not only must we recognise complete rhapsodies, but the rhapsodic form is found to leaven other literary forms of prophecy in all degrees of completeness. The great Assyrian discourse of Isaiah is purely discourse, except that just as the crisis of the boastful invasion is reached there is a momentary change to rhapsodic realisation - panic cries tracing the enemy's advance to the very gates of Jerusalem: then discourse resumes to narrate the overthrow of the invader and the Messianic peace that succeeds. Again if my interpretation is correct Isaiah's discourse

of comfort to Ahaz is punctuated by snatches of the enemy's ballads repeated by the prophet in realistic scorn; the climax also to this group of prophecies is made by triumph cries of the invading enemy alternating realistically with bursts of vision of their overthrow. A type of rhapsodic treatment more developed, yet still incomplete, is found in the interesting cluster of prophecies that centre around the idea of the Prophetic Watchman. He is presented as taking up his post on the outskirts of the Holy land, peering over the eastern wilderness into the darkness of the future. Floods of vision rush upon him at intervals: the Divine voice is heard cheering on the hosts to their work against Babylon, or spectacles of rout and panic are seen : these realised visions are made to alternate with the prophet's own feelings at what he sees, or his explanations and admonitions. I have in this volume distinguished three portions of prophecy as rhapsodies in the completest sense:

and of these the most elaborate is that which covers the last twenty-six chapters - the Rhapsody of Zion Redeemed, with its seven acts or ‘Visions': The Servant of Jehovah Delivered from Bondage; The Servant of Jehovah Awakened; Zion Awakened; The Servant of Jehovah Exalted; Songs of Zion Exalted; Redemption at Work in Zion; and The Day of Judgment.

As regards literary form then Isaiah is discourse tempered by rhapsodic presentation in various degrees. What is the character of the thought which under such various forms is presented to us?

The Isaiah of the first six books may be described as a man of one idea: and his one idea is the main thought of all prophetic writing. To the corruption and evil around him he holds up a picture of a golden age in a future to be reached through a purging judgment from which only a remnant will escape. Whatever may be the immediate circumstances in which he speaks, this is always the drift of his message. He and his children are for signs and wonders in Israel: one son he has named 'Remnant Return,' the other 'Spoil and Harry.' In the vision of his call, when amid rocking temple and smoking altar and answering voices Isaiah, like Moses, is permitted to see the skirts of the Divine presence, his lips must be purified with the coal of fire before he may offer himself as messenger. And his message is to confirm the guilty in their guilt —

to make their heart fat and close their eyes and earsuntil the land has been purged into a desert: even if there be but a tenth left it shall be purged again, and the final remnant shall be as the stock of a tree that has been felled.

The topics of sin and judgment are everywhere being emphasised. Sin is the rebellion of children against the Divine parent, the unfaithfulness of a wife to a husband; it is the carefully tended vineyard bringing forth wild grapes; it is to forsake the rock of strength for the planting of pleasant plants and setting of strange slips and watching over the morning of blossoms - but the harvest is a heap in the day of grief and desperate sorrow. The judgment is the burning of fire under the glory of the thickets until they roll upward in volumes of smoke; it is a Day of the Lord, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, when men fling away their idols to go into the caves and rocks and holes of the earth before the terror of the Lord, and his glorious majesty when he ariseth to shake mightily the earth. The message is not always in general terms: the prophets are the statesmen of Israel, opposition statesmen, standing for the theocracy against the established secular government. To the panic-stricken Ahaz the ideal of Divine presence is held up in the child Immanuel and the child Wonderful; elsewhere the rulers of Judah are denounced as confiding in a refuge of lies, a covenant with death, which will be swept away by the overflowing scourge that is to pass through; the Divine vision has become a

closed book, which the ignorant will not read because he is not learned, and the learned will not read because it is closed; the national iniquity is a breach ready to fall swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh at an instant. Judgment is to descend also upon the foes of the chosen people: these advance like rushing waters, they are chased away like dust whirled before the storm. Babylon, for all its glory, will become like Sodom and Gomorrah, a desert where not even the Arab wanderer will harbour, but doleful creatures will inhabit there and satyrs dance on its ruins: the morning star falls, and the underworld moves to meet him, peering curiously at the power that once made the earth to tremble. Or all things are included in one general judgment, when the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, and the host of the heavens fall like fading fig leaves, rivers of earth will become pitch and its dust brimstone: the smoke will go up for ever.

From such universal judgment there will be gleanings -the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches of a fruitful tree. For such a remnant there will be a golden age: when the scarlet sins will have become white as snow, when the harlot city will be the city of righteousness, purged with the blast of judgment; when the mountain of the Lord's house will be established at the head of the mountains, and many peoples will be flocking there, as to a judge whose reign of peace will beat

their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Sometimes the happy future appears gradual in its coming amidst the bread of adversity and water of affliction there is yet the blessing of visible teachers and voices guiding at every turn of the way; the picture enlarges with pastoral imagery of streams of water on the high hills, cattle feeding in broad pastures, the increase of the ground fat and plenteous; again the light of the moon becomes as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun increases sevenfold; songs of victory abound as in the night when a holy feast is kept, while every stroke of the appointed staff laid on Assyria is with tabrets and harps and rejoicing. Or, on the other hand, the veil of judgment darkness that wraps the nations is suddenly rent for the Saved on the holy mountain, and there break out songs of death swallowed up for ever and tears wiped away from all faces. On such a mountain of holiness the Shoot out of the stem of Jesse will judge with equity in a reign of eternal peace, the venom passing from the snake, the wolf, fatling and lion's whelp playing together with a little child to lead them, while songs of deliverance rise daily around the wells of salvation. The happy remnant will see the King in his beauty, their eyes will behold a far-stretching land, a place of broad rivers and streams, where no war galley can pass along: Jehovah will be judge, law-giver, king, saviour.

Quite apart from any question of theology, it may be