for the founding of a. College in this Colony"

I • Y^LH«W]MlI¥Ei]£SflTrY-

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE TWENTY-SECOND HARTLEY LECTURE.

and tire

BY
HENRY J. PICKETT.

loWonT
HOLBORN PUBLISHING HOUSE,
HOLBi. .v-, HALL, CLERKENWELL ROAD, E.C.i.
1922.

Ho

PREFACE.

THIS book has been written under the
pressure of a deep and ever-deepening
conviction, that our supreme need in this
twentieth century is a truly prophetic ministry,
and that the man who stands in the pulpit, whether
minister or layman, should always realise that his
only right to be there rests upon an obligation
he cannot evade, to be a speaker for God.
A glance round the world of to-day, particularly
since the colossal events of the Great War (1914—
1919), supplies the background and confirmation
of the need for such a ministry. At the same time
it calls for the answer of the prophet, who, as one
standing in the foreground of a divinely-ordained
succession, now in this form, now in that, never
fails to point out to the world the way of life, and
prepares the path of the world's Redeemer.

vi preface.
The Hebrew prophets have always appealed to
the writer, as those whose moral passion, whose
insistence upon Divine ideals, with their applica
tion to individual and national life, declare what is
permanently essential, for all times and for all
peoples. These, so the writer feels, are the ideals for which
the pulpit should always plead. To make them
actual should represent the sum of the preacher's
training and effort. With less than this no preacher
can ever be content. And to aid in thus making
actual the " City of God " seen in vision, is to stand
in the true succession of the prophets.
As these convictions have determined the plan,
so they express the whole purpose of the book, and
the writer asks that it may be perused and estimated
entirely from this point of view.
While accepting modern critical results, the
book makes no claim to. critical ability. Yet it
may be permitted the writer to express his deep
sense of obligation to a long list of those whose
scholarly contributions to the study of the prophets
have assisted a ministry particularly happy in the
service of his own Church, while it has helped to
make the work of this Lecture a labour of love.
In this acknowledgment of thanks the writer

preface. vii
would make special and grateful mention of the
unfailing kindness of that eminent Biblical scholar,
Prof. A. S. Peake, D.D., whose contributions to
the understanding of the Holy Scriptures have
made all students his debtors. In the midst of his
crowded and busy life, Dr. Peake has kindly read
the Lecture through in manuscript, making valuable
suggestions and corrections. For such expert and
willing help, the writer is deeply conscious of an
obligation he can never repay. At the same time,
it has given him ground for confidence in sending
the book forth, with the prayer, that it may lead
to a renewed interest in the study of the prophets,
and to a better appreciation of the place they Jill
in the gradual unfolding of the growing whole of
truth.

SOUTHPORT, May, 1922.

CONTENTS.

Part I.
The Hebrew Prophet.
Pate
Chapter I. The Prophet in Early Israel i
,, II. The Prophet's Training and Call . . 24
,, III. The Prophet in Later Israel . . • 4-1
„ IV. The Prophetic Contribution to Revelation . 79
,, V. The Messianic Hope and Ideal . . .101
VI. The Prophet and Reform in Israel . . 12S
Part II.
The Modern Preacher.
,, VII. The Supremacy of Jesus .... 155
VIII. The Christian Prophets . . . .176
„ IX. The Place of the Preacher in Modern Life 193
„ X. The Preacher's Equipment . . .211
,, XI. The Preacher and the Church . . . 230
„ XII. The Preacher's Joy and Crov.-n . . 255

PART I.
THE HEBREW PROPHET.

" * I VHE word prophecy is much misused ;
1 it seems narrowed to prediction merely.
That is not the main sense of the Hebrew word
translated ' prophet ' ; it means one whose mind
bubbles up and pours forth as a fountain, from
inner, divine spontaneities, revealing God.
Prediction is a very minor part of prophecy.
The great matter is to reveal and outpour the
God-like suggestions pressing for birth in the
soul." Walt Whitman.

THE HEBREW PROPHET
AND THE
MODERN PREACHER.

CHAPTER I.
Ubc propbet in Earls 3srael.
I.
THE selection, training, development, and sub
sequent service of Israel, to the gradually
unfolding purposes of the Divine love,
offers a theme of entrancing and unfailing interest
to the student of religion and of fife. On the one
side, it is to discover, that while the crude, nomadic
portion of the old Semitic world shared with all
peoples the universal faculty of religion — the innate
religious feeling and longing — they possessed this
faculty to an eminent degree, rendering them
peculiarly sensitive to religious training, and capable
of taking them to positions of religious attainment,
unique among the peoples of the world.
On the other side, it is to mark with ever-growing
adoration and wonder the wisdom, the patience, B

2 tlbe IBebrew propbet anb tbe /OioOern fl>teacber.
and the abounding goodness of God, in the selec
tion and culture of such a people, knowing them
" only of all the families of the earth,"1 and
making them the instrument of purposes now
revealed in the light of universal history.
Among the factors used by God in the training
and development of Israel as His appointed organ,
the prophet takes an early and conspicuous place.
Indeed, the records of Israel's early wandering and
settlement in Canaan, the contact with the existing
civilisation and the religious cults found there, the
peculiar susceptibility of these simple children of
the desert to external conditions, all warrant the
assertion, that even thus early in the history, the
prophets saved the religion of Yahweh from being
submerged by the prevailing and even rampant
Baalism, with its degrading rites.2
We need only refer now, in passing, to the work
of Moses and the Judges, and the bold, decisive
challenge of Elijah. The later history, as we shall
see, shows just what might have been expected,
that as Israel grew, the work of the prophet grew
also, alike in prominence, in influence, and in right
of leadership.
Nor, until the final overthrow of Israel, and the
gradual decline of prophecy into apocalyptic,
following the Exile, did the prophet cease to figure
as the chief of God's appointed instruments, for
instruction, warning, and guidance.
1 Amos iii. 2.
» Prof. W. R. Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 32.

h

Zbe ©ropbet in Earlg 3erael. 3
II.
And here — remembering the purpose of this
Lecture — we must pay grateful tribute to the
workers in the realms of modern Biblical scholar
ship and the science of Comparative Religion,
for the increased values belonging to the study of
the prophet and prophecy in early Israel.
The special gain of these researches, enriching
the faith and the preaching of our own and all
coming times, is the insistence of the best scholar
ship upon the unique greatness of Israel's seers,
as contrasted with the diviners, soothsayers, and
magicians of the surrounding nations of Assyria,
Babylon, Egypt, and their own Canaan.
Points of similarity are there, as we might
expect. The prophet in Israel was a growth as
well as a gift. The earliest manifestations of the
prophet's work shares the conditions of the time
out of which it came. Only so could it find its
point of contact, and enter upon any ministry of
usefulness. Are we not all in this respect the product of our
age, and how, in any other way, could we serve
our own generation ? It is not the Divine method —
let us reverently add, it is not the rational method —
"to blind with excess of light." Development is
as great a mercy as it is a necessity. And the
modern view of the prophet is an even greater
proof of the Divine reality, and the Divine govern
ment of the world, than the older representation of
the prophet as a direct herald from the Divine court,
B 2

4 3be ibebrew pcopbet and tbe /moCetn preacher.
uttering predictions bearing upon peoples and
centuries far away, and even — as is now urged by
some amongst us — receiving their fulfilment through
the agony of the late European War !
Prophecy is the statement of eternal truth suited
to the immediate occasion ; and so, while not
excluding prediction, to which reference will be
made later,1 the prophets were first of all preachers
to their own generation, their witness and their
message being at first confined to those who owed
the duty of loyalty to their own national Deity.
The Hebrew prophets survived, and, by im
measurable distances, surpassed the dreamers and
visionaries of contemporary religions — (i) In their
personal character and moral passion ; (2) In the
content of their message ; and, greatest of all, (3)
In their unvarying insistence upon the character
and the purity of Israel's God. And it is not too
much to add, that in so living and speaking, they
not only saved their nation, they saved religion
itself from the corruptions of contemporary faiths.
With this discussion in mind, we shall not be
surprised to find, that, alike the name and earliest
work of the prophet bear the stamp of their local
environment. Western Asia, the Semitic home of the Israelitish
people, had long been the home of ecstatic prophecy.
Indeed, go where we will among primitive peoples,
we shall find nothing answering to what moderns
have pretentiously described as Agnosticism. The
Supernatural, though mysterious and awful, was not
1 See pp. 33-35-

Gbe prophet in Earls 5arael. 5
the Unknowable. As though springing from a
common religious root, underlying all their super
stitious, often repulsive heathen practices, the
student traces the following beliefs : —
(1) The mysterious cause of life and movement
in the world, not only is, but can be known.
(2) It is given to some to know this power
called Deity on more intimate terms.
(3) The Deity can be consulted, influenced,
appeased, won. His favour can be secured, or his
displeasure incurred.
(4) Each tribe or nation had its own distinc
tive Deity, with a seat or centre from which he
worked, and where he could be most readily
consulted. He was always specially favourable
to the territory and to the people over which he
ruled. (5) The will of the Deity could be ascertained
through dream,1 divination,2 — that is, by consul
tation at an oak on the part of one specially gifted,
such as a seer,3 or by extraordinary moods of
excitement and ecstasy leading to convulsions
and self-inflicted physical suffering,4 or by con
sulting the Urim and Thummim, which included,
so it seems, the method of casting lots with
sacred stones,5 or under the stimulus of music.6
Out of such a soil as this religion itself grew, and
the Semitic mind, peculiarly susceptible, as we have

1 Gen. xxviii. 12; xxxvii. 5; xl. 8 ; Judges vii. 13, 15.
2 Judges ix. 37. 3 1 Sam. ix. 9.
4 1 Sam. xviii. 10 ; 1 Kings xviii. 26, 28. s 1 Sam. xiv. 41.
' 1 Sara. xvi. 16, 17.

