Matter, force, energy, ideas, time, space, law, freedom, cause, and the like are absolutely meaningless phrases, except in the light of our personal experience. They represent different departments of that experience which may be isolated for the purposes of special study, as we separate a word from its context, to trace its linguistic affinities, or pluck a flower from its roots, to examine the texture of its tissues. But when we come to discuss their ultimate relations to ourselves and one another, or in other words to philosophize about them, we must remember that they are only known to us in the last resort through the categories of our own personality, and can never be understood exhaustively till we know all that our personality implies. It follows that philosophy and science are, in the strict sense of the word, precisely as anthropomorphic as theology, since they are alike limited by the conditions of human personality and controlled by the forms of thought which human personality provides,"

There is here a keynote which needs very much to be sounded in the literature of sacrificial investigation. It may make a difference, almost world-wide, in our conception, to approach it thus from the interior, as against the mere history of the expression of the inner life. The latter will not be less interesting or any less important, as showing the forms of the thought, but it is in the personality of the worshipper, as the same can be discovered by psychological investigation, that we shall find the true rationale of his acts. If it be objected that it is too far removed from the objects of our study, and connecting with too many variations in human circumstances since then, the reply is, that we must simply trace worship, and the instincts connected with it, to the bottom, and divest ourselves of every addition which time and civilization have made. If it be not possible to do this, in examining the emotions of the human mind, in its adoration of its deity, it certainly will be impossible to find out the meaning of sacrifices by analyzing the entrails of slain beasts.

It is plain, from what has already been said, that whatever result is reached in this inquiry, will necessarily have a large place in determining what the prevailing conception of sacrifices should be, as we examine them in the Old Testament. If it should be developed that the human spirit gives unequivocal testimony to the effect that the consciousness of sin is arrived at apart from a legal or tribal consciousness, the inference that sacrifices have a necessarily expiatory character is in a fair way of establishment. But if, on the other hand, the consciousness of guilt is developed only in connection with the social life, and in response to social claims, wherein the deity is a partaker, that of course makes expiatory sacrifice in the beginning an impossibility. Or whether the ideas of divine wrath and expiation are necessarily corollary, in the worshipping mind, is another question. At all events, if the meaning of sacrifice is ever to become clear, the psychology of worship must first be explored and certain results obtained.

BOSTON, MASS.

A. A. BERLE.

ARTICLE VIII.

GENERAL AND CRITICAL NOTES.

THE ISAIAH CONTROVERSY.

If we are permitted to strike out "Cyrus" as a proper name, and insert, in lieu thereof, "K'ur'ush" or "Koresh" as a general term like Pharaoh, Tzar, or König, it would seem that the main argument for the plural theory of the authorship of Isaiah is removed.

But so to treat the term "Cyrus" is only to do what has already been done with "Tartan" and "Rabshakeh." They are not proper names, but designations of offices. The Revised Version so treats these names, and lays the foundation for similar treatment of "Cyrus" by its marginal reading "Koresh." Of course this argument cuts both ways. It not only overturns a main pillar of the hypothesis of discrete origin, but it gives the coup de main to the old argument for inspiration from the fact (asserted) that an individual Cyrus was called by name, by the prophet Isaiah, generations before he was born. But that was an inherently unworthy argument, since it put inspiration in the attitude of playing a game of historic bo-peep. Cyrus was not such a providential man, either generally or specifically, so far as the Jews were concerned, that he should be singled out as the solitary, or even the leading, instance of this sort of vaticination. On the face of the case Darius was as worthy of premonition as Cyrus.

If chapter xxxix. of Isaiah is good for anything as history, then, in the lifetime of the first Isaiah, Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon, made an alliance with Hezekiah, king of Judah. Sayce is authority for saying that at that time Merodach-baladan was in alliance with powers beyond the Tigris-(Kurushes?). Grant that the first Isaiah knew anything about the political combinations of his time, and you have a foundation laid for all that is said about a "Koresh." In his exultation in God, Isaiah cries out: "He saith of the deep, Be dry!" "He saith of a Koresh, You are my shepherd." The philosophy is " Man's extremity is God's opportunity"-a Koresh from beyond the Tigris can "perform all my pleasure." Out of general conditions special agencies will be found.

