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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



faculty of spiritual intuition, not gained by hu- 

 man reason, but coming to him as a word from 

 God himself, wherein he apprehends religious 

 truth in a new light, as beating in a way not 

 manifest to other men on the practical necessi- 

 ties, the burning questions of the present. Un- 

 like the priesthood, the prophets never formed a 

 regular guild. It was an axiom that the gift of 

 prophecy was bestowed by the inward and imme- 

 diate call of Jehovah. But from the time of 

 Samuel we find a regular succession of prophets 

 working out the spiritual problems of the national 

 faith with ever-increasing clearness, and gather- 

 ering round them, sometimes in regularly-formed 

 communities, a circle of disciples and sympa- 

 thizers which, though never, perhaps, numeri- 

 cally considerable, embraced the names of David 

 and other leaders of Hebrew history, and im- 

 pressed the stamp of prophetic influence on every 

 part of the national life. From this time the 

 priests hold only the second place in the history of 

 the Old Testament religion ; sometimes they even 

 appear as the opponents of the prophetic party, 

 whose progressive ideas are distasteful to their 

 natural conservatism and aristocratic instinct?. 

 But, on the whole, the more enlightened minis- 

 ters of the central sanctuary continued to share 

 with the prophets the task of upholding a lofty 

 religious tradition, and not unfrequently both 

 characters were united in one person. It was, 

 in fact, only through the priests that the ideas 

 of the prophets could receive public sanction in 

 the ordinances of religion, as it was only through 

 rulers like David, or Hezekiah, or Jehu, that they 

 could influence the political conduct of affairs. 



A just insight into the work of the prophetic 

 party in Israel was long rendered difficult by 

 traditional prejudices. On the one hand the 

 predictive element in prophecy received undue 

 prominence, and withdrew attention from the 

 influence of the prophets on the religious life of 

 their own time ; while, on the other hand, it was 

 assumed, in accordance with Jewish notions, that 

 all the ordinances, and almost, if not quite, all 

 the doctrines of the Jewish church in the post- 

 canonical period, existed from the earliest days 

 of the theocracy. The prophets, therefore, were 

 conceived partly as inspired preachers of old 

 truths, partly, as predicting future events, but not 

 as leaders of a great development, in which the 

 religious ordinances as well as the religious be- 

 liefs of the Old Covenant advanced from a rela- 

 tively crude and imperfect to a relatively mature 

 and adequate form. 



The proof that this latter view, and not the 



traditional conception, is alone true to history, 

 depends on a variety of arguments which cannot 

 here be reproduced. That the religious ideas of 

 the Old Testament were in a state of growth dur- 

 ing the whole prophetic period became manifest 

 as soon as the laws of grammatieo-historical exe- 

 gesis were fairly applied to the Hebrew Script- 

 ures. That the sacred ordinances were subject 

 to variation was less readily admitted, because 

 the admission involved a change of view as to 

 the authorship of the Pentateuch ; but here also 

 the facts are decisive. For example, the law in 

 Exodus xx. 24,^"., contemplates the worship of 

 Jehovah on other altars than that of the central 

 sanctuary (cf. Deuteronomy xxxiii. 19). This 

 practice, accordingly, was followed by Samuel, 

 and was fully approved by Elijah (1 Kings xix. 

 14). But the worship of Jehovah on the high 

 places or local sanctuaries was constantly ex- 

 posed to superstitious corruption and heathen 

 admixture, and so is frequently attacked by the 

 prophets of the eighth century. It was undoubt- 

 edly under their influence that Hezekiah abol- 

 ished the high places. The abolition was not 

 permanent; but in the leign of Josiah, the next 

 reforming king, we find that the principle of a 

 single sanctuary can claim the support not only 

 of prophetic teaching, but of a written law-book 

 found in the temple, and acknowledged by the 

 high-priest (2 Kings xxii. 23). The legislation 

 of this book corresponds not with the old law in 

 Exodus, but with the book of Deuteronomy. But 

 perhaps the clearest proof that during the period 

 of prophetic inspiration there was no doctrine of 

 finality with regard to the ritual law any more 

 than with regard to religious ideas and doctrines, 

 lies in the last chapters of Ezekiel, which sketch 

 at the very era of the Captivity an outline of sa- 

 cred ordinances for the future restoration. From 

 these and similar facts, it follows indisputably 

 that the true and spiritual religion which the 

 prophets and like-minded priests maintained at 

 once against heathenism and against unspiritual 

 worship of Jehovah as a mere national deity 

 without moral attributes, was not a finished but 

 a growing system, not finally embodied in au- 

 thoritative documents, but propagated mainly by 

 direct personal efforts. At the same time these 

 personal efforts were accompanied and supported 

 by the gradual rise of a sacred literature. Though 

 the priestly ordinances were mainly published by 

 oral decisions of the priests, which are, in fact 

 what is usually meant by the word law (Torah) 

 in writings earlier than the Captivity, there can be 

 no reasonable doubt that the priests possessed 