6 Gbe Ibebrew ©ropbet anO tbe dRooern preacber.
seen, to these universal intuitions, readily responded,
so that we can trace their operation in all the life
of Israel. These beliefs and practices were the
inheritance of the Israelites, as our faith is our
inheritance, and, brought by " a way they knew
not," into a land where Baal-worship was as common
as its trees and stones, there is little wonder they
were slow to appreciate the loftiness of the purer
faith of Yahweh, and that for long, weary genera
tions, the prophets struggled to set them free.
Little wonder, also, that the first beginnings
of prophecy up to the time of the monarchy were
associated with such crude methods of ascertaining
the mind of their Deity as we have indicated above.
This may be illustrated by the visit of Saul to
Samuel,1 as though Yahweh's presence could be
reached only through the dwelling-place of the seer ;
the use of the ephod with which Abiathar came
to David,2 evidently as an instrument of divination,
and representing what was clearly a common
practice. Later, as might have been expected, such heathen
methods of seeking approach to Yahweh were
unsparingly condemned. Nothing could be more
explicit or severe than the prohibition of Deut.
xviii., 10-12 : — " There shall not be found among
you any one that maketh his son or his daughter
to pass through the fire, or one that useth divination,
one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a
sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar
spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoso-
1 i Sam. ix. 6-14. * 1 Sam. xxiii. 9.

ribe propbet in Earls 3erael. 7
ever doeth these things is an abomination unto the
Lord ; and because of these abominations the Lord
thy God doth drive them out from before thee."
But this takes us on to a time much later than the
early monarchy, when the prophet had displaced
the diviner, and condemns the heathen practices
at the time when Deuteronomy was written, rather
than those of the primitive conditions of society
we are now discussing.
The whole passage just quoted strikingly illu
minates the development of the Hebrew religion,
and enables us with adoring wonder to mark how
completely the conquering faith of Yahweh, under
the guidance of the prophets, transcended the then
ancient and corrupting religions surrounding Israel.
The fact remains — and it is invaluable as evidence —
that while outside Israel the nations following these
practices gradually declined to the grossest sensuous-
ness, and finally to utter ruin, Israel, led by her
prophets, gradually rose to the sublimest mono
theism, and prepared the way for the supreme and
final revelation of Jesus, as the world's only hope
and Redeemer.
The position has been so well stated by Dr. G. C.
Joyce, and is so fundamental to a right under
standing of Hebrew prophecy, that we take the
liberty of quoting his words : —
" Of recent years there has been a tendency
to exaggerate the amount of resemblance
between the religion of Israel, and the other
religions of Western Asia.
" Of this tendency a striking example is

8 rjbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flSobern preacher.
afforded by Winckler's representation of
prophecy as a common possession of such
religions, and his insistence that Hebrew
prophecy was no more than a peculiar type
of a widely-extended institution.
" Divination was undoubtedly a common
institution in the ancient world, and in Israel
the diviner was the spiritual predecessor of
the prophet.
" Divination, subject like everything else
to the operation of this general law, was un
questionably undergoing a process of trans
formation in the heathen world no less than
in Israel. In some respects the conditions
which determined this process of development
among the Gentile nations were not unlike
those which prevailed in Palestine.
" We need not, therefore, be surprised if we
discover something analogous to prophecy
elsewhere. But we shall certainly find that
the points of resemblance are superficial, and
of quite minor importance compared with the
points of difference. For the paramount con
dition which determined the development of
V true prophecy in Israel, was the controlling
presence of the Spirit of God.
" Where this was wanting there could be
no product of permanent spiritual value for
the human race. Human faculties, normal
or supernormal, were powerless in themselves
to see the heavenly light and follow it. Yet
these same faculties, created originally by the

Cbc propbet in Earlg jerael. 9
Spirit of Life, and now used by Him as His
means of communication with man, display
under His influence an ever-widening range
of activity. The Prophets of Israel are the
men in whom these capacities are found in a
pre-eminent degree, and who willingly submit
themselves to the spiritual guidance. As the
process goes forward, prophecy draws further
and further away from its starting-point in
divination, becoming more and more an in
stitution to which there is no parallel outside
the limits of revelation."1

III.
What Dr. Joyce calls " the paramount condition
which determined the development of true prophecy
in Israel," is first seen in Samuel, who may be
correctly described as standing midway between
the old Semitic " seer " or " diviner," and that
line of prophets, who, from his time onward, down
to the Exile, form the outstanding personalities
of Israel's history. While we may not say that
Samuel is the founder of Hebrew prophecy — for
the movement is immeasurably greater than any
one individual — yet he is, strictly speaking, the
first of the Hebrew prophets.
True, the term " prophet " or " prophetess,"
is found earlier in the records. It is appfied to
1 The Inspiration of Prophecy, pp. 58-59- The reader is
also referred to the article on Old Testament Prophecy, in
Dr. Peake's invaluable Commentary on the Biblt, p. 426.

10 rjbe ibebrew propbet and tbe /Biobern preacber.
Abram,1 Moses,2 Aaron,3 Eldad and Medad,4
Miriam,5 and Deborah.6 But no evidence is forth
coming that the name was known in the days of
any of these early leaders, and we are led to con
clude that the term, being familiar in the days
when the record of their deeds was made, is applied
to them by the writers, as though in actual use at
the time.
Cornill, in his exceedingly able book,7 dismisses
the claim above made for Samuel, as " a legend of
a later period," and describes Elijah as " the first
prophet of Israel on a grand scale." Against that
view, however, Prof. Davidson,8 speaks of
" prophecy founded as an institution by Samuel,
though existing sporadically in individual members
long before his time." Dr. Joyce9 describes
Samuel as he who, " beginning life as a diviner,
died a prophet and the founder of the prophetic
order. There is reason to think that it was he who
created the Schools of the Prophets."
However this may be, it is certain that under
Samuel a distinct development in the view of the
prophet and his work may be noted. For the first
time he insisted upon and illustrated the more
spiritual conception of the relation between God
and man, which constitutes the essential element
of the prophetic function. And this gradually
thrust into the background, until it quite eliminated,
the older and more material elements. It is signifi-
1 Gen. xx. 7. 2 Deut. xxxiv. 10. 3 Exod. vii. 1.
* Numbers xi. 26. 6 Exod. xv. 20. • Judges iv. 4.
' The Prophets of Israel, p. 29. s 0 T. Prophecy, p. 5.
8 The Inspiration of Prophecy, p. 49.

£be propbet in Early* jsracl. n
cant that while the sacred or priestly lot is found
in use during the period of Saul1 and David,2 from
this time it entirely disappears. So also the ark
is displaced, although this was an emblem peculiar
to Israel, and represented Yahweh's presence to
them, so much so, that when the ark of God is
taken,3 the glory has departed from Israel.
Yet Samuel proved that Yahweh's presence was
independent of this crude emblem, and hence in
its old form as Yahweh's throne, the ark disappears.
" So wholly has its original meaning been forgotten,
and so utterly have its earlier associations faded
away, that Deuteronomy was able to use it as the
place beside which the decalogue was stored. When
an emblem is made into a chest for holding some
thing else, it is dead. Prophecy first made the ark
unnecessary, and then used it to hold its own
symbol of God's guidance of Israel."4
As is so often seen in history, the circumstances
of the time gave an outstanding personality like
Samuel his opportunity. It was a period of great
transition. It was a time of crisis also, for the
threatened Philistine invasion was a real menace,
and, under the growing weakness of Eli, and the
profligacy of his sons, the very life of Israel was at
stake. The nomadic life and even the desire for it, had
given place to the settled community. The people
had come to understand something of the enormous
resources of Canaan's fertile soil. They were
1 i Sam. xiv. 36, 37. a 1 Sam. xxiii. 9. a 1 Sam. iv. 22.
' Dr. A. C. Welch, The Religion of Israel, p. 44.

is She ibebrew prophet anh tbe Modern preacher.
beginning to have a stake in the land. Growing
habits of industry, securing to them rapidly in
creasing possessions, meant the strengthening of
a common bond, a growing sense of nationhood,
which at last found expression in the desire for a
visible king, with the opportunity to become as
the nations round about them.
Through all this movement, — as yet the greatest
Israel had known — Samuel was the one strong
man, recognised and held in honour, as " the man
of God."1 As the individual grew in value as the
possible oracle of Yahweh, the authority of external
mediums was weakened, and the practice of resort
ing to them was relinquished. This serves to
account for the explanatory verse in i Samuel ix. 9,
evidently the insertion of a later scribe, pointing
out that the place of the seer in earlier Israel, now
belonged to the prophets of their own time.
This will enable us, with some hope of accuracy,
to examine the important question of Samuel's
relation to what has been described as "the schools
of the Prophets." As one who neither by training
nor by temperament was a warrior, caring nothing
for military pursuits, but as a priest, trained in
the sanctuary, interested beyond all else in knowing
the mind and doing the will of God — witness his
early and eager response as a child to Divine in
tuitions2 — we are not surprised to find him linked
up with these groups of religious enthusiasts.
Dr. O. C. Whitehouse definitely describes the
term " schools," applied to these guilds or societies,
1 1 Sam. ix. 6, 7, 8. 8 1 Sam. iii. 4-10.

Che propbet in Earlg Israel. 13
" as altogether a misnomer."1 It is likely enough
that for so early a time, the term is one altogether
too advanced and formal. But they were a very
numerous body of men. They powerfully influenced
the life of their time, and, despite inevitable
exaggeration and even fraud — like the monastic
institutions of the early Christian centuries in their
purest form — rendered valuable service to the
religion of Yahweh.
Dr. Payne Smith claims for Samuel, that he was
the founder of the monarchy in Israel, of the
prophetic order also, and that " one of his noblest
and most important efforts for the public good
was the institution of the schools of the prophets."2
The evidence for this is not forthcoming, and we
are inclined to think the statement is too strong.
It is more likely that, at first, these were voluntary
groups of men — not always necessarily young men —
drawn together by a common religious interest,
who met to encourage and instruct each other, to
recite together such history and poetry of their
race as they knew, and by the practice of vocal
and instrumental music to excite feelings of religious
rhapsody. That Samuel, keenly interested in the intellectual
and religious condition of Israel, should be closely
associated with these men, is perfectly natural.
Ramah,3 as we know, was his home. And at
Naioth,4 or Neraioth, meaning "the pastures,"
1 Peake's Commentary, p. 107.
8 The Expositor, ist Series, vol. iii., p. 251.
* i Sam. vii. 17. * 1 Sam. xix. 19.

