of Baal. The leading idea to be formed of a prophet is that of a public religious teacher, whether honest or dishonest, whether the professed minister of the true God or of some false god. In our own language the word "prophet" is now restricted to denoting, in its proper sense, one miraculously commissioned to foretell events. It is too late to change the name as applied to the Jewish teachers; but if we would avoid error we must give it the additional meaning just explained. It would be a great extravagance, to suppose that all those called prophets in the Old Testament were regarded as possessing the miraculous power of foretelling events, or as making pretensions to this power.

The prophets whose writings remain, in addressing the Jewish people, often insisted on the certain or probable. consequences of their sins; on impending dangers, which could be avoided only, if at all, by a return to their duty; on the blessings which would follow reformation and goodness; on the mercy of God as about to be displayed in some approaching deliverance; and on that constant faith which the Jews, as his chosen people, might repose on his providence, if obedient to his will. It is the office of every teacher of religion and virtue to look to the future, and to point out the consequences of conduct. The imaginations of the prophets were strongly affected by a sense of the connexion of the Jewish nation with God. They described this connexion in the strongest terms. They spoke of the nation in a figure hardly agreeable to our ears, when we suffer the mind to dwell upon it, as God's inheritance, or peculiar possession. Viewing it as existing through its past and anticipated history, they personified it as Israel, his servant, his son, the child whom he had loved, who might be chastised for the sins of a particular generation, but whose enemies and oppressors were to be destroyed, and

for whom a future glory, as yet unknown, was in reserve. Thus their writings often assumed the form of prediction. The prophets, also, as ministers of God, were accustomed, with the licensed boldness of oriental poetry, to introduce God as through themselves addressing the people, and to represent their declarations of what they believed conformable to his will and purposes, as immediately suggested by him. Their language in these respects, though different in the turn of expression, was the same, in meaning and effect, with that which has been uttered from Christian pulpits down to our own time; and that which every religious and moral teacher may or must use when he believes himself to be stating what is indisputably the law of God.

It is clear, that there is much in the language, conceptions, and sentiments of the authors of the prophetical books (so called), which is not to be referred directly to God; and, so far as we have proceeded in our remarks on them, we may proceed with assurance. But there are good reasons for entertaining the question, Whether some of their number were not occasionally employed as ministers of God, under his immediate direction, and endued with the power of predicting events directly revealed to them by him. In the supposition that they were so, there is nothing intrinsically incredible; and such may have been the fact, even though no conclusive evidence of it now remain. We cannot expect to be able to ascertain all that has taken place in the extraordinary, any more than in the ordinary, manifestations of God. But the question, as regards our own belief, is simply, Whether we have sufficient evidence of the truth of this supposition, or whether the balance of probabilities inclines for or against it. In the opinion which has commonly prevailed relating to this subject, much has been assumed without proof; there has been a

great want of critical inquiry, and of logical and wellgrounded reasoning. On the other hand, the opinion. directly opposed to it has been rested chiefly on a principle, destructive of any belief in revelation, and of any religious sentiment toward God as a personal being, or rather of any belief in the God of Christianity; I mean the principle, that rejects all extraordinary interpositions of God, and regards the power that governs the universe as capable only of a sort of mechanical action; - God and matter being equally controlled by certain inevitable laws, the Laws of Nature.

The subject deserves a much more thorough and judicious examination than it has received; an examination to be carried through successfully only by one who unites the qualifications of a true Christian philosopher, a wide thinker, an able reasoner, an enlightened critic, and a laborious and accurate scholar. Its result might, perhaps, attain a high degree of probability. It might at least present us with all that can now be known on the subject. But, in the mean time, if our opinions must remain more or less uncertain, it is an uncertainty that in no way affects our virtue or happiness.

THE direct evidences of the divine authority of our religion have been divided into miracles and prophecies. But it is obvious, that a prophecy is only a miracle of a particular kind, and that, however clear and satisfactory, it can carry with it no peculiar proof, different from that afforded by any other miracle. In order that a prophecy may be received as evidence, its supernatural character must be unquestionable. There must be no doubt respecting either its meaning, or its correspondence with the event predicted, or its intended reference to that event. There

must be no mode of accounting for the correspondence between the prophecy and the event, except by refer ring the former to the omniscience of God. These conditions are not, as I conceive, fulfilled by those passages of the Old Testament which have been alleged as prophecies of Jesus. The Jews, interpreting the Old Testament allegorically, had applied many passages in it to their expected Messiah. A portion of the disciples of Jesus (apparently not all) retained the common notions of their countrymen respecting this subject, and we accordingly. find some of those passages applied to him in the Gospel of Matthew, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. In what is reported concerning the conversations of our Saviour, there are some expressions that may require explanation; but he never appeals in evidence of his divine mission to any words of a Jewish prophet, as containing a miraculous prediction.

The writers of the prophetical books undoubtedly believed, that the series of God's dispensations to their nation was not completed; that something greater was in reserve for it; that all the marvellous preparation which had been made was to produce other results than what had yet taken place. This belief gathered strength in after times. The chosen people, harassed and subjugated, could not but look forward to some miraculous interposition, by which God would at last manifest his purposes toward them and toward the world. They were expecting the appearance of that great minister, by whom those purposes would be accomplished, the Anointed One, the Messiah. This messenger came. The object of his coming was unlike what they

* I have formerly adverted to this subject in an article published in "The Christian Examiner," Vol. V. for 1828, pp. 53-59.

had anticipated; the kingdom which he was to establish was not that which they had looked for; the results, as regarded their own nation, were altogether different. But he was the long-expected Messiah, the Anointed One of God. He had come to fulfil the purpose of the Jewish dispensation. Our Saviour accomplished not any express prophecy relating to him, but he came in conformity to an expectation, which the whole tenor of God's providence toward their nation had taught the Jews to entertain.

THE main purpose of these remarks on the books treated of in this Section, as well as of those on the Pentateuch, has been to show, that these writings, when their character is properly understood, afford no ground of objection to the Jewish or Christian dispensation. But the subject suggests some other reflections, to which we will attend in the next Section.

SECTION IX.

Concluding Remarks.

In one of the most popular of the works introductory to the books of the Old Testament, written by a late prelate of the Church of England, they are spoken of as forming "that consecrated canon, in which the holy oracles were preserved by the Jews, which was stamped as infallible by the testimony of Christ and his apostles, and which, in the first and purest ages of the church, was reverenced (together with the inspired books of the New Testament) as the only source of revealed wisdom."*

Gray's Key to the Old Testament, Preface.