of his life.  In this relation, however, there was nothing distinctively prophetical, just because it was a matter of the inner life alone, and was sufficient for itself; it was just the essence of the life of religion that the prophets thus brought to view and helped to declare itself.  The experience of Jeremiah propagated itself and became the experience of religious Israel.  This was the power by which Israel was enabled to rise again after every fall; the good conscience towards God, the profound sentiment of union with Him, proved able to defy all the blows of outward fortune.  In this strength the servant, despised and slain, triumphed over the world; the broken and contrite heart was clothed and set on high with the life and power of the Almighty God.  This divine spirit of assurance rises to its boldest expression in the 73rd Psalm:  “Nevertheless I am continually with Thee; Thou holdest me by my right hand; Thou guidest me with Thy counsel, and drawest me after Thee by the hand.  If I have Thee, I desire not heaven nor earth; if my flesh and my heart fail, Thou, God, art for ever the strength of my heart, and my portion.”

The life surrendered is here found again in a higher life, without any expression of hope of a hereafter.  In the Book of Job we do indeed find a trace of this hope, in the form that even after the death of the martyr, God may still find opportunity to justify him and pronounce him innocent; yet this idea is only touched on as a distant possibility, and is at once dropped.  Certainly the position of that man is a grand one who can cast into the scale against death and devil his inner certainty of union with God—­ so grand indeed that we must in honesty be ashamed to repeat those words of the 73d Psalm.  But the point of view is too high.  The danger was imminent of falling from it down into the dust and seeking comfort and support in the first earthly experience that might offer, or, on the other hand, sinking into despair.  Subjective feeling was not enough of itself to outbid the contradictions of nature; the feeling must take an objective form, a world other than this one, answering the demands of morality, must build itself up to form a contrast to the world actually existing.  The merit of laying the foundations for this religious metaphysic which the time called for belongs, if not to the Pharisees themselves, at least to the circles from which they immediately proceeded.  The main features of that metaphysic first appear in the Book of Daniel, where we find a doctrine of the last things.  We have already spoken of the transition from the old prophecy to apocalypse.  With the destruction of the nation and the cessation of historical life, hope was released from all obligation to conform to historical conditions; it no longer set up an aim to which even the present might aspire, but ran riot after an ideal, at the advent of which the historical development would be suddenly broken off.  To be pious was all the Jews could do at the time;