It seems strange, after reading some of the more beautiful passages, to suddenly come upon such a passage as that in chapter xxxiv., 6—8. Yet all are equally inspired, and must be equally accepted as divine. It is hard to imagine that the coarse indecency of chapter xxxvi., 12, is dictated by “a God of purity.” Nor is it easy to see what good Isaiah did by walking about “naked and barefoot” (chap. xx., 2,3). The completeness of the nakedness is not left in doubt (v. 4). In any civilised community Isaiah would have been taken up by the police. A fresh difficulty is thrown in the believer’s way by the statement: “The grave cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth” (chap. xxxviii., 18). It is therefore blasphemy to say that there is any “hope” for the dead. Yet it is equally blasphemy to deny that the dead have hope of resurrection. Jeremiah is a most melancholy prophet. He wails from beginning to end; he is often childish, is rarely indecent, and although it may be blasphemy to say so, he and his “Lamentations” are really not worth reading. Ezekiel is both childish and obscene in the grossest sense. I can fancy how Sir W. V. Harcourt would characterise Ezekiel if he were not protected by law. In the first chapter we are introduced to a wonderful chariot, borne by four living creatures, each of whom had four wings and four faces, and four sides, and they had a “likeness” which was separate from them, for “it went up and down among the living creatures” (chap. i., 18); and the chariot had four wheels, or perhaps eight, for there was “as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel” (v. 16); these wheels “went upon their four sides” (v. 17), which must have been very awkward, and they were full of eyes—what do wheels do with eyes?— and were “so high that they were dreadful” (v. 18); on the top of this conglomeration of four-faced creatures and eyed wheels was a firmament, and on the firmament a throne, and on the throne a man, amber-colored, and fire enwrapped, and the man was “the Lord.” And it is blasphemy to deny the truth of this unintelligible jargon of absurdities. Then this man converses with Ezekiel, and “a hand”—apparently minus an arm and a body—brings a book (chap. ii., 9), and Ezekiel eats this “roll” (chap. iii., 1—3), a very indigestible one, 1 should fancy. Then Ezekiel takes a tile, and sketches a town on it, and pretends to besiege the tile, and sticks up an iron pan which he makes believe is an iron wall, and then he lies before it, making a fort and a mount, and bringing battering rams to bear on his old brickbat (chap. iv., 1—4). And it is blasphemy not to believe that this midsummer madness was god-inspired. The remainder of his conduct (w. 9—15) is too disgusting to mention, and as we are not protected, to print it would bring us under Lord Campbell’s Act. The same remark applies to the unutterable nastiness of chaps, xvi. and xxiii.