This treatment of the term "Cyrus" reduces the section xl.-lxxvi. to harmony with itself, for Cyrus is the solitary proper name in the whole section. Generalize this name, and you have taken away the force of the argument for a second Isaiah derived from the fact that the author seems personally acquainted with the historic Cyrus.

It is only necessary to suppose that Isaiah of Jerusalem, as Matthew Arnold calls him, knew what was going on about him to lay a foundation for this reference to a “ Koresh," or for any other coloring in respect to time or event of seemingly later date. Is it not better to emphasize Isaiah's knowledge more, and his subjective psychosis or inspiration less? Isaiah ought to be regarded as the Edmund Burke, the Daniel Webster, or the James G. Blaine of his time-a man who knew the forces working in his own nation, and in the nations round about, and whereto they tended.

When the Turks had taken Adrianople and the adjacent territory in Europe, it would not have required extraordinary mental processes to come to the conclusion that Constantinople must also fall; though it was a hundred years before that event happened. The problem before Isaiah in respect to Jerusalem was substantially the same after the fall of Samaria as that of Constantinople after the fall of Adrianople. Jerusalem must go the same way Samaria had gone. The power is in the east; Jerusalem is foredoomed; it is only a question of time when the end will

come.

As to the powers in Mesopotamia, or Babylonia, properly called, it is only a question of time, also, in regard to them, when their overthrow must come. East of the rivers was the coming power. The Persian stood to Nineveh and Babylon much as the Goth did to Greece and Rome when he was crowding on the Danube. The wild, strong men, in either case, stood facing the rivers, and it would scarcely take divine revelation, or even inspiration, to tell what would happen. The destiny was manifest. The strong son of the earth beyond the Tigris will bear sway over all. Jerusalem will fall, and Babylon will fall. Why not let Isaiah know something about these prophetic conditions, and let him speak out of his knowledge? So he may utter the decrees of God.

There are indications that Isaiah was a man of wide and close observation. "Ho, to the land rustling with wings, beyond the rivers of Ethiopia"-is a touch Isaiah could hardly have laid on his canvas had he not snared and speared fowl on the hills and in the lakes of Abyssinia, as they converge there for a winter home in their retreat from Europe and Armenia. If he had been to Abyssinia, there is no reason why he should not known about a Koresh beyond the Tigris, for probably he had ridden a camel in his retinue in Persia or Bactria. Widen out this man Isaiah--let him know something by observation and experience, and you have diminished the difficulty of interpreting the works that bear his name, and taken away the most of the force of the objections to their unity. We should make of him a greater man than we have hitherto allowed him to be. He was probably a cosmopolite in fact before he became such in theory. That is the natural order for development like his. One objection raised by some of the higher critics to the assignment of the section xl.-lxxvi. to Isaiah of Jerusalem is so simple as to be

charming. The objection is that Isaiah in the time of Hezekiah could not have treated of a return when no captivity had taken place. It is even laid down as a canon that prophecy can speak only in the future tense, not in the future perfect.

But it seems a little strange that divine inspiration cannot do as much as the natural faculties of man can; a little strange that it could not run along the grooves of those faculties. We have a future perfect tense and we are all as voluble in it as we are in the future. We use not only the future tense, but a future perfect and a paulo-post future perfect in vista unlimited. There are few of us in the United States who have lived half a century that did not long before the war prophesy the destruction of slavery, and then try our powers on the problems which were sure subsequently to arise. There is a goodly number, I imagine, who have not been deprived of the comfort of saying, "I told you so," with reference to something on the line of these subsequent problems. Furthermore, the objection is not intelligent. "Salvation by the remnant is a distinguishing element in the works of Isaiah of Jerusalem. To write the second section, xl.-lxxvi., he had only to elaborate a theme already burnt in upon his soul. The arguments for diversity of origin of the book of Isaiah from literary considerations, as style, etymology, are inconclusive. Three thousand years from this time it will probably be argued, from literary characteristics, that Tennyson could not have written "The Northern Farmer" and "In Memoriam."

