dinary with the state of every part of the country; and still
more astonishing is their knowledge of surrounding countries. When
they have to speak of Moab or Edom, they seem as familiar with the
towns and rivers, the customs and history of these countries, as with
those of Judah; and they appear to be as well acquainted with what is
going on in the cities on the Nile or the Euphrates as with what is
happening in Jerusalem. No home secretary is as well acquainted with
the internal affairs of his own country, and no foreign secretary with
the affairs of foreign countries. It was their vocation to be
sensitively alive to all the influences, near or remote, by which
their native land could be affected.

* * * * *

The contents of the prophetic writings, notwithstanding their variety,
easily fall into a few great masses. The chief are these
three--Criticism, Denunciation and Comfort.

1. There is a great mass of what may be called Criticism. Standing on
their watch-tower and turning their observation on the internal
condition of the state, the prophets could nearly always discern
diseased symptoms in the body corporate, and it was their duty to
point them out. So Isaiah commences his prophecies: "The whole head is
sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto
the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and
putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither
mollified with ointment." And he thus gives expression to the
obligation which was laid on him to make these discoveries known: "Cry
aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show My people
their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins."

The sins which the prophets had to reprehend were pretty uniform all
through the prophetic period; and it is interesting to compare them
with those by which our own age is afflicted. There is no school in
which the conscience can be so well educated to a sense of public sin
as in the writings of the prophets.

The root evil was always Idolatry. The nation was continually falling
away from the worship of the true God to idols, or at least the
worship of other deities was incorporated with that of Jehovah. This
was always both a symptom of advanced degradation and the head and
fountain of other evils of the worst kind. All the prophets attack it
with all the weapons in their armoury--with hot indignation and close
argum