of Judah. Both had been greatly affected by civil wars and conflict: with other nations. The kingdom of Israel sunk deeper and deeper, ruled over by a number of depraved kings, who plunged the people into the grossest idolatries with the accompanying immoralities, so that God's righteous judgment fell upon it first. During the prophetic ministry of our prophet the judgment fell on the ten tribe kingdom of Israel. About the year 736 B. C., Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian king, had killed Rezin, the king of Damascus, with whom Pekah the king of Samaria had made an alliance. Tiglath-Pileser then invaded the northern kingdom of Iarael, took many cities in Gilead and Galilee and carried the inhabitants into his own country. (See 2 Kings xvi:5-9; Amos i:5, etc.) This was the first captivity of Israel. The rest of the inhabitants of Samaria, the kingdom of the ten tribes, were carried away by the successor of Tiglath-Pileser, that is Shalamaneser. (Read about this in 2 Kings xvii:3-18 1 Chronicles v:26, and Hosea xiii:16.) Now, Isaiah's home was in Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Judah, and he witnessed from there the calamity which had come upon the ten tribes.

Isaiah began his ministry under the reign of Uzziah. He was a good king, a worshipper of the Lord, yet he did not remove the places of idolatrous worship. He had a sad end (2 Kings xv:1-5). He is also called Azariah. Chapter vi in Isaiah tells us that he had his great vision in the year when this king died of leprosy.

The son of Uzziah, Jotham, reigned in his stead. He did not trouble himself about the high places and the idolatrous groves, and the condition of the nation was that of corruption (2 Kings xv:32-36). He built cities, castles and towns; he prepared for war in time of peace. The ancient Assyria had seen its end with Sardanapulus and in its place arose the two kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia. Babylonia soon took the lead and Assyria was joined to the Chaldean monarchy. The dissolution of the great Assyrian monarchy took place during the reign of Jotham, yet we have not evidence that Isaiah uttered a definite prophecy during the reign of Jotham. He probably did, but we cannot locate it in the book.

Then came Ahaz, the twelfth king of Judah. He was an ungodly ruler and his reign was marked by disaster. (See 2 Chronicles xxviii; 2 Kings xvi.) In idolatry such as burning incense in the valley of Hinnom, and burning his children in the fire of idol worship, he was as wicked, or almost so, as his grandson Manasseh. As a punishment the Lord sent the kings of Syria and Samaria against him. In one day Pekah the king of Syria killed a large number of Jews and took 200,000 captive. They were only saved from deportation by the intercession of the prophet Obed. The full record of this is found in 2 Chronicles xxviii. Then Ahaz trembled before this strong alliance and resolved in calling in the aid of the Assyrian.

It was at that time that prophet and king met at the waterworks as recorded in chapter vii. The prophet assured the wicked monarch that Jerusalem had nothing to fear from Syria and Samaria, that Jehovah would protect Jerusalem. He urged Ahaz to ask a sign, which he refused to do. Then the Lord gave him a sign, that of the virgin who should conceive and bring forth a son and call his name Emmanuel. It is a prediction concerning the virgin birth of Israel's RedeemerKing, the Son of God. The thought is this; How can Jerusalem and Judah perish as long as He, the Messiah, David's Son and David's Lord, has not come? Isaiah also told the king that the menace then threatening would be speedily removed, but that his alliance with the Assyrian would bring disaster. But Ahaz, though he saw the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the kings of Syria and Samaria, did not heed the warning. When an invasion of the Edomites and Philistines threatened (2 Chronicles xxviii:17, etc.), he turned again to his old ally, the king of Assyria. He made him costly presents. Tiglath-Pileser, as already stated above, conquered the kings of Syria and Samaria. Ahaz visited his heathen friend and ally in Damascus, and when he saw there a beautiful altar, he sent a model of it to Urijah, the priest, in Jerusalem, who constructed one like it, and afterward Ahaz used it to commit idolatry and all the abominations which go with it. (See 2 Kings xvi.) But the prophecy about disaster through the Assyrian king was not fulfilled during the lifetime of this wicked king. It came with Sennacherib's invasion during the reign of the next king Hezekiah. He invaded the land but could not touch Jerusalem.

Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, was the very opposite to his wicked father. He was one of the most godly kings which occupied the throne of David. He started in with overturning the altars of idolatry and cutting down the groves where his predecessors had permitted the wicked religious ceremonies of heathendom. Then the temple was renovated. He also destroyed the brazen serpent which Moses long ago had made, and which had been preserved as an object of idolatry, much as ritualistic Christiandom worships the literal cross of wood or metal. He restored furthermore the observance of Passover. After his successful war with the Philistines, he decided to cast off the yoke of the Assyrian by not paying the tribute which his father Ahaz had promised to pay. Then Sennacherib advanced with a large army and spread ruin in every direction. Hezekiah fortified Jerusalem and prepared for a siege (2 Chronicles xxxii:1-8). Then he sent ambassadors to the Assyrian and sued for peace. Sennacherib demanded a large sum of money and gave him assurance that the army would be withdrawn. (2 Kings xviii:13-15). Hezekiah agreed and stripped even the temple of its treasures to pay the vast sum. Then Sennacherib went down to Egypt but was defeated by Tirhaka, king of Ethiopia. Maddened by the defeat he approached Jerusalem again, and sent messengers

from Lachish and demanded its surrender. Hezekiah then spread the whole matter before the Lord, in the house of the Lord, and received the answer that the city was safe. Isaiah's ministry in all this is found in the historical portion of his book. When Sennacherib dared to advance towards the city, the angel of the Lord slew 185,000 of his men in one night. It must be remembered that a large portion of the prophecies of Isaiah up to chapter xxxix are occupied with these events, and can only be rightly understood in the light of the history of Judah of that period.

Concerning the Authorship of Isaiah.

We have stated before that according to Jewish tradition Isaiah perished by the hands of wicked men in being sawn asunder. Equally wicked men have "sawn him asunder" in a different way. We mean the so-called "Higher or Destructive Critics." Did Isaiah really write this Book? Could it be the work of one man? Are there not evidences of a composite authorship? These and other questions have been raised, and their answers given by men whose boast is of superior scholarship, of greater knowledge than the knowledge of the past generations; men who blasphemously assert that their finite brains have absorbed more knowledge in these matters than the infinite Lord of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, possessed in the days of His dwelling on earth.

For some 2,500 years no one ever thought of even suggesting that Isaiah did not write the book which bears his name. The criticism of this book and the denial of this great prophet being the sole author of it is a very modern thing. It started with a man by name of Koppe, who attacked, in 1780, the genuiness of chapter 1. He was followed by another theologian who expressed doubt as the Isaiah being the author of chapters xl-lxvi, generally called the second part of Isaiah. Rosenmueller, the notorious Eichorn, the Hebraist Gesenius, Ewald and others took a hand in it in sawing Isaiah asunder, each questioning certain portions of the book. The great Leipzig professor, Franz Delitzsch, also joined the band of "scientific butchers," and declared that the second part of Isaiah is of post-exilic authorship. This was done by him in 1889, and after this with the year 1890 a veritable flood of criticism set in, led, by Canon Driver, George Adam Smith, Duhm, Stade, Hackman, Cornill, Cheyne and many others. Their infidel discoveries have been readily accepted in this country and are now being taught in Methodist colleges, in the Union Theological Seminary of New York, the Chicago University, in Baptist, Presbyterian and other denominational institutions. But let it be said that there are also scholars just as mature as these critics who stand up for the Isaiahan authorship of the whole book. We mention Stier, Weber, Strachey,

Naegelsbach, Barnes, Bodenkamp, Cobb, Benjamin Douglass, Green, Thirtle, and many others.

The critics have invented a Deutero-Isaiah, that is a second Isaiah, who should have written the second part. Then another set of "scholars" with their scientific microscope discovered that this DeuteroIsaiah could not have written everything of this second part; that there was a third, or Trito-Isaiah, who wrote chapter Iv-lxvi. They also found out with their scholarship that parts were written in Babylon, and other parts in Palestine. They are still at it, "sawing Isaiah asunder." To mention their methods, their hair-splittings, their philological objections and their claims would fill pages, and we would, if we were to follow it, oblige our readers to examine the inventions of the natural, darkened heart of man, which does not believe in God. There are 1,292 verses in the book of Isaiah. Out of these the ultra critics allow 262 verses to be genuine and the rest, 1,030 verses, are rejected by them.

