oral deliverer,
but a Saviour redeeming mankind from the curse of sin. Hence Isaiah is
quoted more than all the other prophets combined, especially by the
writers of the New Testament.

Having announced this glorious prediction of the advent into our world
of a divine Redeemer in the form of a man, by whose life and suffering
and death the world should be saved, the prophet-poet breaks out in
rhapsodies. He cannot contain his exultation. He loses sight of the
judgments he had declared, in his unbounded rejoicings that there was to
be a deliverance; that not only a remnant would return to Jerusalem and
become a renewed power, but that the Messiah should ultimately reign
over all the nations of the earth, should establish a reign of peace,
so that warriors "should beat their swords into ploughshares, and their
spears into pruning-hooks." Heretofore the history of kings had been a
history of wars,--of oppression, of injustice, of cruelty. Miseries
overspread the earth from this scourge more than from all other causes
combined. The world was decimated by war, producing not only wholesale
slaughter, but captivity and slavery, the utter extinction of nations.
Isaiah had himself dwelt upon the woes to be visited on mankind by war
more than any other prophet who had preceded him. All the leading
nations and capitals were to be utterly destroyed or severely punished;
calamity and misery should be nearly universal; only "a remnant should
be saved." Now, however, he takes the most cheerful and joyous views. So
marked is the contrast between the first and latter parts of the Book of
Isaiah, that many great critics suppose that they were written by
different persons and at different times. But whether there were two
persons or one, the most comforting and cheering doctrines to be found
in the Scriptures, before the Sermon on the Mount was preached, are
declared by Isaiah. The breadth and catholicity of them are amazing from
the pen of a Jew. The whole world was to share with him in the promises
of a Saviour; the whole world was to be finally redeemed. As recipients
of divine privileges there was to be no difference between Jew and
Gentile. Paul himself shows no greater mental illumination. "The glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it."

In view of this glorious reign of peace and universal redemption, Isaiah
calls upon the earth to be joyful and all the mountains to break forth
in singing, and Zion to awake,