14 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe fliooern preacher.
in Ramah, a company of these enthusiasts had
settled, dwelling in booths or tents occupying the
pastures. When it is said that they were
" prophesying," the meaning probably is, that they
were engaged in their religious exercises, mainly
consisting of music and singing, and repeating the
oral knowledge of their time. We find later, that
when David, with the captains of the host, estab
lished the musical services of the Sanctuary, they
appointed the sons of Asaph " to prophesy with
harps."1 Among these men — and they numbered
many hundreds, scattered at such sacred places as
Bethel, on the road from Shechem to Jerusalem,2
at Gibeah of Benjamin, or "The Hill,"3 at Jericho,4
and Gilgal,5 — it is natural to conclude that many
would be studious, eager to learn, and keenly bent
on the service of their national God.
The suggestion therefore, that they were taught
to read and write, that they began the series of
chronicles forming the material of later Scribes,6
and that out of them came the succession of those
inspired histories and songs which form part of the
world's best treasure, commands our assent, while
it indicates the particular value of their contribu
tion to the religious development of the nation.
Of the later references to these guilds or brother
hoods, it is not necessary now to write. Our purpose
has been to examine Samuel's relation to them,
and, remembering his intense spiritual aims, we
1 i Chron. xxv. 1-3. z 2 Kings ii. 3. 3 1 Sam. x. 5, 10.
* 2 Kings ii. 5. 6 2 Kings ii. 1 ; iv. 38.
• 1 Chron. xxix. 29.

txbe propbet in Earle jsrael. 15
cannot but think he would seek to turn them to
the best account, encouraging their intellectual
possibility, and discouraging the tendency to
professionalism. It is this practice of " prophesying for gain,"
which the later prophets denounce. Obadiah " hid
a hundred of them " from the rage of Jezebel.1
When, at the end of Ahab's reign, Jehoshaphat
wanted to inquire of Yahweh before going to Ramoth
Gilead to battle, four hundred were gathered to
gether before the allied kings, and prophesied in
Yahweh's name.2 Elijah and Elisha in turn,
each became leaders and heroes of these guilds,3
nor is it possible to say, how, through the example
and teaching of their leaders, the earnest and
faithful of such guilds would spread" the truer
knowledge of Yahweh, and keep alive the truer
faith among their people.

IV.
If Samuel, as we have seen, stood midway between
the old and the new, mediating the transition
from Semitic divination to the more direct, and
spiritual Hebrew prophecy, Elijah stands also mid
way between the nomadic, desert-loving enthusiast
for God, and the most dauntless and courageous
of that line of prophets, who were prepared to
risk everything, even life itself, in loyalty to
their ideal.
1 r Kings xviii. 4. z 1 Kings xxii. n, 12,
0 2 Kings ii. 7; iv. 38; vi. 1-7.

16 Che f>ebrew propbet anb tbe flbooern preacber.
Cornill's description of Elijah already quoted,
as " the first prophet of Israel on a grand scale,"
is entirely justified when we take into account the
nature of his conflict, the fact that he alone of all
the nation measured the crisis and faced it, and
particularly the vastness of his achievement for
Israel. Save in the case of the One " greater than
Elijah," history records nothing finer, more daring,
or more successful than this masterful stroke of
the Prophet from Gilead.
In reviewing the early history of Israel, and in
estimating our debt to these old pathfinders and
heroes, we need often to remind ourselves that the
later monotheistic faith of Judaism, and the com
parative purity of its religious observances, were
gained at tremendous cost. With a great price
Israel obtained this freedom, and what has been
aptly described as " the titanic struggle " of Elijah,
indicates the price at which it was secured. In
him, the false found its uncompromising opponent,
the true its untiring and most competent mouth
piece. The position in Israel at the time of Elijah's
sudden and dramatic entrance into the history
was unlike anything the people had known. We
have already referred to the prevalence of Baal-
worship in Canaan. Side by side with the worship
of Yahweh — Israel's God — there went on the
worship of the Baalim, the local divinities of the
Canaanites. This may be described as the normal
situation. Terrible as it was, owing to the sensuous
and utterly degrading character of the heathen

She propbet in jEartg Jerael. 17
religious rites, and therefore a constant menace
to the true development of Israel, it persisted
long after the time of Elijah, and called forth the
unsparing condemnation of the great eighth -
century prophets.
The immediate occasion of Elijah's startling
challenge, was the fact, that, for the first time in
Israel, a foreign deity was introduced and placed
side by side with Yahweh, as though in friendly
alliance and on equal terms. This was brought
about by the marriage of Ahab, Israel's king, with
Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Phoenicia.
Ethbaal had been a priest of the cult of Ashtoreth,
and had reached his throne through the murder
of a possible rival. The new queen, strong, resolute,
and utterly unscrupulous, was actively promoting
the cult of the new worship, and naturally desired
to establish the supremacy of her national and
favourite deity. To gratify his wife, Ahab had
built a splendid temple and altar to the Tyrian
god in the capital, Samaria, where four hundred
priests in gorgeous vestments, worshipped the
idol, and these, with the priests of Astarte, eight
hundred and fifty in all, fed in splendour at
Jezebel's table.1
There is no need to denounce Ahab as a monster.
Like many another since, he was weak where he
should have been strong, and, bearing the name
of a king, he became a mere tool in the hands of
his crafty and tyrannous wife. Though himself
holding to the worship of Yahweh, naming his two
1 1 Kings xviii. 19.

18 rxbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe Mobern preacber.
sons, Ahaziah and Jehoram, and even his daughter
Athaliah, after Yahweh (a most unusual thing for
a woman), what Ahab desired and evidently thought
possible, was a compromise, by which the worship
of Yahweh as Israel's God, and the Tyrian Baal,
could proceed side by side. For Elijah Yahweh
and Baal were mutually exclusive. Israel must
choose between them, it cannot have both. Ahab
apparently took the line, Why not have both ?
He saw no evil in the religious syncretism which
combined for his people the worship of both deities.
In building and endowing a temple of Baal for
his wife, Ahab did no more than Solomon had done
without exciting opposition on the part of his
people.1 But Solomon's day did not produce an
Elijah. The probability is, that but for Elijah,
Ahab's weak surrender to Jezebel would not have
met with any serious challenge. Many earnest,
sincere souls in Israel, " who had not bowed the
knee to Baal," would have been pained, but, beyond
individual protests, the presumption is that nothing
would have been done.
The idea of one Supreme God, and all other Baals
or Lords as non-existent and false, this had yet
to come. And it is the glory of Elijah's challenge
and triumph, that, for Israel at least, he made it
clear that Yahweh could have no rival in His own
land. By so much did he forward the slow advance
to the later monotheistic faith. " Where He was
worshipped, no other god could be acknowledged
in any sense. This was a proposition of tremendous
1 i Kings xi. 7.

Gbe propbet in Earle Jsrael. 19
practical issues. It really involved the political
isolation of the nation, for as things then stood,
it was impossible to have friendship and alliance
with other peoples if their gods were proscribed
in Israel's land."1 What we are now concerned
with is the fact — and we shall see it again and again
in history — that the prophet, caring more for the
honour of God than for life or nation, saved religion
from the syncretism which would have surrendered
it to the prevailing heathen cults.
Of Elijah's dearest friend, disciple, and successor,
Elisha,2 it is not necessary now to write at length.
Possibly — as happened in England in the days
immediately following Cromwell — Elisha has
suffered from the overwhelming supremacy and
towering greatness of his master and teacher.
During his long life, estimated by some as running
close into a century, he filled a large place in Israel's
fife, and remained passionately loyal to Yahweh.
Though Baal-worship still prevailed in the land,3
there is no record of any protest raised by Elisha
against it. In his recourse to the use of the
minstrel,4 there is rather a recurrence to the lower
level of the diviner, and in the toleration, bordering
on a compromise unthinkable to Elijah, such as
that allowed in the case of Naaman,5 we certainly
miss the moral passion of the prophet.
Yet, to have won as he did, and retained up to
the last, the admiration and affection of the " sons
1 Prof. W, R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 80.
8 1 Kings xix. 16. 8 2 Kings x. 18.
¦ 2 Kings iii. 15. 6 2 Kings v. 18.
C 2

20 Gbe tiebrew propbet anb the dliobern preacher.
of the prophets," being for more than half a century
their acknowledged head and teacher, indicates
real qualities of leadership, and proves the possession
of considerable staying power. That his work
of teaching, at any rate, with the more earnest
and sincere of these guilds or brotherhoods, would
pass into the permanent life of the nation, as
fertilizing streams of blessing, is a very strong
presumption, which, were proof possible, we should
undoubtedly find amply confirmed.
Full of the ministries of human kindness and
help — a friend of the common people — Elisha
filled also a very large place in the nation, as the
adviser and reprover of kings. Through all the
revolution which led to the overthrow of the house
of Omri, and the complete defeat of Tyrian Baalism,
Elisha illustrated and confirmed his title as " the
man of God." He discovered the man who led
it,1 and supplied the guidance and the inspiration
to Israel. Right to the end, his zeal for Yahweh
and for his land remained unshaken,2 and he passes
to his reward, having earned the grateful affection
of those he served so well.

V.
From the work of Elisha, as Sir G. A. Smith has
reminded us, " there are but forty years to Amos,"3
and, with Amos, we reach the first of the literary
1 2 Kings ix. 1-3. a 2 Kings xiii. 14-15.
8 Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i., p. 30.

