is;;] PROPHECY AS A FACTOR IN HISTORY 347 



and under forms which interpreted it in its bearings on 

 his actual historical position and needs. We cannot 

 understand the Old Testament dispensation, either in its 

 own internal unity or in its unity with the New Testa 

 ment, except in this way of always looking at each step in 

 the development for a human continuity whereby the 

 new advance in the carrying out of God s plan of Revela 

 tion and redemption fits into the general progress of 

 history. 



What is true in general must be true in the special 

 case of prophecy which was the main agency by which 

 God carried on His work in Israel, and led up to Christ. 

 The limitations of prophecy in general correspond to the 

 imperfection of the Old Covenant, which again expresses 

 the impossibility of bringing men to understand the 

 fulness of God s saving purpose otherwise than by a 

 gradual training process extended through many centuries. 

 And the particular limitations in prophecy, the local, 

 temporary, earthly colouring of individual parts of the 

 prophetic teaching, correspond to special features of 

 limitation in the Old Testament history, and can be 

 rightly appreciated only by the man who has learned 

 to fit the whole series of the prophets into their proper 

 historical setting. But as we learn to understand the 

 work of the prophets in its historical connection we shall 

 learn also to see how that work everywhere displays a 

 Divine unity manifesting itself through the historical 

 and variable circumstances which mould its temporary 

 form. The progress of the Old Testament history is not 

 a blind sequence of cause and effect, but a progress towards 

 an end revealed in Christ. The whole Old Testament 

 worked to prepare for Christ. And it did not work 

 blindly. Paganism, too, was a preparation for Christ, 

 but an unconscious preparation without any glimpse of 

 the future for which it was the providentially appointed 

 past. But the Old Testament development was never 

 unconscious of its own significance. No prophet saw 



