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course with the Divine Being was obtained after severe fasting, and by means of dreams, visions, and trances.

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This mode of producing enthusiasm, fanaticism, and self-delusion, is infallible. In all times and places it has been practised with a like success. In his "Timæus,' Plato thus alludes to the fact: "For the authors of our being... so ordered our inferior parts . . . and in the liver placed his oracle, which is sufficient proof that God has given the art of divination to the foolishness of man. For no man when in his senses attains prophetic truth and inspiration; but when he receives the inspired word, either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep, or he is demented by some distemper or possession." The North American Indian, the Malay, the Zulu, the Hindoo, and the African, all fast in order to produce a state of religious ecstasy. Bread and meat," says Dr. Tylor, "would have robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the refectory door must many a time have closed the gates of heaven to his gaze" (Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 415). Occasionally the morbid exaltation displayed itself in such exhibitions as that of Saul's stripping off his clothes to prophesy before Samuel; of Isaiah's walking naked and barefooted for three years; of David's dancing naked before the ark. So with the dervishes, dancing until giddiness and exhaustion are brought on is still a religious ceremony.

Although, as just stated, prediction was but an accidental rather than an essential attribute of the Hebrew prophet, he, like modern seers, was supposed to be gifted with clairvoyance. In 1 Sam. ix., when Saul's father lost his asses, Saul repairs to Samuel-the "seer" and "man of God"—and gives him the fourth part of a shekel. Whereupon Samuel tells Saul "all that is in his heart," and the asses are forthwith recovered. Some of the prophets indignantly repudiated this trade of professional divination; and even declared their contempt for the wisdom born of

phrensy. That the ecstatic condition was not always edifying may be gathered from the fact that Shemaiah the Nehelamite ordered "every man that is mad and maketh himself a prophet," to be put "in the stocks; "—a proceeding which so exasperated Jeremiah that, quoting Jehovah, as "thus said the Lord," he punishes Shemaiah and his seed with banishment.

In contemplating these features of the prophetic character we must not forget the intellectual condition of the people whom the prophets addressed. It was one of absolute ignorance, combined with its inseparable attendants-credulity and superstition. Under these circumstances the demand invariably creates the supply: a superstitious generation seeketh after a sign, and is only too willing to accept fanaticism for inspiration. In all ages mankind have been the dupes of priest-craft. But although the priest has interested motives in fostering credulity, it is man's innate tendency which first engenders the self-deception or the imposture of the professional spiritualist. Divination in some form or other has always had its votaries. From the mysteries of Urim and Thummim to the fortune-telling gipsy; from the horoscope of astrology to the dregs of the nurse's tea-cup; from the bellowings of the sacred Apis to the table-rappings of the "medium;"-the intense yearning after fore-knowledge has ever consulted its omens and its oracles. For ever the spirit of curiosity remains the same. The only change is in the means of gratifying it.

With respect to the predictions themselves, if any of . them can be said to have been fulfilled (which in a literal sense is doubtful), those that relate to historical facts must be regarded as mere lucky guesses. They were made by sagacious men respecting events generally near at hand, and upon deliberate consideration of the causes then and there in active operation. They were dictated frequently by hopes which the energies of the whole nation most

concerned conspired to bring to pass; or, as in some of the prophecies of Jeremiah, by alarms which national despondency tended to verify.

