preach to us of judgement, and _the grasshopper becometh a burden_, and we, slowly descending through the drab and monotony of decay, suffer the last great commonplace, death. There can be no greater irony than for the soul, which has sinned by too greedily seeking for sensation, to find sensation absent even from the judgements she has brought upon herself. Poor Heine's _Confessions_ acknowledge, at once with the appreciation of an artist and the pain of a victim, the satire, with which the Almighty inflicts, in the way that Isaiah describes, His penalties upon sins of sense. III. COVENANTS WITH DEATH AND HELL (vv. 14-22). To Isaiah's threats of destruction, the politicians of Jerusalem replied, We have bought destruction off! They meant some treaty with a foreign power. Diplomacy is always obscure, and at that distance its details are buried for us in impenetrable darkness. But we may safely conclude that it was either the treaty of Ahaz with Assyria, or some counter-treaty executed with Egypt since this power began again to rise into pretentiousness, or more probably still it was a secret agreement with the southern power, while the open treaty with the northern was yet in force. Isaiah, from the way in which he speaks, seems to have been in ignorance of all, except that the politician's boast was an unhallowed, underhand intrigue, accomplished by much swindling and false conceit of cleverness. This wretched subterfuge Isaiah exposes in some of the most powerful sentences he ever uttered. A faithless diplomacy was never more thoroughly laid bare, in its miserable mixture of political pedantry and falsehood. _Therefore hear the word of Jehovah, ye men of scorn, rulers of this people, which is in Jerusalem!_ _Because ye have said, We have entered into a covenant with Death, and with Hell have we made a bargain; the "Overflowing Scourge,"_ a current phrase of Isaiah's which they fling back in his teeth, _when it passeth along, shall not come unto us, for we have set lies as our refuge, and in falsehood have we hidden ourselves_ [the prophet's penetrating scorn drags up into their boast the secret conscience of their hearts, that after all lies did form the basis of this political arrangement], _therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I lay in Zion for foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste._ No need of swift couriers to Egypt, and fret and fever of poor political brains in Jerusalem! The word _make haste_ is onomatopoetic, like our _fuss_, and, if fuss may be applied to the conduct of high affairs of state, its exact equivalent in meaning. _And I will set justice for a line, and righteousness for a plummet, and hail shall sweep away the subterfuge of lies, and the secrecy shall waters overflow. And cancelled shall be your covenant with Death, and your bargain with Hell shall not stand._