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TABLE OF THE PROPHETS, IN ORDER OF TIME,

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CHAPTER XIX.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE PROPHETS.

THE PROPHET JONAH.

DURING the course of the preceding history, we have seen a succession of prophets raised up, who, taking the place of the first High Priests, became the organs of communication between God and his chosen people; they made known His will, and were the authorized guides of the nation and its rulers. The kings, although endowed with the usual attributes of royalty, governed but with a delegated authority. When the Israelites demanded to have a king like other nations, and Saul was anointed, he was only the visible sovereign; the object of respect and observance, and the leader of their armies ; but he had no power beyond; he could not alter a single law in the code established by Moses, and when he transgressed those laws in his own person, he received punishment in private affliction and public disasters, and when that failed to effect his repentance, he was removed from the throne, and another king substituted. The kings of Judah and Israel were the vicegerents of Jehovah; nothing more: the government of the Israelites was a Theocrasy, and they were only the appointed administrators of the Law given by God on Mount Sinai.

Yet as power has ever been prone to overstep its appointed bounds, there was a check put upon the caprice and self-exaltation of the princes of Judah and Israel, by the presence of the prophets. These prophets were sometimes only inspired to act on particular occasions; but as the vices of the nation increased, and the haughty disobedience of its kings became more open and violent, the power of the prophets was magnified in proportion: thus a sure defence was provided for any of the people who nobly dared to brave the anger of their idolatrous kings, and the proudest of their monarchs was made to feel, from time to time, the divine authority under which they governed. Elijah and Elisha opposed the most violent and cruel of the monarchs of Israel; and when the sister kingdom of Judah fell into the same state, Isaiah and Jeremiah appeared to rebuke the obstinacy of the people and their kings. Towards the close of each dynasty, the number and greatness of the prophets increased; and when their threatenings and denunciations were disregarded, they appealed to future events, unknown to man but revealed to them by God, and boldly but sorrowfully foretold the fate which awaited their own people, and the nations with whom their history and misfortunes were interwoven.

These last were the prophets whose writings are come down to us, and are the prophets of the Old Testament Scriptures. They appeared when the glory of the nation was departing, and

when, deaf to the warnings of their holy men, the people persisted in trusting to alliances with the heathen, and Egypt, Syria, and Assyria by turns were courted for their friendship, or submitted to as conquerors; then did the prophets rebuke the rulers for their folly and sin in trusting to any power but Jehovah, and foretell the extinction of their ill founded hopes, and pourtray in striking language the future ruin of those proud and haughty nations. The books of the prophets contain distinct predictions of the fate of all the people and cities connected by neighbourhood or intercourse with the Israelites: the destruction of Tyre and her princely merchants; Egypt, with her ancient civilization and gigantic memorials of past greatness, was to pass from her native race and be no more a nation; the fall of both Nineveh and Babylon were minutely foretold even to the manner of their destruction, and Cyrus, the conqueror of the latter, was mentioned by name; all these prophecies were delivered when those kingdoms were at the height of their glory, and when no human eye could see beyond the long vista of power, opulence, and victory which then lay open before them.

Yet these predictions relating to foreign states, important as they are, were but subsidiary to the one great theme of the prophets, namely, the future destinies of their own people, and the coming of their and the world's Redeemer, Jesus Christ. This was the glorious consumma

tion of all their hopes, the reward of their sufferings, the redemption (if accepted) of their nation, and of the whole earth.

When war and famine desolated the chosen land, and the miseries their sins had brought upon them caused the voice of wailing to be in their streets, and the sounds of joy and of mirth to be no more heard, when yet greater tribulation and woe was at hand, and a long captivity was about to commence- -then, in order to comfort those who yet trusted in Jehovah, were the prophets heard predicting the happy return of their descendants to their native land, the rising of a second and more glorious temple from the ashes of the one about to be destroyed, and in that Temple the appearance of the Messiah, promised of old to Abraham. The more the nation was humbled and oppressed, the more triumphantly did Isaiah and the other prophets describe in glowing language the future restoration of the whole nation, and the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom. These predictions were recorded and written down by the prophets themselves or their scribes, and were either publicly recited, or affixed on the gates of the Temple. Their style is magnificent, forcible, and highly figurative; abounding in metaphor, and, as Bishop Gray remarks,* "every object of nature or art that can afford allusions is explored with industry, and every scene of creation and every

*Gray's Key, 325 page. Lowth Heb. Poetry. Lecture vi.

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