Prophets Sentence Examples

He does not discuss the possibility of successful resistance to the Chaldeans; he simply assumes that the attempt is foolish and wicked, and, like other prophets, he identifies his political programme with the will of God.

We know from many sources the prominence assigned to women prophets in the Phrygian church.

His extant commentaries (those on Canticles, on the Prophets, on the book of Psalms and on the Pauline epistles - the last the most valuable) are among the best performances of the fathers of the church.

Both these documents are considered to have originated in the Northern kingdom, Israel, where also in the 8th century appeared the prophets Amos and Hosea.

The Law and the Prophets being alone used in the services of the synagogue, there was no authorized version of the rest of the Canon.

Very important for the study of Midrashic literature are the Yalgut (gleaning) Shim`oni, on the whole Bible, the Yalqut Mekhiri, on the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs and Job, and the Midrash ha-gadhol, 2 all of which are of uncertain but late date and preserve earlier material.

The prophets taught that the national existence of the people was bound up with religious and social conditions; they were in a sense the politicians of the age, and to regard them simply as foretellers of the future is to limit their sphere unduly.

While the influence of the great prophets Elijah and Elisha is clearly visible, it is instructive to find that the south, too, has its 'share in the inauguration of the new era.

For the other books, the recognized Targum on the Prophets is that ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel (4th century ?), which originated in Palestine, but was edited in Babylonia, so that it has the same history and linguistic character as Onkelos.

Times of peace meant national disintegration and the lapse of Israel into the Canaanite local cults, which is interpreted by the redactor as the prophets of the 8th century would have interpreted it, viz.

The lifeand-death struggle between Israel and the Philistines in the reign of Saul called forth under Samuel's leadership a new order of " men of God," who were called " prophets " or divinely inspired speakers.'

Of this we have an interesting example in the vivid episode that preceded the battle of Ramoth-Gilead described in 1 Kings xxii., when Micaiah appears as the true prophet of Yahweh, who in his rare independence stands in sharp contrast with the conventional court prophets, who prophesied then, as their descendants prophesied more than two centuries later, smooth things.

This problem of religion was solved by Amos and by the prophets who succeeded him through a more exalted conception of Yahweh and His sphere of working, which tended to detach Him from His limited realm as a national deity.

The religion of the Hebrew race - properly the Jews - now enters on a new stage, for it should be observed that it was Amos, Isaiah and Micah - prophets of Judah - who laid the actual foundations.

The reaction into idolatry and Babylonian star worship in the long reign of Manasseh synchronized and was connected with vassalage 1 There is some danger in too strictly construing the language of the prophets and also the psalmists.

By the older prophets this judgment of God or " day of Yahweh " was never held to be far removed from the horizon of the present or the world in which they lived.

Duhm's Theologie der Propheten and Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel should also be consulted.

At the request of Mir `Alishirr, himself a distinguished statesman and writer, Mirkhond began about 1474, in the quiet convent of Khilasiyah, which his patron had founded in Herat as a house of retreat for literary men of merit, his great work on universal history, Rauzat-ussafa fi sirat-ulanbia walmuluk walkhulafa or Garden of Purity on the Biography of Prophets, Kings and Caliphs.

The northern kingdom cherished the institution of a monarchy, and in this, as in all great political events, the prophets took part.

The value of this external evidence for the history of Israel is enhanced by the fact that biblical tradition associates the changes in the thrones of Israel and Damascus with the work of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, but handles the period without a single reference to the Assyrian Empire.

We read the history from the point of view of prophets.

It is a new source which is here suddenly introduced, belonging apparently to a history of the Temple; it throws no light upon the relations between Judah with its priests and Israel with its prophets, the circumstances of the regency under the priest Jehoiada are ignored, and the Temple reforms occupy the first place in the compiler's interest.

Jehoash, it is said, turned away from Yahweh after the death of Jehoiada and gave heed to the Judaean nobles, " wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for their guilt," prophets were sent to bring them back but they turned a deaf ear.

If the latter actually occurred, the hostility of the Israelite prophets is only to be expected.

Seers and prophets of all kinds ranged from those who were consulted for daily mundane affairs to those who revealed the oracles in times of stress, from those who haunted local holy sites to those high in royal favour, from the quiet domestic communities to the austere mountain recluse.

A recollection of the manifold forms which religious life and thought have taken in Christendom or in Islam, and the passions which are so easily engendered among opposing sects, will prevent a one-sided estimate of the religious standpoints which the writings betray; and to the recognition that they represent lofty ideals it must be added that the great prophets, like all great thinkers, were in advance of their age.

In this crisis we meet with Isaiah (q.v.), one of the finest of Hebrew prophets.

But the details and success of the reforms, when viewed in the light of the testimony of contemporary prophets, are uncertain.

From this point of view, the desire to intensify the denudation of Palestine and the fate of its remnant, and to look to the Babylonian exiles for the future, can probably be recognized in the writings attributed to contemporary prophets.'

In Israel as in Judah the political disasters not only meant a shifting of population, they also brought into prominence the old popular and non-official religion, the character of which is not to be condemned because of the attitude of lofty prophets in advance of their age.

The prophets who had marked in the past the advent of Assyrians and Chaldeans now fixed their eyes upon the advance of Cyrus, confident that the fall of Babylon would bring the restoration of their fortunes.

The prophets address themselves to men living in comfortable abodes with olive-fields and vineyards, suffering from bad seasons and agricultural depression, and though the country is unsettled there is no reference to any active opposition on the part of Samaritans.

Tobiah and his son Johanan were related by marriage to Judaean secular and priestly families, and active intrigues resulted, in which nobles and prophets took their part.

It was insinuated that Nehemiah had his prophets to proclaim that Judah had again its own king; it was even suggested that he was intending to rebel against Persia!

The wild doctrines of Thomas Miinzer and the Zwickau prophets, merging eventually into the excesses of the Peasants' War and the doings of the Anabaptists in Minster, first roused Luther to the dangerous possibilities of mysticism as a disintegrating force.

In the Mandaean view the Old Testament saints are false prophets; such as Abraham, who arose six thousand years after NU (Noah) during the reign of the sun, Misha (Moses), in whose time the true religion was professed by the Egyptians, and Shlimun (Solomon) bar Davith, the lord of the demons.

The service opened with a procession of Old Testament characters, prophets, patriarchs and kings, together with heathen prophets, including Virgil, the chief figure being Balaam on his ass.

On the other hand, he came to look upon the Old Testament prophets as approved by their antiquity, sanctity, mystery and prophecies to be interpreters of the truth.

It is composed of figures of Christ, angels, prophets and saints, in Byzantine enamel run into gold plates.

The supernatural element that is prominent in the Old Testament is God's providential guidance and guardianship of His people, and His teaching and training of them by His prophets.

The history of Baalism among the Hebrews is obscured by the difficulty of determining whether the false worship which the prophets stigmatize is the heathen worship of Yahweh under a conception, and often with rites, which treated him as a local nature god; or whether Baalism was consciously recognized to be distinct from Yahwism from the first.

A pilgrimage feast must be fixed in date to ensure the simultaneous presence of the pilgrims. There are, besides, seeming references to the feast in the early prophets, as Hosea xii.

