afraid of in any case; they have neither strength nor
skill. But do not for heaven's sake call in Sargon; if you do you will
supply him with an excuse for meddling and we shall never get rid of
him. This was good counsel, but Ahaz was too short-sighted and
panic-stricken to take much notice of it, so in oriental fashion Isaiah
goes on to paint a picture of future disaster. The land, he says, will
soon be laid waste, and future generations will rue the policy now
being determined upon. In the end, of course, things will come all
right, for God will not abandon His people. A better and wiser prince
shall arise who shall restore prosperity to Judah. That prince is not
yet born, but when he is, his name shall be called Immanuel,--God with
us. In another place he describes him as Wonderful Counsellor, Divine
Hero, Father Everlasting, Prince of Peace. "Butter and honey shall he
eat," because there will be nothing else left after Assyria has swept
over the country, but the discipline may have good results in the end,
and will serve to bring Judah to her senses.

There is something strikingly modern about all this, and it is a good
example of the way in which the same conditions arise over and over
again in the course of human history. It is plain to be seen that the
prophecy here indicated was only the shrewd common sense of a wise and
patriotic man who loved his country and believed in God. But what on
earth have his words to do with the birth of Jesus? It is only by a
very long stretch of the pious imagination that they can be held to
apply to Christianity at all. They have an interest of their own, and
a very considerable interest, too, even from the point of view of
religion; but Isaiah would have been considerably astonished to be told
that they would have to wait seven hundred years for fulfilment. To a
certain extent they were fulfilled soon afterward in the advent of the
well-meaning but not very brilliant king Hezekiah. I have dwelt upon
this passage at some length because it is a fair example of the way in
which Old Testament literature has been pressed into the service of
Christian dogma. What I am now saying, as I need hardly point out, is
not my _ipse dixit_; expert biblical scholarship has been saying it for
a long time, but somehow or other its bearing upon generally accepted
dogmas is not popularly realised. It can hardly be maintained that
Christian preachers who know the truth about these matt