"Prophecy had already taught its truths, its last effort was to re veal itself in a life"—the life of Jeremiah. Living through the dreadful years which saw the two successful sieges of Jerusalem by the Babylonian armies, ending in the destruction of the city and temple and the deportation of its chief inhabitants, Jeremiah found himself forced either to utter unrelieved predictions of ruin to a people distracted alternately with panic and delusive relief, or, being silent, to deny the conviction of inspired knowl edge that burned like a fire in his bones. The task entailed for him desperate loneliness, hatred and persecution—sufficient tor ment to a man of shrinking and sensitive temperament. But further he was tortured at times by doubt of his inspiration. Was he but self-deceived or even deceived of God? Were the con fident prophets of peace right? And if the nation perished, how could the worship of Jehovah survive? "Hitherto there had been nations with their religions, but there never had been in the world a religion without a nation to act as its embodiment" (A. C.
Welch). Out of the agony of his perplexity, preserved in some infinitely moving passages (Jer. xv. 10-18, xviii. 9, 10, 14-18, xx.
7-18) came the solution: recognition of how wonderful was the fact of the relation between his conscious self and the Divine Being he longed to serve. In his ultimate peace in God and victory over "fears without and fightings within," we mark the beginning of the modern view of religious faith. Whatever the function of the nations in God's sight, no conception of a moral God is credible unless the unit of divine interest be the human personality. Jere miah had discovered that, wheresoever men live, they may find God, if in humility they do justice and love mercy. So he wrote (xxix. 4-14) to the exiles in Babylonia to live there that life of goodness which the prophets had seen to be the worship God desires : a momentous letter, for in the acceptance of his belief lay the continuance of the Jewish race, and the future of religion. "The spirit of Jeremiah, which breathed out on his people after his death, bore fruit in an experience of fellowship with God which satisfied the deepest aspirations of the human soul" (Skinner).
It was now conceivable that religion might survive the State. The last act of the higher prophecy was to give effect to the pos sibility. Through the constructive idealism of Ezekiel, and the magnificent, monotheistic, oracles preserved in Is. xl.–lv., and no less through the courage and insight of Haggai and Zechariah, whose exhortations effected the rebuilding of the temple in Jeru salem (52c) B.C.) and thus set religion in the forefront of the renascent community's life, the Jews—sole link between the ancient Semitic empires and the new era of Persian and Greek domination—began both to preserve their identity in exilic settle ments, and in Palestine to revive as a people increasingly con scious that it existed through, and for, its distinctive faith.
Ethical Monotheism. For intelligent men they shattered for ever the mental and moral dangers of polydaemonism and poly theism, proclaiming instead the reality of one only God, to be conceived as the infinitude of moral perfection. If modern terminology is permissible, they held both the transcendence and the immanence of God, and whatever the philosophical obscuri ties, this doctrine of God, as not less than "personal" in His rela tion to us, has been the succour of the human spirit, and the source of high and generous virtue for Western civilization. The precise stage at which monolatry (God as the only Being his people must worship, but one among other gods) rose into the pure monotheism patent in II. Isaiah—whether it goes back to Amos, to Elijah, to Moses—cannot be determined; for who shall measure genius? Perhaps the question is wrongly put. In antiq uity no one ceased to believe in the existence of many spiritual beings (cf. Eph. vi. 12), and practical monotheism was achieved whenever it was felt that there is but one creative Spirit, alone meriting worship, other "gods" being wrong conceptions of God as He truly is, or lesser Spirits who beguile men's worship, and their images assuredly "non-entities," the works of men's hands.
The Worth of the Individual. The prophets discovered the immeasureable worth of human personality. It may be that not until Jeremiah did the significance of the individual's aspiration towards God become vividly apparent ; but his experience was creative, and thereafter, aided by Ezekiel's teaching concerning individual responsibility, the instincts of personal piety were liberated to reach out, even through the problem of death, into deeper confidence in Man's worth to God. But this religion of the individual, the product of Prophecy's fundamental thinking and genius for ultimate values, was in no wise individualistic. The heart of prophetic doctrine had been insistence that the will of God is to create a world-order of perfect justice, and that, so long as the moral obligations of each and all go unhonoured, and the lowliest is denied mercy and kindness, there shall be no peace for Man. To the prophets therefore we owe that inestim able incentive for good, the idea of the "Kingdom of God" as the goal of social order.