It proclaimed more loudly than words could do, the prophet's absolute conviction that offspring was no pledge of permanence; that universal death was hanging over a condemned nation. But not only this. It marks a point of progress in the prophet's spiritual life. The crisis, through which we have seen him pass, has purged his mental vision. He no longer repines at his dark lot; no longer half envies the false prophets, who may win the popular love by pleasing oracles of peace and well-being; no longer complains of the Divine Will, which has laid such a burden upon him. He sees now that his part is to refuse even natural and innocent pleasures for the Lord's sake; to foresee calamity and ruin; to denounce unceasingly the sin he sees around him; to sacrifice a tender and affectionate heart to a life of rigid asceticism; and he manfully accepts his part. He knows that he stands alone--the last fortress of truth in a world of falsehood; and that for truth it becomes a man to surrender his all. That which follows tends to complete the prophet's social isolation. He is to give no sign of sympathy in the common joys and sorrows of his kind. "For thus hath Iahvah said: Enter thou not into the house of mourning, Nor go to lament, nor comfort thou them: For I have taken away My friendship from this people ('Tis Iahvah's utterance!) The lovingkindness and the compassion; And old and young shall die in this land, They shall not be buried, and men shall not wail for them; Nor shall a man cut himself, nor make himself bald, for them: Neither shall men deal out bread to them in mourning, To comfort a man over the dead; Nor shall they give them to drink the cup of consolation, Over a man's father and over his mother. "And the house of feasting thou shalt not enter, To sit with them to eat and to drink. For thus hath Iahvah Sabaoth, the God of Israel, said: Lo, I am about to make to cease from this place, Before your own eyes and in your own days, Voice of mirth and voice of gladness, The voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride."