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Excerpt from Commentary on the Books of Kings, Vol. 1 Government, as of those of their sets which had most influence on the progress of the theocracy; to which the narrative of the activity of the prophets neither runs externally parallel nor occu pies a superior or inferior place, but into which it is admitted as a Spiritual element of life, which pervaded the theocracy during this period. As invisible but actual King of the theocracy the Lord had prepared the prophets as the organs of his will, who represented his law and right over against the earthly kings, and were to stand beside these, counselling and guiding or reproving and warning, and, when necessary, to prove their messages to be the words of God by signs and wonders before the people. As long, therefore, as theocratically-minded sovereigns occupy the throne, we see the prophets active only in giving aid and counsel in difficult positions of the theocracy, whereas under the untheo cratic reigns they display their whole Divine authority, and, as the messengers of God, oppose the Kings with such power and efi'ect, that these behove to bow before them or underlie their sentences. Our author therefore makes the activity of the prophets a chief point of his history, not in consequence of a prophetico-didactic tendency, but because he wrote the history of the theocracy in times in which the activity of the prophets exercised so immrtant an influence upon it. If he had wished to subordinate the history of the Kings to that of the prophets, he would certainly, to name only one of a number of facts, not have given so comparatively full an account of the reign of Solomon, of the wisdom, the many buildings, the trade, the revenues, and the riches of this monarch. Or had he, as Hiiv. P. 147 thinks, because he had so little remarkable to relate in the history of the later Kings, been unable to resist giving in the commencement of his work a few details of the glo1)r and splendour of Solomon, and lingering a while to gaze in admiration on the scene, yet the description would not have been so regularly arranged and car ried out, as it actually has been and is shown to have been in the Commentary. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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