180 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



It is not necessary for our present purpose to trace 

 farther in historical order the phenomena of Hebrew 

 prophecy as recorded in the contemporary sources. To 

 sketch even in outline the activity of the various prophets 

 and the special character of their teaching, would require 

 a volume, and would often involve much difficult discus 

 sion. It would be impossible to avoid intricate questions 

 as to date and authorship depending frequently on purely 

 technical arguments. Even to analyse Isaiah s works 

 with accuracy is a task which critics have not yet accom 

 plished with unanimity. We are able, indeed, to form a 

 very distinct conception of his figure from prophecies of 

 quite unambiguous date. A large part of the book of 

 Isaiah fits together with the historical records of the time 

 into a picture of such obvious genuineness that no critic 

 doubts the authenticity of these utterances. But, side 

 by side with these, the book contains many prophecies not 

 less genuine and vigorous, not less obviously inspired by 

 a religious feeling that was in full rapport with contem 

 porary life, which yet find no historical basis in the known 

 life of the prophet. This is a phenomenon which the 

 critic cannot pass over. In Hosea, in Amos, in Micah, 

 in the other parts of Isaiah s own writings, we find every 

 word not only instinct with Divine eternal truth that 

 stretches far into the future, as its roots run far back into 

 the past, but instinct also with fresh human life, with the 

 daily experience of the prophet and his hearers. The 

 prophets prophesied into the future, but not directly to 

 the future. Their duties lay with their own age, and only 

 by viewing them as they move amidst their contemporaries 

 does the critic learn to love and to admire them. A pro 

 phecy, then, coming to us in the name of Isaiah, but 

 having no roots in Isaiah s age, is to the historical student 

 either an inexplicable phenomenon, or a phenomenon 

 misplaced. Certainly, he is called upon to admit that 

 another inquirer approaching the problem from a theo 

 logical standpoint, taking the prophet on the Divine side, 



