216 OEACLES ESTABLISHED AND ITINERANT. 



will. But he can, to a certain extent, produce them 

 by long fasting and by long prayer ; or, in other 

 words, by the continued concentration of the mind 

 upon a single point ; by music, dancing, and fumiga- 

 tions. The disease is contagious, as is shown by the 

 anecdote of Saul among the prophets ; and similar 

 scenes have been frequently witnessed by travellers in 

 the East. 



Prophets have existed in all countries and at all 

 times ; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion 

 as people learn to read and write. Second sight in the 

 Highlands disappeared before the school ; and so it 

 has been in other lands. Prophets were numerous in 

 ancient Greece. In the Homeric period they opposed 

 the royal power, and constituted another authority by 

 the grace of God. Herodotus alludes to men who 

 went about prophesying in hexameters. Thucydides 

 says, that while the Peloponnesians were ravaging the 

 lands of Athens, there were prophets within the city 

 uttering all kinds of oracles, some for going out, and 

 some for remaining in. It was a prophet who obtained 

 the passing of that law under which Socrates was 

 afterwards condemned to death. In Greece, in Egypt, 

 and in Israel, the priests adopted and localised the 

 prophetic power. The oracles of Ammon, Delphi, and 

 Shiloh, bore the same relation to individual prophets 

 as an Established Church to itinerant preachers. Syria 

 was especially fertile in prophets. Marius kept a Syrian 

 prophetess named Martha, who attended him in all 

 his campaigns. It matters nothing what the Syrian 

 religion might be ; the same phenomenon again and 

 again recurs. Balaam was a prophet before Israel 

 was established. Then came the prophets of the 

 Jews : and they again have been succeeded by the 



