appearance and actions were evidence of the reality of the unseen world. The loud cries and dances and knife-cuttings ascribed in I Kings 18 to the prophets of Baal are of the same sort; and it is not unlikely that the nebiim came into Israel from the Canaanitish religion. They are distinguished from the seers, whom we infer unveiled future or hidden things through a magic science or art, by the use of some ritual, by the observation of the starry heavens, or by some other means. The prophets became recognized and honored in Israel, but all sorts of magic and divination were denounced by the prophets themselves and prohibited by the law. They were no doubt thought to involve the recognition of other divine powers besides Yahweh. The nebiim seem never to have used physical means, but to have depended upon the ecstatic frenzy which they cultivated, and to have acted and spoken as impelled by this sacred madness. Their utterances did not remain always unintelligible. Balaam is a type of the prophet whose inspiration is of the ecstatic type (Num. 24: 2-4, 15), a heathen prophet, who utters against his will oracles dictated by Israel's God, and containing the praises of Israel and promises of its coming greatness. He is a passive instrument through which God announces his great historic plan. The four hundred prophets who advised Ahab to engage in the battle in which he fell (I Kings 22), and the prediction by Hananiah of an early return within two years of the exiles of 597 B. C. (Jeremiah 28), indicate that the majority of the prophets were patriots in their inspiration, and were inclined to foretell what the king and the people desired. Ahab's prophets were really inspired by Yahweh, but were inspired to prophesy falsely; a secret which only one prophet, Micaiah, knew.

He was an early forerunner of the second and greatest class of Israel's prophets, whom it is the special task of this discussion to understand. Their message contradicted the popular desires, and was opposed by the great majority of

prophets, as well as by the priests and kings, but was vindicated by the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B. C., and of Judah and Jerusalem in 586 B. c. Their message and the nature of their inspiration stand in striking contrast to those who preceded them; but we shall do better to return to them after looking briefly at their successors, with whom their contrast is almost as striking.

The third sort of prophecy belongs after the Exile and comes out in its true character only in the apocalypses; but the transition to them is made through Ezekiel, Zechariah, Joel, and other late parts of the prophetic canon. The first apocalypse in the full sense, and the only one in the canon, is Daniel. Others follow during a period of two centuries or more, from Daniel's time, that of the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV (about 165 B. C.), to the fall of Jerusalem (70 A. D.) and the final end of the Jewish state (135 A. D.). Here we have writers who are writers only, not speakers nor actors, not at all in the public eye, their personalities wholly concealed behind the assumed names of ancient men of God. This third stage and type of prophecy in Israel has something in common with the first; for the apocalyptists also value and cultivate ecstatic experiences, though rather as a condition of vision than as a physical excitement which has its value in itself. Vision is the uniform method in which apocalyptic revelations are given. The method corresponds to the contents, for the apocalypse is a "revelation" of mysteries of the unseen world and of the future. The language in which such themes are treated is almost of necessity that of mysterious imagery. The pseudepigraphic form is usual in all apocalyptic writing.

In regard to the nature of the experiences that underlie such writings there can hardly be much more doubt or difficulty than in the case of the frenzied ecstasies of the earlier period. We have no need to assume any but physiological and psychic causes of the transports of the early prophets,

whether of Baal or of Yahweh. Parallels are at hand among all nations and in all ages, even down to the present. Such phenomena are to us so far from being proofs of the reality of God and spiritual things, that they sometimes tempt one to wonder whether all other supposed evidences of contact with the Other-than-ourselves may not like them be self-induced delusions. The apocalypses certainly do not help us to lay such ghosts of doubt. Many reasons combine to warn us that the visions of these seers are not real sights of the unseen universe, nor real liftings of the veil that hides the future. The element of falsity in the assumption of the character of a great man of the past puts us on our guard; and the character and varied contents of the visions themselves make the assumption of their objectivity impossible. This does not mean that the earliest bands of prophets were not often really beside themselves, nor that the apocalyptic seers may not sometimes really have experienced the trance conditions which they coveted and sought to induce by fastings and by mental concentration and eager expectation. We get the impression, however, that vision has become a literary form among writers of this sort, and it is seldom that we are led to assume that the vision is real in this psychological sense. Perhaps the most convincing instances are such as Daniel 10: 1-9, and II Esdras 5: 14-22, 9:23-28, etc.

In part corresponding to these three stages and kinds of prophets are three sorts of records which we have of them. About prophets of the first kind we have only popular traditions, stories embodied in the historical books, which enable us to understand what other people thought about the prophets rather than what the prophets thought about themselves. The tendency in these stories is toward an exaggeration of the peculiarity of the prophet and of his miraculous powers. Even so strong and great a character as Elijah is lowered in the very effort of story to exalt him,

and tends to become a mere miracle-worker. Fortunately the memory of his personality restrains this effort in some measure; yet it is quite impossible to unravel the strands of the narrative and recover the original facts of his prophetic experiences, and his own understanding of the nature of his relations with God. Of course the ordinary prophets would have shared the popular view of their calling, and sometimes sincerely, sometimes in pretense, would have cultivated ecstatic conditions and undertaken miracle and prediction. The records we have give the distinct impression that most of them were physically and psychically different from other men, but ethically and intellectually quite on the average level. And this judgment, as we shall see, is confirmed by the criticism passed upon them by the great prophets who follow.

These great prophets are often called writing prophets, although they speak first and only write afterwards, or are written about by their disciples. We cannot accept the books that now bear their names as directly the work of their pens. The analysis of these books and the recovery of the original oracles of these men is so difficult that the doubt is not unnatural whether even in their cases we can get into immediate contact with their minds. But the results of historical and literary study are most reassuring. In spite of differences in detail, agreement in all essentials has been reached, and the personalities of Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, now stand out with wonderful distinctness and impressiveness. It is most instructive to compare the Isaiah of II Kings with the Isaiah of the undoubtedly original oracles contained in the book that has his name. We should know some of the great events of Isaiah's life if we had only the stories of Kings, but Isaiah himself, all that was most characteristic in his religious experience and faith, and that which he contributed to the spiritual progress of the race, would be wholly unknown. It is not

always the writers by profession whom we know best. We know Isaiah, although his book is composite and analysis is difficult, far better than we know the author of Isaiah 40-66, even if we accept these chapters as a unity and as directly from their author's hand. We know Paul so well because he is more than a writer, in fact, only incidentally a writer, his letters being part of his missionary activity. We know Jesus himself as a living personality far better than we know the writer of Hebrews or even the author of the Johannine literature, although we have Jesus' words only in translation, and in varying forms in the different gospels.?

The prophets of the third sort were writers only. We have their books on the whole as they put them forth. And yet, there is almost as thick a veil between the records and the facts in their cases as in those of the first order of prophets who did not write at all, but were written about in popular legend. We need almost as much caution in the use of the book of Enoch or the apocalypses of Ezra or Baruch as in the stories of Samuel and Kings when we are seeking the actual facts of prophetic experience. Vision has become for the writers of the apocalypses a convention, a literary device shaped in form and determined in contents by traditions, written or oral. It happens, therefore, not by accident that we know the prophets of the second kind better even than those of the last period. They stand out distinctly because they spoke in public and on public matters, because they were great actors in great crises of the nation's life, because their words even when written have the character of spoken words, the immediateness and sincerity and self-revealing quality which words artfully put together in the study, and especially words written in an assumed character and in a professional spirit, could not have.

Of course our better knowledge of the prophets of the