i8 7 o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 103 



with the revelation. Perhaps the want of this harmony 

 and the necessity of crushing down conflicting currents 

 by a more violent action on the nerves may explain the 

 physical and mental prostration that we read of in the 

 cases of Saul and Balaam. 



These considerations tend to show that wherever the 

 prophet was deeply absorbed in the history of his time, 

 all the revelations presented to his mind would be deeply 

 coloured thereby. The deep insight into the hearts of 

 men and the moral bearings of events with which the 

 prophets were gifted must have produced a habitual 

 disposition to view everything in its bearings on the 

 moral necessities of the age. And so, even in the in 

 voluntary associations we are treating of, no long train of 

 thought could fail to incorporate some very direct refer 

 ence to the ethical position of the time. This quite 

 coincides with one half of the principle laid down in the 

 first part of our inquiry, viz. that prophecy could omit no 

 important moral development of the prophet s period. 

 More delicate is the question whether any new moral 

 development of history, which represented quite a new 

 turn in the contest of good and evil, and was not merely 

 the bringing into prominence of something lying latent, 

 could be brought into prophecy. 



Such an element could not be manifested in a vision 

 proper, but only in the word of the Lord explaining the 

 vision. We have seen that it would be presumptuous to 

 limit the range of the pictorial part of the revelation. If 

 we admit the supernatural, no reason can be given why 

 infinitely various combinations and successions of images 

 might not rise up in the prophet s mind. But the vision 

 without an accompanying word would give very little 

 real information for two reasons : 



i. The coexistent and the successive can never be 

 clearly separated in a vision. In actual life the distant 

 in space and the distant in tirne are distinguished by the 

 fact that the former is brought near by muscular exertion 



