io 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



(at least by moving the eyes), while the second ap 

 proaches independently of bodily movement. In the 

 panoramic vision this difference vanishes, and everything 

 rises in a sort of vague succession without even a clear 

 measure of time. 



2. The vision per se gives only external circumstances 

 which, uninterpreted, would be void of prophetic signifi 

 cance. 



Thus if a new moral development be laid open to the 

 prophet, this must happen through the prophetic word. 

 Moreover, the question is not whether it is physically 

 possible that the prophet should be lifted out of his own 

 age to consider the new necessities of a future time, but 

 whether this is morally possible. Now the possibility of 

 really new developments of evil in the world depends on 

 the fact that evil is not an impersonal leaven propagating 

 itself among men, but is disseminated by the active 

 personal thought and energy of evil spirits. So the new 

 element of evil is really a new evil thought, and as this 

 cannot be objectively presented to the prophet, he would 

 have to think it out for himself. We have not yet come 

 to speak of the conscious thought of the prophet ; but that 

 only makes matters worse. If the prophet could antici 

 pate a new development of evil, this would be by virtue 

 of a Satanic thought coming to him, built up in his mind 

 by precisely the same inspiration that produced the 

 Divine word. There would be a very great moral 

 difficulty in supposing this. But, moreover, there is a 

 great, though not perhaps insuperable psychological 

 difficulty. The emotion which filled the whole mind of 

 the prophet was faith in God, a full sympathy with the 

 Divine activity in Redemption. The grand idea that 

 filled the prophet s mind and formed the substratum of 

 all revelation, conditioning all the mental processes by 

 which the details of prophecy were filled in, was that 

 which for the Hebrews was summed up in the word 

 Jehovah. There can be no doubt that this feeling was 



