despair; they solved by anticipation the grim problem which history set before them.  They absorbed into their religion that conception of the world which was destroying the religions of the nations, even before it had been fully grasped by the secular consciousness.  Where others saw only the ruin of everything that is holiest, they saw the triumph of Jehovah over delusion and error.  Whatever else might be overthrown, the really worthy remained unshaken.  They recognised ideal powers only, right and wrong truth and falsehood; second causes were matters of indifference to them, they were no practical politicians.  But they watched the course of events attentively, nay, with passionate interest.  The present, which was passing before them, became to them as it were the plot of a divine drama which they watched with an intelligence that anticipated the denouement.  Everywhere the same goal of the development, everywhere the same laws.  The nations are the dramatis personae, Israel the hero, Jehovah the poet of the tragedy. 1

***************************** 1.  In very much the same way the threatened and actual political annihilation of Ionia led to the rise of Greek philosophy (Xenophanes, Heraclitus). *****************************

The canonical prophets, the series of whom begins with Amos, were separated by an essential distinction from the class which had preceded them and which still continued to be the type of the common prophet.  They did not seek to kindle either the enthusiasm or the fanaticism of the multitude; they swam not with but against the stream.  They were not patriotic, at least in the ordinary acceptation of that word; they prophesied not good but evil for their people (Jer. xxviii. 8).  Until their time the nation had sprung up out of the conception of Jehovah; now the conception of Jehovah was casting the nation into the shade.  The natural bond between the two was severed, and the relation was henceforward viewed as conditional.  As God of the righteousness which is the law of the whole universe, Jehovah could be Israel’s God only in so far as in Israel the right was recognised and followed.  The ethical element destroyed the national character of the old religion.  It still addressed itself, to be sure, more to the nation and to society at large than to the individual; it insisted less upon a pure heart than upon righteous institutions; but nevertheless the first step towards universalism had been accomplished, towards at once the general diffusion and the individualisation of religion.  Thus, although the prophets were far from originating a new conception of God, they none the less were the founders of what has been called “ethical monotheism.”  But with them this ethical monotheism was no product of the “self-evolution of dogma,” but a progressive step which had been called forth simply by the course of events.  The providence of God brought it about that this