There are two points in his preaching which stand out with great vividness,—­the certain judgments of God in view of sin, retribution on all offenders; and secondly, the mercy and forgiveness of God in case of repentance.  Retribution, however, is not in Isaiah usually presented as the penalty of transgression according to natural law; not, as in the Proverbs, as the inevitable sequence of sin,—­“Whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap,”—­but as direct punishment from God.  Jehovah’s awful personality is everywhere recognized,—­a being who rules the universe as “the living God,” who loves and abhors, who punishes and rewards, who gives power to the faint, who judges among the nations, who takes away from Judah and Jerusalem the stay and the staff of bread and water.  “To whom then will ye liken God?  Have ye not known, have ye not heard, hath it not been told you from the beginning?  It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, that bringeth the princes to nothing.  Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?  He giveth power to the faint and weary, so that they who wait upon Him shall renew their strength, mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint.”  Can stronger or more comforting language be made use of to assert the personality and providence of God?  And where in the whole circuit of Hebrew poetry is there more sublimity of language, greater eloquence, or more profound conviction of the evil and punishment of sin?  Isaiah, the greatest of all the prophets in his spiritual discernment, in his profound insight of the future, is not behind the author of Job in majestic and sublime description.

Whatever may be the severity of language with which Isaiah denounces sin, and awful the judgments he pronounces in view of it, as coming directly from God, yet he seldom closes one of his dreadful sentences without holding out the hope of divine forgiveness in case of repentance, and the peace and comfort which will follow.  In his view the mercy of the Lord is more impressive than his judgments.  Isaiah is anything but a prophet of wrath; his soul overflows with tender sentiments and loving exhortation.  “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters!  Come ye, buy and eat!  Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!...  Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon...Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear...Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”