No one can read the account of Balaam's falling, and lying prostrate with his eyes open while prophesying (Numbers xxiv.); and of Saul when, after an evil spirit from God had come upon him (1 Sam. xviii. 10), "he stripped off his clothes also and prophesied in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night; wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets" (1 Sam. xix. 24), without calling to mind the exhibitions of ecstatic mania among semi-savages. The Shamans of Siberia, for instance, work themselves up into fury, supposing or pretending that in this condition they are inspired by the spirit in whose name they speak, and through whose inspiration they are enabled to answer questions as well as to foretell the future. The root of the Hebrew word for prophet--_Nabi_, said to mean a bubbling up--confirms this view. The vehement gestures and gushing current of speech which accompanied their improvisations suggested a fountain bubbling up. Insanity and inspiration are closely allied. Various methods were resorted to among the ancients to attain the state of ecstacy, when the excited nerves found significance in all around. The Brahmans used the intoxicating Soma. At Delphi the Pythia inhaled an incense until she fell into a state of delirious intoxication; and the sounds she uttered in this state were believed to contain the revelations of Apollo. In David dancing with all his might and scantily clad before the ark of Jahveh, we are forcibly reminded of the dervishes and other religious dancers. From the mention of music in connection with prophesying (1 Sam. x. 5, xvi. 23, 2 Kings iii. 5), it has been conjectured the Jewish prophets anticipated the Salvationists in this means of producing or relieving excitement. In the Mysteries of Isis, in Orphic Cory-bantian revels, music was employed to work the worshippers into a state of orgiastic frenzy. The passage about Saul suggests the nudity or scanty costume of the prophets. Isaiah the elder--for the poet who wrote from chap. xl. to lxvi. must be distinguished from his predecessor--alleges a commandment from Jahveh to walk naked and barefoot for three years (Isaiah xx. 3). Apollos, or whoever wrote the epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 37), speaks of them wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins. A girdle of leather seems to have been the sole costume of Elijah (2 Kings i. 8). Micah (i. 8) says "I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked." Zechariah speaks of the prophets who "wear a rough garment to deceive," and "say I am no prophet I am an husbandman" (Zech. xiii. 45), which is like what Amos (vii. 14) says: "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit."