y_, followed by a notice, in this and the
following chapter, of the separate books of prophecy belonging to the
Hebrew canon, according to the order in our English version, Daniel
being reckoned with the greater prophets, Lamentations considered as an
appendix to Jeremiah, and the minor prophets arranged by themselves.

2. The office of the prophets under the Theocracy, which we first
notice, was that of _bold reprovers_. They came to rulers and people
with an immediate commission from God to rebuke them for their sins; and
as the contents of their messages were received from God himself, they
exposed the hypocrisy and wickedness of their times in the pure sunlight
of truth, denouncing upon great and small alike the awful judgments of
Jehovah if they persisted in their impenitence. If we except the
preaching of Christ and his apostles, the history of the world furnishes
no such bright examples of faithful dealing with men's consciences. They
never spare kings and princes from fear of their power and patronage.
They never go round about men's sins, but declare them directly and
faithfully. With what majesty of severity did Samuel reprove Saul, and
Nathan David, and Elijah Ahab, and Elisha Jehoram, and Jehu Jehoshaphat!
And if we open the books of Hebrew prophecy which have come down to us
from distant ages and from a very different civil and social order, we
find them not in the least antiquated, but fresh as yesterday, instinct
with life and power. They are a mirror of terrible brightness in which
we may see reflected our pride, self-sufficiency, vain ostentation, and
worldliness; our avarice, fraud, overreaching artifices, breaches of
trust, bribery, oppression of the weak, and corrupt combinations for the
amassing of filthy lucre; our ambition, slander, falsehood, intrigues,
hypocrisy, and vain pretensions; our luxury, prodigality, sensuality,
and intemperance; our profaneness, Sabbath-breaking, neglect of God's
ordinances and contempt of his written word--a mirror too in which we
can see in the background dark clouds of judgment, big with awful
thunder, such as have already come forth upon our land from the
inexhaustible storehouse of divine justice, and are ready to come forth
again, but over which hangs the rainbow of mercy for all that will
repent and humble themselves before God.

3. We may next consider the office of the Hebrew prophets as _expounders
of the Mosaic law_--the Mosaic law in its substance, as disti