he progress of thought in
Greece, where the awakening of the ethical consciousness caused a rupture
between the culture of the philosophers and the popular religion, and led
to a final decay of the political and social life. The prophets of Israel,
however, the typical men of genius of their people, gradually brought
about an advance of popular religion, so that they could finally present
as their highest ideal the God of the fathers, and make the knowledge of
His will the foundation of the law of holiness, by which they desired to
regulate the entire conduct of man. Thus, religion was no longer confined
by the limits of nationality, but was transformed into a spiritual force
for all mankind, to lead through a revelation of the One and Holy God
toward the highest morality.

8. The development of thought brought the God-seeking spirits to the
desire to know His will, or, in Scriptural language, His ways, in order to
attain holiness in their pursuit. The natural consequence was the gradual
receding of the power of imagination which had made the enraptured seer
behold God Himself in visions. As the Deity rose more and more above the
realm of the visible, the newly conceived truth was realized as coming to
the sacred writer through the spirit of God or an angel. _Inspiration_
took the place of _revelation_. This, however, still implies a passive
attitude of the soul carried away by the truth it receives from on high.
This supernatural element disappears gradually and passes over into sober,
self-conscious thought, in which the writer no longer thinks of God as the
Ego speaking through him, but as an outside Power spoken of in the third
person.

A still lower degree of inspiration is represented by those writings which
lack altogether the divine afflatus, and to which is ascribed a share of
the holy spirit only through general consensus of opinion. Often this
imprint of the divine is not found in them by the calm judgment of a later
generation, and the exact basis for the classification of such writings
among the holy books is sometimes difficult to state. We can only conclude
that in the course of time they were regarded as holy by that very spirit
which was embodied in the Synagogue and its founders, "the Men of the
Great Synagogue," who in their work of canonizing the Sacred Scriptures
were believed to have been under the influence of the holy spirit.(88)

9. Except for the five books of Moses, the idea of a mechanical