king of
Moab," (meaning because of the distress they were in for water;) upon
which Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand,
surely, were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king
of Judah, I would not look towards thee nor see thee." Here is all
the venom and vulgarity of a party prophet. We are now to see the
performance, or manner of prophesying.

Ver. 15. "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass,
when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here
is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said,
[singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord,
Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what
every countryman could have told them without either fiddle or farce,
that the way to get water was to dig for it.

But as every conjuror is not famous alike for the same thing, so neither
were those prophets; for though all of them, at least those I have
spoken of, were famous for lying, some of them excelled in cursing.
Elisha, whom I have just mentioned, was a chief in this branch of
prophesying; it was he that cursed the forty-two children in the name
of the Lord, whom the two she-bears came and devoured. We are to suppose
that those children were of the party of Israel; but as those who will
curse will lie, there is just as much credit to be given to this story
of Elisha's two she-bears as there is to that of the Dragon of Wantley,
of whom it is said:

Poor children three devoured be,
That could not with him grapple;
And at one sup he eat them up,
As a man would eat an apple.

There was another description of men called prophets, that amused
themselves with dreams and visions; but whether by night or by day
we know not. These, if they were not quite harmless, were but little
mischievous. Of this class are,

EZEKIEL and DANIEL; and the first question upon these books, as upon all
the others, is, Are they genuine? that is, were they written by Ezekiel
and Daniel?

Of this there is no proof; but so far as my own opinion goes, I am more
inclined to believe they were, than that they were not. My reasons for
this opinion are as follows: First, Because those books do not contain
internal evidence to prove they were not written by Ezekiel and Daniel,
as the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc., prove they were
not written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.