the people flowing through the general mass only reached its flood-tide in them. Every feeling of the people, every movement of life in it, sent its impulse up to them ; every hope and fear waa reflected in their hearts. And it was with hearts so filled and minds so quickened and broad that they entered into the communion of God.
One other passage may be referred to which expresses very clearly the main element in the idea of prophet. In Ex 7' J" speaks to Moses, ' See, I liave made thee God to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet' (H). In Ex 4'* (J) a similar statement occurs, 'He (Aaron) shall be thy spokesman to the people ; he shall be to thee for a mouth, and thou slialt be to him God.' Moses ' inspired ' Aaron, and Aaron spoke his words to Pharaoh and the people. So all the prophets, e.g. Is SO'' 31', regard themselves as the ' mouth ' of J".
ii. Inspiration. — When Samuel dismissed Saul he said to him, ' Thou shalt meet a band of prophets ; and the spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man* (IS 10°-'). The term 'prophesy' describes the excited demeanour and utterance of the prophets, and the ' spirit ' is regarded as the cause of this. Of course, the prophets did not utter mere sounds, but words with meaning ; but it is the personal exaltation of the prophet himself, who has become another man, and not specially the contents of his utterance, that is ascribed to the ' spirit.' The man on whom the spirit comes, oftener performs deeds than speaks words. The ' spirit of tlie Lord ' came on Samson, and he rent the lion as he would have rent a kid (Jg 14*) ; it came on Saul, and he slew his oxen and sent the fragments throughout Israel, calling to war with Amnion (1 S 11°) ; similarly it came on Gideon (Jge**), Jephthah (11-'), and others, and they went out to war and judged Israel. The spirit of the Lord suddenly carries Elijah away, one knows not whither (1 K IS'-), and men fear that it may cast him upon some mountain or into some valley (2 K 2'°) ; and with ' the hand of the Lord ' upon him he kept pace with Ahab'a chariots (1 K 18^''). Probably the conception of God and that of the spirit of God always corre- sponded to one another. In early times God was conceived more as a natural than a spiritual force ; His operation, even when He might operate on the ethical side of man's nature, was physical. Hence ' siiirit ' connotes suddenness and violence in the Divine operation. When one is seen performing what is be3ond man to do, or what is beyond him- self in his natural condition, both to himself and to the onlooker he appears not himself, he is another man ; he is seized and borne onward by a power external to him — the spirit of the Lord is upon him. One under the spirit is always carried away by an impulse, sudden, and often uncon- trolfable. Hence the terms descriptive of the spirit's operation suggest suddenness and violence ; it 'comes upon ' (Sy .Trt 1 S l!)-"-^), 'comes mightily upon' (n^s IS lu"- •»), 'falls upon' (Ezk 11'), 'descends and rests on' (nu Nu II'^-^), 'puts on' a man as a garment (-'^V Jg 6^, 2 Ch 24-*), ' fills' him (Mic 3*), and the like. Similarly it is said that tlie ' hand of the Lord ' comes upon him (Ezk l^ 2 K 3'»), and overi.owers him (Is 8"). AH these expressions describe the plienomena visible to the onlooker, or experienced by the prophet. But it is the complex manifestation that they describe ; they do not analyze it, nor answer the question. Where amidst these phenomena is the point at which the spirit operates?
It is remarkable that in the literary prophets little reference is made to the spirit, and the references made are rather allusive than forma'
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and direct. Hosea (9') calls the prophet ' the man of the spirit' ; Isaiah (30'- -, cf. Job 20*) uses ' spirit of J" as parallel to ' muuth of J"' ; and Miiali (3") declares liinisclf full of power ' by the spirit of J"' to declare unto Jacob his trans^'ression.* But other pro)iliets, including Amos and Jer., do not express the idea. The e.\planation of this fact is probably this : in this ajje the violent e.\citation usual in early prophecy liad almost disappeared ; it was the violent impulse to sp. ak or act that •spirit' particularly connoted, and hence refer- ences to spirit are rare. Isaiah ou one occasion (8") speaks of the ' hand * of J" being upon him, which may refer to some unusual elevation (though cf. Jer 15'"), but the 'power' which Micah was conscious of was probably moral, though whether intermittent or not may be uncertain. Some have supposed that in this age the spirit was regarded as a permanent possession of the prophet, and for that reason not specially alluded to.t In Xu 11^ the spirit that was upon Moses is spoken of, part of whicli rested on the elders, and they prophesied. Their prophesying was momentary and under great excitation; but whether the 'spirit' was considered a permanent possession of Moses or not is not clear (cf. v.^ with V.-*). And the same uncertainty re- mains with regard to the 'spirit' that was on Elijah (2 K 2-"'). In Is II-'- the spirit of J" is said to descend and rest upon the Messiah, giving him discernment, counsel, and might in rule, as well as the fear of the Lord ; and this spirit would seem a permanent possession, though revealing itself as occasions reijuired. But the failure of the canonical prophets to refer to the spirit is scarcely due to their thinking of it as a permanent power indwelling in them ; it is rather due to their not thinking of the spirit specially at all. The cessation of the ecstasy left the prophet his proper self ; he was conscious of being an independent individual person, and as such he entered into fellowship with God. He was no more driven or overpowered by an impulse from without, which superseded his proper self ; his communion with God was a communion of two moral persons. God, it is true, did not speak to him face to face and externally as He did to Moses, but He spoke no less really' to his mind. The nature of the com- munion 13 clear from the dialogues in Is G and Jer 1. In its full perfection it is seen in Jeremiah, who should be taken as the true type of the prophet.