That they were no more than fortunate conjectures is proved by the number of them which did not come true. Such, for instance, as the seventy years' exile foretold by Jeremiah, which cannot, by his own or by any other reckoning, be made to exceed sixty-three years, and if we date from the destruction of Jerusalem, only fifty-two. The prediction of Isaiah that Damascus should cease to be a city and become a ruinous heap has also had no verification. The prophecy of Ezekiel, chap. xxvi., that Tyre should be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, is in chap. xxix. declared not to have been fulfilled. Unsuccessful guesses respecting Babylon were made by several of the prophets. Amongst others, Hananiah rashly foretold the downfall of Babylon " within two full years." Jeremiah, with evident jealousy of this encroachment on his prerogative, hears the inferior prophet at first with a bad grace, and after a while avenges himself by dooming his unfortunate rival to death. "So Hananiah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month." If the error were of so sinful a nature, how was it that Jeremiah himself, or Ezekiel, escaped a similar fate? For beside their other blunders, they both prophesied falsely concerning the conquest of Egypt by Babylon. As to the remarkable mention made by Isaiah respecting Cyrus and the destruction of Babylon, it is no longer disputed by Hebrew scholars that the latter part of the book from chap. xl. to lxvi. (which includes these references) is by a later writer-called the younger Isaiah, who shared in the captivity; and who wrote simply of what he had direct experience. The prediction by Daniel (chap. xi.) of the conquests of Alexander the Great is of a similar character to the foregoing; the evidence being tolerably conclusive that the book of Daniel was written in the time of Antiochus

Epiphanes (of whose tyranny he gives an historical account), and therefore nearly a hundred and fifty years after the time of Alexander.

The learned criticism of latter days, which has devoted so much patient study to the subject, has arrived at the same unsatisfactory conclusion concerning the Messianic prophecies. The general vagueness of the terms in which these are made, requires indeed but little ingenuity to find an appropriate application for them in support of almost any theory that may be desired. But the truth is, that without severely straining their meaning, it cannot be pretended that they have any reference whatever to the events they are supposed to foretell. Setting aside the special circumstances with which the idea gradually became invested, the one prominent and all-important feature is the expectation and promise of a Deliverer. Now, although the popular belief of the Jews distinctly pointed to the coming of this Messiah, the tradition had no definite place in their creed until conquest and persecution had overtaken them, and so rendered liberation from their oppressors a matter of solicitude. While they themselves were conquerors, and until the vain-glorious and ruinous reign of Solomon, with the misrule of which sensual voluptuary their greatest misfortunes may be said to have begun, their comparatively prosperous condition stood in no great need of amendment. Both in origin and development the Messianic tradition was purely secular;save in so far as the belief in a Deliverer grew to be a part of their religion, and raised the idea of the Saviour from the conception of the human, to that of a divinely appointed, being.

As suffering pressed more and more heavily upon the Jewish people, we find the prophets, especially at the time of the Babylonish captivity, inspired with the enthusiastic and visionary hope which sanguinary and imaginative men not unfrequently extract from misfortune. We find

them nobly exhorting their fellow-sufferers to the worship of the one true God; and stimulating their fortitude with predictions, not only of forthcoming deliverance, but of a universal theocracy combined with unbounded earthly dominion and glory. The belief that the advent of the promised Saviour was near at hand, was no less strong with the Jews in the days of Micah, than was the belief with the disciples of Jesus and also with Jesus himself that, they would live to see the coming of the kingdom. of God. But that the kingdom of the Messiah was a kingdom of this world, is not more evident from the writings of the Old Testament, than it is from the entire history in the New. Christ crucified" was unto the Jews a stumbling-block. This was a corollary of their belief that Christ abideth (i.e., should live) for ever." In every sense, indeed, the earthly glory of their promised Deliverer was utterly incompatible with the humble pretensions of the carpenter's son; and the assumption of the character of Jesus was so great an outrage to their preconceived notions, that death alone could expiate the offence.

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It may be venturesome to offer an opinion on the disputed interpretations of the most important of the prophetic passages: nevertheless it may not be amiss to note here the meaning which is the most obvious, if the least acceptable. Let us take the great prophecy of Isaiah vii. 14. Suppose any one to read it who had never heard the name of Christ, and was prepared to accept only the plain sense conveyed by the words themselves, taken in context with the subject-matter of the discourse. It would seem, under such conditions, that one conclusion

1 "We which are alive and remain," says St. Paul, "shall be caught up together with them in the air" (1 Thess. iv. 17). "The stars of heaven shall fall," are the words of Jesus; "and then shall

they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. . . . Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark xii. 25 ff.)

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