citement of prophets. This phrase of "the hand of the Lord" coming on the Extatic exprophets is descriptive of the species of excitement under which they gave forth their utterances, as if by the power of God specially acting on them. When "the hand of the Lord was on Elijah," it roused him to physical exertion; "and he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab," (who was on horseback,) "to the entrance of Jezreel" (1 Kings xviii. 46). Ezekiel imagined himself, on such an occasion, bodily transported. "So the Spirit lifted me up," he says, "and took me away; and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me" (Ezek. iii. 14). At other times the visitation introduces him to bewildering visions of a whirlwind, a fiery cloud, and creatures of monstrous form, and of a fiery being who lifts him up "between the earth and the heaven," and carries him elsewhere (Ezek. i. 3-14; viii. 1-4). The impulse thus induced becomes infectious. "And Saul sent messengers to take David; and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied." Saul sends in succession two more parties, who are similarly affected, and join in the prophesying (1 Sam. xix. 20, 21). Saul, we have seen, had himself been so carried away with the spirit of prophecy on joining a company thus engaged. The pro ing dreams or visions. Dreams, or visions of the night, were a vehicle for receiving Prophesythe prophetic power. "If there be a prophet among you, I through the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream "(Num. xii. 6). phet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully " (Jer. xxiii. 28). "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him," and then was revealed to him the coming bondage of his descendants in Egypt (Gen. xv. 12-14). "Balaam, the son of Beor, hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said; he hath said, which heard the words of God, and knew the knowledge of the most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open;" on which he bursts forth into a prophetic annunciation of the prosperity of Israel (Num. xxiv. 15-19). Jeremiah, after Extrava of pro phets. prophesying of the restoration of the Jews through two chapters, says, "Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me," showing that the whole communication had been given to him in a dream (Jer. xxxi. 26). "Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed; then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters," the result being his prophecy of four great kingdoms typified to him as four beasts (Dan. vii. 1). He has another such vision of wars between two powers represented to him in the forms of a ram and a goat butting at one another (viii. 1-7). And in the midst of other such revelations, he says, "Then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground" (x. 9). Zechariah also, when similarly uttering prophecies, tells us, "The angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep," on which he has further revelations (Zech. iv. 1). The excitable nature of the prophets led them, as might be gant action expected, to break out in extravagance of action as well as of words. Saul, in his fit of enthusiasm, "stripped off his clothes also," evidently as the others had done, "and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets" (1 Sam. xix. 24)? David, though a crowned monarch, "danced before the Lord with all his might," when bringing in the ark to the sound of music (2 Sam. vi. 14). Elijah, as we have already seen, girt himself and ran before Ahab's horse. Isaiah, in prosecution of his prophetic exhibitions, goes "unto the prophetess" and procreates children, to whom significant names are given. "Behold," he exclaims, "I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts" (Isa. viii. 3, 18), of which children we, however, hear no more. He dressed, it appears, in sackcloth, and on one occasion imagined he had received an order from God to throw off his clothing, and to go about naked for a term of years. "And the Lord said," he tells us, "like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot" (xx. 2-4); a sign, be it remarked, to be exhibited to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, rather than to the Israelites, and for which there is no recorded fulfilment. Ezekiel fancied that he devoured a roll inscribed with denunciations against his people. "Son of man," he thought it said to him, "be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold an hand was sent unto me; and lo, a roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll." Then he is told to go and communicate the words to the Israelites, but was at the same time warned, "the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee" (Ezek. ii. 8-10; iii. 1-7), so that the exhibition went for nothing. Afterwards, the spirit takes him up and carries him to the captives of his people by the river of Chebar. And he says, "I sat where they sat, and remained astonished among them seven days," at the close of which he receives further communications (iii. 14-16). His patience underwent a severer trial. He was told by his divine monitor to make a mock siege of Jerusalem with a tile and an iron pan. "This," it was said, "shall be a sign to the house of Israel," but scarcely of a description to impress them. And then he was required to lie three hundred and ninety days on his left side to represent that he was in some way bearing the sins of the house of Israel, and forty on his right side for the sins of Judah, each day signifying a year. And it was said, "behold, I will lay bands upon thee, and thou shalt not turn thee from one side to another, till thou hast ended the days of thy siege." And then his daily portion of food and drink was prescribed to him, and he was to bake it with human ordure, afterwards changed at his remonstrance to that of the cow (iv. 1-17). Here we have a representation of a siege of Jerusalem for the astounding period of four hundred and thirty years. By whom maintained it is not said, nor, of course, has there been any such fulfilment. Hosea imagined that to him was assigned the revolting task of raising up children, at one time from a harlot, at another from Extrava gant action of prophets. Eras of the prophets. prophesying of the resto sleep was sweet unto m fied to him as fo was I in a ground" ( and wa which ex T T ts on Israel, and which rous persons wh re ue of the form, while othe. dst of historic narrative an er certain of the prophets, such us, largely indulge. The stated prohave been handed down to us, are in but sixteen in number. In the New Tes ur evangelists record predictions attributed to the Apocalypse is devoted to the subject, as the the book, namely a Revelation, indicates. In a former conversation you showed that the writings of the Old Testament were apparently put into their present shape not earlier than the time of Ezra. How does such a conclusion bear upon the so-called prophecies as predictions made before the events described therein took place? S. Very decidedly. The prophecies relate to what was to befal the Jews as a nation, to judgments on other nations surrounding them, and to their expected Messiah. Taking the return from the captivity in Babylon, or the time of Ezra, as a standing point, much of the history had already been accomplished when the scriptures were made public by Ezra and Nehemiah. No announcement, consequently, of events that had then gone by, can be accepted as predictions of them before their occurrence, although put forward in the form of prophecies. It would be as if, in the present day, a book were issued, in the pages of which were introduced, as prophecies, events of the times of William the Conqueror or Charles the First. At what time did the stated prophets live? P. S. The earliest of these is Jonah, who is thought to have written about B.C. 862. No testimony for the Bible can, however, be deduced from his prophecy, for it consisted merely in a denunciation against Nineveh, which, even by his own showing, was not fulfilled. He professes to have been A apters i. to Transitions of Assyria Hezekiah, from times up rating his are embraced within the limits of a century. P.-I gather from what you tell me that prophecy must have induced prophecy; namely, that at certain periods, and there seem to have been but two such, and both of but limited extent, a spirit of prophesying arose and spread itself from man to man. Seeing the excitement to which these persons were subject, especially when in contact with one another, the thought naturally presents itself, that their predictions sprang from human influences of time and circumstance, and not from divine inspiration. Half of these prophets, for example, lived in or near the time of the captivity, which you have already noticed was one of religious ferment and literary activity, when just such effusions might be naturally expected. Is the authenticity of these writings beyond dispute? |