Such are the penalties exacted by the irony of fate for the world's persecution of its prophets.

To the latter belong views of the Antichrist, of the heathen worldpower, of the place, extent, and duration of the earthly kingdom of Christ, &c. These remained in a state of solution; they were modified from day to day, partly because of the changing circumstances of the present by which forecasts of the future were regulated, partly because the indications - real or supposed - of the ancient prophets always admitted of new combinations and constructions.

Some of them imitated the Hebrew prophets in the performance of symbolic acts of denunciation, foretelling or warning, going barefoot, or in sackcloth or undress, and, in a few cases, for brief periods, altogether naked; even women in some cases distinguished themselves by extravagance of conduct.

Although the character of the reforms throws remarkable light upon the condition of religion in Judah in the time of Josiah, it is to be observed that the writings of the contemporary prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) make it very questionable whether the narratives are thoroughly trustworthy for the history of the king's measures.

It is only since the 11th or 12th century that Kabbalah has become the exclusive appellation for the renowned system of theosophy which claims to have been transmitted uninterruptedly by the mouths of the patriarchs and prophets ever since the creation of the first man.

Yobai (the second century A.D.) of doctrines which God communicated to Adam in Paradise, and which have been received uninterruptedly from the mouths of the patriarchs and prophets.

While the priests developed the sacrificial ritual, it was the prophets that represented the theocratic element of the national life - they devoted themselves to their task with noteworthy persistence and ability, and their efforts were crowned with success; but their virtue of singlemindedness carried with it the defect of narrowness - they despised all peoples and all countries but their own, and were intolerant of opinions, held by their fellow-citizens, that were not wholly in accordance with their own principles.

He at the same time shows the Greeks that their own greatest philosophers and poets recognized the unity of the divine Being, and had caught glimpses of the true nature of God, but that fuller light had been thrown on this subject by the Hebrew prophets.

Sometimes he thinks that they came direct from God, like all good things, but he is also fond of maintaining that many of Plato's best thoughts were borrowed from the Hebrew prophets; and he makes the same statement in regard to the wisdom of the other philosophers.

The prophets themselves lay no weight upon the ark as the central point of Jerusalem's holiness.

The philosophy of history, by which Hebrew prophets could read a deep moral significance into national disaster and turn the flank of resistless attack, became one of the most important elements in the nation's faith.

The second book among the minor prophets in the Bible is entitled The word of Yahweh that came to Joel the son of Pethuel, or, as the Septuagint, Latin, Syriac and other versions read, Bethuel.

There are cogent reasons for placing Joel either earlier or later than the great series of prophets extending from the time when Amos first proclaimed the approach of the Assyrian down to the Babylonian exile.

But it is further obvious that Joel has no part in the internal struggle between spiritual Yahweh-worship and idolatry which occupied all the prophets from Amos to the captivity.

The book, therefore, must have been written before the ethico-spiritual and the popular conceptions of Yahweh came into conscious antagonism, or else after the fall of the state and the restoration of the community of Jerusalem to religious rather than political existence had decided the contest in favour of the prophets, and of the Law in which their teaching was ultimately crystallized.

The king is not mentioned - which on Credner's view is explained by assuming that the plague fell in the minority of Joash, when the priest Jehoiada held the reins of power - and the princes, councillors and warriors necessary to an independent state, and so often referred to by the prophets before the exile, are altogether lacking.

The earliest prophetic books have a quite different standpoint; otherwise indeed the books of northern prophets and historians could never have been admitted into the Jewish canon.

The other physical features of the great day, the darkening of the lights of heaven, are a standing figure of the prophets from Amos v.

Other prophets of the same age speak much of dearth and failure of crops, which in Palestine then as now were aggravated by bad government, and were far more serious to a small and isolated community than they could ever have been to the old kingdom.

In the judgment of the present writer however, the results of Old Testament study (particularly in the Prophets) since Professor Robertson Smith's death have shown that this theory is untenable.

In fact no progress can be expected in the accurate study of the prophets until the editorial activity both of the great prophets themselves and of their more reflective and studious successors is fully recognized.

Already in the opening passage mysterious voices are heard crying, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people"; the plural indicates that there were other prophets among the exiles besides the author of Isa.

They called their four original founders apostles and prophets - titles given also in the Key of Truth to the elect one.

On the other are such figures as the Hebrew prophets, distinguished by their hairy garment and by their denunciation of the luxury of both sexes.

The slighting references to it by the Christian fathers are no more an argument against its existence in the primitive church than the similar denunciations by the Jewish prophets of burnt-offerings and sacrifices are any proof that there were no such rites as the offering of incense, and of the blood of bulls and fat of rams, in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem.

The promises of Old Testament prophets that the Gentiles would share in the blessing of the coming of Christ are also recalled, ii.

The judgments predicted by the pre-exilic prophets had indeed been executed to the letter, but where were the promised glories of the renewed kingdom and Israel's unquestioned sovereignty over the nations of the earth ?

The message of the prophets was primarily a preaching of repentance and righteousness if the nation would escape judgment; the message of the apocalyptic writers was of patience and trust for that deliverance and reward were sure to come.

These events belonged in the main to the past, but the writer represented them as still in the future, arranged under certain artificial categories of time definitely determined from the beginning in the counsels of God and revealed by Him to His servants the prophets.

It is true that rival prophets were leading rebellions in various parts of Arabia, that the tax-collectors were not always paid, and that the warriors of the land were much distressed for want of work owing to the brotherhood of Arabs proclaimed by Mahomet.

Rather its contents came to him piecemeal and at various stages in his ministry as a Christian "prophet," extending over a period of years; and, like certain Old Testament prophets, he shows us how by his own experiences he became the medium of a divine message to his church and to God's " elect " people at large.

As the last of the four great prophets of the 8th century he undoubtedly contributed to that religious and ethical reformation whose literary monument is the Book of Deuteronomy.2 The remainder of the book bearing the name of Micah falls into two main divisions, viz.

And so he became a positive religious teacher by virtue of the very ideas that made the words of the Hebrew prophets so potent and sublime.

Her utterances were reduced to verse and edited by the prophets and the "holy men" (& oi.).

The history of Christian preaching with which alone this article is concerned has its roots (I) in the activity of the Hebrew prophets and scribes, the former representing the broader appeal, the latter the edification of the faithful, (2) in the ministry of Jesus Christ and His apostles, where again we have both the evangelical invitation and the teaching of truth and duty.

At a later time, when the validity of the Montanistic prophecy was called in question, the adherents of the new movement appealed explicitly to a sort of prophetic succession, in which their prophets had received the same gift which the daughters of Philip, for example, had exercised in that very country of Phrygia.

Not only did an extreme party arise in Asia Minor rejecting all prophecy and the Apocalypse of John along with it, but the majority cf the Churches and bishops in that district appear (c. 178) to have broken off all fellowship with the new prophets, while books were written to show that the very form of the Montanistic prophecy was sufficient proof of its spuriousness.

Every bond of intercourse was broken, and in the Catholic Churches the worst calumnies were retailed about the deceased prophets and the leaders of the societies they had founded.

The early Montanists (the prophets themselves) used expressions which seem to indicate a Monarchian conception of the person of Christ.

