that sight which, in Ezekiel, bare the blaze of the crystal and the eyes of the wheels-which, in Daniel, read at a glance the hieroglyphics of heaven-and which, in John, blenched not before the great white throne. Many eyes are glorious: that of beauty, with its mirthful or melancholy meaning; that of the poet, rolling in its fine frenzy; that of the sage, worn with wonder, or luminous with mild and settled intelligence; but who shall describe the eye of the prophet, across whose mirror swept the shadows of empires, stalked the ghosts of kings, stretched in their loveliness the landscapes of a regenerated earth, and lay, in its terror, red and still, the image of the judgment-seat of Almighty God? Then did not sight-the highest faculty of matter or mind— come culminating to an intense and dazzling point, trembling upon Omniscience itself?

Has

Exultation, we have said, is the pervading spirit of Isaiah's prophecy. His are the "prancings of a mighty one." he to tread upon idols? he not only treads, but tramples and leaps upon them. Witness the irony directed against the stock and stone gods of his country, in the 44th chapter. Does he describe the downfall of the Assyrian monarch?it is to the accompaniment of wild and hollow laughter from the depths of Hades, which is "moved from beneath" to meet and welcome his coming. Great is his glorying over the ruin of Babylon. With a trumpet voice he inveighs against the false fastings and other superstitions of his age. As the panorama of the millennial day breaks in again and again upon his eye, he hails it with an unvaried note of triumphant anticipation. Rarely does he mitigate his voice, or check his exuberant joy, save in describing the sufferings of Christ. Here he shades his eyes, holds in his eloquent breath, and furls his wing of fire. But, so soon as he has passed the hill of sorrow, his old rapturous emotions come upon him with twofold force, and no paan, in his prophecy, is more joyous than the 54th chapter. It rings like a marriage bell.

The true title, indeed, of Isaiah's prophecy is a “song." It is the "Song of Songs, which is Isaiah's," and many of its notes are only a little lower than those which saluted the birth of Christ, or welcomed him from the tomb, with the burden, "He is risen, he is risen, and shall die no more!" From this height of vision, pitch of power, and fulness

of utterance, Isaiah rarely stoops to the tender. sail on in

Supreme dominion,

Through the azure deep of air."

He must

"Can a woman

Yet, when he does descend, it is gracefully. forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget; yet I will not forget thee." Tears in the eye of a strong man, move more than all other human tears. But here are tears from a "fire-armed angel," and surely there is no softness like theirs.

The uniform grandeur, the pomp of diction, the almost painful richness of figure, distinguishing this prophet, would have lessened his power over the common Christian mind, had it not been for the evangelical sentiment in which his strains abound, and which has gained him the name of "the Fifth Evangelist." Many bear with Milton solely for his religion. It is the same with Isaiah. The cross stands in the painted window of his style. His stateliest figure bows before Messiah's throne. An eagle of the sun, his nest is in Calvary. Anticipating the homage of the Eastern sages, he spreads out before the infant God treasures of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The gifts are rare and costly, but not too precious to be offered to such a being; they are brought from afar, but HE has come farther "to seek and to save that which was lost."

Tradition-whether truly or not, we cannot decide-asserts that 698 years before Christ, Isaiah was sawn asunder. Cruel close to such a career! Harsh reply this sawing asunder, to all those sweet and noble minstrelsies. German critics have recently sought to imitate the operation, to cut our present Isaiah into two. To halve a body is easy; it is not quite so easy to divide a soul and spirit in sunder. Isaiah himself spurns such an attempt. The same mind is manifest in all parts of the prophecy. Two suns in one sky were as credible as two such flaming phenomena as Isaiah. No! it is one voice which cries out at the beginning, "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth”—and which closes the book with the promise, "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come and worship before me, saith the Lord."

JEREMIAH.

Criticism is never so unjust, as when, while exaggerating one undoubted merit in a writer, she denies him every other. This is unjust, because a great merit is seldom found alonethere has seldom, for example, been a great imagination without a great intellect; and because it is envy which allows the prominence of one faculty to conceal others which are only a little less conspicuous. Burke was long counted, by many, a fanciful showy writer without judgment; although it is now universally granted that his understanding was more than equal to his fancy. It was once fashionable to praise the prodigality of Chalmers' imagination at the expense of his intellect; it seems now admitted, that although his imagination was not prodigal, but vivid-nor his intellect subtle, though strong—that both were commensurate. A similar fate has befallen Jeremiah. Because he was plaintive, other qualities have been denied, or grudgingly conceded him. The tears which often blinded him, have blinded his critics also.

