could be lawfully offered.  The sin of seeking heathen alliances (57:9) points also unmistakably to the same period.  Although the prophet is carried forward in vision to the future of the covenant people, he does not wholly forget the men of his own generation, but occasionally administers to them severe rebukes, thus mingling the present with the future, after the manner of all the prophets.

The other arguments which have been urged against the genuineness of this part of Isaiah are only of secondary importance, and can readily be answered.  It is said that the style is more diffuse and flowing than in the first part.  The answer is that this agrees well with both the altered circumstances of the prophet and the altered character of his theme.  Most of his earlier prophecies were delivered under the pressure and excitement of public life, when he went before rulers and people charged with specific messages from Jehovah, and these, too, mostly of a denunciatory character.  But the part now under consideration was written in the serenity of retirement, with the general purpose of comforting God’s people by a view of the future glory in reserve for them.  It is entirely natural, then, that the style of the first part should be more concise and abrupt, that of the latter more diffuse and flowing; even if we do not make allowance for the influence of age.  But notwithstanding this difference between the two parts, both have the same general costume, and the same peculiar expressions and turns of thought, by which they are sufficiently marked as the productions of the same pen.  It should be added that the Hebrew of this second part of Isaiah is in general as pure as that of the first part.  The few Chaldaisms which it exhibits may be explained as belonging to the poetic diction.  Such Chaldaisms exist, moreover, in the earlier books.  “Some words, as seganim (princes, 41:25), may be explained by the intercourse of the Jews with the Assyrians in the days of Isaiah.”  Davidson’s Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 857.

8.  It has been shown that the arguments against the genuineness of this part of Isaiah (and by parity of reason against certain sections of the first part) have their ground in the denial of prophetic inspiration, and cannot endure the test of sober criticism.  The evidence, then, for the genuineness of these chapters remains in its full force, and it is of the most weighty character.  If we look to external testimony, there is the undeniable fact that, as far back as we can trace the history of the book of Isaiah, they have constituted an integral part of it.  They are recognized as such by Josephus (Antiq. 11. 1, 2); by Jesus the son of Sirach, in the book called Ecclesiasticus (48:24, 25); and always in the New Testament when quotations are made from them—­Matt. 3:3; 8:17; 12:17-21; Luke 3:4; 4:17-19; John 1:23; 12:38-41, where a quotation from the last part of Isaiah is joined with one from the first part; Acts