Is there, then, no hope for Jerusalem? Yes, but not where the prophet sought it at first, in herself, and not in the way he offered it--by the mere presentation of an ideal. There is hope, there is more--there is certain salvation in the Lord, but it only comes after judgement. Contrast that opening picture of the new Jerusalem with this closing one, and we shall find their difference to lie in two things. There the city is more prominent than the Lord, here the Lord is more prominent than the city; there no word of judgement, here judgement sternly emphasized as the indispensable way towards the blessed future. A more vivid sense of the Person of Jehovah Himself, a deep conviction of the necessity of chastisement: these are what Isaiah has gained during his early ministry, without losing hope or heart for the future. The bliss shall come only when the Lord shall _have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgement and the spirit of burning_. It is a corollary of all this that the participants of that future shall be many fewer than in the first vision of the prophet. The process of judgement must weed men out, and in place of all nations coming to Jerusalem, to share its peace and glory, the prophet can speak now only of Israel--and only of a remnant of Israel. _The escaped of Israel, the left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem._ This is a great change in Isaiah's ideal, from the supremacy of Israel over all nations to the bare survival of a remnant of his people. * * * * * Is there not in this threefold vision a parallel and example for our own civilisation and our thoughts about it? All work and wisdom begin in dreams. We must see our Utopias before we start to build our stone and lime cities. "It takes a soul To move a body; it takes a high-souled man To move the masses even to a cleaner stye; It takes the ideal to blow an inch inside The dust of the actual."