s; he
preaches against sin and demands repentance, and predicts calamity.

There are two points in his preaching which stand out with great
vividness,--the certain judgments of God in view of sin, retribution on
all offenders; and secondly, the mercy and forgiveness of God in case of
repentance. Retribution, however, is not in Isaiah usually presented as
the penalty of transgression according to natural law; not, as in the
Proverbs, as the inevitable sequence of sin,--"Whatsoever ye sow, that
shall ye also reap,"--but as direct punishment from God. Jehovah's awful
personality is everywhere recognized,--a being who rules the universe as
"the living God," who loves and abhors, who punishes and rewards, who
gives power to the faint, who judges among the nations, who takes away
from Judah and Jerusalem the stay and the staff of bread and water. "To
whom then will ye liken God? Have ye not known, have ye not heard, hath
it not been told you from the beginning? It is He that sitteth upon the
circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers;
that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, that bringeth the princes
to nothing. Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint and weary,
so that they who wait upon Him shall renew their strength, mount up with
wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint." Can stronger
or more comforting language be made use of to assert the personality
and providence of God? And where in the whole circuit of Hebrew poetry
is there more sublimity of language, greater eloquence, or more profound
conviction of the evil and punishment of sin? Isaiah, the greatest of
all the prophets in his spiritual discernment, in his profound insight
of the future, is not behind the author of Job in majestic and sublime
description.

Whatever may be the severity of language with which Isaiah denounces
sin, and awful the judgments he pronounces in view of it, as coming
directly from God, yet he seldom closes one of his dreadful sentences
without holding out the hope of divine forgiveness in case of
repentance, and the peace and comfort which will follow. In his view the
mercy of the Lord is more impressive than his judgments. Isaiah is
anything but a prophet of wrath; his soul overflows with tender
sentiments and loving exhortation. "Ho, every one that thirst