_Application._--1. In these latter days the prophetic endowment, to a greater or lesser extent, is possessed by all God's people (1 John ii. 20). 2. The Church should pray that it may be possessed to the fullest extent by all who are called to minister in holy things. Prophets of clear and penetrating "vision" are among the greatest gifts which God can confer upon the Church.[1] 3. This great endowment must be used not merely for the detection and exposure of human sin, lest we become cynical and inhuman, but also for the discovery of the abounding evidence of the Divine compassion (as in v. 9), that we may be brought into more perfect sympathy with Him who hates sin but desires and seeks to save the sinner. FOOTNOTES. [1] A preacher who is not in some way a seer is not a preacher at all. You can never make people see religious realities by correct definitions. They will not believe in the reality of God on the word of a man who merely demonstrates it to them. You must see such things yourself if you are going to help others to see them. This is the secret of all the preaching that ever was good since preaching began.--_Beecher._ PROPHECY THE VOICE OF GOD. i. 2. _The Lord hath spoken._ Thus at the very outset of this book Divine authority is claimed for the utterances contained in it. Three views may be taken of the writings of the Hebrew prophets. 1. They are the writings of men who knew they were uttering that which is false when they claimed to be messengers of the Most High. 2. They are the writings of enthusiasts who mistook the ecstasies of their excited imaginations for Divine inspirations. 3. They are the writings of holy men who were inspired by the Holy Ghost. Against the first of these views is to be set the fact that the whole influence of the prophets was exerted on behalf of national righteousness and individual virtue; that for these things they suffered; that for these things some of them died. Is it credible that men who _so_ sought to promote _such_ ends would begin and continue their mission with a blasphemous lie? Against the second is to be set the fact that many of their predictions have been fulfilled--fulfilled after intervals, so long, and with such minute accuracy, that sceptics have sought to account for such fulfilments by asserting that the prophecies were written subsequently to the events to which they refer; an assertion which the most competent scholars repel even with contempt.