thing
which can save modern cities and countries, however magnificent their
civilization, from a like visitation of Almighty power, if they continue
in the iniquity which all the world perceives, and sometimes deplores.
It must have seemed as absurd to the readers of Isaiah's predictions
twenty-five hundred years ago that Babylon and Tyre should fall, as it
would to the people of our day should one predict the future ruin of
Paris or London or New York, if the vices which now flourish in these
cities should reach an overwhelming preponderance, but which we hope may
be wholly overcome by the influence of Christianity and the spirit and
interference of God himself; for He governs the world by the same
principles that He did two thousand years ago,--a fact which seldom is
ignored by any profound and religious inquirer.

I have no faith in the permanence of any form of civilization, or of any
government, where a certain depth of infamy and depravity is reached;
because the impressive lesson of history is that righteousness exalteth
a nation, and iniquity brings it low. Isaiah predicted woes which came
to pass, since the cities and peoples against whom he denounced them
remained obstinately perverse in their iniquity and atheism. Their doom
was certain, without that repentance which would lead to a radical
change of life and opinions. He held out no hope unless they turned to
the Lord; nor did any of the prophets. Jeremiah was sad because he knew
they would not repent, even as Christ himself wept over Jerusalem. No
maledictions came from the pen or voice of Isaiah such as David breathed
against his enemies, only the expression of the sad and solemn
conviction that unless the people and the nation repented, they would
all equally and surely perish, in accordance with the stern laws written
on the two tables of Moses,--for "I, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting
the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, even to the third and
fourth generation;"--yea, written before Moses, and to be read unto this
day in the very constitution of man, physical, mental, spiritual,
and social.

The prophet first announces the calamities which both Judah and
Ephraim--the southern and the northern kingdoms--shall suffer from
Assyrian invasions. "The Lord shall shave Judah with a razor, not only
the head, but the beard,"--thus declaring that the land would be not
only depopulated, but become a desert, and that men should no longer
live by ag