other, to supplement them, either in times of religious declension or when, as in Israel, the people were

withdrawn from their influences. Hence the great extension of the Prophetic Order in such periods, and

especially in the kingdom of the ten tribes. But when, during the reign of Ahab, the religion of Jehovah was,

so to speak, repudiated, and the worship of Baal and Astarte substituted in its place, something more than

even the ordinary exercise of the Prophetic Office was required. For the prophet was no longer

acknowledged, and the authority of the God, whose Messenger he was, disowned. Both these had therefore

to be vindicated, before the prophetic agency could serve its purpose. This was achieved through what

must be regarded, not so much as a new phase, but as a further development of the agency already at work.

We mark this chiefly in the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, which was contemporary with the first open

manifestation of Israel's national apostasy.

Even a superficial reader will observe in the ministry of these two prophets, as features distinguishing it

from that of all other prophets, indeed, we might say, from the whole history of the Old Testament - the

frequency and the peculiar character of their miracles. Three points here stand out prominently, their

unwonted accumulation; their seeming characteristic of mere assertion of power; and their apparent purpose

of vindicating the authority of the prophet. The reason and object of these peculiarities have already been

indicated in our foregoing remarks. But in reference to the characteristic of power as connected with these

miracles, it may be remarked that its exhibition was not only necessary for the vindication of the authority of

the prophet, or rather of Him in Whose Name he spake, but that they also do not present a mere display of

power. For it was always associated with an ultimate moral purpose in regard to the Gentiles or to Israel - the

believing or the unbelieving among them; and in all the leading instances (which must rule the rest) it was

brought about not only in the Name of Jehovah, but by calling upon Him as the direct Agent in it (comp. for

the present Volume I Kings 17:4, 9, 14, 20- 22). Thus viewed, this extraordinary display of the miraculous

appears, like that in the first proclamation of Christianity among the heathen, "for a sign, not to them that

believe, but to them that believe not" (1 Corinthians 14:22) - as Bengel explains, in order that, drawn and held

thereby, they might be made to listen.

But even so, some further remarks may here be allowed; not, indeed, in the way of attempted disquisition on

what must always be a prime postulate in our faith, but as h elps in our thinking. It seems to me, that miracles

require for their (objective) possibility - that is, subjectively viewed for their credibility1 - only one

postulate: that of the True and the Living God. It is often asserted, that miracles are not the traversing of the

established, but the outcome of a higher order of things.

Given, that there is a God (be the seeming hypothetication forgiven!), and in living connection with His

rational creatures - and it seems to follow that He must teach and train them. It equally follows, that such

teaching must be adapted to their stage and capacity (power of receptiveness). Now in this respect all times

may be arranged into two periods that of outward, and that of inward spiritual communication (of Law and

Persuasion). During the former, the miraculous could scarcely be called an extraordinary mode of Divine

communication, since men generally, Jews and Gentiles alike, expected miracles. Outside this general circle

(among deeper thinkers) there was only a "feeling after God," which in no case led up to firm conviction. But

in the second stage personal determination is the great characteristic. Reason has taken the place of sense;

the child has grown to the man. The ancient world as much expected an argument from the miraculous as we

do from the purely rational or the logically evidential. That was their mode of apprehension, this is ours. To

them, in one sense, the miraculous was really not the miraculous, but the expected; to us it is and would be

interference with our laws and habits of thinking. It was adapted to the first period; it is not to the second.

It would lead beyond our present limits to inquire into the connection of this change with the appearance of

the God-man and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Church. As we have shown in a previous Volume,

under the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was chiefly known and felt as a power. The "still small voice" marks

the period of transition.

"Prophetism" was, so to speak, the introduction of the "still small voice" into the world - first in a

preparatory manner; in the fullness of time, as in all fullness, in the Christ; and finally as indwelling in the