Cbe propbet in Barle Israel. 21
prophets. While our study of Israel's early seers
reveals the paucity of available first-hand informa
tion — no written word of any of them having come
down to us — it also serves to bring out the dis
tinguishing characteristic of the religion to which
the earlier prophets witnessed. And we touch
permanent truth — urgently needing emphasis in
our own, as in every time — when we dwell upon
the two ways by which the faith of early Israel,
gradually assisted and directed by the prophets,
declared its Divine origin. First : In the character
of its God. Second : In the life and service of His
followers. As to the first : — Not only was there nothing like
it in that old heathen world, there has been nothing
like it since ; there is, outside the Christian world,
nothing like it to-day. Possessing as the Semites
did, a genius for religion ; imitative, susceptible,
untutored, and coming into a land every part of
which was full of sacred groves, high places of
sacrificial worship, and crudely-made temples,
nothing could have saved them from the corruptions
and excesses of their heathen neighbours, but the
steady insistence of the prophets, that theirs was
a God hating iniquity, loving righteousness and
truth. The Semites had no monopoly of the religious
faculty. The instinct for it is as universal as life.
The nations round them had their gods, whom their
peoples worshipped. Yet, spite of their worship,
and often because of the degrading nature of it,
other nations and peoples, without exception,

22 abe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfoobern preacher.
declined to ruin and final extinction. Their deities
were even as they, given to partialism and change,
they were passional, prejudiced, local and fickle.
" Israel is the only nation we know of that never
had a mythology, the only people who never
differentiated the deity sexually." 1 So deep does
this last trait extend, that the Hebrew language
is not even competent to form the word " goddess."
That there were many in Israel who succumbed
to the prevailing idolatry, that the nation itself
was slow to understand the greatness of their
privilege, and the loftiness of their faith, was the
agonizing complaint of the prophets, while it cost
Israel centuries of suffering, and eventually the
loss of the nation itself. Yet, though the nation
perished, Israel, of all the peoples of the earth,
survived, and its survival is due to its acknow
ledgment and ultimate acceptance of Yahweh, the
God of all the earth.
The insistence of this truth is urgently called for
in the pulpits of to-day. The loftier our view of
God, the more accurate will be our interpretation
of man, the more certain our mastery of life. A
great doctrine of God is the chief want of our
twentieth century.
As to the second : — As was the Deity, so must
be those who spoke for Him, and whom He called
His people. A God hating iniquity and loving
purity could neither be bought by offerings, nor
deceived by empty promises. Only as human
character gradually shared His ideals and embodied
1 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, p. 23.

Gbe propbet in JEarrs Jerael. 23
them in life and deed, could men rise to profitable
intercourse with Him, or to any effective service
of their fellow-men. Nor, except in the glory of
His own self -revelation, and the uniqueness of His
own inimitable teaching of it, had Jesus anything
higher to say than this.
How the work of the prophets assisted the under
standing of the character of God, and the correlative
service of man, how it prepared the way for the
final revelation of Jesus, we shall see in later
chapters. Meanwhile, the work of the earlier
prophets down to Elijah had been well done, and
they have placed the generations under permanent
obligation to them for their pathfinding ministry.

CHAPTER II.
Gbe ©ropbefs XTtaiufng an& CaU.
A STUDY of Israel's early history, enables
us more worthily to appreciate the place
and the work of the prophet. It justifies
the statement, that not once only, but again and
again, the purer faith and truer life of Israel were
saved by his devoted and unsparing sacrifice. As
a simple statement of fact, the prophets were not
only in conflict as we have seen, with the leaders
of Israel, they were constantly resisting the
idolatrous tendencies of the people themselves.
The fight for the supremacy of Yahweh was
unceasing on their part. The god or the " baal,"
was the god of the tribe or nation, not of the in
dividual. And the fortunes of the god, so to say,
ebbed and flowed with the decline or prosperity
of the nation. If the nation suffered reverse,
the deity was unpropitious or weak. If the nation
was prosperous, the deity was superior to the sur
rounding "baals." Ultimately, as we shall see,
the struggle for Yahweh's supremacy was won,
though only through long delay and suffering, in
volving even the loss of the nation itself !

She prophet's Graining anb Call. 25
It is necessary to remember that Yahweh was
not originally the god or baal of Palestine. His
true home was at Sinai. He had conquered
Palestine for Himself and for His followers. And
here, worshipped as Yahweh was by His own people
at the existing heathen altars, or side by side with
the Moabite Chemosh,1 the Zidonian Ashtoreth,2
or the Ammonite Milcom,3 it was often for the
peoples, an interesting contest between (to them)
actual deities ; and they took pleasure in it, as
those who delight in the success of a favorite
champion. Against all this degrading and syncre-
tizing tendency, the prophets of Israel were the
true defence of the nation, nor, but for their heroic
and unsparing effort, could Israel have won through.
But, leaving the further story of their later
struggle, and how, and at what cost their victory
was achieved, it is necessary at this point to turn
aside to the study of the men themselves, and
discover, if we can, how it was they were so far in
advance of their people, and the secret of their
unique and abiding success.

It is significant, that for the purposes of this
inquiry, we are compelled practically to ignore
the prophetic guilds or brotherhoods belonging
to the period of the early monarchy. We have
1 Numbers xxi. 29. 2 Deut. i. 4 ; 1 Kings xi. 5.
8 1 Kings xi. 5 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13.

26 cbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
already seen that these companies of men can claim
no right to the somewhat formal and high-sounding
title of " the schools of the prophets." It is quite
probable, that under the direction of Samuel, Elijah
and Elisha, they did good work and served a useful
ministry. They may have assisted the education
in writing, in the preservation of worthy tradition,
and — though we have no evidence for it — paved
the way for the preservation of later prophetic
utterance. But the later history reveals them as a paid,
professional class, uttering for money what was
desired of them, crying " peace, peace, when there
was no peace," x and constituting the heart-ache
and burden of men like Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah,
whose strongest denunciations are uttered against
their ungodly pretensions and false declarations.
What is certain is, that the great prophets, whose
writings are the unspeakably precious heritage of
all time, had no connection with such guilds, and,
for the most part, were compelled to denounce
them openly, as " blind leaders of the blind."
As was the character of Israel's God, so must
be those who represented Him, and who were
authorized to speak in His name. Unlike the priest
hood or the monarchy, which was hereditary and
the right of a special class or caste, the prophet
was called irrespective of any external condition
whatsoever. Save on the ground of moral fitness,
there is no " prophetic type," to which all must
conform ; nor is there anything answering to what
1 Isa. xxx. 9-1 1 ; Jer. v. 13 ; vi. 13, 14; Amos ii. 12.

Cbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 27
we may describe as a specialized order turned out
after a uniform pattern.
God's representatives are forthcoming from
either sex,1 from village and town, from any and
every class composing the community. Thus
early in the revelation does God ignore the poor
external conditions upon which man loves to
dwell, and exalts to this distinctive and supremely
responsible position, the most unknown and unlikely
of men.
The supreme requirement is character. And
character gained through long and earnest contact
with God, so that, even though he knows it not,
his life shines with the glory gained by secret com
munion.2 The prophets were men whom God knew
face to face.3 But this last reference — though it
is inherent in the office from the first — has behind
it a history of development. For Deuteronomy,
as we now know, belongs to a period familiar with
the prophets, and sums up the best judgment of
the centuries upon them. II.
It is impossible to detach this inquiry from
what has become in recent years a study of ever
growing interest and importance.
We refer to the modern study of psychology,
and the investigation of psychical phenomena.
It belongs to the early psychology of prophetic
development, that men, gifted with unusual insight,
1 Exod. xv. 20 ; Judges iv. 4 ; 2 Kings xxii. 14.
' Exod. xxxiv. 29. s Deut. xxxiv. 10.

28 Cbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dliobern preacber.
possessing the power to interpret dreams, claiming
to be able to solve the mysteries of things — all
that we should now describe as belonging to the
occult — these men were for that day and for that
people, prophets, seers or diviners. Attached to the
courts of the heathen nations round Israel — and
we find them established in Israel itself1 —
was a " prophet," not necessarily nor chiefly as
a mentor of conduct, but as a referee of what was
supposed to be the will of the deity.
But as Yahweh became better known, and known
through and by the men He made, the office and
function of the prophet rooted itself in personal
fitness. Prophecy can develop only where per
sonality counts for much. And where, beyond
all other, God's society is preferred and enjoyed,
the content of personality, the soil of it, so to say,
is immeasurably enriched.
This surely forms part — though, as yet, only
a small part — of the psychological conditions which
made the prophets so definite in their repeated
assurance that they had received, and were under
compulsion to deliver, the " Word of Yahweh."
For it enables us to see how these men construed,
alike themselves and their work. " The Lord
hath spoken, who can but prophesy ? "2 Teachers
of Yahweh's personal relation to Israel, they came
to the knowledge of what these relations were,
as is still the case, through their own experience,
and through that ever-widening knowledge, with
which God always rewards the obedient.
1 i Chron. xxi. 9 ; 2 Sam. vii. 1, 2. * Amos iii. 8.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 29
This repeated and insistent emphasis upon
character, is strikingly brought out in the names
or titles, by which the prophet came to be known
in Israel.
The " Seer,"1 visionary or diviner of the earliest
time, passes with Samuel (whose relation to Yahweh
was more personal and intimate, and whose
obedience was more consistent) into the more en
during term " prophet." The later term signifies
" The speaker for God," not so much a foreteller,
as a forthteller of the thoughts, longings, and
designs of the Eternal Mind.
Or again, we discover the richer content, as well
as the possible greatness of the office, in the descrip
tion of the prophet as " a Man of God,"2 a designa
tion indeed, concealing inexhaustible treasure for
us even yet.
Hosea and Micah speak of the prophet as " The
Man of the Spirit,"3 while, as still his work and
^influence grew, he is called the " Messenger,"4
the "Servant,"5 the "Interpreter"6 of Yahweh.
We dwell here upon the significance of these
names or titles, as closely bearing upon the dis
cussion in hand, and as revealing to us the prophet's
point of view. The name follows the characteristic
or quality or habit of the bearer, and was given
because it was true in fact.
These men were too near reality, and too much
absorbed with the practical business they had in
1 1 Sam. ix. 9.
8 1 Sam.ix. 6; 1 Kings xii. 22 ; r Kings xvii. 18 ; 2 Kings iv. 7, 9.
8 Hos. ix. 7 ; Micah iii. 8. * Isa. xiii. 19.
6 Mai. iii. 1. • Isa. xliii. 27.

3° Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe fliobern preacber.
hand, that of first knowing and then communicating
to others the mind of Yahweh, to care or even to
think of mere titles, or small questions of personal
dignity. It was Yahweh who mattered to them.
All else was secondary.
Nor was their belief in Yahweh a question of
reason or logic brought about by any process of
thought. God had spoken to them. That was
enough. They had seen and heard Him in the
deepest and most secret experiences of their own
spirit. They were as confident of it as of their
own existence.- They were indeed, emphatically,
" men of the Spirit."
This necessarily — as it always will — involved
for them a definite course of life, a specified psychical
training. It admits us to their secret. We see
the price they paid for their eminence and authority.
For as now, so then, men are as they think. And
the prophet's absorbing thought was the honour
of Yahweh.
It followed therefore, gradually but inevitably,
that the master passion moulded the men, and
fashioned them along great and distinctive lines.
And a careful study of the individual prophets
reveals certain well-defined and always present
factors by which, not only the sense of vocation
grew upon them and held them, but their distinctive
claim, as being " speakers for God," was justified
before others.
Not that this contains the whole truth, as we shall
see. "A purely natural account of the psycho
logical phenomena of prophecy cannot be true to

Gbe propbet's Graining anb Call. 31
fact. Room must be found for the action of the
supernatural."1 And with this so necessary qualifi
cation and reminder, let us proceed to analyze the
elements of the prophet's training.
(1) That the prophets were students is obvious,
and needs no emphasis. That they thought deeply,
felt keenly, and lived an intense life, is written
across the whole story of their words and deeds.
No flippant men are these, tripping across life as
a stage, being selfishly concerned with mere personal
or family interests.
In such a case they would not have been heard
of. The Spirit of God could have found no point
of contact. There would have been no psychical
link, making correspondence possible. The older
mechanical theory of inspiration is thus seen to
be quite untenable, and men have been compelled
to abandon it. It was arbitrary, unreasonable,
dishonouring. The idea of Athenagoras,2 " the
Spirit making use of them (the prophets) as a flute
player breathes into a flute," is exploded, in the
light of a more accurate knowledge of the Bible.
They worked with their brain. They wrestled,
even as we do, with problem and doubt. As witness
Amos away in the solitary fastnesses and upland
wilds of his native Tekoa, musing over the problem
of Israel's riotous wrong-doing. Or Isaiah, as he
reverently waited and worshipped in the temple,
overwhelmed before the vision of Yahweh's holiness,
and the terrible sin and danger of his people.
1 Prof. G. Joyce, The Inspiration of Prophecy, p. 63
2 A Plea for the Christians.

32 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Iftobern preacber.
(2) That the prophets were lovers is equally
obvious. This is indeed the true starting-point
for understanding them. Not that their love was
full-grown at first, nor was it always at the same
point of intensity, any more than with the Christian
of to-day. But their relation was rooted in an
experience of deep, personal affection for Yahweh.
It is impossible to read the agonizing lament of
Amos, of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, or the heart-cry of
Hosea, wrung from him by his home-tragedy of
unrequited affection, as they viewed the shocking
treatment of Yahweh by their people, and not
feel how warm and even passionate was their own
zeal for God, and the strength of their love for Him.
(3) And the love urged the Communion, the
sense of kinship, the desire for that oneness with
Yahweh which marks the inner experience of the
prophets. This was the secret of their strength.
This was to them " the meat to eat the world
knew not of." This explains their growing
spirituafity, and the ever-increasing loftiness of
their message.
And if we inquire how they reached the purer
spirituality of their faith, how, rising away from
the idea of location or place where it was necessary
to consult Yahweh, they gained at length the view
of God, not as national, but as universal, the true
and only living God of all the earth,1 the explana
tion is, that they had found God in the constant
longing of their own hearts, and in the responsive
satisfaction of His indwelling grace.
1 Isa. liv. 5.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 33
(4) So they became men of Knowledge, of In
sight, of Interpretation. " The secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him."1 The relation,
resting on a moral and spiritual basis, grounded
in intense affection for the person and purposes
of Yahweh, the consequent revelation of the Divine
will was the unfailing sequel of their loyalty and
trust. So Amos interprets it, " Surely the Lord
will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto
His servants the prophets."2 While Jeremiah
rebukes the false prophets and exposes them, as
not having " stood in the council "3 of Yahweh !
This does not mean that the prophets were lifted
beyond ordinary men in the methods of attaining
general knowledge, and certainly it does not render
them infallible. They needed, even as we, care
fully to watch and guard the training of their
faculties. They were not exempt from error.
They made the mistake the apostles later made,
in the first century of our era, looking as they did,
for the perfect incoming of the Kingdom of God
in their days. Even so the prophets anticipated
" the great day of the Lord " to come in their own
time, and such estimates, as they proved, needed
repeated revision.
But while much of what used to be regarded as
prediction in prophetic utterance,4 has been shown
to be capable of a more rational, and, may we add,
diviner explanation, the element and ministry
of prediction cannot be excluded or denied.
1 Psa. xxv. 14. 2 Amos iii. 7.
• Jer. xxiii. 22. * See also pp. 104-7.

34 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe fliobern preacber.
And here is the place to say, that in no realm
of Biblical study are we under a greater debt to
the work of modern scholars and scholarship, than
in the study of the prophets and the prophetic
literature. For it is, as Dr. Peake so well says,
" in the prophetic writings more than anywhere
else that we find the inmost secret of Israel's re
ligion."1 And it is through the unwearying
labour of these devout and godly scholars, that
the religion of Israel, as well as the work of the
prophets who saved it, and who were its effective
exponents, has been made to live anew, and we see
it to be the record of a movement immeasurably
more wonderful, more divine, than the older view
could be.
It is now clear to us, that the immediate concern
of the prophets, was the honour of Israel's God.
They sought to understand His relations to and
purposes for His own people. Their concern was,
that the urgency of His word through them, as
speakers for Him, applied to existing circumstances,
should result in the quickening of the individual
and national conscience, and a corresponding
recognition of the obligation due to so wonderful
a love as that of Yahweh. Dealing primarily, as
they did, with the moral order, the application of
moral truth to every-day thought and action, they
found their target, so to say, in the moral constitu
tion of man, and so, necessarily, their words would
have an application far beyond their own time
and land, becoming therein truly predictive.
1 Peake's Commentary , p. 45.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 35
Being true then and there for Israel, they are
true for all time and everywhere.
Taking the view of God we do, as the only all-
wise and all-powerful, whose redeeming purpose
of love reaches to all peoples, and on to the last
syllable of recorded time ; taking also the view
of the trained lover, called into the " Council of
Yahweh," and so sharing the secrets of the Most
High ; what difficulty is there in accepting the
view that He could and sometimes did project
before the minds of His " interpreters," visions
of the coming order of His Kingdom, and the method
of its unfolding ?
The whole future of the Divine redemptive work
lay in the fact declared by Amos, that Yahweh
" of all the families of the earth, has known only
Israel."1 Such a selection encouraged hope. To
the best minds of Israel such a hope was always
exalting the ideal. And as, under the teaching
of history and experience, the ideal expanded and
heightened, the mind of the prophet often rising
to ecstasy in the contemplation of it, would behold
possibilities in it stretching on to an ever more
glorious day. It is this which enables us to under
stand the statement of Prof. A. B. Davidson : —
" the essence of prophecy is prediction."2
But to suppose that the prophets were concerned
with events now happening in the twentieth century,
or that God, overpowering and ignoring their
ordinary faculties, gave to them minute particulars
of things only now receiving fulfilment, is to remove
1 Amos iii. 2. ! Old Test. Prophecy, p. 294.
D 2

36 Gbe ftebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacber.
them entirely from the category of men. Being
primarily teachers of their own age, such a view
makes God responsible for a method not paralleled
by anything we know of Him in other realms.
Further, it is to remove a master motive to the
service of God and man, seeing that it inevitably
shuts us in to a most hopeless and desolating
fatalism. (5) To study, affection, communion, and know
ledge, the element of sympathy must be added as
a factor in the training of the prophets. They
loved God intensely, and, because of that, they
loved their fellow-men the more. " For the hurt
of the daughter of my people I am hurt,"1 is the
agonizing cry of Jeremiah, and therein he speaks
for all the company of the prophets. They suffered
for and with their people. They knew their sorrows
and carried their burdens.
What makes the personality of the prophet, and
the nature of his message and work such a charm,
is the thorough humanness running through all.
Where, for example, even now, when we are sup
posed to have advanced so far in our estimate of
human values, is there excelled that fine outburst of
pure feeling on the part of Jeremiah, as he cries : —
" Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes
a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and
night for the slain of the daughter of my people " ?2
How else can the Gethsemane of Isaiah be under
stood, — a scholar, an aristocrat, a statesman, — as,
for his people's sake, and to save them from the
1 Jer. viii. 21. * Jer. ix. i.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 37
threatened Assyrian disaster, " for three years he
walked naked and barefoot " P1 Was it not for
love of his people, Amos faced the revelling, immoral
crowd of Bethel ? And what else but the desire
of Hosea to save his people from the consequences
of forsaking their God, could have compelled from
so pure and sensitive a soul, the unutterably pain
ful story of his own darkened home ?
It is by pursuing this line of psychical study,
inquiring into the prophet's inner experience,
examining the. factors making up his mental and
moral training, that we are able to understand
the prophet as he came to be, and account for the
large place he filled in the world of his day.
That these same factors still apply, and are as
essential to the effective service of God and man,
supplies the reason and defines the purpose of
this particular study, and will form the appeal
of the later part of our task. Meanwhile, before
passing to a closing reference bearing upon the
call of the prophets, and as a further tribute to
what we have designated their " humanness," it
is delightful, in tracing the prophet's development,
to mark how each prophet retains his identity, and
refuses the " stamp " or " type " of any prescribed
mould. They came to the knowledge of their
work through their own experience, and the ex
perience was just as varied as life itself. When
our Lord selected the twelve for training, in order
to the preaching of the Kingdom, He included in
that group every type of personality. The twelve
1 Isa. xx. 3.

