atening character. That the
proclamation of salvation occupies a very prominent place in Isaiah,
was seen even by the Fathers of the Church. _Jerome_ says: "I shall
expound Isaiah in such a manner that he shall appear not as a prophet
only, but as an Evangelist and an Apostle;" and in another passage:
"Isaiah seems to me to have uttered not a prophecy but a Gospel." And
_Augustine_ says, _De Civ. Dei_, 18, c. 29, that, according to the
opinion of many, Isaiah, on account of his numerous prophecies of
Christ and the Church, deserved the name of an Evangelist rather than
that of a Prophet. When, after his conversion, _Augustine_ applied to
_Ambrose_ with the question, which among the Sacred Books he should
read in preference to all others, he proposed to him Isaiah, "because
before all others it was he who had more openly declared the Gospel and
the calling of the Gentiles." (_Aug. Conf._ ix. 5.) With the Fathers of
the Church _Luther_ coincides. He says in commendation of Isaiah: "He
is full of loving, comforting, cheering words for all poor consciences,
and wretched, afflicted hearts." Of course, there is in Isaiah no want
of severe reproofs and threatenings. If it were [Pg 2] otherwise, he
would have gone beyond the boundary by which true prophetism is
separated from false. "There is in it," as Luther says, "enough of
threatenings and terrors against the hardened, haughty, obdurate heads
of the wicked, if it might be of some use." But the threatenings never
form the close in Isaiah; they always at last run out into the promise;
and while, for example, in the great majority of Jeremiah's prophecies,
the promise, which cannot be wanting in any true prophet, is commonly
only short, and hinted at, sometimes consisting only of words which are
thrown into the midst of the several threatenings, _e. g._, iv. 27:
"Yet will I not make a full end,"--in Isaiah the stream of consolation
flows in the richest fulness. The promise absolutely prevails in the
second part, from chap. xl.-lxvi. The reason of this peculiarity is to
be sought for chiefly in the historical circumstances. Isaiah lived at
a time in which, in the kingdom of Judah, the corruption was far from
having already reached its greatest height,--in which there still
existed, in that kingdom, a numerous "election" which gathered round
the prophet as their spiritual centre. With a view to this circle,
Isaiah utters the words: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." The
contempo