We repeat here what we say in the studies in Isaiah at the close of our analysis and annotations.

But what does all this mean? It is a denial of what is written in the first verse of this book "The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah." And if several men wrote this book, if part was written during the Babylonian capitivity and other parts added after the capitivity, then this statement with which the book begins is untrue. This first verse assures us that the book is a whole, that all we find in it is the vision of one man. To deny this breaks down the truthfulness of the book and reduces it to the level of common literature. This is what the critics have done. But the book of Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament. The Jews always believed this book to have been written by Isaiah. They held this belief when our Lord was on the earth. He Himself read in the synagogue of Nazareth from chapter lxi, which the critics deny to be the writing of Isaiah. Quotations from Isaiah are frequently found in different parts of the New Testament. Twenty-one times we read of Isaiah and his words in the New Testament. The phrases used are the following: "Spoken by the Prophet Esaias;" "Fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias;” “Well did Esaias Prophesy;" "In the Book of the Words of Esaias;" "As said the Prophet;" "These things said Esaias;" "Well spake the Holy Spirit by Esias;" "Esaias also saith;" "Esaias saith." This is evidence enough that the Lord and the Holy Spirit through the Evangelists and the Apostle Paul set their seal to this uncontradicted and unanimous belief that Isaiah wrote this book. The critics by their methods impeach the testimony of the Lord Himself or charge the infallible Lord of Glory to have been limited in His knowledge and that He acquiesced

in the current traditional belief of the Jewish people, knowing better Himself.

All the arguments of the critics are disproven by the book itself. One only needs to study this book and the careful study will bring out the unanswerable fact of the unity of the book of Isaiah. Only one person could have written such a book and that person did not write it by himself, but was the mouthpiece of Jehovah. This is the conclusion of an intelligent and spiritual study of the book itself. The silly and arbitrary restrictions the critics make, that Isaiah could not have written certain passages, because it was beyond his horizon, or that he could not have mentioned Cyrus, the Persian king, by name, over 150 years before he was born, springs from the subtle infidelity which is at the bottom of the destructive criticism, which denies the supernatural altogether.

The Message of Isaiah.

The name Isaiah means "Jehovah saves" or "Jehovah is salvation." He has well been called the evangelical prophet. There are more direct quotations as well as indirect allusions to this great book in the N. T. than from any other prophetic book. Josephus relates that Cryus, the Persian king, was greatly moved by the reading of the book of Isaiah, one of the evidences, that Isaiah was not compiled after the exile. In the passage where Josephus speaks of the edict issued by Cryus permitting the Jews to return, he says: "This was known to Cyrus by his reading the book which Isaiah left behind him of his prophecies; for this prophet has said that God had spoken thus to him in a secret vision, 'My will is that Cyrus, whom I have appointed to be king over many and great nations, send back my people to their own land, and build my temple.' This was foretold by Isaiah 140 years before the temple was demolished. Accordingly, when Cyrus read this and admired the divine power, an earnest desire and ambition came upon him to fulfill what was so written." The early church held Isaiah in great esteem and recognized its great message. When Augustine had been converted he asked Ambrose which book he would advise him to study first. Ambrose told him, "The prophesies of Isaiah." All the great men of God, the instruments of the Spirit of God like Luther, Calvin, Knox and cthers acknowledged the greatness of this book and its message.

What Peter says as to the contents of the writings of the Prophets of God is more true of Isaiah than of any of the other prophetic books except the Psalms. "The Suffering of Christ and the Glory that should follow." Isaiah's message reveals the Redeemer and King of Israel. He is the "Holy One of Israel" mentioned by this title twentyfive times. The Redeemer of Israel is Jehovah the Creator. He announced His virgin birth, the child to be born of the virgin, the son given, and reveals the titles of that Son (ix:6). He describes Him in