We have called his acquaintance with Scripture profound, and one peculiar way in which it manifests itself will bear out the assertion; for frequently it is the very spirit and essential aroma of the passage that he reproduces,
without making any use of the words themselves.
There are passages in his writings which we could not have understood but
for some acquaintance with the New Testament.
(“St George’s Day” 48)
The Commedia is not the only text to which references recur throughout MacDonald’s corpus.
From his first realistic novel, David Elginbrod (1863),Isaiah stands forth as a text of distinction.
Within Elginbrod, the fortieth chapter of Isaiah is read in its entirety three times. Not only is it
expressed upon each occasion that this is the favourite chapter of the saintly Elginbrod (a character based on MacDonald’s father [Greville 323]), but each time there is also a small exposition on some aspect of the Bible chapter. (4; 208; 367) It is arguable that the story itself is shaped by these expositions. The short story published the next year, “The Wow O’ Rivven”
(1864), ends with a significant quotation from Isaiah 60, which calls for the reader to reflect
anew upon the tale they have just heard. (189) In Annals the book of Isaiah is mentioned
several times, and at one point its fortieth chapter is emphasized again, exegeted at
considerable length, beginning with the words: “And the sermon I preached to myself and
through myself to my people, was that which the stars had preached to me.” (512) This Isaiah
sermon is a turning point in the novel, and is girded by several performances from Handel’s
Isaiah-inspired Messiah. In Wingfold reflection upon words of the prophet Isaiah is part of an
awakening for the curate (330), and paraphrases are scattered throughout the book.250 In the
midst of the great storm in Gibbie, Gibbie remembers the words of the prophet “Esaias,” and
thus we see how this story, too, is significantly shaped by the Old Testament text (202; Gibbie
is so frequently named a ‘prophet’ that it is hard to overlook the parallels). In What’s Mine’s
250 The word comfort, which begins Isaiah 40, appears in various forms 123 times throughout the novel – a few too many to be
Mine, the mother’s memory of her husband preaching from Isaiah 28 is a pivotal moment in
righting her relationship with her son and their land – just as in Isaiah, obedience to God and
relationship with the land are key themes. (306)In There and Back (1890) Isaiah’s vision is used
as a prism through which to better understand the change in the protagonist Richard. (415) In
Hope of the Gospel (1892), the book of Isaiah and the prophet himself are referenced frequently. At one point MacDonald gives careful emphasis to the fact that the text from which Christ
read aloud when returning to his home synagogue was Isaiah – thus identifying himself as
fulfilment of its prophecy. (63) Isaiah is, of course, the scriptural source for the character of
Lilith, who figures in MacDonald’s novel of the same name (1895), and whose name is also
given to a character in the short story “The Cruel Painter” (1864), and to a horse in Cumbermede
(1872). Such explicit references continue, and the implicit references are almost innumerable.
Isaiah is also frequently referred to in the Unspoken Sermons (I-1866; II-1885; III-1889). Greville
shows that the recitation of Isaiah is a habit that spanned his father’s lifetime: as a schoolboy
the young George regaled his friends with “a free metrical version of the 14th chapter of Isaiah”
(a lengthy chapter); and late in MacDonald’s life, according to a friend, “it was worth a journey
from London [to Italy] to hear [him] read the 43rd chapter of Isaiah: ‘The Divine Voice itself
seemed to come to us as he finished by saying, “Take it to yourself personally: what He said to
Jacob, He says to you.’”(Greville 61; 507)
MacDonald was not unique among Victorian writers in giving close attention to this book,
though his emphasis is extensive: Isaiah received substantial attention culturally. Handel’s
Messiah (largely based on excerpts from Isaiah, and emphasizing the fulfilment of this prophetic
text in the person of Christ) was experiencing a revival.251 Isaiah was dominant in many of the
era’s best-known hymns, including “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “O Come, O
Come Emmanuel.” (Sawyer 8) Isaiah 32:8 was used as a public epitaph by Queen Victoria, for
herself and Albert. Holman Hunt’s notorious paintings, such as The Shadow of Death and The
Scapegoat, referenced well-known Isaiah passages. The celebrity Victorian preacher Charles
Spurgeon, claiming that a verse from Isaiah had converted him, preached frequently from that
book. (148) Ruskin’s writings are littered with references to Isaiah, and he too could quote
extensively from it by heart. (Milbank 29) Maurice’s Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament,
251 Furthering this revived interest was The Works of John Newton (1820), which contains thirty-eight sermons featuring the
Handel libretto. (Sawyer 8) MacDonald referred to The Messiah in both sermons and novels, and Greville talks of “Handel’s Largo from the far Jerusalem” being used to draw to conclusion their evening services. (508) Louisa, who sang with her daughters in the Handel Choir of the Crystal Palace, famously pounded away at the Hallelujah chorus on a church organ during an earthquake in Bordighera. (Beinecke Archive letters; Greville 515) In The Elect Lady, Handel is described in performance: “I saw him with his white rapt face, looking like a prophet of the living God sent to speak out the heart of the mystery of truth!” (113)
