ing the august idea of the moral government of the world'.'

3. This brings us to a third point: the religious function and influence of prophecy. It is often stated that the prophets were the creators of ethical monotheism; the founders of that 'true biblical religion which came to its fulfilment in Christianity 2. Certainly they proclaimed with burning and passionate ardour the moral element in Jehovah's character. They taught that His anger was not fitful or unreasonable, not lightly arising or falling indiscriminately, but essentially and perfectly righteous. Two remarks, however, suggest themselves in regard to the statement that the prophets were 'creators of monotheism.' In the first place, it is necessary to protest against the idea that the higher conception of God was the outcome merely of human reflection, or the product of a higher phase of moral culture. What the natural evolution of religion leads to we see in the religions of heathendom. The gods of paganism were deified human beings, reproducing the attributes, or at least some one attribute, of their worshippers; heathen deities wear the impress of the national or tribal character which they reflect. But the God of the Hebrew prophets is one who stands in sharpest contrast to His people; indeed it is their unlikeness to Jehovah that is the secret of their threatened ruin. Left to itself the northern kingdom would have chosen Baal, and the worship of Jehovah might have even disappeared but for Elijah in the ninth century, but for Amos and Hosea in the eighth. Secondly, the monotheism of the prophets was no new article of faith. It was the revival of a belief which probably had been the implicit conviction of the best in Israel

1 Kuenen, op. cit. p. 124.

2 Pfleiderer, Gifford Lectures, vol. ii. p. 45. Cp. Nicolas, Des doctrines religieuses des Juifs, p. 25: 'Les prophètes sont des initiateurs à la vérité divine; les premiers ils ont entrevu ce spiritualisme religieux dont le christianisme a été l'expression la plus élevée.'

3 Cp. Oettli, op. cit. p. 15.

3

Pro

ever since the time of Moses1. The vital importance of the prophetic doctrine was that it was a turningpoint in the transformation of faith in Jehovah as the national God into a universal religion. fessor Kuenen has pointed out that the doctrine of Jehovah's holiness lifted the whole conception of deity to a new and higher sphere. It was in His holiness. that Jehovah was unique, and if holiness were an essential element in the divine character, the God of Israel must be the only God. He cannot belong only to one particular people; every nation that recognizes an ethical standard, whether it be the law of nature written in the heart or some positive code devised by human wisdom, stands in a necessary relation to the Holy One of Israel. Thus while we are not justified in concluding that the idea of monotheism was entirely new in the prophetic period, that idea was undoubtedly proclaimed with fresh emphasis, and under circumstances that gave precision and point to a dimly-realized belief which hitherto had been probably confined to a very small circle of the faithful. For the nation as a whole cannot have been in any strict sense monotheistic. The average Israelite regarded the gods of the heathen as really existing beings who within their own sphere or domain were as powerful as the God of Israel in His. In opposition to this belief the prophets taught that where the law of righteousness was recognized, however defective or rudimentary might be its content, there the sway of Jehovah extended. Right was everywhere right, and wrong wrong. If the God of Israel were once acknowledged to be the God of righteousness, His dominion must necessarily be conceived as co-extensive with the law of righteousness itself, in a word with the inhabited world. The appearance therefore of Amos, the earliest of the

Cp. Kuenen, op. cit. p. 119.

3

Cp. Rom. ii. 14.

* See Robertson's criticism of Kuenen, Early Religion of Israel, pp. 320 foll.

eighth-century prophets, forms an era in the history of human thought. Amos, says Cornill, 'is the pioneer of a process of development from which a new epoch in humanity dates.' If righteousness is indeed the supreme law of the universe, the God of Israel is the God of the whole earth, and in the creed of Israel are concealed the germs of a world-religion.

