182 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



life, but two prophets lives, one in his own day, and one 

 in the far future. And if this be the real state of the case, 

 Isaiah will be to the critic, for all practical purposes, two 

 men ; the whole historical significance of these chapters 

 must still be transferred from the age of Hezekiah to the 

 age of Labynetus. 1 



But, instead of pursuing these intricate questions, our 

 present purpose calls us rather to consider the way in 

 which critics of divergent tendencies have sought to 

 explain the phenomena of Hebrew prophecy that are 

 undisputed by the most sceptical inquirer. We have 

 learned to regard the prophets as the leaders of the 

 religious life of Israel, rising above the people, as men 

 who bear within them a higher ground of trust in God, 

 a deeper insight into His purpose, than falls to the lot of 

 their fellow-countrymen. A prophet like Isaiah main 

 tains, we can hardly fail to see, a kingly attitude. Nor 

 was it the mere accident of success that enabled him to 

 assume this position. The northern prophets, whose 

 career was lighted up by no gleam of present hope, who 

 were never privileged to take part in a national success, 

 speak with no less undoubted authority. That the people 

 whose sins they denounced, and whose speedy fall they 

 proclaimed, hated and persecuted them, is not singular. 

 But the persecutors were never able to proceed against 

 the prophets as impostors, or as mere turbulent revolu 

 tionaries. The name in which they spoke, the life that 

 witnessed to their words, inspired respect and even awe 

 among their bitterest enemies. The explanation of this 

 fact is not far to seek. It lies not in the person of the 

 prophet himself, for no historical fact can be clearer than 



1 The way in which believing critics, men who acknowledge not only 

 the supernatural but the miraculous, deal with questions of date and 

 authorship, is most instructively exemplified in Kamphausen s Lied 

 Mosis. The arguments employed in that work are not the less interest 

 ing because the learned author is an admiring disciple of a man who 

 left a strong personal mark on all his hearers we refer to the late 

 lamented Rothe. 