The orthodox party were known as the Cataproclans, the heterodox as Cataeschinites, and both appealed to the oracles of their prophets.

Other influences tending to diversity were the rise of later prophets and visionaries, the personality of prominent members of the sect (like Tertullian himself, who gave to Montanism much more than he received from it), and the power of local environment.

The method, by which the text was thus utilized as a vehicle for conveying homiletic discourses, traditional sayings, legends and allegories, is abundantly illustrated by the Palestinian and later Targums, as opposed to the more sober translations of Onkelos and the Targum to the Prophets.

The highest strains of the psalmists and the most fervent appeals of the prophets were progressively directed to the great end of praising and preaching the One true God, everlasting, with sincere and pure devotion.

And in One Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, who spake in the Prophets, 9.

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son], who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the Prophets, 9.

About this time the French prophets, Camisards, as they were called, attracted much attention by their extravagances and follies.

In this spirit he wrote commentaries upon portions of Aristotle, and upon the Summa of Aquinas, and towards the end of his life made a careful translation of the Old and New Testaments, excepting Solomon's Song, the Prophets and the Revelation of St John.

Aroused by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah the building was then resumed, and despite fresh attempts to hinder the work it was completed, consecrated and dedicated 1 References to I Esdras in this article are to the book discussed above as Ezra, Third Book Of.

At this time three prophets arrived from Zwickau, eager to hasten the movement of emancipation.

The prophets are not to be confined to these forms, but may "give thanks as much as they will."

Appoint therefore unto yourselves bishops and deacons, worthy of the Lord, men meek and uncovetous, and true and approved; for they also minister unto you the ministration of the prophets and teachers.

Therefore despise them not; for they are your honoured ones, together with the prophets and teachers."

Certainly the stage of development is an early one, as is shown, e.g., by the prominence of prophets, and the need that was felt for the vindication of the position of the bishops and deacons (there is no mention at all of presbyters); moreover, there is no reference to a canon of Scripture (though the written Gospel is expressly mentioned) or to a creed.

On the other hand the "apostles" of the second part are obviously not "the twelve apostles" of the title; and the prophets seem in some instances to have proved unworthy of their high position.

The custom of delivering expositions or comments more or less extemporaneous on the lessons of the day at all events passed over soon and readily into the Christian Church, as may be gathered from the first Apology (c. 67) of Justin Martyr, where we read that, in connexion with the practice of reading portions from the collected writings of the prophets and from the memoirs of the apostles, it had by that time become usual for the presiding minister to deliver a discourse in which "he admonishes the people, stirring them up to an imitation of the good works which have been brought before their notice."

Among his works are The Book of Isaiah (2 vols., 1888-1890); The Book of the Twelve Prophets (2 vols., 1876-1877); Historical Geography of the Holy Land (1894); Jerusalem (2 vols., 1907); The Preaching of the Old Testament to the Age (1893); The Life of Henry Drummond (1898).

All these set forth in their symbolical books the supreme place of Scripture, accepting the position which Zwingli laid down in 1536 in The First Helvetic Confession, namely, that "Canonic Scripture, the Word of God, given by the Holy Spirit and set forth to the world by the Prophets and Apostles, the most perfect and ancient of all philosophies, alone contains perfectly all piety and the whole rule of life."

The other prophets of the same order may be presumed to have been hardly less unsuccessful.

Bib., " Amos," and the introduction to Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel (2), though in some cases the final decision will have to be preceded by a more thorough examination of the traditional text.

The German commentaries on the Minor Prophets by Nowack (2nd ed., 1903) and (especially) Marti (1904) must not, however, be neglected.

Thus the pre-exilic literature, as we now have it, has little to say about angels or about superhuman beings other than Yahweh and manifestations of Yahweh; the pre-exilic prophets hardly mention angels.

It is much more reasonable to believe that each part of the world has its own special deity; prophets and supernatural messengers had forsooth appeared in more places than one.

He pours scorn upon the exorcists - who were clearly in league with the demons themselves - and upon the excesses of the itinerant and undisciplined "prophets" who roam through cities and camps and commit to everlasting fire cities and lands and their inhabitants.

It is therefore probable that in other cases than those of Isaiah and Jehu the writings of, or rather, about the prophets which are cited in Chronicles were known only as parts of the great "book of the Kings."

Just as the Gathas (the ancient Zoroastrian hymns) omit Gaokerena, and the Hebrew prophets on the whole avoid mythological phrases, so this old Hebrew thinker prunes the primitive exuberance of the traditional myth.

The Adam-story is plainly of foreign origin, and could not please the greater pre-exilic prophets.

His pastoral character is recognized in the 1 Note the prestige of martyrs and confessors, the ways of true and false prophets in Mand.

Thus both are hortatory writings, the one argumentative in form, the other prophetic, after the manner of later Old Testament prophets whose messages came in visions and similitudes.

The ignorant populace, for whom the promised social millennium had by no means dawned, saw in an attitude seemingly so inconsistent obvious proof of corrupt motives, and there were plenty of prophets of misrule to encourage the delusion - orators of the clubs and the street corners, for whom the restoration of order would have meant well-deserved obscurity.

It was naturally to the apostles, prophets and teachers, its most spiritual men, that the Church looked first for direction and control in all these matters.

We see from I Kings xviii., 2 Kings x., that great Baal temples had two classes of ministers, kohanim and nebhiim, " priests " and " prophets," and as the former bear a name which primarily denotes a soothsayer, so the latter are also a kind of priests who do sacrificial service with a wild ritual of their own.

It is instructive to observe how differently the prophets of the 8th century speak of the judicial or " teaching " functions of the priests and of the ritual of the great sanctuaries.

The Canaanite influence on the later organization of the Temple is clearly seen in the association of Temple prophets with the Temple priests under the control of the chief priest, which is often referred to by Jeremiah; even the viler ministers of sensual worship, the male and female prostitutes of the Phoenician temples, had found a place on Mt Zion and were only removed by Josiah's reformation.'

So fundamental a change as lies between Hosea and the Priestly Code was only possible in the general dissolution of the old life of Israel produced by the Assyrians and by the prophets; and indeed the new order did not take shape as a system till the exile had made a great change in old institutions.

Nevertheless, the concentration of all ritual at a single point, and the practical exclusion of laymen from active participation in it - for the old sacrificial feast had now shrunk into entire insignificance in comparison with the stated priestly holocausts and atoning rites2 - lent powerful assistance to the growth of a new and higher type of personal religion, the religion which found its social expression not in material acts of oblation, but in the language of the Psalms. In the best times of the old kingdom the priests had shared the place of the prophets as the religious leaders of the nation; under the second Temple they represented the unprogressive traditional side of religion, and the leaders of thought were the psalmists and the scribes, who spoke much more directly to the piety of the nation.

The existence of this degraded class up to the Exile throws considerable light upon the phraseology of the prophets in referring to idolatry as adultery and the scenes connected with it as prostitution.

The threefold division of the canon just given is recognized in the Talmud, and followed in all Hebrew MSS., the only difference being that the books included in the Latter Prophets and in the Hagiographa are not always arranged in the same order.

