TO THE READER

ONE may happily assume a general interest in the varied and impressive utterances of the Book of Isaiah, and trust that a fresh attempt to grapple with the problems which they present may be cordially welcomed. Critical workers at any rate will require no excuse for such a re-examination. Το many of them the inadequacy of the old point of view and of the traditional methods has long been apparent, and a regeneration of the study of Isaiah an object of keen desire. Already several fragmentary contributions have been made to an expanded criticism, and in 1892 a complete and comprehensive work on the Book of Isaiah from an advanced point of view saw the light—I refer of course to the commentary of Bernhard Duhm. This boldly conceived work cannot fail to instruct even those who are farthest from its conclusions, and will not soon be forgotten. Its appearance could not however absolve me from the obligation of completing the present work. What I have to offer has features almost or altogether peculiar to itself, and in particular is predominantly as analytical as Duhm's able commentary is synthetical. It is moreover the natural development of the imperfect but original criticism which underlies my Prophecies of Isaiah, and my article on "Isaiah" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1881). And if its very tardy appearance needs some excuse, this will, I hope, be amply supplied by the circumstances of its composition. A year divided between academical duties at Oxford and ecclesiastical functions at

Rochester may no doubt have moral compensations, but is not happily planned either for teaching or for study, and it is an additional heavy drawback to have my hours of work limited by an infirmity of sight during the darker months. I can only trust that the latter disadvantage may not have resulted in too many minute slips through imperfect revision, and that the former may even propitiate some readers towards me. Pastors and preachers at any rate may perhaps read with less suspicion what might strike them here and there as needlessly unsettling, had it not been partly composed amidst the preoccupations of a difficult and responsible preaching office.

Critical scholars

Here I might well lay down my pen. both in England and abroad, for whom in the first place I write, need no further introduction. Out of regard, however, to preachers, whose perplexities I understand, and who form a large proportion of Bible students, I may be allowed to add some straightforward remarks. It appears to me, then, that the attitudes of the critic and the preacher, though different, are not antagonistic, and that, if in Germany the critic, in his aloofness from the people, has sometimes been deficient in religious sympathy, our English preachers and teachers, who are expected to "bring forth out of their store things new and old," have not yet shown nearly sufficient willingness to learn from the critics. The effect of this upon our Biblical critics too often is that they give way to misplaced hesitancy. They are conscious that practical church workers are as a rule sceptical of new ideas, and they are therefore tempted to aim at a type of criticism which, though unavoidably new and so far suspicious, shall yet be different in many respects from that which is practised elsewhere. The loss to truth must be great, and the gain to the Church small and transient. How very much better it would be if we critics could in the first place take up a more courageous attitude towards ecclesiastical prejudice, by setting forth in

plain terms a theory of the Bible which would correspond equally to critically ascertained facts, and to the needs of true edification, and in the next could practise ourselves oftener in the art of devout but honest Biblical preaching! By taking the first course, we should, without painful controversy, neutralise some of the injurious results of that wrong doctrine of the Bible which colours so much popular preaching, and more than anything else hinders the spread of critical and historical truth, and by taking the second, we should disarm the objections of those liberal-minded preachers whose theology is more practical than systematic, by showing that to treat the Bible historically can be made directly conducive to "building up" the congregation, and to purifying and deepening its thoughts respecting God and man. For what after all is the Bible? Certainly it is a channel for spiritual messages from above to spiritually susceptible minds; this all evangelical preachers see clearly enough. But it is also a record both of the development of the higher life among the Israelites through a combination of natural and spiritual causes, and of the gradually expanding thoughts of this gifted people on some of the greatest subjects. And considering that out of the old Israel arose strange as it seems- He who is the Root of the new Israel, and that out of the religious society of the Jews sprang, in part at least, the religious societies of the Christians, and that some at any rate of the greatest and deepest of our religious thoughts can be studied in their growth in the Old and the New Testament, and have there received in some respects a classic form, why should preachers be impatient of a criticism which does but show the stages of this long development, and make credible what without it might well appear a beautiful but scarcely credible fairy tale ?

I shall not be surprised if for the present many of my brother-preachers hesitate to follow me. It has been so long repeated that there are two Isaiahs (a strange carica

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ture of the older critical view), or at any rate that the prophecies of the two greater writers of the Book of Isaiah have come down to us in substantially their original form, without later insertions or additions, that when, not merely in articles, but in a volume, a different view is advocated, ordinary students may not unnaturally shake their heads. Still the path of progress ought to have been made a little easier for them by a pioneer, and I may hope that some preachers will assimilate the main results of these researches. Should this be the case, and should such students with due caution let their congregations share in the benefit, I think that I can say from experience that no injury will arise to true edification. Criticism of the Bible does indeed destroy some views of history and prophecy which were accidentally connected with the higher life of the soul, but it only destroys to build up again better. Like Hagar's angel it opens our eyes to unsuspected "wells of water," and he who allows it to revolutionise his view of the Book of Isaiah will not only find his insight into the divine training of the Jewish people greatly deepened, but feel the true Isaiah of Jerusalem and the true Second Isaiah of Babylon becoming more and not less of prophets to himself-more and not less capable of bringing the self-revealing God nearer to him than before.

I have addressed myself specially to preachers, because to them the precedence in the work of popular enlightenment rightly belongs. Some of the most necessary reforms in Bible teaching have been well explained by Dr. Briggs in a paper on "The Sunday School and Modern Biblical Criticism," in the North American Review for January 1894.1 Could the moderate suggestions of this article be adopted for our higher Bible classes, it would partly remove the too

1 See also "Reform in the Teaching of the Old Testament," an article by the present writer in the Contemporary Review, August 1889, which has not yet lost its point.