does in the Gospel of John, in spite of all their polemic against the traditional religion.  They are not saying anything new:  they are only proclaiming old truth.  While acting in the most creative way they feel entirely passive:  the homo tantum et audacia which may with perfect justice be applied to such men as Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah, is with them equivalent to deus tantum et servitus.  But their creed is not to be found in any book.  It is barbarism, in dealing with such a phenomenon, to distort its physiognomy by introducing the law.

X.I.3.  It is a vain imagination to suppose that the prophets expounded and applied the law.  Malachi (circa 450 B.C.) says, it is true, iv. 4, “Remember ye the torah of Moses my servant;” but where shall we look for any second expression of this nature?  Much more correctly than modern scholars did these men judge, who at the close of the preexilic history looked back on the forces which had moulded it, both the divine and those opposed to God.  In their eyes the prophets are not the expounders of Moses, but his continuators and equals; the word of God in their mouth is not less weighty than in the mouth of Moses; they, as well as he, are organs of the spirit of Jehovah by which He is present in Israel.  The immediate revelation to the people, we read in Deuteronomy xviii., ceased with the ten commandments:  from that point onwards Jehovah uses the prophets as His mouth:  “A prophet like unto thee,” He says to Moses, “will I raise up to them from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him; and whosoever shall not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.”  We find it the same in Jeremiah; the voice of the prophets, always sounding when there is need for it, occupies the place which, according to the prevailing view, should have been filled by the law:  this living command of Jehovah is all he knows of, and not any testament given once for all.  “This only I commanded your fathers when I brought them up out of Egypt:  Obey my voice, and walk ye in all the ways that I will command you.  Since the day that your fathers came forth out of Egypt, I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear.”  And even after the exile we meet in Zechariah (520 B.C.) the following view of the significance of the prophets:  “Thus spake Jehovah of hosts [to the fathers before the exile], Speak true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother, and oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the poor:  and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in his heart.  But they refused to hearken, and shrugged the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.  Yea, they made their hearts as a flint, lest they should hear the Torah and the words which Jehovah Sebaoth hath