38 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Diobern preacher.
are a miniature world, and it is an exquisite study
to mark how, without interfering with personality,
He moulded their lives to His pattern.
Taking the fifteen canonical prophets — excluding
Daniel, as belonging to apocalypse — we find almost
every type of personality represented. Returning
for a moment to the pre-literary prophets, Elijah
is as unlike Elisha, as John the Forerunner of
Jesus is unlike John the Apostle. So Amos and
Micah are as far removed in social status and in
early training from Isaiah and Ezekiel as men
could possibly be, yet each is true to himself, each
brought his distinctive contribution to the ever
growing whole of truth, and the building of the
City of God. III.
When we pass to the important consideration
of the prophet's call — the means by which he is
made aware of what we designate vocation — we
are still in the realm of psychological study. For
the question of call is primarily rooted in sub
jective experience. It first works in the realm
of the inner consciousness. It presupposes a willing
ness to surrender personality to the higher desires
and purposes of God. In this statement, we do
not forget the shrinking of Isaiah,1 the reasoning
of Jeremiah,2 or the sense of insufficiency in Paul.3
Who has ever seriously contemplated the work
of the prophet, as a speaker for God, the awe of
it, the responsibilities it brings, the eternal issues
1 Isa. vi. 5. a Jer. i. 4-10. 8 2 Cor. ii. 16.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 39
involved, and not felt the humiliating sense of
unworthiness and unfitness for a work so great,
for a privilege so distinctive ? Is it not correct to
affirm that the higher the sense of " vocation,"
the more complete the sense of helplessness on
the human side ? Yet are not these experiences
of disparity and disability rather a ground for the
Divine approach than otherwise ? Have not the
best and as it has proved, the most successful of
God's workmen, felt the same ? Such legitimate
self-distrust is certainly consistent with a secret
devotion, a willingness to " obey the heavenly
vision," when once the path of duty is clear.
When however, we thus emphasize the sub
jective, and speak of it as a " primary factor,"
we do not mean that God is not the author
of the call, or that He is not its first cause.
Rather what is meant is, that this is the method
by which He works, finding deep in the qualities
of personality and spiritual loyalty, His path of
approach. The prophets are, each of them, most definite
in their claim, that they are commissioned men.
The sense of vocation is overpowering. They
speak because they have been commanded by
Heaven's King. They have distinctly heard God's
voice, and hence their dogmatism, " Thus saith
the Lord." In all the suffering of Jeremiah — his
life a martyrdom — perhaps nothing made him
smart more, than the charge of Shemaiah that he
was a prophet by his own appointment.1 His
3Jer. xxix. 27.

40 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfcobern preacher.
answer to the cruel insinuation is the passionate
assertion of a compelling inward power, leaving
him no option. " And if I say, I will not make
mention of him, nor speak any more in his name,
then there is in mine heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones, and I am weary with for
bearing, and I cannot contain."1
But, in all this very real work of the Divine
Spirit, arresting, compelling, instructing, it is not
necessary to suppose then — any more than now —
an objective appearance, or audible voice. The
experience of Isaiah in the temple,2 is not the less,
but all the more real to us, as we think of the up-
rush of spiritual feeling, the overmastering sense
of God's presence and power which possessed him,
as he mused there in profound thought of his people,
his nation, the menace of Assyria, and then of
God as the only, yet sufficient answer.
The well-known instance of Isaiah may stand
for the whole. No more attractive study presents
itself — and in these days, when " speakers for
God " are urgently needed — no study can be more
important, than to follow the way in which these
men were led to make their witness. In this
respect, the pages of the prophets, as autobio
graphical revelations, are at once the most
illuminating and the most delightful of our
literature. Always remembering the controlling and guiding
purpose of God, using, as He has chosen to do,
human channels as His organ of communication,
1 Je». xx. 9. 2 Isa. vi. 1-9.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 41
while reluctantly passing over the examination of
individual instances, let us mark the following
elements, as constituting the " call " of the
prophet : —
(1) Experience leads the way. God must be
known, loved, obeyed. Much will have led to the
definite " sense of God," which underlies vocation.
What indeed is experience, but the growing force
of many rills making up the main current or channel
of personality ? It is what the New Testament
knows as conversion, and the following of Christ.
These men knew God, not as a doctrine, but as a
fact. As they followed their work, as they looked
out over the conditions of their time, or as they
suffered in their persons and homes, God stood for
them as the reality behind, above, and over all.
He and His made up for them the supreme concern
of life.
(2) Conviction grew out of their experience.
They saw clearly, because their Divine teacher
was so real, and because they felt so strongly the
reasonableness, the imperiousness of His demand.
And the morality for which Yahweh stood, as
distinct from the deities of other nations, the pre
vailing voluptuousness of their times, and the
tendency to rest in mere form and ritual, such
morality and the need for it, was as real as God
Himself. The nation would perish unless it
abandoned idolatry, and honoured Yahweh its
God. Nothing could save it from extinction but
return and loyalty to Him. Hence the " ethical
monotheism " of the prophets' message, and, in

42 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe iBiobern preacher.
that, their distinctive contribution to the develop
ment of Israel's religion.
(3) Out of such depth of conviction came the
inward compulsion, by which the " call " was con
firmed and expressed. Each of them passed
through an experience, felt later by the " One
greater than a prophet," so that they could have
fittingly used His own great speech, " I have a
baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished."1 And it is
always questionable, whether, until this " necessity
is laid upon us," and the sense of " woe unto me "
is felt, we ought to accept any other standard as
constituting the call of God.
There were other considerations moving the
prophets, as there always are, where these more
subjective experiences are shared. The prophets,
because they lived in the very real world where
God was first and chief, lived and moved also in
the equally real world of human need. Emerson
in one of his essays, remarks : — " the seer must
always be a sayer." But why ? Because the
keen eye of the seer is always upon life ; its
conditions, wrongs, perils, problems, baseness,
nobleness. The " cloistered cell " is never the home of
prophets. They will sometimes tarry there to
commune and to draw supplies of wisdom and
strength, but they will as surely emerge from it,
having had the " inner vision " of the world's crying
need, to bring to men the message of heaven's
1 Luke xii. 50.

Gbe prophet's Graining anb Call. 43
forgiving love. And their confidence in the com
pleteness of the Divine answer, their intimate
knowledge of man's need, and their eagerness to
make the conditions of human life an opportunity
for God, will be for them and for others the con
firmation and proof of their call to speak.
To give " an opportunity for God." To the
prophet, this is, beyond everything, the " one
thing needful." Jealousy for the honour of God,
unshakable loyalty to the Divine will, the longing
here and now to get that will done, and all, because
therein lies the salvation of the individual and the
only hope of the world, this constitutes the burden,
the life-mission, the growing heaven of those who
are the called and trained of God.

CHAPTER III.
Ube propbet in Xatet Israel.
BETWEEN the decisive and splendid victory
of Elijah on Carmel, and the Elijah-like
appearance of Amos in Bethel, there stretches
about a century of thrilling life for Israel, some
part of which must now pass under review, if we
are to understand the larger place of the prophet
in Israel from the eighth century onward, and the
permanent contribution he made to the life and
religion of his own and succeeding times.
So conspicuous a triumph, and so unanimous
a choice as the headland of Carmel witnessed that
day when idolatry was exposed, and the people
cried out " The Lord he is God ; the Lord he is
God,"1 might have been reckoned as final, and as
deciding the supremacy of Yahweh for ever.
But the teaching of history, down to our own
time, warns us against expecting too much from
sudden upheavals of revolution, or from gusts
of popular feeling, or the effort to impose reform
from without. True religion, indeed, had been
greatly assisted by the victory of Elijah, but not
only were the people a long way from the purer
1 i Kings xviii. 39.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael, 45
monotheism of the prophet of the exile,1 the worship
of the old Canaanite Baals still went on, and was
even increased, while there set in a season of revelling
and riotousness of living, which at length called
forth the stern denunciation of Amos, the first of
the literary prophets.
We have a parallel in the triumph of Puritanism
under Cromwell, and the re-action of the Restora
tion on the return of Charles the Second. After
seven years of civil war, following the awful
tyrannies of Laud, Buckingham, and Strafford ;
the " crowning mercy " of Cromwell's smashing
blow at Naseby ; the brilliant years of the Common
wealth, with the triumph of liberty they witnessed ;
there were those in England who hoped for, and
declared the near approach of the golden age.
Yet the " reign of the saints " was immediately
followed by " the reign of strumpets," and, set
free from the stricter rule of the Puritans, the forces
of evil were unloosed, and for a time overwhelmed
the Puritan triumph, as though it had been in vain.
A later parallel, and, for this generation a more
serious one, is found "in the greatest war in history "
of the years 1914 to 1919. The war was fought
for the overthrow of tyranny, and to make the
world safe for democracy. It was believed and
hoped that the agony of such a horror would have
sobered nations, humbling them before God, and
leading to a passionate yearning for a new Pente
cost as the solution of all our problems. Yet we
are now confronted by a world in which the extremes
1 Isa. xl. 18-26 ; xliv. 8-20.

46 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe iliobern preacher.
of extravagant waste and pitiful starvation face
each other, while every nation has witnessed a
recrudescence of riotous pleasure-seeking, a love
of sheer brutality, and a general spirit of lawless
ness, such as followed the re-establishment of
tyranny under the Stuarts.
But to return. Undoubtedly Elijah's reforma
tion, supported by his successor, Elisha, profoundly
affected the nation. Yet, imperceptibly no doubt
at first, but surely, and with ever-increasing velocity,
Israel, retaining the forms of the worship of Yahweh,
declined to the lowest moral standards.
Many factors contributed to this downward
tendency. Let us examine the chief.
(i) The greater laxity of the prevailing idolatry,
with the indulgences they encouraged, was a
constant temptation to the sensitive, imitative
Semitic mind. . v
We have only to remember the prevailiflg^vorld^i-
ness of our own time, and the influence of it upon
the crowd, to understand this. The golden calyes
still remained at the shrines of worship.1 The
" Asherah,"2 or sacred pole, remained in Samaria.
Royal sanctuaries were set up at Bethel, at one
end of the kingdom, and Dan3 at the other. Gilgal,
Mizpeh, Tabor, Shechem, and Penuel, while they
all testified to the prevailing religiousness of the
people, contributed in the end, to the formalizing
and corruption of the truer worship of Yahweh.
This was due to the fact that while at these
shrines, the Israelites worshipped their own god,
1 i Kings xii. 28. 2 1 Kings xvi. 33. 8 1 Kings xii. 29.

