4. If I commission a Servant to deliver a message,--is not the message which he delivers _mine_? If I give him words to deliver,--are not _the words_ which he delivers _mine_? So obvious a proposition is no matter of opinion. You _cannot_ deny it. Nor,--(to apply the illustration to the matter in hand,)--nor _do_ you deny it, probably, so far as _Prophecy_, (in the popular sense of the term,) is concerned: but you begin to doubt, it seems, when any other function of the prophetic office is in question. "Any other function," I say; for, (as all men ought to be aware,) a prophet,--(_navē_ in Hebrew, προφήτης in Greek,)--does not, by any means, of necessity imply one who describes _future_ events. Πρό does not denote futurity of time, but vicariousness of office. The προ-φήτης is one who speaketh πρό, "on behalf of," "in the person of," GOD; whether declaring things past,--(as when Moses describes the Creation of the World, the Fall of Man, the Patriarchal Age): things present,--(as when St. Luke, "having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first," writes of them "in order"): things future,--(as when David, and Isaiah, and the rest of the goodly fellowship, "testified beforehand the sufferings of CHRIST, and the glory that should follow[396].") This is no arbitrary statement, but a well-known fact, which modern unbelievers and ancient heathen writers have declared with sufficient plainness[397]. So long then as the message which the Servant delivers is prophetic, you do not object to the notion that it is GOD'S message; nay, that the words spoken are GOD'S words. You begin to doubt, it seems, when a collection of genealogies, (as the two Books of Chronicles;) or when a story like that contained in the Book of Esther is concerned. But what is this but very trifling, and mere childishness? The message _may_ be mine, it seems, if it be of a lofty character: it may _not_ be mine if it be of a homely, ordinary kind!--I send a message by my Servant, and he delivers it faithfully: but whether it _is_ to be called my message, or is _not_ to be called my message, is to depend entirely on the subject-matter!... Thus, if a King, refusing to appear in person, should issue a reprieve to prisoners under sentence of Death, a proclamation of Peace or of War, an address to the representatives of the constitution, (Clergy, Lords, and Commons,) in parliament assembled,--the message would be _his_. But if, on the contrary, he were only to send a few homely words, the expression of some wish or intention which has nothing that seems particularly royal in it,--then, the message would _cease_ to be his!... I protest that as I am unable to see the reasonableness of such a method of regarding things human, so am I at a loss to understand why men should so regard things Divine.