174 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



Soon the foreign wars of the king were marked by con 

 tinual reverses, which only drove the court to seek deliver 

 ance in still wilder superstitions, and at last in the horrid 

 worship of Moloch the fruit of that lowest grade of 

 religious feeling which knows no sentiment but terror. 

 But meantime the true national and spiritual life of 

 Israel gathered round the prophets of Jahveh. Two of 

 these prophets, Isaiah and Micah, we know from their 

 extant writings. In external circumstances no two 

 men could be more unlike. Isaiah was a man of noble 

 family and high culture, moving in courtly circles and 

 versed in all the political movements of the day. Micah, 

 a simple unpolished countryman, knew only so much 

 of the state of the nation as a keen, uneducated sense 

 could read in the affairs of his own province. Yet so 

 thoroughly did the prophetic fire penetrate and assimilate 

 the whole natural life, that, amidst considerable differences 

 of detail, these men represent at bottom precisely the 

 same religious and political standpoint. Let us pause for 

 a moment at this point. The critical study of prophecy 

 has by no means borne out the view that, in points of 

 detail, especially in predictive details, the prophets are 

 fully at one. But, precisely, these discrepancies bring out 

 in stronger relief the substantial unity of the prophetic 

 spirit. The unity did not lie in a system of dogmas. The 

 prophets were familiar indeed with the old theocratic 

 legislation and the writings of their own predecessors, 

 but their attitude towards both was perfectly free. They 

 knew that Jahveh was guiding His people to a higher 

 standpoint, in which even prophecy itself must fall away. 

 It was not by a system of externals, but by participation 

 in the spirit of Jahveh, that the prophets felt themselves 

 bound together. Nor was a man a prophet merely in 

 virtue of his earnest faith in the God of Israel. The 

 prophet felt the hand of Jahveh upon him, impelling him 

 in a course that he could not have chosen for himself ; 

 and, in this course, his individuality was not obliterated, 



