in such a man, but not such as constitutes virtue. Even under the dispensation of the law, he was counted a sinner, and sacrifices for his sins were appointed. Under the gospel he is still called a sinner, who is to be beaten with few stripes. He is not the wilful sinner, but nevertheless a sinner, and he must suffer therefor He has done the wrong—violated the great rule of right—and he cannot escape the evil consequences of the wrong which he has done. These unfortunate effects of his actions, he must suffer, and they constitute his few stripes. He has offended in neglecting his intellect-neglecting those lessons of right that it was his duty to learn; and he now endures the afflictions of wrong deeds. But he has been true to conscience, and hence all is peace within, and he has a degree of joy in his soul, even amidst the afflictions he suffers from the outraged right.

In the light of this character, the operation of certain sudden conversions may be understood. The man of such a character has been loyal to conscience, but has neglected the instruction of the intellect. When, therefore, that intellect comes to be enlightened, and he discerns what is right, he is suddenly converted, having always been faithful to perform whatever he believed to be right. Having learned the right, he has not to begin to learn fidelity to conscience, and so lift up his character from that state of low degradation; and, therefore, sudden conversion is for him a possible experience. It is also possible, but in a less degree, to that man whose actions have sprung more from impulse than motive; more from negation of intellect, than from any distinct purpose. The case of St. Paul may be an example in hand. Even Saul, we are informed, was loyal to conscience; and what he did, he tells us he felt it his duty to do. His was an error of belief. He did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. He looked upon Jesus as an impostor, and felt it his duty to persecute his deluded followers. This was Saul's sin. Had he applied his intellect properly to the revelations God had given, he might have known that Jesus was the Christ. When, therefore, Jesus so appeared to him as to convince him of the truth of his Messiahship, Saul was suddenly converted; and with little delay became Paul the apostle. But such conversion can

not well come to that man, the daily course of whose life violates his conscience. Such a man, in addition to learning what is right, has also to acquire by patient and rigid discipline, the habit of subordinating self, passions, interest, every thing, to the direction of conscience.

The fourth case is that of the man who does the right for its own sake-does it for the reason that it is the right. The agent who acts thus is virtuous, and will enjoy the reward of the righteous man. He has been true to conscience, to intellect, and revelation. He has thoroughly furnished himself for good works, and to him belongs the welcome plaudit, "well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

Concerning this man and his works, there is rectitude in the actions, and rectitude in the agent. He has performed the right, and will enjoy the fruits of a right mode of life. He has also performed it from the best motivebecause it was right, because conscience commanded it -and he will enjoy that peculiar peace which belongs to such as love God and keep his commandments.

Such, then, being the phases of moral character among men, the teachers of righteousness should know the characters of their people, and endeavor to adapt their instructions to their particular moral wants. To those who belong to the class first enumerated, lessons upon the authority of conscience and the supremacy of the calls of duty, are adapted. They need to be taught to conform their modes of life to right and duty. Members of the second class require the same lessons of duty as the first, together with more careful cultivation of the rational faculties. To individuals of the third class, more particular instruction in what is right and true should be given. Their intellects need to be exercised, and the various volumes of God's revelations must be opened before them for this purpose. The fourth class requires only to be encouraged to persevere in well doing, and drawn onward continually in the search for new and more glorious revelations of truth, and to more perfect conformity to all the obligations of right and duty. And let all, therefore, strive to improve to the best and noblest uses, all the means which God has given through the different yet harmonious channels of conscience, intellect and revelation.

A. G. G.

ART. XXI.

Isaiah.

WE select for motto the well-know passage from the fortieth chapter of the prophecies of the subject of this article. "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." And we choose it for the purpose, because we deem it strikingly denotative of him, who, notwithstanding the important part he plays in his country's history,-in a few instances, visibly, in that outward history which is written in books, but much more largely in that vital spirit of the national being which inspires the deeds that form the subject of material history-stands usually so mysteriously hidden behind his prophecy, that we know but little of the man. Like one hailing us in the twilight, which exaggerates his proportions, but obscures and confuses his form and features, we hear Isaiah's voice, full, deep, organ-toned, and we fancy we discern. himself in stature and majesty corresponding to the sound; but when we would fix his look and lineaments, they shift and mingle in the haze. He is "a voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord!" Let us review the few facts of his biography which we possess.

