portance
to that of the Prophet. It is from God's Spirit searching the depths of
the Godhead, and knowing His most hidden counsels, that those
prophecies of the second part, going beyond the natural consciousness,
have proceeded.

We believe we have incontrovertibly proved that we are not entitled to
draw any arguments against Isaiah's being the [Pg 189] author of the
second part, from the circumstance "that the exile is not announced,
but that the author takes his stand in it, as well as in that of
Isaiah's time, inasmuch as this stand-point is an assumed and ideal
one. But if the _form_, can prove nothing, far less can the _prophetic
contents_." It is true that these contents cannot be explained from the
natural consciousness of Isaiah; but it is not to be overlooked, that
the assailed prophecies of Isaiah are even as directly as possible
opposed to the rationalistic notion of prophetism, which is arbitrary,
and goes in the face of all facts, and from which the arguments against
their genuineness are drawn. In a whole series of passages of the
second part (the same which we have just been discussing), the Prophet
intimates that he gives disclosures which lie beyond the horizon of his
time; and draws from this circumstance the arguments for his own divine
mission, and the divinity of the God of Israel. He considers it as the
disgrace of idolatry that it cannot give any definite prophecies, and
with a noble scorn, challenges it to vindicate itself by such
prophecies. That rationalistic notion of prophetism removes the
boundaries which, according to the express statements of our Prophet,
separate the Kingdom of God from heathenism. The rationalistic
_notional_ God, however, it is true, can as little prophesy as the
heathenish gods of stone and wood, of whom the Psalmist says: "They
have ears, but they hear not, _neither speak they through their
throat_."

It is farther to be considered that the predictions of the Future, in
those portions of Isaiah which are assailed just on account of them,
are not so destitute of a foundation as is commonly assumed. There
existed, in the present time and circumstances of the Prophet,
important actual points of connection for them. They farther rest on
the foundation of ideal views and conceptions of eternal truths, which
had been familiar to the Church of the Lord from its very beginnings.
They only enlarge what had already been prophesied by former prophets;
and well secured and as