fear of judgement, without revealing to them the possibility and beauty of victorious virtue. Had we lived in those great days, what a help he had been to us--what a help he may be still!--not only firm to declare that the wages of sin is death, but careful to effect that our humiliation shall not be despair, and that even when we feel our shame and irretrievableness the most, we shall have the opportunity to behold our humanity crowned and seated on the throne from which we had fallen, our humanity driving back the battle from the gate against which we had been hopelessly driven! That seventh verse sounds like a trumpet in the ears of enervated and despairing men. II. GOD'S COMMONPLACE (vv. 7-13). But Isaiah has cast his pearls before swine. The men of Jerusalem, whom he addresses, are too deep in sensuality to be roused by his noble words. _Even priest and prophet stagger through strong drink_; and the class that should have been the conscience of the city, responding immediately to the word of God, _reel in vision and stumble in judgement_. They turn upon Isaiah's earnest message with tipsy men's insolence. Verses 9 and 10 should be within inverted commas, for they are the mocking reply of drunkards over their cups. _Whom is he going to teach knowledge, and upon whom is he trying to force "the Message,"_ as he calls it? _Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts?_ Are we school-children, that he treats us with his endless platitudes and repetitions--_precept upon precept and precept upon precept, line upon line and line upon line, here a little and there a little?_ So did these bibulous prophets, priests and politicians mock Isaiah's messages of judgement, wagging their heads in mimicry of his simple, earnest tones. "We must conceive the abrupt, intentionally short, reiterated and almost childish words of verse 10 as spoken in mimicry, with a mocking motion of the head, and in a childish, stammering, taunting tone."[29] [29] Ewald. The original runs thus: "Ki tsav la-tsav, tsav la-tsav qav la-qav, qav la-qav; z'eir sham z'eir sham."