The expansion of the Talmudic twenty-four to the thirty-nine Old Testament books of the English Bible is effected by reckoning the Minor Prophets one by one, by separating Ezra from Nehemiah, and by subdividing the long books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles.

The Proverbs of Jesus, the son of Sirach (c. 200 B.C.), which form now the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, were translated into Greek by the grandson of the author at about 130 B.C.; and in the preface prefixed by him to his translation he speaks of " the law, and the prophets, and the other books of our fathers," and again of " the law, and the prophets, and the rest of the books," expressions which point naturally to the same threefold division which was afterwards universally recognized by the Jews.

Another allusion to the tripartite division is also no doubt to be found in the expression " the law, the prophets, and the psalms," in Luke xxiv.

A collection of sacred books, including in particular the prophets, is also referred to in Dan.

The Law was the first part to be definitely recognized as authoritative, or canonized; the " Prophets " (as defined above) were next accepted as canonical; the more miscellaneous collection of books comprised in the Hagiographa was recognized last.

As distinguished from the Priestly Narrative (to be mentioned presently), it has a distinctly prophetical character; it treats the history from the standpoint of the prophets, and the religious ideas characteristic of the prophets often find expression in it.

A number of narratives, evidently written by prophets, and in many of which also (as those relating to Elijah, Elisha and Isaiah) prophets play a prominent part, and a series of short statistical notices, relating to political events, and derived probably from the official annals of the two kingdoms (which are usually cited at the end of a king's reign), have been arranged together, and sometimes expanded at the same time, in a framework supplied by the compiler.

The writings of the canonical prophets form another important element in the Old Testament, also, like the historical books, of gradual growth.

The activity of the prophets was largely called forth by crises in the national history.

The two earliest of the Minor Prophets, Amos and Hosea, prophesied in the northern kingdom, at about 760 and 740 B.C. respectively; both foresaw the approaching ruin of northern Israel at the hands of the Assyrians, which took place in fact when Sargon took Samaria in 722 B.C.; and both did their best to stir their people to better things.

That the interval which elapsed before the Prophets and the Hagiographa were also translated was no great one is shown by the prologue to Sirach which speaks of " the Law, the Prophets and the rest of the books," as already current in a translation by 132 B.C. The date at which the various books were combined into a single work is not known, but the existence of the Septuagint as a whole may be assumed for the 1st century A.D., at which period the Greek version was universally accepted by the Jews of the Dispersion as Scripture, and from them passed on to the Christian Church.

There is little noticeable in Hobbes' dating of the prophets, though he considers it " not apparent " whether Amos wrote, as well as composed, his prophecy, or whether Jeremiah and the other prophets of the time of Josiah and Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai and Zechariah, who lived in the captivity, edited the prophecies ascribed to them.

The starting-point of this newer criticism of the prophets is the clearer practical recognition of the fact that all pre-exilic prophecy has come down to us in the works of post-exilic editors, and that for the old statement of the problem of the prophetic books - What prophecies or elements in Isaiah, Jeremiah and the rest are later than these prophets ?

From 1875 onwards Smith contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica a long series of important articles, which, together with the articles of Cheyne, Wellhausen and others, made that work an important factor in the change which was to pass over English thought in regard to the Bible; in 1878, by his pleadings in the trial for heresy brought against him on the ground of these articles, he turned a personal defeat in the immediate issue into a notable victory for the cause which led to his condemnation; and subsequently (in 1880), in two series of lectures, afterwards published 2 and widely read, he gave a brilliant, and, as it proved, to a rapidly increasing number a convincing exposition of the criticism of the literature, history and religion of Israel, which was already represented in Germany 2 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881); The Prophets of Israel (1882).

When the enterprise of Christian missionaries had gone on for some little time, especially in the regions outside Palestine where there was little or no previous knowledge of Christ and of Christian ideals, the wandering prophets and apostles by whom the missions were mainly conducted must have soon begun to feel the need for some sort of written manual to supplement their own personal teaching.

The moment of transition is clearly marked in the Didache, where the charismatic ministry of " apostles and prophets " is beginning to give place to permanent local officials of the Church, bishops, presbyters and deacons.

The lives and actions of apostles and prophets were in their general tenor like those of other men; it was only that, for the particular purpose of their mission, they found themselves carried beyond and above themselves.

As the words of prophets and lawgivers had from the first carried their own authority with them under the Old Covenant, so from the first the words of Christ needed no commendation from without under the New.

According to Strauss the fulfilments of prophecy in the New Testament arise from the Christians' belief that the Christian Messiah must have fulfilled the predictions of the prophets, and the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament either originate in the same way or are purely mythical embodiments of Christian doctrines.

A brief sketch will be given (I) of the history of Hebrew prophecy (in supplement to what has been already said in the article Hebrew Religion or is to be found in the articles devoted to individual prophets), and (2) of prophecy in the early Christian Church.

With the prophets it is quite otherwise; they appear not individually but in bands; their prophesying is a united exercise accompanied by music, and seemingly dance-music; it is marked by strong excitement, which sometimes acts contagiously, and may be so powerful that he who is seized by it is unable to stand, 2 and, though this condition is regarded as produced by a divine afflatus, it is matter of ironical comment when a prominent man like Saul is found to be thus affected.

In its external features the new phenomenon was exceedingly like what is still seen in the East in every zikr of dervishes - the enthusiasm of the prophets expressed itself in no artificial form, but in a way natural to the Oriental temperament.

In the latter passage read "they saw the fervour of the prophets as they prophesied, &c."

But we know that there were nebhiim among the Canaanites; the "prophets" of Baal appear in the history of Elijah as men who sought to attract their god by wild orgiastic rites.

Clear indications of a primitive magical modus operandi appear as survivals in the narratives of the pre-exilian prophets.

And so, though we cannot follow the steps of the process, we are not surprised to learn that they soon had an established footing in Israel, and that the prophets came to be recognized as a standing sacred element in society.

It is far from easy to determine how far the development of the class of prophets meant the absorption into it of the old seers.

The rise of this function of the prophets is plainly parallel with the change which took place under the kings in the position of the priestly oracle; the Torah of the priests now dealt rather with permanent sacred ordinances than with the giving of new divine counsel for special occasions.

Yahweh's ever-present kingship in Israel, which was the chief religious idea brought into prominence by the national revival, demanded a more continuous manifestation of His revealing spirit than was given either by the priestly lot or by the rise of occasional seers; and where could this be sought except among the prophets?

It does not, of course, follow that everyone who had shared in the divine afflatus of prophetic enthusiasm gave forth oracles; but the prophets as a class stood nearer than other men to the mysterious workings of Yahweh, and it was in their circle that revelation seemed to have its natural home.

A most instructive passage in this respect is i Kings xxii., where we find some four hundred prophets gathered together round the king, and where it is clear that Jehoshaphat was equally convinced, on the one hand, that the word of Yahweh could be found among the prophets, and on the other that it was very probable that some, or even the mass of them, might be no better than liars.

Again, Moses differs from all other prophets in that Yahweh speaks to him face to face, and he sees the similitude of Yahweh.

