The result at which our author arrives upon a long examination into the different uses of the word "Spirit" is, that these expressions respecting the infusion of the Spirit "signify nothing more than that the prophets had a singular and extraordinary virtue and cultivated piety, with very great constancy of mind, and thereby they had a perception of the mind or judgment of God; for we shall find that the Spirit of God denotes in Hebrew as well the mind as the judgment or sentence of God, and therefore that the law of God, because it unfolded the mind of God, is called the mind or Spirit of God; therefore the imagination of the prophets might, with equal justice, be said to be the mind of God, and the prophets be said to have had the mind of God, inasmuch as through their imagination the decrees of God were revealed. * * * The question how the prophets acquired a sense of certainty respecting their revelations gives rise to a long discussion. Their imagination being the main instrument of their discoveries, they cannot have the same security as we have for those truths which are discovered by scientific insight or "natural light." "It is," says Spinoza, very characteristically, "a moral, not a mathematical security. It is derived (1) from the great strength of their phantasy, which brings objects before them as clearly as we see them when we are awake. (2) From some divine sign. (3) From their minds being disposed to the right and just," Spinoza affirms the last to be the principal secret of their certainty. * * * Nevertheless, he affirms that the revelations to the prophet depended upon his temperament and upon his own opinions. These he brought with him--these varied not only his style of writing, but his understanding of any communication that was made to him. His joy, his sorrow, all the different moods of his mind and body, were continually affecting his judgments and his teachings. * * * Every thoughtful reader will perceive that in these statements Spinoza has an evident advantage over those who treat the personal feelings, experiences, struggles of the prophets, as if they were nothing--who forget that they were human beings--who look upon them merely as utterers of certain divine dogmas, or as foretelling certain future events. He has a right to say that such persons overlook the letter of the books, while they profess to honor the letter; that they change their substance, while they think that they are taking them just as they are. But no real devout reader of the prophets ever forgets that they are men. Their human feelings, sufferings, rejoicings, are parts to him of the divine revelation. The struggles of the prophet with his own evil--the consciousness and confession that the vile is mixed with the precious--help more than all formal teaching to show him and us