said that no more precious legacy of thought has come down to us from antiquity than this Hebrew conception of a golden age to come. It is difficult to overestimate the bracing moral influence of an ideal future. The classic thought of Greece and Rome took an opposite course: their age of gold was in the remote past, the progress of time was a decline, and the riches of philosophy claimed to be no more than a precarious salvage. The result was the moral paralysis of fatalism, or at best individualism. The imaginative pictures of Biblical prophecy inspire spiritual energy by bringing a future to work for, and, on the other hand, the weakness of a luxurious optimism is avoided in the writings of an author who, while he puts forth all his powers to exalt the future, insists always that the only way of entrance to this future is the forcible purging out of evil.

When we turn from the six books to the Rhapsody of Zion Redeemed, we find the same general conception, which indeed is the thought of all prophecy, but it is now expanded, and placed in a new setting, associated with new historic surroundings. It may be safely asserted that nowhere else in the literature of the world have so many colossally great ideas been brought together within the limits of a single work.

The first of these great ideas is the prophetic significance put upon the conquering career of Cyrus and his deliverance of Israel from Babylon. The force of this

part of the prophecy has been much obscured by the widespread tendency to dwarf 'prophecy' into 'prediction': and it has been argued as if all the tremendous machinery of the first Vision, with its scene of all the nations of the earth summoned before the bar of God, were put in motion for no further purpose than to exhibit Jehovah as capable of predicting a future which he was capable of making. In actual fact, the words of the Vision associate 'foreseeing things to come' with 'declaring the former things': what the idols are challenged by Jehovah to do is to put upon the course of events such significance as the significance these events are found to bear when they are viewed in the light of Jehovah's purpose. This counsel of Jehovah is elaborately brought out: how he had chosen his people from among the nations; how, unfaithful to their calling, they became blind and deaf, and, to magnify the law, they were permitted to be hidden in the prison houses of exile; how their captors abused their office, and laid burdens on God's people, as if these were but their natural captives; how therefore Cyrus is raised up as an instrument of righteousness to strike the nations down and set Israel free; how Israel comes forth from his prison houses 'a blind people that hath eyes, a deaf people that hath ears.' It had been too light a mission for Israel to raise up his own fallen people, he is to bring forth judgment also to the Gentiles; the dispersion of Israel has been the means of leavening the nations, and opening

to them a way of salvation by which all nations of the earth may be blessed. It is as if the ages had been slowly and blindly dragging into place the different elements of some magnetic circle: the final event of Cyrus's career has completed the circle, and Jehovah's purpose from the beginning has been flashed forth to the world. If we go no further than this, it appears that in this rhapsody men's thoughts are for the first time lifted to a philosophy of world history, Closely associated with this is another of the great ideas of the rhapsody that of spiritual conquest. The authority that proclaims Israel as Jehovah's Servant to bring judgment to the Gentiles, proclaims also that this work is to be done without violence: he is not to strive nor cry; the bruised reed he is not to break, nor quench the smoking flax. The image describing his mission is the gentle agency of 'light,' with its irresistible illumination: he shall not burn dimly until his light has reached the farthest ends of the earth. This is among the loftiest moral conceptions of all human thought. How new an idea it was is measured by the length of time it has taken even the leaders of thought to grasp it. In actual history, the men of the Return were distinguished by a spirit of violent exclusiveness, that sought to draw tighter the bonds of hereditary privilege; their literary production, The Chronicles, delights to dwell upon a religious reform like that of Asa, with its covenant 'that whosoever would not seek the LORD the God of Israel, should be put to death, whether

small or great, whether man or woman.' Fifteen centuries of Christianity exhibited Jews persecuting Christians and Christians persecuting Jews; Catholics Protestants, and Protestants Quakers; before the idea began slowly to make its way that force cannot conquer spirit. This ideal of purely spiritual dominion is found, adorned with all the beauty of poetic setting, in the Hebrew rhapsody.

It should be noted again that in this work of Zion Redeemed, the fundamental conception of God is put upon that basis on which discussions of theism must ultimately rest. The rhapsody of course is filled with scorn of idolatry. The idol worshipper must first plant his tree and wait for the rains of heaven to nourish it; meanwhile he sweats over the forging of his axe; when at last he can cut down his tree, the more important functions of firewood and cooking must still have precedence: the rubbish that is left is to be converted into a God of worship. But scorn of idols, if it stands alone, is open to an obvious retort: no idol worshipper, it will be said, ever supposes that a bit of wood saves him; the wood is the symbol of a supernatural power. In the Isaiahan rhapsody this scorn of idols is associated with an antithesis of another kind: contempt is poured upon the forming of idol gods to contrast with a God who has formed the people he redeems; the idols are carried in procession - Bel bowing over one beast, Nebo stooping over another-but Jehovah has carried his people from infancy, and even to old age will

he carry them. We are thus brought into contact with the fundamental question of theism: Is God something to be 'made,' 'recognised,' 'accepted'; or is he the maker of the very mind that would 'recognise' or 'accept'? A man may not choose his parents; may he choose his God? Is God a supreme induction of human enquiry, or has he been revealed as something beyond human thought? Or, to take the phraseology of a modern epigram, Is man the noblest work of God, or is it that God is the noblest work of man? Thus on one more topic the Hebrew prophet is keeping us among the fundamentals of universal thought.

The rhapsody, once more, is filled with the idea of Redemption: and the familiarity of this word in modern theology must not make us forget that among the moral conceptions of human thought the world has reached nothing higher than this. All force of poetic presentation is put forth to exalt this idea. In the first Vision inexhaustible tenderness is made to play around the new thought that the Maker of Israel has become his Redeemer. The sixth Vision is a picture of the redeeming presence at work in Zion, from the first sight of a vineyard given up to the beasts of the forest, while watchmen sport and dogs slumber, to the song of Zion in her glory as the City of Salvation. Besides this direct treatment there is an indirect mode of exalting the idea of Redemption that is very potent: such imagery and allusion is employed as will exhibit the return across the desert from Babylon,