Since the absorption of the aborigines in Israel Canaanite ideas had exercised great influence over the sanctuaries - so much so that the reforming prophets of the 8th century regarded the national religion as having become wholly heathenish; and this influence the ordinary prophets, whom a man like Micah regards as mere diviners, had certainly not escaped.

They too were, at the beginning of the Assyrian period, not much more different from prophets of Baal than the priests were from priests of Baal.

The rise and progress of the new school of prophecy, ' beginning with Amos and continued in the succession of canonical prophets, which broke through this religious stagnation, is Amos discussed in the article Hebrew Religion; for from Amos, and still more from Isaiah downwards, the Successors.

From this time, moreover, the prophets appear as authors; and their books, preserved in the Old Testament, form the subject of special articles (Amos, Hosea, &c.).

Amos disclaimed all connexion with the mere professional prophets, and in this he was followed by his successors.

Formerly the prophets of Yahweh had been all on the same side; their opponents were the prophets of Baal.

But henceforth there were two parties among the prophets of Yahweh themselves, the new prophets accusing the old of imposture and disloyalty to Yahweh, and these retaliating with charge of disloyalty to Israel.

Amos still has frequent visions cf a more or less enigmatic character, as Micaiah had, but there is little trace of this in the great prophets after him.

But the false prophets were by no means mere common impostors; they were the accredited exponents of the common orthodoxy of their day, for the prophets who opposed Jeremiah took their stand on the ground of the prophetic traditions of Isaiah, whose doctrine of the inviolability of Yahweh's seat on Zion was the starting-point of their opposition to Jeremiah's predictions of captivity.

No doubt there were many conscious hypocrites and impostors among the professional prophets, as there always will be among the professional representatives of a religious standpoint which is intrinsically untenable, and yet has on its side the prestige of tradition and popular acceptance.

But on the whole the false prophets deserve that name, not for their conscious impostures, but because they were content to handle religious formulas, which they had learned by rote, as if they were intuitive principles, the fruit of direct spiritual experience, to enforce a conventional morality, shutting their eyes to glaring national sins, after the manner of professional orthodoxy, and, in brief, to treat the religious status quo as if it could be accepted without question as fully embodying the unchanging principles of all religion.

The popular faith was full of heathenish superstition strangely blended with the higher ideas which were the inheritance left to Israel by men like Moses and Elijah; but the common prophets accepted all alike, and combined heathen arts of divination and practices of mere physical enthusiasm with a not altogether insincere pretension that through their professional oracles the ideal was being maintained of a continuous divine guidance of the people of Yahweh.

It is sometimes proposed to view the canonical prophets as simple preachers of righteousness; their predictions of woe, we are told, are conditional, and tell what Israel must suffer if it does not repent.

The current theological formula for this two-sided position is that the prophets are at once preachers of the law and forerunners of the gospel; and, as it is generally assumed that they found the law already written, their originality and real importance is made to lie wholly in their evangelical function.

But in reality as has been shown in the article on Hebrew Religion, the prophets are older than the law, and the part of their work which was really epoch-making for Israel is just the part which is usually passed over as unimportant.

To the prophets knowledge of God is concrete knowledge of the divine character as shown in acts - knowledge of a person, not of an idea.

But till this was realized Isaiah was right in teaching that the law of continuity demanded that the nation within which Yahweh had made Himself known to His spiritual prophets must be maintained as a nation for the sake of the glory of God and the preservation of the "remnant."

The immediate result of Josiah's reformation was the complete dissolution of anything that could be called a political party of prophetic ideas; the priests and the ordinary prophets were satisfied with what had been accomplished; the old abuses began again, but the nation had received a reformed constitution and there was nothing more to be said.

The New Testament joins on not to the post-exile prophets, who are only faint echoes of earlier seers, but to Jeremiah's great idea of the new covenant in which God's law is written on the individual heart, and the community of faith is the fellowship of all to whom He has thus spoken.

The prophets of the restoration are only the last waves beating on the shore after the storm which destroyed the old nation, but created in its room a fellowship of spiritual religion, had passed over; they resemble the old prophets in the same imperfect way in which the restored community of Jerusalem resembled a real nation.

The theodicea of the prophets is national; they see Yahweh's righteousness working itself out with unmistakable clearness in the present, and know that all that He brings upon Israel is manifestly just; but from the days of Jeremiah' the fortunes of Israel as a nation are no longer the one thing which religion has to explain; the greater question arises of a theory of the divine purpose which shall justify the ways of God with individual men or with His "righteous servant" - that is, with the ideal community of true faith as distinct from the natural Israel.

But the claim' to speak in the name of God is one which has often been made - and made sincerely - by others than the prophets of Israel, and which is susceptible of a great variety of meanings, according to the idea of God and His relation to man which is presupposed.

It is true that the prophets absorbed the old seers, and that the Israelites, as we see in the case of the asses of Kish, went to their seers on the same kind of occasions as sent heathen nations to seers or diviners.

There is sufficient evidence that down to the last age of the Judaean monarchy practices not essentially different from divination were current in all classes of society, and were often in the hands of men who claimed to speak as prophets in the name of Yahweh.

But the great prophets disallowed this claim, and the distinction which they draw between true prophecy and divination is recognized not only in the prophetical law of Deuteronomy but in earlier parts of the Pentateuch and historical books.

And so too with the following great prophets; the important thing in their work was not their moral earnestness and not their specific predictions of future events, but the clearness of spiritual insight with which they read the spiritual significance of the signs of the time and interpreted the movements of history as proofs of Yahweh's actual moral sovereignty exercised over Israel.

So long as the great problems of religion could be envisaged as problems of the relation of Yahweh to Israel as a nation the prophets continued to speak and to bring forth new truths; but the ultimate result was that it became apparent that the idea of moral government involved the destruction of Israel, and then the function of prophecy was gone because it was essentiall y national in its objects.

In this as in all other matters of transcendental truth "wisdom is justified of her children"; the conclusive vindication of the prophets as true messengers of God is that their work forms an integral part in the progress of spiritual religion, and there are many things in their teaching the profundity and importance of which are much clearer to us than they could possibly have been to their contemporaries, because they are mere flashes of spiritual insight lighting up for a moment some corner of a region on which the steady sun of the gospel had not yet risen.

A less complete but yet most powerful vindication of the spiritual prophets was furnished by the course and event of Israel's history.

Thenceforth the religion of Yahweh and the religion of the prophets are synonymous; no other reading of Israel's past was possible, and in fact the whole history of the Hebrews in Canaan, as it was finally shaped in the exile, is written from this point of view, and has come down to us, along with the remains of actual prophetic books, under the collective title of "The Prophets."

To some extent this historical vindication of the prophetic insight went on during the activity of the prophets themselves.

From the time of Amos downwards the prophets spoke mainly at great historical crises, when events were moving fast and a few years were often sufficient to show that they were right and their opponents wrong in their reading of the signs of the times.

And here the controversy did not turn on the exact fulfilment of detailed predictions; detailed prediction occupies a very secondary place in the writings of the prophets.

The prophets themselves required no historical verification of their word to assure them that it was indeed the word of God, nor do they for a moment admit that their contemporaries are entitled to treat its authority as unproved till such verification is offered.

