement, all but one; and as this one is obscure in its English guise, and the pa.s.sage really swings from it, we may devote a paragraph to its meaning.

_A G.o.d of judgement is the LORD_ is an unfortunately ambiguous translation. We must not take _judgement_ here in our familiar sense of the word. It is not a sudden deed of doom, but a long process of law. It means _manner_, _method_, _design_, _order_, _system_, the ideas, in short, which we sum up under the word "law." Just as we say of a man, _He is a man of judgement_, and mean thereby not that by office he is a doomster, but that by character he is a man of discernment and prudence, so simply does Isaiah say here that _Jehovah is a G.o.d of judgement_, and mean thereby not that He is One, whose habit is sudden and awful deeds of penalty or salvation, but, on the contrary, that, having laid down His lines according to righteousness and established His laws in wisdom, He remains in His dealings with men consistent with these.

Now it is a great truth that the All-mighty and All-merciful is the All-methodical too; and no religion is complete in its creed or healthy in its influence, which does not insist equally on all these. It was just the want of this third article of faith which perverted the souls of the Jews in Isaiah's day, which (as we have seen under Chapter I.) allowed them to make their wors.h.i.+p so mechanical and material--for how could they have been satisfied with mere forms if they had but once conceived of G.o.d as having even ordinary intelligence?--and which turned their political life into such a ma.s.s of intrigue, conceit and falsehood, for how could they have dared to suppose that they would get their own way, or have been so sure of their own cleverness, if only they had had a glimpse of the perception, that G.o.d, the Ruler of the world, had also His policy regarding them? They believed He was the Mighty, they believed He was the Merciful, but because they forgot that He was the Wise and the Worker by law, their faith in His might too often turned into superst.i.tious terror, their faith in His mercy oscillated between the sleepy satisfaction that He was an indulgent G.o.d and the fretful impatience that He was an indifferent one. Therefore Isaiah persisted from first to last in this: that G.o.d worked by law; that He had His plan for Judah, as well as these politicians; and, as we shall shortly find him reminding them when intoxicated with their own cleverness, _that He also is wise_ (x.x.xi. 2). Here by the same thought he bids them be at peace, and upon the rus.h.i.+ng tides of politics, drawing them to that or the other mad venture, to swing by this anchor: that G.o.d has His own law and time for everything. No man could bring the charge of fatalism against such a policy of quietness. For it thrilled with intelligent appreciation of the Divine method. When Isaiah said, _In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength_, he did not ask his restless countrymen to yield sullenly to an infinite force or to bow in stupidity beneath the inscrutable will of an arbitrary despot, but to bring their conduct into harmony with a reasonable and gracious plan, which might be read in the historical events of the time, and was vindicated by the loftiest religious convictions. Isaiah preached no submission to fate, but reverence for an all-wise Ruler, whose method was plain to every clear-sighted observer of the fortunes of the nations of the world, and whose purpose could only be love and peace to His own people (cf. p.