I have said that the age is very modern, and we shall indeed go to its prophets feeling that they speak to conditions of life extremely like our own. But if we wish a still closer analogy from our history, we must travel back to the fourteenth century in England--Langland's and Wyclif's century, which, like this one in Israel, saw both the first real attempts towards a national literature, and the first real attempts towards a moral and religious reform. Then as in Israel a long and victorious reign was drawing to a close, under the threat of disaster when it should have passed. Then as in Israel there had been droughts, earthquakes and pestilences with no moral results upon the nation. Then also there was a city life developing at the expense of country life. Then also the wealthy began to draw aloof from the people. Then also there was a national religion, zealously cultivated and endowed by the liberality of the people, but superstitious, mercenary, and corrupted by sexual disorder. Then too there were many pilgrimages to popular shrines, and the land was strewn with mendicant priests and hireling preachers. And then too prophecy raised its voice, for the first time fearless in England. As we study the verses of Amos we shall find again and again the most exact parallels to them in the verses of Langland's _Vision of Piers the Plowman_, which denounce the same vices in Church and State, and enforce the same principles of religion and morality. * * * * * It was when the reign of Jeroboam was at its height of assured victory, when the nation's prosperity seemed impregnable after the survival of those physical calamities, when the worship and the commerce were in full course throughout the land, that the first of the new prophets broke out against Israel in the name of Jehovah, threatening judgment alike upon the new civilisation of which they were so proud and the old religion in which they were so confident. These prophets were inspired by feelings of the purest morality, by the passionate conviction that God could no longer bear such impurity and disorder. But, as we have seen, no prophet in Israel ever worked on the basis of principles only. He came always in alliance with events. These first appeared in the shape of the great physical disasters. But a more powerful instrument of Providence, in the service of judgment, was appearing on the horizon. This was the Assyrian Empire. So vast was its influence on prophecy that we must devote to it a separate chapter. FOOTNOTES: [55] He died in 798 or 797. [56] 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 20, 22. [57] 2 Kings xiii. 14. [58] vi. 12 ff., etc. [59] viii., etc. [60] xiii. 17 ff. [61] 2 Kings xiii. 22-25. [62] xiv. 28, if not Damascus itself. [63] 2 Kings xv.: cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. [64] xii. 7 (Heb. ver. 8). Trans., _As for Canaan, the balances, etc._ [65] Amos, _passim_. Hosea viii. 14, etc.; Micah iii. 12; Isa. ix. 10.