And when you are told to take the prophets as your example do not go away saying, "I cannot predict future events, and astonish people, and make them feel that I have some supernatural power." No, they could not be _that_ example to you. A prophet was a man who knew the character of the true and living God; and because he knew and loved Him, and was living with Him, he made other men know Him, and feel Him, and understand Him too. I have no time to enter into all the questions concerning the precise manner in which the prophet got to know God's mind and will—by dream, in ecstasy, in lofty rapt thought, in wonderful insight into the Spirit of God, and sometimes by a vision like that of Isaiah, where he "saw the Lord, high and lifted up," on His throne. Or, the prophet got to know God in a similar way to that which we read of in the case of the child Samuel, when the voice of God in the lonely Temple struck upon the child's ear so that there was nothing startling, and he thought it was his master's voice calling him; but he lived to see the terrible fulfilment of the first teaching which God gave to the child, in that which befell the master. I have no time to go into all that, nor to enter largely into the place and purpose of the prophets in working out that history which shows, when properly understood, nothing else but the growth of the Spirit of Jesus Christ through the ages, till that Spirit came in its completion in Jesus the Son of Mary; for _there_ is the whole meaning of the prophets in Israel; they were an incarnation of the very same heart, and mind, and will of the Divine dispensation and of God for the world's redemption which were in Jesus; it was the Spirit of Jesus. And do not put away the words as a mere figure unless you put away the words as a mere figure when you read that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God. It was the very Spirit of God. The same Spirit as was consummate in Jesus, the perfect Prophet because the perfect Revelation of God, in its measure was present in every prophet who made the people believe God as they had never done before, and recognise His presence in the history of their time. The prophets taught them to repent of their sin, to live for God, to take their share in the great conflicts for righteousness that God was fighting in their age. In a measure the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, was present in every age of it. There is scarcely any occurrence, any story, any Psalm, in the prophecies of the Old Testament, which has not an application to Jesus Christ, and a meaning showing that He is in it. It is made a specimen, as it were, of all that is practically to be found in Him. The history of Israel in prophecy, which was the rising and the beginning of the future history of Israel, was just the growing of Jesus through the ages, till at length He culminated in the Son of Mary.