The mass of the nation, of course, was always much more struck by the "signs" and predictions of the prophets than by their spiritual ideas; we see how the idea of supernatural insight and power in everyday matters dominates the popular conception of Elijah and Elisha in the books of Kings.

So too all the old national heroes and heroines ultimately became prophets; in the case of Deborah there is even a fusion in local tradition between an old heroine and an historical seer.

But these teachers did not succeed in accomplishing a task parallel to what the Hebrew prophets achieved, namely, the complete renewal and elevation of the Hebrew religion from a local and national into a universal and ethical religion.

Johns (Interpreter, April 1 9 06, "The Prophets of Babylonia") thinks that longer discourses moral, and predictive, fully equal to those of the Hebrew prophets, existed in Babylonia as early as the 3rd millennium B.C. but were curtailed into the brief sentences of the omen tablets.

The first requisite of real progress, after dogmatic prejudices had been broken through, was to get a living conception of the history in which the prophets moved; and this again called for a revision of all traditional notions as to the age of the various parts of Hebrew literature - criticism of the sources of the history, among which the prophetical books themselves take the first place.

In recent times therefore advance in the understanding of the prophets has moved on pari passu with the higher criticism, especially the criticism of the Pentateuch, and with the general study of Hebrew history; and most works on the subject prior to Ewald must be regarded as quite antiquated except for the light they cast on detailed points of exegesis.

On the theology of the prophets there is a separate work by Duhm (Bonn, 1875), and Knobel's Prophetismus der Hebraer (1837), is a separate introduction to the prophetical books.

Until recently it was impossible to form any distinct idea of the Christian prophets in the post-apostolic age, not so much from want of materials as because what evidence existed was not sufficiently clear and connected.

The prophets not only consoled and exhorted by the recital of what God had done and by predictions of the future, but they uttered extempore thanksgivings in the congregational assemblies, and delivered special directions, which might extend to the most minute details, as, for example, the disposal of the church funds.

From three quarters primitive Christian prophecy was exposed to danger - first, from the permanent officials of the congregation, who, in the interests of order, peace and security could not but look with suspicion on the activity of excited prophets; second, from the prophets themselves, in so far as an increasing number of dishonest characters was found amongst them, whose object was to levy contributions on the churches; I.

Even the author of the OcOaxrt finds it necessary to defend the prophets who practised celibacy and strict asceticism against the depreciatory criticism of church members.

The necessity of resisting the inexorable demands of the prophets led to the introduction of new rules for distinguishing true and false prophets.

No prophet, it was declared, could speak in ecstasy, that was devilish; further, only false prophets accepted gifts.

Both canons were innovations, designed to strike a fatal blow at prophecy and the church organization re-established by the prophets in Asia - the bishops not being quite prepared to declare boldly that the Church had no further need of prophets.

But the prophets would not have been suppressed by their new methods of judging them alone.

It was now taught that prophecy in general was a peculiarity of the Old Testament ("lex et prophetae usque ad Johannem"); that in the new covenant God had spoken only through apostles; that the whole word of God so far as binding on the Church was contained in the apostolic record - the New Testament; 2 and that, consequently, the Church neither required nor could acknowledge new revelations, or even instructions, through prophets.

A great many things had to be sacrificed to this, and amongst others the old prophets.

The strictly enforced episcopal constitution, the creation of a clerical order, and the formation of the New Testament canon accomplished the overthrow of the prophets.

After the beginning of the 3rd century there were still no doubt men under the control of the hierarchy who experienced the prophetic ecstasy, or clerics like Cyprian who professed to have received special directions from God; but prophets by vocation no longer existed and these sporadic utterances were in no sense placed on a level with the contents of the sacred Scriptures.

It was derived directly from the times of primitive Christianity; from the Saviour himself and his disciples and friends, with whom they claimed to be connected by a secret tradition, or else from later prophets, of whom many sects boasted.

The prophets are to give thanks as they like at these " breakings of bread," without being restricted to the prayers here set forth.

The prophets who normally preside over the Suppers are called " your high-priests," and receive from the faithful the first-fruits of the winepress and threshingfloor, of oxen and sheep, and of each batch of new-made bread, and of oil.

In the course of history the demons sought to bind men to themselves by means of sensuality, error and false religions (among which is to be reckoned above all the religion of Moses and the prophets), while the spirits of light carried on their process of distillation with the view of gaining the pure light which exists in the world.

To this end prophets, preachers of true knowledge, have been sent into the world.

Mani, following the example of the gnostic Jewish Christians, appears to have held Adam, Noah, Abraham (perhaps zoroaster and Buddha) to be such prophets.

As for his theology, its leading factors were - (i.) the teachings of the apologists; (ii.) the philosophy of the Stoics; (iii.) the rule of faith, interpreted in an anti-Gnostic sense, as he had received it from the Church of Rome; (iv.) the Soteriological theology of Melito and Irenaeus; (v.) the substance of the utterances of the Montanist prophets (in the closing decades of his life).

The hope of the advent of an ideal king was only one feature of that larger hope of the salvation of Israel from all evils, which was constantly held forth by all the prophets, from the time when the seers of the 8th century B.C. proclaimed that the true conception of Yahweh's relation to His people could become a practical reality only through a great deliverance following a sifting judgment of the most terrible kind.

The idea of a judgment so severe as to render possible an entire breach with the guilty past is common to all the prophets, but is expressed in a great variety of forms and images.

As a rule the prophets directly connect the final restoration with the removal of the sins of their own age; to Isaiah the last troubles are those of Assyrian invasion, to Jeremiah the restoration follows on the exile to Babylon, to Daniel on the overthrow of the Greek monarchy.

To the prophets the kingship of Yahweh was not a mere ideal, but an actual reality.

Its full manifestation indeed, to the eye of sense and to the unbelieving world, lay in the future; but true faith found a present stay in the sovereignty of Yahweh, daily exhibited in providence and interpreted to each generation by the voice of the prophets.

But when the prophets were succeeded by the scribes, the interpreters of the written word, and the yoke of foreign oppressors rested on the land, Yahweh's kingship, which presupposed a living nation, found not even the most inadequate expression in daily political life.

As time went on and even the dynasty of David failed in the persons of unworthy representatives to maintain this ideal, both psalmists and prophets taught the people to look beyond the earthly kingdom to the spiritual kingdom of which it was a type.

Is the authority of the church manifested in the decisions which a local church arrives at by a majority of votes, or in the decisions of apostles and prophets after taking counsel, of the episcopate in later times, ratified by common consent of Christendom?

The custom, which is ultimately based on the penance of "sackcloth and ashes" spoken of by the prophets of the Old Testament, has been dropped in those of the reformed Churches which still observe the fast; but it is retained in the Roman Catholic Church, the day being known as dies cinerum (day of ashes) or dies cineris et cilicii (day of ash and sackcloth).

They declared Christ to be the Son of God only through grace like other prophets, and that the bread and wine of the eucharist were not transformed into flesh and blood; that the last judgment would be executed by God and not by Jesus; that the images and the cross were idols and the worship of saints and relics idolatry.

The old sacrificial hymns were probably obscene and certainly nonsensical, and the substitution for them of the psalms, and of lections of the prophets and New Testament, was an enormous gain.

