second kind is really due to the fact that they were far greater men than those who preceded and those who followed them in Israel. This is the reason why they occupy a greater place in the history of their nation and why the account of their religious experiences is truer to fact and fuller in meaning. The work they did, the purposes they had, the truths they saw and spoke, have an importance that itself guards the genuineness of the utterance and of its record. It is no mere accident, even though it does not always happen, that we have in these cases the best records of the greatest men, the best knowledge of the experiences that are best worth knowing.

It is already evident how different will be the problems and the results of the psychological study of the mystical experiences of prophets of these three kinds. In the crude prophecy of Saul's time and of the period of the early kings we have men acting in ways that seem to others superhuman, and no doubt meant in most cases to themselves their actual possession by superhuman spirits. But this sort of religious frenzy or madness gives the least difficulty to the psychologist and is most easily accounted for. It is the operation of factors in our mental and emotional experience with which we are familiar, abnormal but not supernormal functionings of the mind, below rather than above the common levels of human experience. In these cases to explain is to explain away, to understand is to be free from the desire and therefore to lose the capacity to have such experiences. When men are convinced that these experiences are manifestations of weaknesses of the human, rather than powers of the divine, and that they have no validity as proof of the reality of the higher realm of being, and are of no effect in opening avenues for the incoming of higher powers into human life, then they are no longer experienced. The miracle stories that are told in these early prophets fall away of themselves when science removes the

\mystery and disproves the magic which ignorant hopes and fears created. In all this inevitable and welcome process of liberation from superstition we recognize already a very close relationship between the question of cause and the question. of value. What these fanatics did and said in their frenzies, and what their later and even present ignorant imitators do and say, is without value; it calls forth no wonder in us and reveals nothing about the nature of that unseen world toward which our spirits aspire, to know and to experience which is the aim of religion.

But the third type of prophecy has a curious likeness to the first in this matter of value and truth. The apocalyptic writers uniformly claim to tell of things beyond human sight, things seen and heard and imparted only by the exceptional seer to whom such transports are granted, The modern student does not question first the genuineness of the transports, but first the truth and value of the things seen and heard. The value is, no doubt, greater than that of the physical excitement of early bands of raving dervishes, but it is not so great as it claims to be. What these visions actually contain is not information of a sort that convinces us, or that is difficult to account for as a wholly human product. The imagery used in descriptions of heaven, the throne of God, angels, the coming day of the Lord, the end of the world, and the world to come, we can in part trace to its sources in ancient literature, in primitive myth, in natural phenomena, especially those of the visible heavens, in catastrophies and disasters, wars and exiles, the doings of cruel and ambitious tyrants, and the shiftings of world-empire. Some great ideas, especially such as may deserve to be called a philosophy of history, or rather, the doctrine of an all-determining plan of God, we may find in these books, and some worthy discussions of the great problems of sin and evil; but of an actual seeing of realms and beings beyond our sense we find nothing, nor any justification of the claim

to cast a ray of light into the darkness of the future. And by this lack of value in the contents of such prophecy our impression is confirmed that the experiences by which it comes are not other than human.

What now of the prophets of the second period, and especially what can we know as to the nature of their mystical experiences? In their cases also we must necessarily judge of the experience by its results, of the inspiration by the things revealed and achieved. Let us then ask two questions in regard to these great men. First, what do we find their real message to be? what truth from God do they declare? what work of God do they accomplish? The answer to such questions will be fundamental in our decision as to the nature of their experience. And in the second place, what do the prophets themselves say of their experiences or reveal indirectly concerning them?

The very fact that these prophets put their spoken oracles into writing indicates that they put emphasis upon the contents of their preaching and not chiefly on the mysteriousness of its form. These are, above all things, prophets who have something to say, and something to accomplish by what they say; and we shall understand their mental life best if we understand the meaning and purpose of their mission. Tolstoy gives a striking definition of the characteristics of prophecy when he writes that, "First, it runs counter to the general disposition of the people among whom it makes itself heard; secondly, those who hear it feel its truth, they know not why; thirdly, and chiefly, it moves men to the realization of what it foretells." These characteristics do, in fact, describe the prophets before us accurately. Their message was new, in the sense that it was against current opinion and practice in matters of religion. Yet it was convincing because it made its appeal to something deeper in men's consciousness than the popular and superficial currents of thought and conduct, and even to some

thing older and more fundamental in the religious traditions of Israel. And their words had effect, not only in demonstrating, but in bringing to realization, that which they declared to be the will and purpose of God.

The teaching of these prophets is closely bound up with the critical and stirring events of the period between 760 and 586 B. C., the period of the aggressions of the Assyrian empire and of its decline and fall, and the succession of Babylon to dominance over the world. Put in concrete form what the prophets of this period had to say was first, that a crisis was at hand which would prove to be disaster and destruction to Israel itself, and that at the hand of Israel's own God. The Day of Yahweh was at hand and would prove to be not the day of Israel's success and power, but of its overthrow, a day, not of light, but of darkness, not of escape from danger, but of the coming of greater and unescapable dangers (Amos 5: 18-20). In the second place, the popular religion, as it was practiced at the various shrines throughout the land and as it was ordered and conducted by the priesthood, was declared by the prophets to be idolatrous and heathenish, not commanded by Yahweh but displeasing to him, a contradiction of that sole worship which he demanded of his people. In place of this, the religion which Yahweh required was, in Micah's great phrases, only "to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God." In the third place, politics and war were not the means by which Israel was to further its fortunes, to escape evil, or to fulfill its calling as the people of Yahweh. The kingdom itself seems to have been regarded, certainly by Hosea, as apostasy from God. Isaiah opposes the alliance with Egypt, which was the nation's best hope of resistance against Assyria, and demands a waiting upon God in humility and trust, and a sense that he only is to be feared, and that the nation's security rests solely on its attitude toward him.

Behind these concrete and definite declarations were certain underlying principles: above all, that Yahweh is righteous and that this righteous God orders the history of the world in accordance with his will, not only interpreting events as they happen, but himself determining events in accordance with righteousness and for its ends. Matthew Arnold rightly interprets the spirit of prophecy when he makes the central message of the Old Testament the faith that the power not ourselves makes for righteousness, and that to righteousness belongs blessedness. To this it should be added that the righteousness of God now required him to intervene in the course of history; that this intervention must be against and not for his own people, Israel; and that this something which God is about to do, this strange and incredible turning of his wrath from Israel's enemies against Israel itself, is known to his prophets, though it should be known to all men by the course of events and by the ill desert and chiding conscience of the people. Another underlying principle of the prophets' teaching is involved in this. The God of righteousness is the God of all nations, the orderer of human history; and this means in effect that there is no other God. An implicit even though not at first unmistakably expressed monotheism underlies the religion of the prophets. Indeed, it is not too much to say that we owe our monotheistic faith to them. That the one God in whom we believe is an ethical personality, is Israel's great gift to the world, and the prophets' great and at first most unwelcome gift to Israel. One other fundamental principle of prophecy is the blending of morals and religion, the substitution of righteousness and judgment, the knowledge of God and kindness, humility and faith, inwardness and the ccmmunion of the soul with God, for sacrifices and festivals, This is another way of putting that achievement of prophecy for which the debt of the world to the prophets is great beyond reckoning.