in public worship; exactness of its observance, and removal of everything idolatrous, could have secured a healthy religious life in the nation, it would have been attained.

Amidst all, moreover, Isaiah and other prophets were zealously proclaiming, from day to day, the highest spiritual truths. Always lofty in their morality, and illustrious in their defence of popular liberty and national independence, they had gradually risen to purer and more far-reaching conceptions of the future. The hope of a great Messiah had been known from early ages, but had become more distinct from the time of David. Yet it only gradually attained its more spiritual and sublime elevation. Joel had prophesied of a terrible day of Jehovah, when judgment executed on the heathen in the Valley of Jehoshaphat would introduce a golden age, and the Spirit would be poured on all flesh. Amos had cheered the faithful of his day by foretelling that the fallen tent of David would again be raised.1 Hosea had told those of the next generation that the children or Israel would one day return, and seek Jehovah, their God, and David their king; and, like his predecessors, he had painted the happiness of that time. But the development of a higher spiritual tone, under Hezekiah, purified and sublimed these glad anticipations. A bright hopefulness and wide survey of the future, like that which had once characterized the young nation under Moses and Joshua, re-appeared, now, when the State was slowly sinking.

Pious souls in the past had cherished the fond hope of a great kingdom of God to be realized in Israel, and its triumph necessarily implied a fitting and victorious leader and head. The glory of David, and the unbroken succession of his House in Judah, coupled with the sacred 1 Amos ix. 11.

intimations of prophets, naturally led to the conviction that the expected Messiah could spring only from him. But it was Isaiah whose great soul first realized in their fulness the attributes essential in the Expected One, as the perfect Head of the true Theocracy. Even the best among the kings had come short of them; the hopes of the godly respecting them had been ever deferred. Yet, so much the more did the ideal of the king, needed to introduce the perfected reign of God among men, clear itself from all human mists and colourings in such a mind as that of Isaiah. He felt that the promise had gone forth that God would "stablish the throne of David's kingdom for ever," and nothing could shake his faith in it. Alike before the despairing and oppressed, or the disbelieving and mocking, he proclaimed his firm trust in this great hope. Nor did he falter even when the hosts of Sennacherib seemed to threaten the immediate ruin of the State, for his confidence never wavered, even when the Assyrian was at the gates of Jerusalem. To him we owe the bodying forth of the Messianic expectations of the past, in a clear and majestic definiteness, which henceforth made his utterances the stay and support of succeeding ages. The Hope of Israel must be one who Himself fulfilled all the demands of God, the Supreme King, so that their power and truth might work through His example and life. A divine might and glory must dwell in Him, to enable Him thus to fulfil an ideal in which all before Him had failed. If He, Himself, did not absolutely realize perfection, it could not be that the perfect kingdom of God could ever be attained. But such an one must come, else the religion which demanded Him was falso. If thus completely fulfilling all God's law, however, He must be the Messiah-the glorious King of the true 1 2 Sam. vii. 13. 1 Kings xi. 39.

people of Jehovah-expected in all ages of the past. That He should come, was to be the hope, the yearning, the supplication of all. It was blessed even to look trustingly towards His advent, and try to realize personally a glimpse of His perfections!

From Isaiah's day, the Messiah thus first vividly held before the nation, with all the attractions and distinctness of inspired genius, was the absorbing subject of Jewish desire and expectation. That He would assuredly appear in due time it was deemed impious to question; how He would do so, henceforth engrossed the thoughts of the race. That He should spring from the root of David was still proclaimed by the prophets, but His external glory or natural descent were treated as of altogether inferior moment to His spiritual majesty. Such a Messiah could only come as the Prince of Peace; violence would be in contradiction to His nature and aims. The time of His appearance, however, was not as yet revealed even to Isaiah. Still, the glorious ideal was before mankind. From it other prophets caught enthusiasm, and the godly of generation after generation walked in its light.1

But the bright visions of Isaiah and Micah were far from fulfilment. The moral cancer of heathenism had gained too deep a hold on the nation to be eradicated by the zeal of any prince, however zealous, and the prophetic visions of future Messianic glory had yet to be darkened by denunciations and warnings. The goodness of Judah like that of Ephraim proved to be as the morning cloud or the early dew that goeth away.

1 Ewald, vol. iii. p. 707.

2 Hosea vi. 4. The morning cloud is a mass of dense white mist-the moisture brought up from the Mediterranean by the prevalent westerly winds of summer and autumn. It becomes condensed on passing over the colder night air of the land. The

morning clouds are always of a brilliant silvery white, save at such times as they are dyed with the delicate opal tints of dawn. They hang low upon the mountains of Judah, and produce effects of indescribable beauty as they float far down in the valleys, or rise, to wrap themselves round the summits of the hills. In almost every instance, by about seven o'clock the heat has dissipated these fleecy clouds, and to the vivid Eastern imagination the morn has folded her outstretched wings. . . . Billowy masses of silvery white or opaline clouds roll in the valleys in fantastic everchanging forms, from which the summits of the mountains, now stand out like rocky islands in a wide chain of picturesque lakes, and now, seem like the low foot hills of mighty snow-clad ranges, towering behind them to the sky. The scene shifts rapidly as the dense masses of vapour, glistening with all the exquisite brightness of Syrian light, wave hither and thither, or are sucked up by the rising sun, leaving behind them for a few hours a delightful moisture. Neil's Palestine Explored, pp. 46, 136. A book abounding with original and striking illustrations of Scripture gained during a long residence in the East.

WHILE

THE PROPHETS MICAH AND ISAIAH.

HILE the strenuous exertions required of Hezekiah in restoring the ancient religion, reveal the moral and social corruption of the time, the utterances of the prophets of his reign speak no less forcibly of the deep shadow which accompanied its splendours.

So far as we know, the first of the national prophetpreachers of these later times had been Micaiah or Micah, in the reign of Ahab. After him, men like Joel, Amos and Hosea had risen, the Savonarolas and Bernards of their day; culminating in the great inspired orators of the reign of Hezekiah. His reign was the Augustan age of prophecy in every sense. Not only the transcendent genius of Isaiah, but that of Micah of Moresheth, still show in the inspired writings which bear their names, the wondrous addresses to which their generation listened.

Very little is known of Micah beyond the fact that he came from the neighbourhood of Gath, and was thus a native of the Maritime Plain, with its fiery summer heat;

1 Micah i. 14. As late as the time of Jerome a hamlet in the neighbourhood of Eleutheropolis was famous as the home of Micah, and a grave there, over which a Christian church had been built, was shown as his. Riehm.