published in 1852/3, gave an unperturbed response to heated discussions of Isaiah in the field of Biblical Criticism and Historical Critical Method. Matthew Arnold published four different
works commenting on Isaiah, making his own weighty contribution to the new Biblical study
methods, and moving the influence of those methods promptly into the classroom.252 He
explains the import of this pervasive Old Testament book: “Isaiah is styled the greatest of the prophets, the evangelical prophet, and St. Jerome calls him not so much a prophet as an evangelist, and Ambrose told Augustine to read his prophecies the first thing after his conversion, and this prophet is of all Old Testament writers the one far most quoted in the New.” (Prophecy 4)
That Isaiah was receiving such attention is not as unusual as it might at first seem. Long known
as the “fifth gospel,” it has always held a unique place as a text combining prophet, poet, and
evangelist. Even intratextually Isaiah has prominence because, as Arnold points out, “this
prophet is of all Old Testament writers the one far most quoted in the New.”(Prophecy 4) It is
essentially a polyphonic text. Amongst early Church Fathers Isaiah has noteworthy influence
on the writings of Augustine, and Jerome claims that it contains “all the mysteries of Christ.”253
(Sawyer 43, 48) In its role as Messianic prophecy and a call to Gentiles, ithas been a key text
for Chaucer, Dante, Dunbar, Milton, Bunyan, Herbert, Shakespeare, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Byrd, Bach, Pope, Byron, and Shelley – to name but a few. In the late eighteenth century
Robert Lowth’s Isaiah: a New Translation, ensured that the text remained of principal literary
interest. As widely read for Lowth’s introductory comments on the relation of prophetic and
poetic language as for the translation itself, this and Lowth’s other writings on Isaiah were
especially notable in their influence on Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Blake. That Isaiah the prophet was also a poet was a significant attraction to both pre-romantics and Romantics: a
model to imitate.254
Yet of special pertinence to the current discussion is the fact that, being a text of such historical and literary significance – the “fifth gospel”255 – and yet safely not a gospel, Isaiah
became the perfect test case for the Historical Critical Method. Its aptness was furthered by
252A Bible-Reading for Schools (Isaiah, Chapters 40-66), Arranged and Edited for Young Learners (1872); “Isaiah of Jerusalem,” an article
in Nineteenth Century 13 (April, May 1883); Isaiah XLLXVI, with the Shorter Prophecies Allied to It (1875); Isaiah of Jerusalem, in the
Authorized English Version with An Introduction, Corrections and Notes (1883).
253 Augustine translates Isaiah 7: 9 into the Greek as: “If you do not believe, you will not understand” – evoking both‘Princess’
books.
254 Coleridge makes use of Lowth’s translation in his 1795 lectures, and through Hugh Blair, Lowth’s thought on Isaiah also
influences Wordsworth’s Prelude. This distinction is not surprising as in his introduction Lowth reconsiders what is understood to be the basic elements of poetry – pointing out that for the Hebrews, poetry was not necessarily defined by meter or rhyme. (“Introduction” np)
the discussion over ‘Deutero-Isaiah.’ As scholars considered the possibility of the book actually having two authors (Trito-Isaiah yet to be proposed), many questions arose with regard to who had actually written the book, when it was written, the actual identity of those referred to in the text, explanations for apparent inconsistencies, and probable text sources. Many Victorians held the King James Version of the Bible in such high esteem that some were even unaware that it was a translation; resistance to a new translation was high amongst the general population. (McGrath 301, 302) That such questions challenged the accuracy of a long- accepted translation disturbed many people; that authorship might also be in question was plain heresy. Prominent public figures, such as George Eliot, John Ruskin, and Leslie Stephen lost their faith over some of these issues. Wrote Arnold: “This is what everyone sees to
constitute the special moral feature of our times: the masses are losing the Bible and its religion.”
(Dogma 175) In large part it seemed like the church was in a divide, either liberally welcoming this new and revolutionary trend in Biblical scholarship or closing conservative doors soundly. And in the midst of this weighted, vested discussion sat the non-conforming George
MacDonald, with his love of the book of Isaiah, and his insistence upon the importance of the
poesis within it.256
256 Should there be contention over discussing the story of Isaiah, rather than poem, it is important to remember that neither
form necessarily excludes the other – as discussed in relation to MacDonald and Sidney in footnote 5 of the Introduction. Only about a century prior to MacDonald did ‘novels’ begin to be published in non-verse form. For a specific defense of Isaiah
as narrative, see: “Is There a Narrative Substructure Underlying the Book of Isaiah?” by R.L. Routledge, Tyndale Bulletin (2004).