d and away from the
world, and clear his mind of everything else, that he might receive
the message in its purity; but then he had, in the second place, to
turn himself round towards men and, taking their circumstances into
account, deliver the message to them in the most effective way. He had
first to allow the Divine message to master him; but then he had to
turn upon it and master it, before he could be the medium by which it
was conveyed to others.

The prophets had to go amongst men, even if it were at the risk of
life, and deliver the Divine message. They had to use every device to
make it telling, striking in at every opportunity and giving line upon
line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. They did
not disdain the homeliest means, if it served the purpose. A prophet
would go about in public carrying a yoke on his neck, like a beast of
burden, or lie a whole year on his side, to attract attention to some
important truth. More than once we find a prophet setting up a board
in the market-place, with only a few words written on it, into which
he had condensed his message, that the passers-by might read it.

On the other hand, when it was appropriate, they did not spare
themselves the trouble of cultivating the graces of style by which
words are made attractive and impressive.[25] The prophetic books are
almost as artistic as poems. Their literary form is not exactly
poetry, though now and then it crosses its own boundary and becomes
poetical. It is a kind of rhythmical prose, governed by laws of its
own, which it carefully observes. All the prophets are not, indeed,
equally careful. Some of them appear to have been too completely
carried away with the message which they had to deliver to think much
of the way of delivering it. But these were not the strongest of the
prophets; and it is worth observing, that those who took the most
pains about the form in which what they had to say was couched have
been the most successful prophets in this sense, that they have been
most read by subsequent generations.

At the head of them all, in this respect, stands Isaiah. If the book
of an ordinary reader of the Bible were examined, it would be found, I
imagine, that Isaiah is thumbed far more than any other portion of the
prophetical writings; and this is due not only to the divinely
evangelical character of his message, but also to the nobly human
style of his language.[26] All the resources of poetry an