He lived in the successive reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Uzziah began his reign in 810, B. C., and Hezekiah died in 698 of the same era; the interval comprising a period of more than a century. Assuming him to have begun to prophesy in the last year of Uzziah, i. e., 758, and to have been then thirty years of age, the term at which the priests, and possibly the prophets, entered on their office; and supposing him to have died in 713, the last year in which we have mention of him, he was seventy-five at his death, and had exercised

his functions during a term of forty-five years. But of the date of his assumption of his office, of his manner of life and character, of his secular occupation, if he had one, and how, and when he died, we have no record. A dubious tradition, the truth of which, however, the most intelligent Jews deny, intimates that he survived the twenty-nine years' reign of Hezekiah, and in the first year of Manasseh's reign was put to death by that tyrant for opposition to his idolatries, by being sawn asunder. And to him it is, that the author of the Hebrews is supposed to allude, when, speaking of the cruel fates of the prophets, he says, "they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, slain with the sword," &c. It is most probable, however, that he died a natural death in the fifteenth or sixteenth of Hezekiah, at the age of seventy-five, and in the fortyfifth year of his prophetical ministry.

This very meagre and uncertain outline of facts is all, in the way of memoir, which either sacred history or tradition furnishes for a conception of Isaiah the man, the husband, the father, the friend, the citizen, good or bad. And in regard to the prophet, a far more vigorous faculty of search, a far more accurate and thorough acquaintance with the manners and spiritual habitudes, and the social and political organizations of the times in Judea and its adjacencies, a far more learned familiarity with the influential opinions and the mental idiosyncrasies of his age and people, than we can boast, were requisite,— even if conscious, as we are not, of the necessary creative power, to evolve from the gorgeous, but often obscure grandeurs of his rhapsodies, a presence which shall take the shape and form, and flesh and blood personality of him, who, with most of us, is but the august shadow, Isaiah.

It is as if, sitting with us on some sea-overhanging hill, gazing on majestic masses of clouds, heaped and volumed about the sinking sun, his upward rays streaming through their piles in variegated glory, and the solemn boom of the great sea sounding under all, you were to bid us conjure from their folds some befitting Genius, with look and port, embodying the aspect of the scene, and voice and utterance giving intelligible expression to the deep harmony of the waves. We possess no spells adequate to the task.

And again, unlike most of the conspicuous characters of sacred story, Abraham and David, and Moses, and Paul, of each of whom we have a substantial biography in the Bible, and a palpable image in our minds, Isaiah floats through his prophecies and before our vision, a diffused shadow, a mysterious, oracular voice, and we seek him, as we seek a bird in the leafy woods, whose song delights, but whose self eludes us, among the flickering of the foliage.

We grope upwards through the dim centuries adown which he pours his evangelic song, but when we reach the source whence streams the lay,-like the Roman Pompey when he invaded the Holy of Holies in the temple, we look in vain for some substantial presence. The sound sounds on, and manifestly from lips touched with a live coal from the altar of Jehovah, and the air is tremulous all about us with murmurs of inspiration, but the cloud, though it be of a divine glory, so fills the temple, that we cannot discern the form and the lineaments of him from whom the song proceeds. We have no hope that we shall be able, from this "palpable obscure " to summon a personality answerable to the magnificent periods, which, in the prophetic poems of Isaiah, chant the dirges of empires, fulminate the wrath of Jehovah over wavering Judah and obdurate Israel, bewail the desolations, and the long captivity of his native land, and ring the prelude of the advent of the Desire of all nations, the Son of God, and Saviour of the world. And should our readers think that the very absence of all biographical records leaves fuller scope for the construction of a life and character which may worthily fill the vacant niche in the illustrious row of ancient saints who look down upon us from the walls of the elder Jerusalem, we humbly confess our incompetency to invent an Isaiah. Such an attempt we leave to bolder or abler men. We shall content ourselves, in the first place, by attempting a presentation of the order to which he belongedthat of the Jewish prophets,-and, by the help of the few special notices of his life which the sacred chronicle presents, endeavor to eliminate him from his class; next, essay a rapid survey of the spiritual, and hence the political condition of the two Hebrew kingdoms, during the