We must not make the mistake, so common concerning reformers, and regard the evils that were justly lashed by the prophets as prevailing throughout society.  Had this been the case, where would the ethical forces of a new and higher life have risen?  Single preachers of social righteousness might have arisen, like Savonarola in Florence, under such conditions, but no general reform could have developed.  The steady growth of the movement initiated by the great prophets shows that it sprang from no individuals, but from society; that they merely led the reserve forces of virtue in the nation.  The heart of the nation was doubtless sound, and growing more vigorously virtuous.  Professor Thorold Rogers reminds us that the period when a great outcry is heard against any social evil, is not that wherein the evil is at its height, for then there would probably be no power of protest, but rather that in which the recuperative forces of society are rallying to throw off the disorder from the body politic.  Morality was in advance of religion at this time in Israel, and this interprets the movement which ensued to place religion in its proper position at the head of the march of progress.

It was amid such a state of affairs that the great prophets appeared upon the stage of action, calling the nation to a higher religion.  They were not so much philosophers, reasoning out a lofty intellectual conception of God, as preachers of righteousness, vitalizing from the moral nature the sense of the purity and justice of the Power in whom men lived and moved and had their being They turned the light of the inward law upon God, and revealed Him as its author.  They led Virtue into the Temple, touched her lips with a live coal from off the altar, and from a tongue of fire men heard, “Thus saith the Lord.”  They revived the true Mosaic priesthood, which set apart conscience as the mediator between God and man.  The seed that Moses planted budded and swelled toward its bloom.  The prophetic writings show us men a-hungered after righteousness breathing out the worship of Jehovah into the worship of the Eternal, who loveth righteousness.

Isaiah carries this message from God: 

    To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? 
    I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts. 
    And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 
    When ye come to appear before me,
    Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? 
    Bring no more vain oblations;
    Incense is an abomination unto me;
    The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure;
    It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 
    Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth;
    They are a trouble unto me;
    I am weary to bear them. 
    And when ye spread forth your hands,
    I will hide mine eyes from you: