CHAPTER XIV

PREACHERS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

IN Bagster's edition, the Old Testament occupies five hundred and eighty-five pages; of these, one hundred and fifty-four are occupied by the Books of the Prophets; that is, more than one quarter of the entire literature of the ancient Hebrews, as it is preserved in our Protestant Bibles, is prophetic literature. This fact roughly indicates the importance which public opinion attached to the work of the prophets, and the extent of their influence upon their nation and their share in interpreting its life. What was the function of the prophet among the ancient Hebrews? Says George Adam Smith: "In vulgar use the name 'prophet' has degenerated to the meaning of one who foretells the future.' Of this meaning it is, perhaps, the first duty of every student of prophecy earnestly and stubbornly to rid himself. In its native Greek tongue 'prophet' meant, not 'one who speaks before,' but one who speaks for, or on behalf of, another.' It is in this sense that we must think of the prophet' of the Old Testament. He is a speaker for God. The sharer of God's counsels, as Amos calls him, he becomes the bearer and preacher

of God's word. Prediction of the future is only a part, and often a subordinate and accidental part, of an office whose full function is to declare the character and the will of God." 1

I ask the reader of this volume to comply with this counsel, and earnestly and stubbornly to rid himself of the idea that a prophet means one who foretells events. That the prophets did not regard themselves as primarily foretellers is clear from the character of their writings, only a very insignificant part of which is taken up with predictions of any kind. In those predictions they did not always agree with one another, and the events do not always occur as the prophets expected. When Jonah told the people of Nineveh, "In forty days Nineveh shall be destroyed," he foretold what did not come to pass. "God," says the sacred writer, "repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them," and, as an historic fact, Nineveh was not destroyed for many years after the date at which, according to the story, the prophecy purported to be delivered.

Nor did the prophets themselves regard accuracy of prediction as the test of their prophecy. On the contrary, they distinctly repudiated this test. One of the greatest of the prophets, the author of the book of Deuteronomy, written six or seven centuries before Christ, by an unknown author,2 declares that though the prophet has accurately foretold

1 The Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i. p. 12.

2 See chapter v.

future events, and his witness is historically sustained, if his teaching does not sustain loyalty to Jehovah, not only is it to be counted of no value, but he himself is to be counted worthy of death. He

says:

Ye shall walk

"If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he give thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken rebellion against the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of bondage, to draw thee aside out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee." 1

If the prophet's message is luminous with truth, if it is inspiring, if it presents to the people a grander conception of God than they have before entertained and calls them back to a more righteous life in his service, then, and only then, is the messenger to be accepted. Not by any miraculous

1 Deut. xiii. 1-5.

quality, but by its religious spirit and character, is the teaching of the prophet to be measured. Such is the standard which the prophets themselves recognized as that by which all prophetic writings are to be judged.

It is not difficult to see how the other conception, that the prophet is primarily a foreteller, became prevalent. In the first place, he was in some sense a foreteller. There are two ways in which men are accustomed to decide on their course of action in a time of doubt. He who is charged with the responsibility of decision may endeavor to peer into the future, judge what will be the probable results of the alternative courses, and by the anticipated results determine the wisdom or the righteousness of the courses proposed. I say the righteousness, not merely the wisdom; for he who is accustomed to determine the righteousness of conduct by its results will naturally employ this method in determining the righteousness as well as the wisdom of any prospective course of action. Thus while this method is always the one pursued by the man of expediency it is not only pursued by him; it is also the method of the utilitarian. Such men serve a useful purpose; the immediate results of proposed action ought always to be taken into account, and such counselors compel us to take account of immediate results; they require the community to count the cost, which it always ought to do. But they are never far-sighted, for it is never possible for even the most sagacious mortal to foresee more

than the immediate outcome of any path of life, and this never with certainty. The other course of reaching a conclusion in such a time of doubt starts from a different premise and employs a different process. He who adopts it assumes as his premise that there are certain great principles, both of practical wisdom and of practical righteousness. On the irresistible force and immutable action of these principles he bases his judgment. The only problem is how to apply the principle, the truth of which he assumes, to the circumstances before him. If he is mistaken in his judgment of the principle the mistake is fatal; nothing can prevent inevitable disaster from following the course of action he advises. But if he is correct in his apprehension of the principle, his errors in application can be corrected from time to time as these errors are made manifest. When Thomas Jefferson, long before he or any man could have anticipated the Civil War, said in view of slavery, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just," Thomas Jefferson was a true prophet, not because a miraculous vision of future events was given to him, but because the sense of divine justice and the consciousness of human iniquity made him feel sure that unless the nation rid itself of its iniquity it would suffer the penalty threatened by divine justice. He who is endowed with a keen sensitiveness to moral principles, with intellectual capacity to apply those principles to national life, and with the insight which enables him to understand the