i8 7 o] PROPHECY IN CRITICAL SCHOOLS 173 



To Hosea the corner-stone of the truth of all hopes is just 

 this : Jahveh, whose love long since created and formed 

 the people, cannot for ever forsake his own work ; his love 

 must complete what it has designed, the salvation of the 

 people, which, just because it has from the first experienced 

 this love, must at length remember its origin, and turn 

 again to the true source of love and salvation ; and just 

 when the more powerful human foreboding is ready to 

 utter the final sentence of eternal extinction just then it 

 springs back confounded, and itself extinguished before 

 the higher Divine presentiment which, at the decisive 

 moment, presses forward with overpowering force.&quot; l 



In this unshaken confidence in Israel s future all the 

 prophets are agreed. But by none, perhaps, is the love 

 of Jahveh for His people delineated so profoundly and 

 tenderly as by Hosea himself a man of the tenderest 

 affections, chastened and deepened by the calamities of 

 his people. The history of mankind contains no more 

 touching instance of faith than the way in which Hosea 

 closes a book that again and again foretells the captivity, 

 by introducing the converted people addressing Jahveh 

 in words of submission and thanksgiving. 2 So striking 

 a union of faith that no mishap could shake, with an in 

 sight that never failed to read the fatal signs of the times, 

 marks off the prophets as clearly from ordinary religious 

 enthusiasts as from ordinary moral teachers. 



In the kingdom of the ten tribes, as Hosea himself 

 foresaw, even the prophetic word must be swept away 

 helpless in the general ruin, finding no response in the 

 hearts of the people. But in Judah it was otherwise. 

 There, too, the people had sunk, under Ahaz, into deep 

 religious and social corruption. The heathenism into 

 which that fantastical king threw himself from the first, 

 was accompanied by a rapid growth of luxury and 

 sensuality, and by a general decay of the vigorous theo 

 cratic system by which alone the small and isolated 

 kingdom could maintain its position among its neighbours. 



1 Propheten, i, 179. 2 Hosea xiv. 3. 



