In the generation, from which Jesus sprang, there was, amid national circumstances closely resembling those in which the Second Isaiah was written, a counterpart of that Israel within Israel, which our prophet has personified in ch. xlix. The holy nation lay again in bondage to the heathen, partly in its own land, partly scattered across the world; and Israel's righteousness, redemption and ingathering were once more the questions of the day. The thoughts of the masses, as of old in Babylonian days, did not rise beyond a political restoration; and although their popular leaders insisted upon national righteousness as necessary to this, it was a righteousness mainly of a ceremonial kind--hard, legal, and often more unlovely in its want of enthusiasm and hope than even the political fanaticism of the vulgar. But around the temple, and in quiet recesses of the land, a number of pious and ardent Israelites lived on the true milk of the word, and cherished for the nation hopes of a far more spiritual character. If the Pharisees laid their emphasis on the law, this chosen Israel drew their inspiration rather from prophecy; and of all prophecy it was the Book of Isaiah, and chiefly the latter part of it, on which they lived. As we enter the Gospel history from the Old Testament, we feel at once that Isaiah is in the air. In this fair opening of the new year of the Lord, the harbinger notes of the book awaken about us on all sides like the voices of birds come back with the spring. In Mary's song, the phrase _He hath holpen His Servant Israel_; in the description of Simeon, that he waited for the _consolation of Israel_, a phrase taken from the _Comfort ye, comfort ye My people_ in Isa. xl. 1; such frequent phrases, too, as _the redemption of Jerusalem_, _a light of the Gentiles and the glory of Israel_, _light to them that sit in darkness_, and other echoed promises of light and peace and the remission of sins, are all repeated from our evangelical prophecy. In the fragments of the Baptist's preaching, which are extant, it is remarkable that almost every metaphor and motive may be referred to the Book of Isaiah, and mostly to its exilic half: _the generation of vipers_,[161] the _trees and axe laid to the root_,[162] _the threshing floor and fan_,[163] _the fire_,[164] _the bread and clothes to the poor_,[165] and especially the proclamation of Jesus, _Behold the Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world_.[166] To John himself were applied the words of Isa. xl.: _The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight_; and when Christ sought to rouse again the Baptist's failing faith it was of Isa. lxi. that He reminded him.