i8;7] WAS PROPHECY SUPERNATURAL ? 353 



inquiry, and he can afford to be convicted of errors of 

 detail. 



Allow him to start from the position that a purely 

 phenomenal and empirical measure is to be applied to 

 prophecy that prophecy is to be measured by prediction, 

 and that prediction is to be tested on the letter of its 

 details, and the game is in his hands. But is this fair ? 

 What Kuenen says is, &quot;I cannot admit that this is in a 

 special sense the word of God, unless you prove that it 

 told things, within the region of empirical verification, 

 which could not have been got at by human foresight.&quot; 

 But, according to the prophets own account of the matter, 

 God s word has for its function to keep Israel in sympathy 

 not with empirical facts, but with God s transcendental 

 plan and purpose. If it really discharged this function 

 if it really enabled men to walk with God in a personal 

 fellowship of faith and love, and gave them so much 

 insight into His purposes as was needful at each moment 

 to cast light upon their path if, as Isaiah puts it, the 

 prophets and those who hearkened to their word really 

 heard a word behind them saying, &quot; This is the way, walk 

 ye in it,&quot; when they turned to the right hand or to the left 

 then surely the prophets were right in saying that the 

 word was not theirs, but God s. 



When the matter is put in this way, the question of 

 prediction and fulfilment does not cease to be important, 

 but it is no longer possible to treat it in the bare empirical 

 fashion proposed by Kuenen. On the one hand it is 

 perfectly conceivable that we might have the most 

 remarkable prediction of details verified in the most 

 literal way by subsequent events, and yet that in this 

 prediction we might receive no revelation of the heart and 

 purpose of God which should have the slightest religious 

 value, and therefore no real prophecy. Suppose that Dr. 

 Slade, when brought into the London police court, had 

 offered to prove his supernatural mission by telling the 

 price at which Russian stocks would be quoted on the day 



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