red a chariot of fire and horses of fire,
and parted them both asunder, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven." Hum! this the author of Chronicles, miraculous as the story is,
makes no mention of, though he mentions Elijah by name; neither does he
say anything of the story related in the second chapter of the same book
of Kings, of a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head; and that
this man of God (ver. 24) "turned back, and looked upon them, and cursed
them in the name of the Lord; and there came forth two she-bears out of
the wood, and tare forty and two children of them." He also passes over
in silence the story told, 2 Kings xiii., that when they were burying a
man in the sepulchre where Elisha had been buried, it happened that the
dead man, as they were letting him down, (ver. 21) "touched the bones
of Elisha, and he (the dead man) revived, and stood up on his feet." The
story does not tell us whether they buried the man, notwithstanding he
revived and stood upon his feet, or drew him up again. Upon all these
stories the writer of the Chronicles is as silent as any writer of the
present day, who did not chose to be accused of lying, or at least of
romancing, would be about stories of the same kind.

But, however these two historians may differ from each other with
respect to the tales related by either, they are silent alike with
respect to those men styled prophets whose writings fill up the latter
part of the Bible. Isaiah, who lived in the time of Hezekiab, is
mentioned in Kings, and again in Chronicles, when these histories are
speaking of that reign; but except in one or two instances at most, and
those very slightly, none of the rest are so much as spoken of, or even
their existence hinted at; though, according to the Bible chronology,
they lived within the time those histories were written; and some of
them long before. If those prophets, as they are called, were men of
such importance in their day, as the compilers of the Bible, and priests
and commentators have since represented them to be, how can it be
accounted for that not one of those histories should say anything about
them?

The history in the books of Kings and of Chronicles is brought forward,
as I have already said, to the year B.C. 588; it will, therefore, be
proper to examine which of these prophets lived before that period.

Here follows a table of all the prophets, with the times in which they
lived before Christ, according to