The first quality exhibited in Jeremiah's character and history, is shrinking timidity. His first words are, “Ah, Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I am a child." The storm of inspiration had seized on a sensitive plant or quivering aspen, instead of an oak or a pine. Jeremiah, at this crisis, reminds us of Hamlet, in the greatness of his task, and the indecision or feebleness of his temperament. And yet this very weakness serves at length to attest the truth and power of the afflatus. Jeremiah, with a less pronounced personality than his brethren, supplies a better image of an instrument in God's hand, of one moved, tuned, taught, from behind and above. Strong in supernal strength, the child is made a "fenced city, an iron pillar, and a brazen wall." Traces, indeed, of his original feebleness and reluctance to undertake stern duties, are found scattered throughout his prophecy. We find him, for instance, renewing the curse of Job against the day of his birth. We find him, in the same chapter, complaining of the derision to which he was subjected in the discharge of his mission. But he is re-assured, by remembering that the Lord is with him, as a "mighty terrible one." His chief power, besides pathos, is

impassioned exhortation. His prophecy is one long application. He is distinguished by powerful and searching prac ticalness. He is urgent, vehement, to agony. His "heart is broken" within him; his "bones shake;" he is "like a drunken man," because of the Lord, and the words of his holiness. This fury often singles out the ignorant pretenders to the prophetic gift, who abounded in the decay and degradation of Judah. Like an eagle plucking from the jackdaw his own shed plumes, does Jeremiah lay about him in his righteous rage. Their dull dreams he tears in pieces, for "what is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord.” For their feigned burdens he substitutes a weight of wrath and contempt, under which they sink into ignominy. Mingled with this ardor of spirit, and earnestness of appeal, there are touches of poetic grandeur. Witness the picture in the 4th chapter of the tokens attesting the forthcoming of the Lord to vengeance. Chaos comes again over the earth. Darkness covers the heaven. The everlasting mountains tremble. Man disappears from below, and the birds fly from the darkened air. Cities become ruins, and the fruitful places wildernesses, before the advancing anger of the Lord. Byron's darkness is a faint copy of this picture; it is an inventory of horrible circumstances, which seem to have been laboriously culled and painfully massed up. Jeremiah performs his task with two or three strokes; but they are strokes of lightning.

Before closing his prophecy, this prophet must mount a lofty peak, whence the lands of God's fury, the neighboring idolatrous countries, are. commanded, and pour out lava streams of invective upon their inhabitants. And it is a true martial fire which inspirits his descriptions of carnage and desolation. In his own language, he is a "lion from the swellings of Jordan, coming up against the habitation of the strong. All tears are now wiped from his face. There is

a fury in his eye which makes you wonder if aught else were ever there; it is mildness maddened into a holy and a fearful frenzy. In a noble rage, he strips off the bushy locks of Gaza, dashes down the proud vessel of Moab, consumes Ammon, makes Esau bare, breaks the bow of Elam, and brandishes again, and again, and again, a sword over Babylon, crying out at each new blow, "a sword is upon the Chaldeans; a sword is upon the liars; a sword is upon her

mighty men; a sword is upon her horses; a sword is upon her treasures." We have difficulty in recognizing the weeper among the willows in this homicidal Energy, all whose tears have been turned into devouring fire.

Besides his Lamentations-which have occasioned the general mistake that he is wholly an elegiac poet-fine strokes of pathos are scattered amidst the urgency, the boldness, and the splendor of his prophecy. His is that melting figure of Rachel, weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are not. His is that appeal to Ephraim Is he my dear son? is he a pleasant child?" which sounds like the yearning of God's own bowels. His the plaintive question "Is there no balm in Gilead?" And his the wide wish of sorrow-"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep night and day for the slain of the daughter of my people!"

And was not this wide wish granted when, in the Lamentations, he poured out his heart in those deep melodies. of desolation, mourning, and woe? Here, to use the beautiful language of one departed, "the scene is Jerusalem lying in heaps; the poet, the child of holy inspiration, appears upon the ruins, and, with notes of desolation and woe, strikes his harp to the fallen fortunes of his country. It was not that the pleasant land now lay waste-and it did lie waste; it was not that the daughters of Jerusalem were slain, and her streets ran red-and they did run red; but it was the temple-the temple of the Lord, with its altars, its sanctuary, its holy of holies levelled to the ground-rubbish where beauty stood, ruin where strength was its glory fled, its music ceased, its solemn assemblies no more, and its priesthood immolated, or carried far away. These had shed their glory over Israel, and over all the land, and it was the destruction of these which gave its tone of woe to the heart of the Israelite indeed." Yet the feelings which fill his heart to bursting are of a complicated character. A sense of Israel's past glory mingles with a sense of her guilt: he weeps over her ruin the more bitterly that it is self-inflicted. There is no protest taken against the severity of the divine judgments, and yet no patriot can more keenly appreciate, vividly describe, or loudly lament the splendors that were no more. We can conceive an angrier prophetic spirit, finding a savage luxury in comparing the deserted streets and desecrated shrines of Jeru