unlike that of Isaiah. These tendencies were not in accordance with the purpose either of Isaiah or of Paul. Both men assumed that all others could and should see for themselves the truths which came to them through this opening of their eyes to things unseen. They both assumed also that faith in a God who saves the humble and believing will stimulate, rather than displace, moral endeavor. What is important is to recognize that the truth and the importance of a prophet's message do not depend on the psychological condition in which it is received. We have in every case to judge value and truth and importance in human history independently and by our own tests. Men in a sober state of mind may utter great and epoch-making truths, or commonplaces, without power and effect, and men in an ecstasy or under the impulse of great emotional exaltation may do great things or little, may utter new truths or familiar truisms or things untrue. So that the bare question whether a prophet's self-consciousness is natural or supernatural, normal or abnormal, carries us but a little way toward proper estimation of his significance. In any case, it is that which is within that counts. No seeing or hearing can give man a knowledge of God. However vividly a prophet imagines and objectifies, what he gives us is always an event or a reality of his soul.

a

Perhaps the question which a psychologist would most like to ask of an Amos or a Jeremiah is, just what they meant when they said, "Thus saith Yahweh," or "The word of Yahweh." This is the almost uniform introduction to the oracles of the great prophets. It is difficult to suppose that it describes in any sense an objective hearing. It is a strange manner, and no doubt expresses a high selfconsciousness, for a man to speak and write in the character of Yahweh, speaking in the first person. Yet it is difficult to avoid the impression that it is a manner, a convention, and means nothing more, though this, indeed, is

much, than that the prophet is fully convinced that what he says is the truth of God. This strange consciousness is well expressed by that lesser contemporary of Isaiah, the prophet Micah, when he says, in contrast to the prophets who preached because they were bribed to do so, and therefore shall have no vision and no answer of God, “But I, truly, am full of power, even the spirit of Yahweh, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin."

In regard both to the seeing of visions and the hearing of the word of God three possible explanations seem to present themselves: first, that of pure objectivity and supernaturalism, a voice really heard, heavenly or future things really seen; second, a mental experience capable of psychological explanation; as either where a given object calls forth a corresponding idea, or where an idea, after much pondering, comes at last to receive a plastic representation; here a condition more or less ecstatic or dream-like can be assumed; third, some experience seen as one looks back upon it to have been the means by which truth was gained or virtue attained, and hence interpreted as an act of God, or as having come about at the divine command. Only the second and third of these explanations are open to the modern mind.

The convictions and decisions of these prophets went against current opinion and they concerned matters of vital significance to the people and to their rulers. One cannot stand thus alone against prevailing sentiment and the authority of those in power unless he has the conviction that his truth is the word of God. Ordinarily and normally our moral convictions come to us from tradition and training. When one turns against his traditions and his environment, and chooses a way of his own, he must consciously ask himself why he is sure he is right. What power in distinction from that of the community and in contrast

to it forces him into positions where he is exposed to hatred and persecution? It is worth remembering, also, that the primitive prophet, whose equipment was nothing but his capacity to become religiously insane, could be tolerated by the rulers and the priests of a community, and even welcomed as proof effective with the multitude of the reality of divine beings and the necessity of religion. But when the prophet is manifestly sane and speaks to reason and conscience, uttering truths radical and subversive of traditional customs in morals and religion, he becomes dangerous to those whose interests are in the maintenance of the existing order. One whose convictions force him to stand as a fortified wall against the assaults of the people, requires to know that God is with him, and that his convictions are God's words.

What has been said should not be understood to mean that the examples of these prophets justify the psychologists in saying that all religious experience is subjective and does not involve the reality of God. This is not in any way involved in the effort to understand the religious experiences of these prophets in the light of our own, and as experiences which we may hope to share. Nothing can be more certain than that these prophets, to whom vision and ecstasy were things of slight importance, believed themselves to be in the presence, not indeed, of mysterious powers, but of a supreme personality who knew them and whom they knew. This personality had a proper name, Yahweh. He was Israel's God; but the prophets experienced him each as his own God, and prophecy reaches its height in the realization of this relationship as that of friend with friend. The prophets of the first type were hardly individual. Their prophetic inspiration was the experience of a group. And the prophets of the third order again lost their individuality, hiding it behind the veil of an assumed authorship. Prophecy in both of these forms is an exceptional endowment, and must re

main exceptional if it is to have effect. If all men were seized with frenzy, society would be the chaos of a madhouse. If the heavens above and the course of future events were spread out before the eye of every man, the calling of the apocalyptical seers would come to an end. In fact, the powers they claimed are so high and divine that they feared to be disbelieved if they claimed them for themselves. Such powers could be credibly affirmed only of those men of the remote past who were already put by common consent in a place apart from ordinary men, and on the side of God. Only Enoch, who walked with God, or Noah, who alone was righteous and perfect in his generations and alone with his house escaped the divine judgment, or Abraham, God's friend, or Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,/ or Elijah, who ascended bodily to heaven, or some other prophet to whom heaven was opened, or scribe to whom the law of God was shown, could be supposed to have powers so above those of man. That such men saw the future could be demonstrated by long centuries of the fulfillment of their words, down to the writer's present. Prophets of the early and late period, then, claimed unique powers, but actually lost all individual distinctness and personality. Now the great prophets are conscious that they are different from average men, but they do not desire to remain different. Their knowledge of God is that inner knowledge which is possible to all men, and is the greatness and joy of human nature. Yet each one of them stands distinct as a great personality whose character and life spoke his message more clearly than his words. And the message they spoke and embodied was also personal, for their message was God. They knew themselves to be under bondage to God and subject to his compelling will. But in this bondage they found freedom; mastered as they were by God, they were yet more than other men masters of themselves. This experience is essentially emotional in its character; it is not an

idea, but an attitude of the whole man, and toward the whole world. A passionate love for God, an enthusiastic championship of his cause, masters them and burns in them as a flame. They do not see how it can be otherwise with any man, God being what he is. And as they do not need to look to the heavens above or to the world to come for God, but only into their own hearts, so, also, they see him in things immediately about them and in the events. of the day. To find great and deep meanings in the actualities of the present, to see the hand and feel the power of God in every common thing, is as characteristic of the prophet as it is of the artist and poet. The prophet sees all things, and especially the things nearest at hand, in the light of the eternal.

The word "spirit" was one that helped some prophets to express their sense of the nearness of the divine power and of its essential oneness in nature with man; though some, like Jeremiah, seemed to fear its use lest it suggest mere ecstasy and supernaturalism. It was a word that needed redemption from some of its early antecedents in order to serve the purposes of ethical religion.

Our first impression when we approach the psychological study of the deeper religious experiences of the prophets is that such study may prove unfruitful and even unwholesome, partly because we are not prophets ourselves, and seem to assume too much when we undertake to measure their experience by our own, partly because they were so far from being psychologists, and did not reflect, as modern scientists do, on the sources or nature of their experience; in fact, if they had done so, we instinctively feel that they could have been prophets no longer, and that the world would have suffered an irreparable loss. Can we, then, who cannot help being psychologists, still hope to make our own in any real sense the experience of these mighty men of God? If ecstasy or vision were the distinctive mark of