ISA'IAII, or the Prophecy of ISAIAH, a canonical book of the Old Testament, Isaiah is the first of the four great pro phets, the other three being Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The style of Isaiah is noblo, sublime and florid. Grotins calls him the Demosthenes of the He brews. }le had the advantage, above the other prophets, of improving his diction by conversing with men of the greatest learning and elocution; and this added a sublimity, force, and majesty to what he said. lie boldly reproved the vices of the age in which he lived, and openly displayed the judgments of God that threatened the Jewish nation; at the same time denouncing vengeance on the Assyrians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, Moabite:, Edomites, Syrians, and Ara bians, who were instrumental in inflict ing those judgments. He foretold the deliverance of the Jews from their cap tivity in Babylon, by the bands of Cyrus, king of Persia, a hundred years before it came to pass; but the most remarkable of his predictions are those concerning the Messiah, in which he not only foretold his coming in the flesh, but many of the great and memorable circumstances of his life and death. The whole, indeed,
bears the stamp of genius and true inspi ration.
rsis, one of the chief deities in the Egyptian mythology. By the Egyptians she was regarded as the sister or sister wife of Osiris, who concurred with her in the endeavor to polish and civilize their subjects; to teach them agriculture and other necessary arts of life. Among the higher, and more philosophical theolo gians, she was made the symbol of pan theistic divinity. By the people she was worshipped as the goddess of fecundity. The cow was sacred to her. She is repre sented variously, though most usually us a woman with the horns of a cow, and sometimes with the lotus on her head, and the sistrnm in her hand.