Filled with these conceptions the prophets came forward soon after the beginning of the eighth century. They are no longer sooth-sayers and seers; they do not predict any more; they do not announce definite facts; they only know what will and must be the consequences of the sinful life of the people: they proclaim a great judgment; they declare what must be done in order to turn aside the wrath of Jehovah. Impelled by inward certainty to ascertain and reveal the nature and will of Jehovah, filled with religious inspiration, and in a tone of deepest earnestness, the prophets give to their utterances an expression of force and fire, which forms a proper sequel to the beautiful beginnings of lyric poetry, as we have learned to know them in the songs of victory, in the strains of thanksgiving and lamentation of the Israelites, in the psalms--a sequel which corresponds to the power and importance of the spiritual movement from which the exhortations of the prophets arise. With unwearied zeal they exhort the people to return to their ancient God and trust in him alone. Then, as Israel's power began to decline after the death of Jeroboam and Uzziah, the view and conception of the prophets becomes higher and higher; the more threatening and dangerous the position of affairs, the greater their influence; and at the time when the political existence of the Israelites was broken down, their religious life is perfected and purified, into a thorough recognition of ethical monotheism. A man of the kingdom of Judah, Amos of Tekoa, a place not far from Jerusalem, prophesied in Israel in the first decades of the reign of Jeroboam, between 790 and 760 B.C. He calls himself "neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet;" he assures us that he was not a disciple of the prophets, and did not wear the usual garb of a prophet, _i.e._ a poor coarse clothing. He adds that he was a herdsman and a planter of sycamores: "Jehovah took me from following the flock, and said to me; Go and prophesy to my people in Israel."[51] From these prophecies, which he afterwards wrote down, it is plain that the Holy Scriptures, in the form in which the two texts had been united and revised by the hand of a prophet, were familiar to him and present before him; that the prophecies of Joel were known to him.[52] It was in Bethel, the chief place of sacrifice in Israel, that he came forward. There, at the place of the bull-image, he proclaimed the wickedness of this worship, and branded in still stronger terms the moral corruption of the land. In vain had Jehovah uttered warnings by his prophets; the law was not regarded; justice was crooked; the weak were oppressed. No doubt Amos exaggerated his reproaches, but we cannot doubt that the faults he attacked were in existence. The careless he threatened with the destruction which would soon burst upon them if they remained without repentance or improvement. Then would the high places of Isaac be laid