Gbe propbet in Jtater Israel. 47
Yahweh, the Canaanite worship of their false
Baals went on at the same sites. Attached to
each rival deity, was a band of zealous priests, each
striving to outvie the other in attracting the people.
The sacred feasts and services were accompanied
by the most shameful excesses.1 To these feasts,
the people were encouraged to bring their material
offerings and gifts, often the produce of the land.
And when it is remembered that these shrines
of worship were also seats of judgment, and offices
of state administration,2 where law and justice
were openly travestied,3 it is easy to understand
how difficult it would be to preserve the purity of
religion. When the worship of religion is corrupt,
religion itself, for the individual, has been slain !
(2) The settlement in Canaan, and especially
the union of the tribes under a monarchy, had
meant the growth of towns, the development of
industries, and an approach to some of the arts
of civilization.
Under David, and following his conquests, and
for some time under Solomon, the nation enjoyed
a period of remarkable prosperity, during which
" Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
his own vine and under his fig-tree."4
The rich soil, especially of the North — Samaria
and Galilee — yielded an abundance far beyond
their need, so that riches were stored up, and the
" people waxed fat." But side by side with this
1 Amos ii. 7, 8. Hosea iv. n-14.
a 2 Sam. viii. 15 ; 1 Kings iii. 28 ; Amos. vii. 10-13.
8 Amos ii. 6, 7 ; viii. 5, 6. * 1 Kings iv. 25.

48 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe diiobern preacher.
material prosperity, aided by the syncretizing
tendency of the worship, morality declined
(3) Ultimately, the monarchy Israel desired,
" to make them as other nations," proved its
ruin. To understand this, we need to remember
that, under David, the old patriarchal nobility
remained, and the king was " chief among equals."
But, under Solomon, a change took place which
profoundly and permanently affected the life of
the people, while it served to create the need and
point out the place of the later prophet's work.
Gradually, but surely, government now tended
to centre round " courts," calling for an " aristo
cratic " or " noble " class. Military officers, officers
of departments were created and placed in positions
of authority and influence, who in turn entirely
superseded the older order of heads of families and
tribes, while the people were reduced to the con
ditions of serfdom. And, as has so often happened
since, the people — for whom the prophets chiefly
cared — were exploited and fleeced by the powerful
few. Extravagance, expansion of territory, ivory
palaces for kings and nobles,1 all meant exaction
in the way of taxes. These taxes the old yeoman
class were unable to meet, so that more and more
the land was seized by the rulers, and the poor, in
ever-increasing numbers, became the mere tools
of the rich.
This was brought to a head under Solomon,
whose borrowing from Hiram had compelled him
1 Amos iii. 15.

Gbe propbet fn Hater Israel. 49
to cede twenty of his northern cities to the
Phoenician. From being the idol, Solomon was
now regarded as the oppressor of his people, so that
by the time his son Rehoboam came to the throne,
events were ripe for revolution. That revolution
was hastened by the declaration of avowed tyranny on
the part of the new king,1 only Judah and Benjamin
remaining loyal to the ancient house of David.
As indicating the nature and strength of the
change already referred to, the remaining ten tribes
of the North, instead of selecting a king of the old
patriarchal type, called back from Egypt, an old
favourite, but disgraced official of Solomon,2
idolatrous, tyrannical, despotic. Dynasty followed
dynasty in rapid succession, each new monarch
mounting upon the slaughter of the supporters
of his forerunner.
This went on, until the long and prosperous,
but wicked rule of Jeroboam II, whose military
successes in Syria and Damascus, accompanied
by a revival of the extravagance of Solomon's
worst days, in still further weakening the moral
fibre of the nation, called forth the prophetic
judgment of Amos.
(4) Nor, in estimating the position of affairs in
later Israel, can we afford to overlook the critical
geographical situation, particularly of the Northern
Kingdom. Judah, away behind her rocky bulwarks,
and with her far less favoured soil, difficult also of
access, was saved many of the perils of the neigh
bouring kingdom of Israel. This serves partly to
1 1 Kings xii. n. s I Kings xi. 40. E

so Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb the flbobern preacber.
explain why Judah remained longer in attachment
to the old faith, though the tendencies which
characterized and changed the northern portion
of the kingdom, were true also of the south.
Galilee, open to the Mediterranean — the marriage-
ring of nations — with its broad, inviting Esdraelon
plain running under Nazareth — an open gateway
between East and West — made Northern Israel,
" a buffer state," between Assyria or Babylon, and
Egypt, Ethiopia, or Rome, as the case may be.
(5) This rendered the Northern Kingdom more
sensitive to the restlessness, the aggressiveness
and lust of empire, which is so marked a feature
of the Eighth Century B.C. And it inevitably con
stituted part of the moral temptation of Israel,
to be even as the nations whose greatness so im
pressed them. " By far the greatest event in the
eighth century before Christ was the appearance
of Assyria in Palestine."1 And this remarkable
play of internationalism, the fact that the Hebrews
were being " drawn into the world," that they felt
movements of which their own history was but an
eddy, gave the prophets of Israel their opportunity,
and assisted them to reach and proclaim that view
of God, which, while destroying the nation, saved
the world for true religion. I.
These contributing factors, while powerfully
affecting the life of the nation, served to release
the prophet for his true work as " the mouthpiece
1 Sir G. A. Smith, Book of the Twelve Prophets, vol. i. p. 44.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. s«
of God," and as the revealer of the Divine mind.
In earlier days, as we have seen, the " seer " was
the general adviser, the referee in disputes, what
we should now describe as the political leader or
statesman, the " power behind the throne " in a
political sense.
But as the monarchy in Israel became more and
more an imitation of oriental royalty, monopolizing
all leadership within its own court and military
circles, the prophets, released from " secular "
obligations, increasingly represented the moral
passion and became the moral voice of the nation. .
Pofitical independence heightened their religious
authority. They counted for far more as moral
teachers, than as judges of petty disputes, or such
relatively small questions as deciding the direction
of straying cattle.1 They grew to a position of
greater trust and wider leadership, as they proved
themselves the impartial critics, and the safest
guides of the nation's life.
The appeal of Amos is directly to the people.
The prophets become the educators of the common
conscience. They are emphatically " the preachers
of righteousness " to every class of the community
— the court included — and righteousness, right
relations to God, right conduct toward their fellow-
man, is their chief concern.
Questions of ritual, of worship, or of political
alliances may then take care of themselves. " But
let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness
as a mighty stream."2 This is the refrain of the
1 i Sam. ix. 6. * Amos v. 24.
E 2

52 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flSobern preacher.
prophetic music, old indeed as music itself, but now
repeated by Amos and Hosea with an intensity,
a passion, and in such varied and noble setting, as
led on to the " golden age " of prophecy under
Isaiah and Jeremiah, and, great as any, the eloquent
second Isaiah.
What is important to note here, as proving the
Divine guidance and government of the world, is
the striking fact that the rise of internationalism
in the eighth century before Christ, the clash of
great empires, found great moral leaders in Israel
and Judah, such as no other nation possessed.
Just when they were needed, these prophetic
leaders were there, prepared to step outside national
boundaries, ready to take the international, the
world view. They were eager to make their broad
appeal to the innate moral consciousness of man
everywhere, to touch universal chords, and so
create music, the power and beauty of which has
become the imperishable and priceless possession
of universal man. In this respect, the contribution
y of the Hebrew prophet is unique. In the history
of the religions of the world, there is nothing
like it.

II.
It does not fall within our province to follow the
swaying fortunes of Israel and Judah under the
successive invasions of foreign peoples. Nor do
we stay to describe how the struggle resulted first
of all, as might have been expected, in the over-

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 53
throw of the Northern Kingdom, the fall of Samaria
under the Assyrians in 722 B.C. ; then later, in the
fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of Judah under
the Babylonians, in 568 B.C. We are here con
cerned with these exciting and tragic years, as we
mark across them the faithful ministry, the heroic
witness and suffering, the unflinching devotion of
the prophets.
It is an altogether thrilling story, so perennially
interesting that it is so human. A record full of
warning, rebuke, encouragement and hope to our
own time, particularly as the resemblances are so
numerous and accurate.
Writing as we do, with the modern ministry of
the Word in view, and supremely concerned for the
place and power of the modern pulpit, we are pro
foundly convinced — especially in view of the
enormous gains brought to the study of the prophets
by modern scholarship — that they offer to the
preachers of to-day, and to their congregations,
an untold mine of wealth.
That through these successive generations God
raised up and called these speakers and sufferers,
" daily rising up early "x (a significant indication
of eagerness, not without its modern application),
leaving no age, however corrupt, without those
who would have saved disaster, is a wondrous
revelation of " the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and the knowledge of God,"2 which later
compelled Paul to break out in profoundest
adoration. 1 Jer. vii. 25. a Rom. xi. 33.

