IV 



ON THE QUESTION OF PROPHECY IN 

 THE CRITICAL SCHOOLS OF THE CONTINENT 



(From &quot; The British Quarterly Review,&quot; April 1870) 



THE works whose title head this article J are too divergent 

 in character and purpose to allow us to think of completely 

 discussing them in a single paper. We propose to make 

 use of them only in their bearing on a single subject the 

 present state of the question of prophecy in the Continental 

 critical schools ; and we have chosen these books partly 

 because they are among the most recent that deal with 

 the subject of prophecy, and partly because they seem to 

 us to be typical in their character, marking out leading 

 lines of thought among the very various conceptions of 

 prophecy which prevail in Continental theology at the 

 present day. In saying this, we do not, of course, mean 

 that these books are of equal or even similar intrinsic 

 value. In Ewald s great work, despite the waywardness 

 and arbitrary self-reliance which so often disfigure his 

 criticism, we everywhere recognise a man of original and 

 creative power, who never fails to put great questions in 

 a fresh and instructive light. In Kuenen, again, we are 

 most impressed by the cold pellucidity of thought which 



1 [They were four in number, viz. : the second edition of Ewald s 

 Prophets (1867-68) ; the second part of Kuenen s Historical and Critical 

 Inquiry (1863) ; the first part of Kuenen s Religion of Israel (1869) ; 

 and the first part of Gustav Baur s History of Old Testament Prophecy 

 (1861).] 



163 



