he fatherless, plead for
the widow." "If ye be willing and obedient." "Say ye to the righteous
that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their
doings. Woe unto the wicked; it shall be ill with him, for the reward of
his hands shall be given him." On the one simple condition of turning
from moral evil to good, the blessings of the inner life are promised in
every tone of assurance, consolation, promise. "Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool." "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your
God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned." "He shall feed
his flock like a shepherd; he shall gather the lambs with his arm and
carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with
young." "Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into
singing, O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his people, and will
have mercy upon his afflicted."

The most triumphant word in the New Testament, and its tenderest word,
both are drawn from one verse in the elder Isaiah: "He will swallow up
death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all
faces."

The distinctive word and thought of Jesus toward God is first found in
the later Isaiah,--"our Father." "Doubtless thou art our father, though
Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not; thou, O Lord,
art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting." The word
recurs, together with an image which by a later than Jesus was made the
symbol of an arbitrary divine despotism, but which Isaiah first employed
to blend the idea of omnipotent power with closest affection: "O Lord,
thou art our father; we are the clay and thou the potter; and we are all
the work of thy hand." A similitude is used even gentler than a father's
care: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." "Can a
woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on
the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee."

By the later Isaiah is shown the figure of an innocent sufferer, whose
sorrows are to issue in the widest blessing. This sufferer has been
interpreted sometimes as typifying the few heroic souls among the people
of Israel, sometimes as a prophet in Isaiah's day, last and most fondly
as Christ. Whomever the prophe