The conception of the "Day of the Lord" is frequent and prominent in the prophets, and the sense given to the phrase by the people and by the prophets throws into bold relief the contrast between popular beliefs and the prophetic faith.

The prophets had an ethical conception of Yahweh; the sin of His own people and of other nations called for His intervention in judgment as the moral ruler of the world.

In the pre-exilic prophets the judgment of God is "primarily on Israel, although it also embraces the nations"; during the Exile and at the Restoration the judgment is represented as falling on the nations while redemption is being wrought for God's people; after the Restoration the people of God is again threatened, but still the warning of judgment is mainly directed towards the nations and deliverance is promised to Israel.

As a day of judgment it is accompanied by terrible convulsions of nature (not to be taken figuratively, but probably intended literally by the prophets in accordance with their view of the absolute subordination of nature to the divine purpose for man).

The first was on Chronicles, then followed one on the Psalms, and finally his exegetical masterpiece - the commentary on the prophets.

The explanation is to be found within Israel itself, in factors which succeeded in re-shaping existing material and in imprinting upon it a durable stamp, and these factors, as biblical tradition recognizes, are to be found in the work of the prophets.

That the book of Ruth did not originally form part of the series of "Former Prophets" (Joshua - Kings) is further probable from the fact that it is quite untouched by the process of "prophetic" or "Deuteronomistic" editing, which helped to give that series its present shape after the fall of the kingdom of Judah.

Its effect upon the false prophets was to increase their frenzy.

In striking contrast to the "vain repetitions" of the false prophets are the simple words with which Elijah makes his prayer to Yahweh.

Besides, it is the work of Mahomet, and as such is fitted to afford a clue to the spiritual development of that most successful of all prophets and religious personalities.

The same mode of address is familiar to us from the prophets of the Old Testament; the human personality disappears, in the moment of inspiration, behind the God by whom it is filled.

But all the greatest of the Hebrew prophets fall back speedily upon the unassuming human " I "; while in the Koran the divine " I " is the stereotyped form of address.

We are reminded of the greatness, the goodness, the righteousness of God as manifested in Nature, in history, and in revelation through the prophets, especially through Mahomet.

From the mass of material comprised in the Koran - and the account we have given is far from exhaustive - we should select the histories of the ancient prophets and saints Narratives.

For the most part the old prophets only serve to introduce a little variety in point of form, for they are almost in every case facsimiles of Mahomet himself.

Besides Jewish and Christian histories there are a few about old Arabian prophets.

And if such a character appeared after Mahomet, still he could never be anything but an imitator, like the false prophets who arose about the time of his death and afterwards.

The histories of the earlier prophets, which had occasionally been briefly touched on in the first period, are now related, sometimes at great length.

In the seventh month occur the Molid of the sayyida Zenab, and the commemoration of the Miarag, or the Prophets miraculous journey to heaven.

But, besides the graves of her native saints, Egypt boasts of those of several members of the Prophets family, the tomb of the sayyida Zeyneb, daughter of Ali, that of the sayyida Sekeina, daughter of Hosain, and that of the sayyida Nefisa, great-granddaughter of Hasan, all of which are held in high veneration.

In Hebrew literature the Pentateuch, the historical books and the prophets alike contain scanty but precious information regarding Egypt.

Neither Koran nor Sunna distinguishes between temporal and spiritual powers, and no such distinction was known as long as the caliphs acted in all things as successors of the prophets and heads of the community of the faithful.

With all the other prophets the primary function is spiritual teaching; miracles, even though numerous and many of them symbolical like Elisha's, are only accessory.

On the 27th of December 1521 three " prophets " appeared in Wittenberg from Zwickau, Thomas Munzer, Nicolas Storch and Mark Thomas Stubner.

There was confusion in Wittenberg, where schools and university sided with the " prophets " and were closed.

Hence the charge that Anabaptists were enemies of learning, which is sufficiently rebutted by the fact that the first German translation of the Hebrew prophets was made and printed by two of them, Hetzer and Denk, in 1527.

On the 6th of March Luther returned, interviewed the prophets, scorned their " spirits," forbade them the city, and had their adherents ejected from Zwickau and Erfurt.

He had no teacher and no grammar; but Paulus Scriptoris carried him a huge codex of the prophets on his own shoulders all the way from Mainz.

Hebrew prophets had foretold that God would send a " messenger "; that a voice would be heard saying, " Prepare the way of the Lord."

Some thought him Elijah or one of the ancient prophets returned to earth - a suggestion based on popular tradition; others said He was John the Baptist risen from the dead - the superstition of Herod who had put him to death.

The suggestions are still the same - John the Baptist, or Elijah, or some other of the prophets.

Happy were the disciples in seeing and hearing what prophets and kings had looked for in vain.

But while they are excluded, a multitude from all quarters of the earth shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the prophets in the kingdom of God.

His eyes are now fixed on Jerusalem, where, like the prophets, He must die.

The creative Word had been long personified by Jewish thought, especially in connexion with the prophets to whom " the Word of the Lord " came.

Examination of titles in the Prophets and the Psalms (to say nothing of Ecclesiastes and Wisdom of Solomon) makes it evident that these have been added by late editors who were governed by vague traditions or fanciful associations or caprice, and there is no reason to suppose the titles in Proverbs to be .exceptions to the general rule.

Prophets play so great a part in the early history that the ignoring of them here is significant.

The organization of the family is treated much more fully than in the Law and the Prophets, and has a more modern aspect.

The prophets have nothing to say of them as a class.

Its thought, differing so widely from that of the prophets and the Pentateuch, is most naturally referred to the period when the Jews came into intimate intellectual contact with the non-Semitic world, and particularly with the Greeks (philosophical influence is not to be looked for from Persia).

The excitement of the people was increased by the arrival of three men known in history as the Zwickau prophets.

In Genesis and elsewhere there are examples of popular thought which have not the characteristic spirit of the prophets, and which, it is clear, could only gradually be purified.

The excavations (at Gezer, Megiddo, Jericho, &c.) indicate a persisting gross and cruel idolatry, utterly opposed to the demands of the law and the prophets.'

It is the adaptation of the prophets' conceptions of Yahweh to old religious ideas, the building up of new conceptions upon an old basis, a fusion " between old heathen notions and prophetic ideas," and " this fusion is characteristic of the entire priestly law."

The Babylonian code is essentially class-legislation, and from the point of view of the idealism of the Old Testament prophets, which raises the rights of humanity above everything else, the steps which the code takes to safeguard the rights of property (slaves included therein) would naturally seem harsh.

The appeal of the prophets, " is not for better institutions but for better men, not for the abolition of aristocratic privileges but for an honest and godly use of them."

Old tradition suggests the " schools of the prophets " at Jericho, Gilgal and Bethel, and in fact the proximity of these places, especially Bethel, to Judaean soil may be connected with the friendly and sometimes markedly favourable attitude to Judah in these narratives.

The same associations are those of the Moslem, whose religion has so strangely absorbed the prophets and traditions of the older faiths.

This is known as fitrah or the custom of prophets.

He claims to have had conversations with all the prophets past and future, and reports conversations with God himself.

A peculiar compliment to Mahomet was involved in the fact that the leaders of the rebellion in the various districts did not pose as princes and kings, but as prophets; in this appeared to lie the secret of Islam's success.

