The description however that follows (Ezekiel xl.
&c.) of the new city and temple, with the sacrifices offered by "the priests the Levites, of the seed of Zadok," and the gate of the sanctuary for the prince (xliv.

3), and his elaborate account of the borders of the land (xlviii.

13-23), place the earnestness of Ezekiel's literalism in still clearer light.
The 72nd Psalm, by the splendour of its predictions concerning the grandeur of some future king of Judah, earns the title of Messianic, _because_ it was never fulfilled by any historical king.

But it is equally certain, that it has had no appreciable fulfilment in Jesus.
But what of the 11th of Isaiah?
Its portraiture is not so much that of a king, as of a prophet endowed with superhuman power.

"He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked." A Paradisiacal state is to follow .-- This general description _may_ be verified by Jesus _hereafter_; but we have no manifestation, which enables us to call the fulfilment a fact.
Indeed, the latter part of the prophecy is out of place for a time so late as the reign of Augustus; which forcibly denotes that Isaiah was predicting only that which was his immediate political aspiration: for in this great day of Messiah, Jehovah is to gather back his dispersed people from Assyria, Egypt, and other parts; he is _to reconcile Judah and Ephraim_, (who had been perfectly reconciled centuries before Jesus was born,) and as a result of this Messianic glory, the people of Israel "shall fly upon the shoulders of the _Philistines_ towards the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand on _Edom_ and _Moab_, and the children of _Ammon_ shall obey them." But Philistines, Moab and Ammon, were distinctions entirely lost before the Christian era .-- Finally, the Red Sea is to be once more passed miraculously by the Israelites, returning (as would seem) to their fathers' soil.