much as omnipotence, a mark of Deity. * * * * * These, then, are the four points, upon which the religion of Israel offers itself. _First_, it is the force of the character and grace of a personal God; _second_, it speaks with a high intellectual confidence, whereof its scorn is here the chief mark; _third_, it is intensely moral, making man's sin its chief concern; and _fourth_, it claims the control of history, and history has justified the claim. FOOTNOTES: [85] _From to-day on_, Ez. xlviii. 35; but others take it _Also to-day I am He_. [86] Renan's theory of the "natural monotheism" of the Semites was first published in his _Histoire des Langues Semitiques_ some forty years ago. Nearly every Semitic scholar of repute found some occasion or other to refute it. But with Renan's charming genius for neglecting all facts that disturb an artistic arrangement of his subject, the overwhelming evidence against the natural monotheism of the Semite has been ignored by him, and he repeats his theory unmodified in his _Histoire du Peuple d'Israel_, i., 31, published 1888. [87] Literally _witnesses_--_i.e._, of the idols. [88] This word is wanting in the text, which is corrupt here. Some supply the word sharpeneth, imagining that חדד has fallen away from the beginning of the verse, through confusion with the יחד which ends the previous verse; or they bring יחד itself, changing it to חדד. But evidently ברזל חרשׁ begins the verse; _cf._ the parallel עצים רשׁח which begins ver. 13. [89] Here, again, the text is uncertain. With some critics I have borrowed for this verse the first three words of the following verse. [90] Perhaps _feeder on ashes_. [91] Chs. xliii. 25; xliv. 21, 22; xlv. 17. [92] See ch. xiv. of this volume. CHAPTER X. _CYRUS._ ISAIAH xli. 2, 25; xliv. 28-xlv. 13; xlvi. 11; xlviii. 14, 15.