It does not show that the namers were prophets or wise judges, for the Spaniards really knew California not at all for more than two centuries, and then only as a genial but rather barren land; but it shows that the conquistadores mixed poetry with business and illustrates the glamour thrown about the " Northern Mystery."

Out of these developed, by the labours of the prophets, a religion of high spirituality and exalted ethical ideals.

This conception of God revealed itself as so essential to the prophets that their intense national feeling was modified.

But the prophetic teaching was obscured in part by the nationalism of the prophets themselves, who exalted Israel as at once God's instrument and the peculiar object of his love; and in part by the triumph of a legal-ritualistic sacrificial system.

The rudiments of some of these ideas can be found in the prophets, but their development took place after the exile, and indeed for the most part after the conclusion of the writings accounted canonical.

He seizes upon the most spiritual passages of the prophets, and revives and deepens them.

Even the prophets had spoken in the name of God; they accepted neither book nor priesthood as authoritative, but uttered their truth as they were inspired to speak, and commanded men to listen and obey.

The prophets use the formula, " Thus saith the Lord," but he goes beyond them and speaks in his own name, " Amen, I say unto you."

He knew himself as greater than the prophets, indeed as him of whom the prophets spoke - the Messiah.

The early Church naturally used the terms and phrases of the prophets.

Sometimes the prophets denounce them, sometimes ignore them, sometimes attempt to reform and control them.

A completer organization was retarded by two factors, the presence of the apostles and the inspiration of the prophets.

Against Cheyne, see Marti's work on the Minor Prophets (1894); the "great fish" and the "three days and three nights" remain unexplai ed by this writer.

It was foreordained that Messiah's witnesses should be borne by Divine power through all obstacles and to ever-widening circles, until they reached and occupied Rome itself for the God of Israel - now manifest (as foretold by Israel's own prophets) as the one God of the one race of mankind.

There are statues of Dürer, Sachs, Melanchthon, the reputed founder of the grammar-school, the navigator Martin Behaim, and Peter Henlein, the inventor of the watch; and the streets are further embellished with several fountains, the most noteworthy of which are the Schöne Brunnen, 1385-1396, in the form of a large Gothic pyramid, adorned with statues of the seven electors, the "nine worthies," and Moses and the prophets; and the GÃnsemÃnnchen or goose-mannikin, a clever little bronze figure by Pankratz Labenwolf.

Although they have been called the "harbingers" of the Anabaptists, the characteristic teaching of the Zwickau prophets was not Anabaptism.

In all this the Anabaptists had maintained one central article of faith that linked them to the Zwickau prophets, belief in conscience, religious feeling, or inner light, as the sole true beginning or ground of religion; and one other article, held with equal vigour and sincerity, that true Christians are like sheep among wolves, and must on no account defend themselves from their enemies or take vengeance for wrong done.

He recalls the mourning in the doomed city; the children dying of hunger in the streets; the prophets deluding the people with vain hopes.

For with the same thou hast anointed priests, kings, and prophets and martyrs with this thy chrism, perfected by thee, 0 Lord, blessed, abiding within our bowels in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Many priests are appointed guardians of shrines and tombs of members of the Prophets family (imains and imamzadeiis) and are responsible for the proper administration of the property and funds with which the establishments are endowed.

In the Avesta all these recur ad nauseam, so much so that the primitive spirit of the religion is stifled beneath them, as the doctrine of the ancient prophets was stifled in Judaism and the Talmud.

Even the disciples whom he chose did not recognize his true nature, but mistook him for the Messiah promised by the Demiurge through the prophets, who as warrior and king was to come and set up the Jewish empire.

The prophets and patriarchs, having been often deceived by the Demiurge, suspected a trick and would not avail themselves of the promised salvation, remaining content with the bliss of being in Abraham's bosom.

In 1875 he was appointed one of the Old Testament revisers; in1880-1882he delivered by invitation, to very large audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow, two courses of lectures on the criticism of the Old Testament, which he afterwards published (The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, first edition 1881, second edition 1892, and The Prophets of Israel, 1882, which also passed through two editions); and soon after his dismissal from his chair he joined Professor Baynes in the editorship of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and after Professor Baynes's death remained in supreme editorial control till the work was completed.

The Liberal party, which now came into control in the college repeatedly disappointed the hopes of Cotton Mather that he might be chosen president, and by its ecclesiastical laxness and its broader views of Church polity forced the Mathers to turn from Harvard to Yale as a truer school of the prophets.

The Law, according to him, was not of God, but of " the sinister power."2 The same was the case with the prophets, and it was death to believe in the Old Testament.

Furthermore, the manner in which the prophets are looked back upon in ix.

It is also highly probable that much of the material in the second part of the book was suggested by the works of the later prophets, especially by Ezekiel and Zechariah.

Other prophets confine themselves to vague and general predictions, but the author of Daniel is strikingly particular as to detail in everything relating to the period in which he lived, i.e.

And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed."

The Jains count twentyfour such prophets, whom they call Jinas, or Tirthankaras, that is, conquerors or leaders of schools of thought.

It was full of churches and monasteries, enriched with the reputed relics of saints, prophets and martyrs, which consecrated it a holy city and attracted pilgrims from every quarter to its shrines.

This law was derived partly from Moses, partly from the utterances of the later prophets, partly from oral tradition and from the commentaries and supplementary maxims of generations of students.

Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the necessity of service to God, or the inculcation by later prophets of humility and faith.

In estimating the religious value of Deuteronomy it should never be forgotten that upon this passage the greatest eulogy ever pronounced on any scripture was pronounced by Christ himself, when he said "on these words hang all the law and the prophets," and it is also well to remember that when tempted in the wilderness he repelled each suggestion of the Tempter by a quotation from Deuteronomy.

All the more remarkable spirits of the time, like prophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart at the head of the finances because he played billiards well, and Villeroy in command of the armies although he was utterly untrustworthy; which sent the patriot Vauban into disgrace, banished from the court Catinat, the Pre Ia Pense, exiled to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fnelon, and suspected Racine of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.

In his domestic life he had some severe trials; his wife died, after eleven years of married life, in 1839; his only son, who was a scholar like-minded with himself, who had shared many of his literary labours, and who had edited an excellent edition of St Cyril's commentary on the minor prophets, died in 1880, after many years of suffering.

Thus, the saying " Is Saul also among the prophets?"

The episode, with the interview between Saul and Samuel, and with its interesting attitude to Saul and to the prophets, was evidently unknown to the writer of xv.

While the detailed history of Israelite kings and prophets in I Kings xvii.-2 Kings x.

At one time the mosques were covered with mosaics, analogous to those of Ravenna, depicting scenes from the life of Mahomet and the prophets.

In Judaism - unless we should refer to the prophets' polemic against images a reaction is due to the introduction of the codified law.

Elsewhere we see prophets and sibyls, personifications of the theological virtues and of the sciences.

And she abhors the false prophets who abound and considers the million dollar reward offered a direct invasion of her privacy.

Therefore, it became a proverb; so, is Saul also among the prophets?

He reveals truth to His prophets, but also abrogates it, changes the message, or makes them forget it.