of the Jews as rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah, and the prophecies themselves are full of warnings of the impending judgment of God upon the nation; the preface to the other begins with "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people; " goes on to declare that they have suffered the penalty which had been threatened, and learned the lesson which that penalty was meant to teach; and the theme of the subsequent prophecies is the approaching redemption of the nation and its restoration to its land, its city, and its temple. Each of the two prophets, Isaiah the son of Amoz, and the Great Unknown, has given an account of his call to the ministry. That of Isaiah is given in the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah; that of the Great Unknown in the fortieth chapter. The latter's call is simpler and less dramatic than that of his predecessor, but his message is not less explicitly given to him:

66 Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her

That her hard service is accomplished, her debt of guilt is discharged,

That she has received from Jehovah's hand double for all her sins.

Hark! there is a cry:

Voice. 66 Clear ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah,

Make plain in the desert a highway for our God,

Let every mountain and hill sink down, and every valley be up

lifted,

And let the steep ground become level, and the rough country

plain!

And the glory of Jehovah will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken it.

The Prophet. "Hark!

The Voice. "Cry!

The Prophet. "What shall I cry?

.All flesh is grass, and all the strength thereof like the flowers of

field;

The grass withers, the flowers fade, because the breath of Jehovah has blown thereon.

The Voice. "The grass withers, the flowers fade;
But the Word of our God stands for ever." 1

This is the fundamental message of the Great Unknown: Men are like flowers of the field, living to-day, perishing to-morrow; nations, institutions, political and religious, pass like shadows across the mountains; shadows we are and shadows we pursue; and yet, behind them all, manifesting himself through them all, vocal in all history, revealing himself in all phenomena, is God. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the manifestation and utterance of the Eternal abides forever and speaks through all transitory phenomena. This is the fundamental message of the Great Unknown. In some sense like that of Moses, like that of Hosea, like that of the First Isaiah, like that of the unknown writer of Deuteronomy, like that of later prophets, even down to our own time, is this word of prophecy: The Eternal abides forever, and all phenomena are but the ever-changing manifestations of his ever unchangeable Presence.

But if Isaiah shared this message with other and previous prophets, he learned one lesson and taught one truth which no prophet before his time had seen and few even of Christianly instructed teachers have seen more clearly.

1 Isa. xl. 1-8. Polychrome translation, modified.

Great men give their message to the age in which they live; great men also grow out of the age in which they live. If there could have been no Exodus without a Moses, there could have been no Moses without an Exodus. If there could have been no Reformation without a Luther, there could have been no Luther without a Reformation. If there could have been no Puritan revolt without a Cromwell, there could have been no Cromwell without a Puritan revolt. If Lincoln led us safely through the Civil War, the Civil War led Lincoln safely from the Illinois politician to the world statesman. It is the distinctive characteristic of great men that their hearts are open to the influences by which they are surrounded, and hence open to hear the voice of God in current events, and to learn the lesson which passing history has for them. The annalist simply narrates events; the prophet sees behind them the Word of God, and gives interpretation to the events. The Great Unknown was in this sense the product of the age to which he spoke. His lesson was learned in the school of experience; his message was taught to him by contemporaneous history; he was the child of the Exile; and in this Exile he learned a lesson which could be learned only in the school of suffering. Israel's great teachers had been preeminently the sufferers of the nation — just men suffering for the unjust: Amos, the righteous, bearing the burden of a most unrighteous people; Hosea, the loyal, bearing the burden of a most unloyal people; Micah, the peas

ant prophet, bearing the burdens of the peasant poor; Isaiah, the strong-hearted hater of corruption, living a lifelong martyrdom and dying a martyr's death; Jeremiah, weeping bitter tears for sins that were not his own. And the Great Unknown dimly sees what even now the Church of Christ sees not too clearly that salvation comes through sorrow, that the suffering ones are the victorious ones, that the redemption of the nation must come, not by a crowned king, but by a Suffering Servant. Sometimes this suffering servant appears to the prophet to be the entire nation suffering for its own sins and for the sins of the world, and working out its own redemption by its own suffering; sometimes to be some one especially chosen out of that nation, suffering with and for them; sometimes the prophet himself; in one notable ode the prophet seems to see dimly in the vista of the future a single figure bearing in his own person the burdens of humanity, a Sinless Sufferer by his suffering bringing healing to others : 1

"Who indeed can yet believe our revelation ?

And the arm of Jehovah - to whom has it disclosed itself?

66 He grew up as a sapling before us,

And as a sprout from a root in dry ground,

He had no form nor majesty,

And no beauty that we should delight in him.

"Despised was he, and forsaken of men,

A man of many pains, and familiar with sickness,

1 Isa. xliv. 1, 2, 21; xlii. 1-4; xlix. 5–10; lii. 13-15.

Yea, like one from whom men hide the face,
Despised, and we esteemed him not.

"But our sicknesses, alone, he bore,
And our pains - he carried them,
Whilst we esteemed him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.

"But alone he was humiliated because of our rebellions,
Alone he was crushed because of our iniquities;
A chastisement, all for our peace, was upon him,
And to us came healing through his stripes.

"All we, like sheep, had gone astray,

We had turned, every one to his own way,
While Jehovah made to light upon him
The guilt of us all.

"He was treated with rigor, but he resigned himself, And opened not his mouth,

66

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

And like a sheep that before her shearers is dumb.

Through an oppressive doom was he taken away,

And as for his fate, who thought thereon,

That he had been cut off out of the land of the living,

That for my people's rebellion he had been stricken to death?

"And his grave was appointed with the rebellious,

And with the wicked his tomb,

Although he had done no injustice,

Nor was there deceit in his mouth.

"But it had pleased Jehovah to crush and to humiliate him.

If he were to make himself an offering for guilt,

He would see a posterity, he would prolong his days,
And the pleasure of Jehovah would prosper in his hands.

"He would deliver from anguish his soul, Would cause him to see light to the full.