to perceive that such an ideal had been the essence of the religion of Jehovah from the first, we understand how thoroughly Amos was mastered by that knowledge. If we need any further proof of his "possession" by the character of God, we find it in those phrases in which his own consciousness disappears, and we have no longer the herald's report of the Lord's words, but the very accents of the Lord Himself, fraught with personal feeling of the most intense quality. _I_ Jehovah _hate, I despise your feast days.... Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; I will not hear the music of thy viols._[182]... _I abhor the arrogance of Jacob, and hate his palaces._[183]... _The eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom._[184]... _Jehovah sweareth, I will never forget any of their works._[185] Such sentences reveal a Deity who is not only manifest Character, but surgent and importunate Feeling. We have traced the prophet's word to its ultimate source. It springs from the righteousness, the vigilance, the urgency of the Eternal. The intellect, imagination and heart of Amos--the convictions he has inherited from his people's past, his conscience of their evil life to-day, his impressions of current and coming history--are all enforced and illuminated, all made impetuous and radiant, by the Spirit, that is to say the Purpose and the Energy, of the Living God. Therefore, as he says in the title of his book, or as some one says for him, Amos _saw_ his words. They stood out objective to himself. And they were not mere sound. They glowed and burned with God. When we realise this, we feel how inadequate it is to express prophecy in the terms of evolution. No doubt, as we have seen, the ethics and religion of Amos represent a large and measurable advance upon those of earlier Israel. And yet with Amos we do not seem so much to have arrived at a new stage in a Process, as to have penetrated to the Idea which has been behind the Process from the beginning. The change and growth of Israel's religion are realities--their fruits can be seen, defined, catalogued--but a greater reality is the unseen Purpose which impels them. They have been expressed only now. He has been unchanging from old and for ever--from the first absolute righteousness in Himself, and absolute righteousness in His demands from men. 3. THE PROPHET AND HIS MINISTRY. AMOS vii., viii. 1-4. We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word; we have sought to trace to its source the Word which came to the Man. It now remains for us to follow the Prophet, Man and Word combined, upon his Ministry to the people.