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And finally he beholds Jahve on a wall with a plumbline. He sees that Jahve's rule is not locust, not plague, but undeviating righteousness is the characteristic of Jahve, and hence this great downfall of Israel must follow, he now feels certain, after the premonition, because he sees the great moral wrongs of his people. The approach of Assyria is the means of Jahve's plan. might appear," says Smend, "that the cognition of Israel's sin was first and the certainty of his downfall last. But as much as Israel's sin might have provoked Jahve, the corollary that he must destroy Israel, could not have followed from such a cognition of sin. Jahve could according to traditional belief punish Israel, but not destroy. The Assyrians threatened Israel, and from the certainty that Jahve would through them destroy Israel, followed, on the contrary, the immensity of Israel's sin. It is of psychologic interest, however, that Amos thought first of a locust plague and then of a drought. Amos's prediction was, of course, conditioned by his belief in divine retribution, and the conditions of Israel at that time, but is not explicable by that any more than by the mere fact that Israel was threatened by Assur."

Therefore, as a result of the testing of the premonition, there follows, for the first time in the history of human thought, the wonderful revelation of Amos and the other prophets, that God is just and moral, and to be on intimate terms with God means moral intimacy. It is only through some such overpowering experiences as a premonition of Israel's downfall that so vast a conception as that of Jahve's universality and justice is at all intelligible to any one who comprehends the vastness and grandeur of the religious conceptions of the prophets. It was a religious revelation of so unique a character that we can well comprehend how these men have been believed, and believed themselves, to stand in direct com

munion with God, speaking to Him mouth to mouth. By threatening danger," says Smend, "they realize and announce that destruction is approaching. In nothing more and nothing less consists their prevision." (Jer.

6: 17.)

"The sins for which Israel is paying the penalty of destruction are, of course, always present. In view of them, the prophet is strengthened in his threatening prophecy (Jer. 34), while the punishment of particular sins of individuals, he announces in particular ways (Am. 7; Jer. 20, 28, 29). The threatening danger becomes thus a basis for his certainty, but originally it is not that. As the cause of the destruction there arises the thought of sin in the prophet's consciousness, when the danger approaches, and, contrariwise, his thoughts of sin recede with receding premonition of danger.

"The prevision of the future was certainly vouchsafed these prophets from Heaven, and no one could take that power to himself. It stood in closer relation to the entire religious life of Israel, it was the highest blossom of the historical Jahve religion, and is not founded on magic illumination."

More explicit than Smend is Dr. Buttenwieser's article Essence of Prophecy": It was not, then, the realizations of Israel's guilt that undermined the prophets' peace of mind, shocked their moral consciousness and brought them to the conviction "long before the political skies were overcast " that their people was doomed. On the contrary, the primary fact in the prophets' consciousness was their sudden inexplicable foreboding of the approaching catastrophe, and from this followed, as they inquired into the cause of the judgment, their awakening to the absolute righteousness of God and the sinfulness of their people.

That the process could not have been reversed, namely,

recognition of moral depravity, and the nation's downfall as a result, is to me still more evident from the fact that often the prophets are so overwhelmingly certain of the destruction they announce that neither repentance nor anything else can avert the catastrophe (Jer. 9-10), which could not have been the case had the idea of doom been the result of cognition of Israel's sin, for then it would follow that when the sin is removed, the punishment would be removed.

It becomes evident, therefore, provisionally at least, that the prophetic call was nothing but the moment in which the prophet became conscious of that sudden, inexplicable and awful premonition of the nation's imminent fall.

As in most cases, however, the exception proves the rule, so here, the truth that the prophetic call is a psychological experience of so profound a nature that a new, awakened life is the result, is reinforced by the exception that not all prophets receive their call in the form of a premonition. In the case of Hosea, it seems, the prophetic call came at the moment when a light suddenly flashed across his soul, as a result of his love for his faithless wife. The awakened life, the bold thought that Jahve's relation to faithless Israel was but an intensified love which he bore his faithless wife, was the psychological experience that assured Hosea that the very act of wedding such a wife was the express order of God, intending thus to teach him the prophetic message to his people. It appears to him afterwards as a divine arrangement, that he had to marry just this particular wife, but it seems to him now that even then God had said to him: "Take unto thee the wife of whoredom, and children of whoredom " (Hos. 1:2).

Hence, to speak in general terms, the prophetic "call " is the psychological moment when the prophet becomes suddenly conscious of profound truths, on the occasion of

the strange phenomenon of premonition or some other equally strange and profound psychological experience.

6. Schwartzkopff's Objections

Schwartzkopff's main objection to Smend is that, if we accept the theory that premonition of Israel's downfall is first and the cognition of sin last, then it would follow that the closer the threatened evil approaches, the more sinful Israel must be judged. Very logically indeed does he argue that the true prophets, the national pastors (Seelensorger), the religious geniuses of Israel, could not possibly declare white to be black and black white, could not possibly condemn the morally guiltless and excuse the guilty, according as misfortune threatened or not.

Schwartzkopff's whole argument is that the prophets recognized the great "World-Order," the ethical nature of the universe, and from that standpoint and with that law they measured and could measure the cause and effect in world-history. No one would dare deny that this moral law is the principle by which we determine and predict cause and effect in the world-history, and the prophets did that very thing in all their activity; but, and this is the important thing which Schwartzkopff overlooks, that law had to be discovered, and it is not discovered by a mere glance or even a thorough study of Israel's sins. It is discovered through some accidental, psychological experience, in the case of the prophets through the sudden, inexplicable, depressing and awful premonition of the nation's doom. Being a moral universe, ruled by an ethical and just God, such a calamity could only be the result of disobedience to those laws, and seeing the inevitable approaching result, they looked about for the cause and found it in the moral corruption of the people. Now then, were Israel free from moral corruption, then such a foreboding would have had no explanation and would

have led not to the sublime conclusions of the prophets but to utter confusion.

I am, therefore, convinced that the prophetic call was this great psychological experience, in most cases a premonition of Israel's doom and the discovery of the basic principles of a moral universe was the result of the " call," for it is evident to even the cursory reader of the prophetic works that they became preachers as a result of the "call," and not in any instance did they ascribe the "call " to a result of what they preached.