THE REV. J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON THE UNITY OF ISAIAH. / { 



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 investi- 

 gation 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 dis- 

 cussions 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 narrow- 

 est 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 dis- 

 pensation 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 

 Begins Professor at Cambridge to that of the Maccabees. But 

 after the Beturn, the Jews had become so narrow in their 

 national spirit that the glowing pictures of a glorious future 



