1870] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 105 



greatly intensified during the prophetic inspiration which 

 always crushed down all mere personal imperfect feelings 

 which separate man from full harmony with God. There 

 can be no doubt that the symbolism of Isa. vi. points to 

 this. In a mind so elevated every mental association 

 would have its direction determined accordingly. The 

 difficulty that prevented depraved men from becoming 

 prophets of divine truth would still more thoroughly 

 prevent the prophetic inspiration from running along 

 the course of a new development of evil. I do not think 

 this resistance could be overcome without a mental 

 struggle violent enough to raise the prophet from the state 

 of reverie to a state of conscious thought. 



Before passing to this perhaps more interesting part 

 of prophecy, where the prophet was conscious of mental 

 effort in producing his prophecies, we may sum up 

 briefly the results already obtained. 



The apparent objectivity of any revelation does not 

 prove that it was given objectively to the prophet, but 

 only that his involuntary mental energy built it up from 

 subjective elements. These latter are partly super 

 natural, but also of necessity partly natural, the super 

 natural part being so adjusted that the result, be it 

 dream or vision, is exactly the desired revelation. But 

 this revelation is built up from its subjective elements 

 by a natural process of association determined in its 

 direction, partly by the material it is working on, but in 

 great measure by the habitual character of the prophet 

 and his emotional state at the time. In this respect the 

 prophetic vision and Divine word do not differ from an 

 ordinary dream or reverie ; for these too depend in part 

 only on recollections present to the mind and impressions 

 transmitted by the not wholly dormant senses, and 

 receive their whole colouring and character from the 

 character and emotions of the mind in which they are 

 produced. It does not therefore appear that the revela 

 tions thus presented could ever free themselves from the 



