id proof of at least the dual authorship of the book.

This assumption instantly raises the question as to who is the author of
prophetic themes. Is it the prophet himself or the Holy Spirit? Does the
prophet himself bring forth the prophecy of his own foreknowledge? Or,
is the Holy Spirit the inspirer of themes new and old? Happily God has
settled the question for us. He declares by his Apostle Peter "that no
prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation"; that is, of the
prophet's own disclosure. "For prophecy came not of old time by the will
of man; but _holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Spirit_." (2 Peter i. 20, 21.) It is, therefore, bold assumption to
affirm that God could not give to the same prophet new and more exalted
themes in his progressive revelation of truth. It is a limitation of God
himself to the critic's notion of what should, or should not be. This
would eliminate the divine element of the book by a sweep of the
critic's pen. It is an assumption too groundless to need a reply.

Further, as to the change of style. Nothing is more natural or
reasonable than the fact that a change of theme should produce a change
of style. A more exalted theme must quicken the imagination, set the
emotions aflame, stimulate all the mental and moral powers of the
author. A historical statement, a commonplace theme, can be dealt with
in a commonplace style, while new and uplifting truth awakens new powers
in the writer. Milton's Paradise Lost was entirely different from his
ordinary prose composition. Dr. John Watson's sermons were on a higher
level than his books of fiction. Writers who do much of their literary
work on the level plain on which the people move, frequently rise to
mountain peaks of sublime composition when the occasion and theme demand
it.

The style in the later chapters of the book of Isaiah is just what we
would expect from the prophet when the Holy Spirit opened to his
enraptured mind the theme of redemption through a suffering Messiah, in
the fifty-third and following chapters of the book.

The objection to conceding the authorship of the entire book to Isaiah,
because the prophet mentions Cyrus by name before his birth, is made in
the face of the fundamental fact already stated that God inspired the
writer, and is therefore the author of prophecy, "declaring the end from
the beginning." (Isa. xlvi. 10.) He knows all the future and whom he
will choose to accomplish his