When we turn to examine the work of this unknown messenger we cannot help noticing the difference in style, which even the translation cannot obscure. The great Isaiah writes in terse, closely-packed sentences, with all the authoritative manner customary with the Prophets. This writer, on the other hand, is rhetorical, and loves to dwell on his favourite ideas. The sharp word of the prophetic deliverance here gives way to a reasoning exposition and a pleading tenderness that makes this prophecy a Gospel before the Gospels. The distinctive religious ideas can be easily marked. Absolute Monotheism is insisted on with a fulness and repetition which shows that it is in some degree a new truth. There is none beside Jehovah; He is alone, unique; and description is exhausted in the endeavour to picture His glory and power. He is now constantly referred to as the Creator of the world, the framer of the stars on high, the maker of both darkness and light, both good and evil; so that no room is left for the dualism that the Prophet may have learned to despise in the Babylonian religion. His finest scorn is reserved for the conception that an idol can have any claim to divinity. He depicts the process of their manufacture, their utter helplessness; it may be that he had seen them borne in to the capital as the suburbs fell before the invader. Universalism struggles for expression in this writer, but it is not always so clear and definite as in the writings of the great Isaiah. This arises however, not so much from the racial prejudices that have so clogged the Hebrew mind, as from a reading of Israel's history which the prophet was well entitled to make, namely, that she was to be the premier nation in the instruction of the world in righteousness and the knowledge of God, the priest-nation of humanity. This conception of the nation's history and destiny is embodied in a personification known as the Servant of Jehovah. Israel has been chosen as the Servant so that the light may be brought to the nations. In this mission the Servant meets with persecution, yet turns not back from those who pluck off the hair nor hides his face from shame and spitting. The slightest retrospect of Israel's history shows that the Servant of Jehovah was trained for his task only through suffering. Israel had suffered for her sins of presumption and disobedience; but were the nations who punished her any more righteous? Moreover, many of those who sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion must have been pious and righteous, and innocent of the causes of their nation's calamities. As the prophet broods over the meaning of the Exile, as it affected the godly remnant, he begins to see that this suffering, undeserved though it might be in particular cases, would become a supreme lesson in righteousness to the world. This assumption is embodied in the astonishing drama of the suffering Servant; one who suffers from a disfiguring disease, which marks him