Mark how Amos enforces this truth. His prophetic glance extends beyond the borders of Israel itself. The heathen nations are arraigned by him as amenable to the judgment of God for offences against ordinary laws of humanity and international good faith. Damascus, Philistia, Edom, Ammon and Moab-they also are subject to the just sway of Jehovah, though they acknowledge Him not. On them, too, Jehovah inflicts the penalties which are the expression of His necessary resentment against human sin; it is His holiness which is outraged by the wholesale barbarities inflicted by one nation on another; it is He to whom vengeance belongeth1. What is this but an anticipation of St. Paul's statement, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men? Assuredly in this prophetic view of God, in this conviction that the area of judgment extends beyond the limits of Israel 3, are hidden the elements of a true universalism. The teaching of Amos is still a long way removed from the generous faith which welcomed the nations into the kingdom of God and looked upon them as participating in the privileges and hopes of the chosen people. But that faith was already implicitly contained in the doctrine of Amos that Jehovah was the God who had controlled by His providence the restless movements of the nations, or in that of Micah that the substance of Israel's conquered

1 Ps. xciv. I. 2 Rom. i. 18. 3 Montefiore, op. cit. p. 146. Montefiore has some interesting paragraphs on the growth of the universalist conception, pp. 145 foll. He regards the prediction of Isa. xix. 22-25 as 'the high-water mark of eighth-century prophecy' (p. 149).

foes should be consecrated unto the Lord of the whole earth'.

Corresponding to this primary conception of God is the prophetic philosophy of history 2. A large share of attention is devoted by most of the prophets to Israel's past career. They delight to trace the course of the divine dealings with the chosen people, and to point out the critical epochs in Jehovah's self-manifestation. In a certain sense, as we have seen, their mission is extended to all the nations in turn. Egypt, Tyre, Asshur, Edom, Moab, Babylon, though outside the sphere of the sacred covenant, were within that of the divine governance. But the real distinction between Israel and the nations consisted in the fact that Jehovah was not to His elect people merely what He was to the heathen-a dimly recognized power making for righteousness, but a covenant God manifesting Himself and making known the laws of His operation in condescending grace. The guilt of Israel was conspicuous in proportion to the degree of divine knowledge, and the measure of divine favour which it had enjoyed. Heathenism, it has been said, 'has neither a religious view of history, nor a philosophy of history; for it knew no absolute final moral purpose to the attainment of which the fates of the nations were to serve as means. Israel, on the other hand, knew such a purpose of history-namely, the realization of a kingdom of God, of a human fellowship and community corresponding to the holy will of God.' It was the belief of the prophets in the purpose of a righteous God that made them for all mankind 'the teachers of the religious view of the world which contemplates all that is perishing, all that is transitory, sub specie aeternitatis 3?

1 Amos ix. 7; Mic. iv. 13.

2

Cp. Darmesteter, op. cit. p. 208: 'La philosophie de l'histoire est née le jour où les prophètes crurent trouver au monde et à la vie un sens et un objet.'

3 Pfleiderer, Gifford Lectures, vol i. pp. 191, 192. Cp. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 138.

U

But other elements were contributed by the prophets to the idea of God. If the ethical doctrine of Amos stood by itself, it might appear to have a certain one-sidedness. The God whom he proclaims is essentially a moral ruler and judge, an object rather of fear than of love or trust1. In Hosea we discover that which forms the counterpart to the teaching of Amos. By Hosea a religious, rather than an ethical, aspect of God's relation to Israel is brought into prominence. To Amos, God is Israel's king and judge; to Hosea, her husband and father: to Amos, Israel is a state, a sinful kingdom, which has brought upon itself the righteous penalty of sin; to the mind of Hosea, the house of Jacob presents itself as 'a moral individual' or person, whom Jehovah has graciously brought into a close relationship with Himself. The idea indeed of the continuity of this relationship colours Hosea's brief retrospect of history. In the career of Jacob, the progenitor of Israel, who had so manifestly experienced the strength and tenderness of Jehovah's pity and pardoning love, the history of the nation was typically summed up. Punishment and disciplinethese had been the great factors in Jacob's life-but they had ever been controlled by an unfailing purpose of grace; they had been the instruments of moral purification; they had been visible proofs of Jehovah's abiding favour. I will not leave thee, was the promise to the lonely wanderer at Bethel, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of 3 Similarly, the entire history of Israel, from the days of the patriarchs downwards, is for Hosea the history of 'a single unchanging affection always acting on the same principles, so that each fact of the past is at the same time a symbol of the present or a prophecy of the future.' Hosea then crowns the doctrine of Jehovah's justice by dwelling on the constancy of His love. It is noticeable in this

1 Cornill, Der Isr. Prophetismus, p. 48.

2 Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 165.

3 Gen. xxviii. 15.

• Robertson Smith, loc. cit. Cp. Hos. ii. 15; ix. 9; Joshua vii. 24.