But, no matter what the literary diversities may be, there is something that runs beneath them all and overcomes all their force. There is a psychological unity from i. to lxxvi. The essential ideas that underlie the works of the first Isaiah underlie the most of the second also. The scribes, if such there were, who put the works of these two men together and abolished one of them were certainly well witted. The essential ideas of the second Isaiah in the great Song of the Return are such as had been formulated over and over again by the first. The formula of the first Isaiah is,-captivity, return, consequences-universal righteousness. The formula of the second is,-captivity (assumed), return, consequences-universal righteousness. In both, the Messianic conception comes in as a means to the end involved in the universal ethical consequences. Suppose in one place the Messianic idea is of a king, in the other that of a servant-what of it? The two conceptions are not inherently inconsistent. It may be the function of a king sometimes to serve. "Ich Dien" is the motto of the Prince of Wales. A crown may be foredoomed to tragedy. There is no reason why the same mind might not have entertained even diverse ideas in different stages of its career, or developed now one function of a Messiah and now another. The conception of a king might suit "the fiery heart of youth"; something less forceful and strenuous, more spiritual, the pensiveness of mellow age. The two ideas are easily adjustable when viewed in the large indefinite

way in which they are treated by Isaiah. Why should not Isaiah of Jerusalem have sung the Song of the Return? He was so impenetrated with its idea that he named his son, "Shear-jashub," "Remnant shall return." Of all men of all time such a man was fittest to write this song. Section xl.-lxxvi. is merely "Shear-jashub" expanded. Why does not the rule here apply, that, when you have a sufficient cause for an effect, one more natural than any other, you can rest? The Song of the Return is wrought in miniature again and again in the first section.

It may safely be asserted that it would be a psychological impossibility for the Song of the Return to have been written at the time the captivity was verging to its close, without more marks of time, place, manner, and condition being left upon it. The total work is contemplative, indefinite, philosophical-such a work as one would write for an exigency conceived to lie in the future, not for one then pressing. So indefinite is this poem, that there is not a mark about it to tell where it was written, whether in Jerusalem, Babylon, or Damascus. It would be impossible for an old man even, writing at the time of the return or on the eve of its activity, not to have caught up some thrill from the pulse of the time, and to have made a call on the Jews for some specific acts that would tend to secure the success of the return.

Read this section to a camp of overland pioneers of '48 on the plains bound for California, or of '59 bound for Pike's Peak, and tell them it was a call upon a people to execute a journey under circumstances similar to their own, and you would get the reply, "Go to, now! There is nothing natural in all this; nothing that sounds of teamsters driving in the oxen. There is not even the primitive call in it to organize a company." And your critics would be right. From beginning to end there is not a thing about the section adapted to a living, pressing exigency.

Given a time when an "enterprise of great pith and moment" was crowding to the front, or was actually on the field, in view of its demands the very splendor of the section makes it profound and melancholy. Instead of hitting the exigency of the return, the Song of the Return always ricochets over the return to come down on the great universal ethical effects beyond. The work is such as a man would write who was contemplating a disaster to his nation, and yet could not give up the thought that there was something about that nation that would survive and ultimately bless all mankind. Isaiah had optimism enough about him to believe

"That good shall fall

At last, far off, at last to all,

And every winter change to spring."

But just what distinguishes Isaiah is the "far-offness" of his contemplated events. No man would be writing in this way in Jerusalem beleagured, or in Babylon with the invincible Cyrus bearing down upon or in possession of it. But a man would write in Isaiah's way who was contem