as often as I speak, I cry out; I cry, Violence and spoil: because the word of Yahweh is made a reproach unto me, and a derision, all the day. And if I say, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and. I am weary with forebearing, and I cannot contain." This is a first hand outpouring of a great prophetic consciousness which needs no comment. The humanity and the divine impulsion and authority of the true prophet are here completely and inseparably blended. The mysticism of Jeremiah stands in a peculiarly illuminating relation to the legalism of Josiah's reformation, that is, to the law book of Deuteronomy. The relation of Jeremiah to this book, discovered and put into effect only a few years after the beginning of his prophesying, is another problem too complicated for us to enter upon. It seems probable that the hopes with which Jeremiah may first have greeted the appearance of this prophetic reformation of the popular religion were disappointed in the outcome. Certainly the religion he taught and the hopes he cherished were of different and even opposite nature and tendency. Against the exaltation of the temple at Jerusalem Jeremiah declared that it was God's purpose to destroy it, even as he had the sanctuary in Shiloh. Those who were proclaiming "The temple of Yahweh" as a ground of trust and as a shield of sin, were uttering lying words. The popular proverb, "We are wise, and the law of Yahweh is with us," is met by the assertion that "the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely. The wise men... have rejected. the word of Yahweh." The sacrificial system, he affirms, does not go back to Moses and the wilderness. In general, the reformation seems to be condemned as undertaken feignedly, and not with the whole heart. The prophet's own idea of religion is given in his great description of the new covenant, when the law of Yahweh will be written in the

heart and every man will have his own knowledge of Yahweh, from the least to the greatest, needing no teacher, nor any priest, since sin will be remembered no more. To Jeremiah, also, therefore, the experience of the prophet should be the experience of every man. If it is now exceptional, it is, nevertheless, in its nature not unhuman but normal and destined to universality. On the contrary, the religion of a written canonical law, which claims finality, as Deuteronomy did (12:32), and unqualified and perpetual obedience, necessarily fears and must undertake to repress or control the words of prophets. So, in fact, the Book of Deuteronomy does. Prophets may do miracles and their predictions may prove true, yet if their teaching goes contrary to the doctrine or precepts of the law they must be rejected, and even put to death (13:1-5). Prophets are, indeed, to arise to whom the people must listen, but they are to be prophets like Moses, prophets who speak the things commanded. In fact, under a religion of the law, there can be no prophet like Moses, "whom Yahweh knew, face to face" (34: 10). It is evident how effectually such principles as these would discourage and quench the spirit of prophecy. It was, indeed, precisely the currency of such principles that made Jeremiah feared and hated, and his life one perpetual martyrdom.

Jeremiah discusses in some detail the character of the prophets whom he judges false. Among them Hananiah stands out conspicuously, who predicted that the exiles of 597 would return within two years (chapter 28). This prophecy of peace is the very essence of false prophecy, as Jeremiah views it (28: 7-9). He does not judge that these prophets have been misled by a deceiving spirit from Yahweh, as Micaiah judged concerning the four hundred prophets of Ahab; he declares, on the contrary, that they are conscious deceivers, speaking a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of Yahweh; saying, I have dreamed,

and prophesying lies; but the word of Yahweh which is like fire, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces, they do not possess (23:9 ff.).

As to prediction, we are sure only that Jeremiah foretold the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians (chapters 7 and 26). From the Scythian invasion, which perhaps occasioned Jeremiah's first appearance as a prophet, on to the end of his life, he is sure that judgment against Judah is the purpose of God, and that neither Jerusalem nor the temple is to escape. In 4:23-27 the coming desolation and chaos are described as if actually seen in vivid anticipation. But it is not vision, but rather insight and moral judgment, on which Jeremiah rests the most incredible of his forecasts, that of Jerusalem's overthrow (7:115).

Ezekiel stands between the prophets of the second sort and those of the third, the apocalyptic type. In part, his message is identical with Jeremiah's. He affirms, with him, that Jerusalem is about to fall. But his nature, his religious experience, his teaching and outlook, differ radically from those of the prophets before him. We are concerned here only to notice that in Ezekiel vision and ecstasy are revived, while prophecy in its more ethical and spiritual qualities begins that decline from which it did not recover until the coming of Christ. The vision of Ezekiel, told in the first chapter, is naturally to be compared with that of Isaiah. The physical details are far more elaborated, but the intellectual content is far poorer, and of ethical or spiritual significance one can hardly speak. This theophany is seen in trance, and conveys to the prophet the visible assurance that Yahweh is free from the temple of Jerusalem; that the temple can fall without violating his transcendence, since his throne is a chariot that moves freely where it will; and that the exiles in Babylonia are not shut off from the worship of him, since he can come to them there. The departure of

Yahweh from the temple before its fall and his final return to the new temple of the Messianic times form, in fact, a central thought in Ezekiel's revelation. And because God's presence in Jerusalem was physically conceived, so his departure and return must be physically experienced. It is for this reason that vision, in the proper sense, is a natural form in which his revelation is received and expressed. Over against the inwardness of Jeremiah's experience of God, we feel the prevailing externality that separates God from man in Ezekiel. The spirit of God lifts him up and carries him away bodily. The hand of Yahweh is strong upon him and forces him to come and go against his will. He is translated from Babylonia to Jerusalem, where he sees the abominations that are defiling the temple, and beholds the departure of Yahweh through the east gate. And then the spirit lifts him up and brings him "in the vision by the spirit of God into Chaldea," where he tells the captives the things Yahweh had shown him (8-11). Later on, long after the destruction of the city, he is once more carried to Palestine "in the visions of God," and is shown God's plans for a new Jerusalem, a new land of Israel, a new temple; measurements and details being imparted to him by an angelic interpreter. So that even his law, his contribution to the coming priestly law of the new Judaism, comes to him in the form of a vision, and is experienced and imparted as things seen and heard (40-48).

In spite of all this, Ezekiel often announces like the others "the words of Yahweh," with no evidence expressed or implied, of visionary accompaniments; and at certain points, especially in his exposition of the rights of the individual before God, in his description of God's shepherding of his scattered people, and most of all in his conception of the renewal of human nature by the incoming of the divine spirit, his message is worthy of following theirs (18, 34, 36:25-27). Nevertheless his conception of God and hence

his idea of worship and his experience of inspiration are rather revivals of earlier views and anticipations of later and lower levels than those reached by the men we have been studying. His vision is meant to impress us with the distance of God rather than his nearness. The approach to him is long and distracting; and when we reach him in the end, even though he has a likeness as the appearance of a man," yet we see scarcely more than a blaze of light before which man falls on his face and cannot rise until summoned and empowered by God himself.

What, now, shall be our judgment in regard to the experiences characteristic of these greater prophets, who are also best known and have so great and creative an influence upon the spiritual history of the world?

Among the four whom we have principally considered only one, Isaiah, can be said to be characterized by visionary experiences, and even in his case vision proper seems limited to the one crisis which made him a prophet. Moreover, the contents of this vision is such that vision is not necessary for its discovery or confirmation. We know, of course, that what Isaiah saw is not the objective reality of what stands about the throne of God. We can even see that a certain danger belonged to the experience of these truths in vision. form. Other men might easily suppose either that such knowledge was beyond their powers, or that all that could be expected of them was the obedient acceptance of the word of the prophet. There was even some danger that the great thoughts themselves might be obscured by this form of utterance. The initiative belongs entirely to God, and the attitude of man seems to be so entirely that of receptiveness that a weakening of moral effort might result, and one might expect salvation from God on the sole condition of passiveness and assent. These very dangers re-appear in connection with Paul, whose experience, as we have seen, was not