when we know not its
natural cause, which is the power of God.

However, we are not now inquiring into the causes of prophetic
knowledge. We are only attempting, as I have said, to examine the
Scriptural documents, and to draw our conclusions from them as from
ultimate natural facts; the causes of the documents do not concern us.

As the prophets perceived the revelations of God by the aid of
imagination, they could indisputably perceive much that is beyond the
boundary of the intellect, for many more ideas can be constructed from
words and figures than from the principles and notions on which the
whole fabric of reasoned knowledge is reared.

Thus we have a clue to the fact that the prophets perceived nearly
everything in parables and allegories, and clothed spiritual truths in
bodily forms, for such is the usual method of imagination. We need no
longer wonder that Scripture and the prophets speak so strangely and
obscurely of God's Spirit or Mind (cf. Numbers xi. 17, 1 Kings xxii, 21,
etc.), that the Lord was seen by Micah as sitting, by Daniel as an old
man clothed in white, by Ezekiel as a fire, that the Holy Spirit
appeared to those with Christ as a descending dove, to the apostles as
fiery tongues, to Paul on his conversion as a great light. All these
expressions are plainly in harmony with the current ideas of God and
spirits.

Inasmuch as imagination is fleeting and inconstant, we find that the
power of prophecy did not remain with a prophet for long, nor manifest
itself frequently, but was very rare; manifesting itself only in a few
men, and in them not often.

We must necessarily inquire how the prophets became assured of the truth
of what they perceived by imagination, and not by sure mental laws; but
our investigation must be confined to Scripture, for the subject is one
on which we cannot acquire certain knowledge, and which we cannot
explain by the immediate causes.

II

... As I have said, the prophets were endowed with unusually vivid
imaginations, and not with unusually perfect minds. This conclusion is
amply sustained by Scripture, for we are told that Solomon was the
wisest of men, but had no special faculty of prophecy. Heman, Calcol,
and Dara, though men of great talent, were not prophets, whereas
uneducated countrymen, nay, even women, such as Hagar, Abraham's
handmaid, were thus gifted. Nor is this contrary to ordinary experience
and reason. Men of great imaginative power are less fitt