54 Gbe ibebrew prophet anb tbe flBobern preacher.
That there were men prepared to respond, men
who, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, loving
their people dearly, were willing to face the un
welcome tasks of rebuke and judgment, and risk
life itself for the sake of loyalty to their Divine
ideal, is a tribute to the greatness of human nature,
and a striking confirmation of Paul's statement,
that God has never "left himself without witness."1
That notwithstanding the expenditure of such
a true wealth and royalty of nature as these out
standing personalities represented — the really great
of the earth — they were rejected and cast out, the
world "not being worthy of them; "2 that might
and wickedness wrought out its repeated and
apparently triumphant mischief, is but a striking
illustration of the course of history, from the
beginning to this day, and constitutes the travail,
delay, and mystery of succeeding ages.
That through the sacrifice and labour of these
truly royal men, the cause of pure religion ultimately
won through, and that, through this saved remnant,
came " The One," whom we reverently worship as
Master and Lord, whose Kingdom is everlasting
and whose triumph is as certain as His throne,
constitutes the perpetual hope and assurance of
faith, while it serves as the abiding challenge to
our unflinching loyalty and devotion.
III.
It remains now to trace the way in which the
influence and work of the prophets so powerfully
1 Acts xiv. 17. 2 Heb. xi. 38.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 55
affected the life and history of Judah and Israel
during the eventful centuries stretching between
Amos, the first of the prophets to commit his words
to writing, and Ezekiel, when prophecy was taking
on an apocalyptic colouring, including the writers
of the exilic and post-exilic periods, conspicuous
amongst these, being that unmatched religious
genius, the second Isaiah.
As one passes from prophet to prophet, and
reads again words that still " live and burn," we
are conscious of being caught up into the current
of mighty world-movements. We are no longer
viewing an insignificant and negligible people,
away in one of the smallest of lands, insular, local,
self-contained. " Drawn into the world " indeed,
as the Hebrews were — the Belgium of the eighth,
seventh, and sixth centuries before Christ — they
lived in the face of some of the greatest empires
the world has known, and they became in turn,
the aim of their greed, the tools of their might,
the victims of their cruelty.
Assyria, always aggressive and violent, under
the mighty Tilgath-Pileser IV. (the contemporary
of Jeroboam II. and Ahaz) rose to her zenith of
power. By successive strokes, regaining Babylonia,
attacking the Chaldeans and the Medes — though
unsuccessfully — then coming West, taking Damascus
and making Palestine a tributary kingdom, her
great objective was Egypt, which was gained in
661, and, for ten years, Egypt remained an Assyrian
province. But kingdoms founded on force can have no

56 Gbe Ibebrew prophet anb tbe fliobern preacher.
permanence, and in a little over fifty years, the
Assyrian dynasty was overthrown. Confronted by
the revolt of Egypt, attacked by the Scythians, a
wild and barbarous people north of the Crimea,
they received the final blow from the Medes, and
Nahum, the prophet of the period, reflects the
general feeling of relief in the overthrow and fall
of their capital, Nineveh : —
" Ah, how do thy shepherds slumber,
Thy nobles sleep !
Thy people are strewn o'er the mountains,
And no one to gather them !
" All they that hear thy tidings
Clap hands over thee ;
For on whom hath not thy villainy
Passed without ceasing 1 "1
The Assyrian Empire was now divided between
the Medes and the Babylonians. Once more Syria
and Palestine became the objective of Egypt on
the one side, and, Babylonia on the other. Necho,
of Egypt, who had defeated Judah at Megiddo,2
was overthrown; and under Nebuchadrezzar the
Crown Prince of Babylon, Palestine became
a part of the Babylonian Empire. The revolt of
Jehoiakim led to a first deportation into captivity
in 597. Again the Egyptians under Hophra fought
for Syria and Palestine, which resulted in the
movement of Nebuchadrezzar westward, and the
capture and fall of Jerusalem in 586. A witness
of these horrors, a captive and exile, one of the
most gifted of Israel's sons, has vividly mirrored
1 Nahum iii. iS, 19. Quoted from Prof. A. R. Gordon's,
The Prophets of the Old Testament, pp. 174, 175.
8 2 Kings xxiii. 29.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 57
the scene in what he calls " a lamentation," and
shall be for a lamentation1 : —
" A strong branch she had, —
A sceptre of rulers ;
High was its growth 'mid the foliage,
And stately with many a shoot.
" She was plucked up in fury,
She was thrown to the ground ;
The East wind parched her fruit,
Tore off her shoots.
" Her strong branch withered away,
The fire devoured it;
And now she is planted in desert ground,
In a parched land.
" And fire hath gone out from her branch,
And consumed her shoots ;
And her strong branch abideth no more
As a sceptre for rule."2
What is known as the Persian period began in
539 under Cyrus, King of Persia, who came up
against Belshazzar at Opis, and afterwards entered
Babylon without opposition. To this period we
owe the " great prophet " of the later years of the
exile, as also Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
This rapid and imperfect sketch of the external
history of Israel and Judah is included here, that
we may the more truly estimate the greatness of
the prophets, called at such a crisis to the moral
leadership of the nation. So far as outward
magnificence goes, and, reckoned by mere material
standards, it was one of the greatest periods of
universal history. For, on either side of this small
1 Ezek. xix. 10-14.
2 Quoted from Prof. A. R. Gordon's The Prophets of the Old
Testament, p. 226:

58 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe flBobern preacher.
" buffer state," the great empires of that day were
contending for mastery, regardless of the rights
of smaller peoples, and utterly unscrupulous in
method. Our recent experiences during the late
world-war present perhaps the closest parallel.
But God leaves not the world without witness.
As, out of the dark days of the Stuart tyranny,
there shines the witness of our glorious Milton,
"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,"
so out of these suffering years of Israel's life, came
these patriotic, lofty, pure-minded prophets, tower
ing to a sweep of vision, to a courage and strength
unequalled in history. And what an assuring and
impressive reflection — as proving the abiding
supremacy of the spiritual over the material —
that while all these masterful empires have vanished,
and their haughty monarchs are forgotten, the
prophets they ignored or despised, are beloved
leaders still, and their neglected speech is prized
as part of our choicest literary and spiritual
possession. IV.
In our next chapter we shall attempt to ascertain
something as to the substance of their teaching.
Only so can we rightly and adequately understand
either the men, or the debt we owe them.
Meanwhile, there are certain characteristics of
their message and work requiring statement,
especially as it relates to the abiding ministry of
the preacher. In point of attainment, outlook,
and grasp, they are as unlike each other as any

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 59
similar group of preachers to-day, or indeed, in
any day.
Accepting the considered judgment of Cornill,
that " Amos is one of the most marvellous and
incomprehensible figures in the history of the human
mind, the pioneer of a process of evolution from
which a new epoch of humanity dates,"1 no one
would contend that his ministry in Israel, is to be
compared with the long and brilliant ministry of
Isaiah in the Judean capital. Or that the work
of Hosea and Micah of the same Assyrian period,
ranks with the work of the outstanding prophets
of the Babylonian era, men like Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, who sustained and guided the nation
through the terrible years of the final break-up and
dispersion. Nor does this estimate imply either disparage
ment or inferiority. It is much more a tribute
to the sincerity and devotion of each individual
prophet. It is beyond all, a tribute to the wisdom
and goodness of God, " who hath distributed to
each man, as God hath called each,"2 and whose
eternal thought and mercy has the whole of
humanity within His embrace. Their variety is
their charm, even as loyalty to their own in
dividuality is at once their credential and their
power. What is so delightful, as we read them to-day,
is to discover their point of unity in their passionate
loyalty to their God. That, differing in tempera-
1 Cornill : The Prophets of Israel, p. 46.
8 1 Cor. vii. 17 ; Rom. xii. 3.

60 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dBobern preacber.
ment, in the nature of their " call," in the form of
their message, they are yet one in their sense of
the Divine pressure and burden. This will be the
more apparent, as we examine the individual
features of their work.
(i) The ministry of Amos is characterized by
the distinctive notes of warning and judgment.
He has been described as a " dogmatist of the reality
of conscience and the God of conscience."1 He
breaks in upon Israel's wickedness entirely un
announced and unknown, yet he speaks with such
directness to the conscience of the revellers at
Bethel, and with such authority, as to suggest the
rank of the prophet. This explains why Amaziah
immediately links him with the prophet class,
bidding him to return to his own land, and
prophesy there.2
The training of Amos had well equipped him
for his work. Away among his native hills of
Tekoa, he had lived in close and constant com
munion with God. He had thus gained a knowledge
of the moral order of the world, and of God's relation
thereto, as to fit him to become " the pioneer of
a new epoch." As a shepherd and a dresser of
sycomores,3 he knew and understood nature as
God's oldest book of reality and truth. How
well he knew it is seen in the apt and forceful use
he makes of nature to illustrate and enforce his
message.4 There it was, that knowing his work
1 Dr. A. C. Welch, Religion of Israel, p. 76.
2 Amos vii. 10-13. 'Amosvii. 14.
1 Amos iii. 4, 5, 8 ; viii. 1-2.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 61
and loving it, loving God most of all, he received
his call.
Away in his country home, he saw and felt the
need of men. He knew what was taking place in
the world outside Israel. He grieved over the
corrupt conditions of his own people. He saw
how religion itself was being used to encourage
a shocking defiance of moral law.1 He mused
upon it until his great soul flamed with indignation,
he felt " necessity was laid upon him," a call he
could not refuse urged him, saying, " Go, prophesy
unto my people Israel."2 " The Lord God has
spoken, who can but prophesy."3
It was God who was hurt and offended by their
sin. And not only theirs, but by sin anywhere
and everywhere. God cannot endure it, either
in Israel, or outside Israel. It is an offence to
Him. And it must cease, or judgment and penalty
must follow.
How this led Amos forward to his great doctrine
of God, must be considered later. Certainly this
firm grasp of a great, a world-embracing moral
order, applying to Israel because it applied to other
nations, but particularly to Israel, seeing that
they had received so much of Yahweh's favour,
serves as an explanation of the prophet's vehemence
and severity.
It is quite clear that Amos the herdman is no
provincial. Nor is he a surface reader of local or
national weaknesses and follies. He rises to heights
1 Amos v. 10-13; vi. 3-6; viii. 4-7.
2 Amos vii. 15. 8 Amos iii. 8.

62 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe rtliobern preacher.
of true grandeur, because he has been captivated
by a great view of God, and of that righteousness,
which, being of God, is supreme and eternal.
Nor, let us add, can any ministry be worthily
sustained, or made permanently effective, where
the sovereignty of God, the greatness of conscience,
and the peril of grieving the one, or ignoring the
other, is not an oft-recurring note.
(2) Hosea was the late contemporary, and
immediate successor of Amos. As a native of the
Northern Kingdom, he may probably have listened
to the denunciation of Amos, when he thundered
forth his warning at Bethel, and was silenced by
Amaziah. Nor is it mere idle fancy to suggest that, as one
among the crowd, the courage and conviction of
Amos may have been a factor in his own awakening
and call. While every syllable Amos uttered, rang
with the note of deep conviction, he spoke with
the detachment belonging to one not directly in
volved in the suffering and ruin he threatens and
predicts. On the other hand, as a countryman and fellow-
citizen, the message of Hosea throbs with the
personal note ; his soul is wrung with anguish by
the wrong-doing of his people, and the suffering
he too regards as inevitable.
His is therefore the ministry of entreaty, of
repentance, of proffered mercy and affection.1
Hosea is the complement of Amos, in that he
supplies the " wooing note." " His voice " says
1 Hosea xiv. 2-4.

Gbe propbet inlHater Jsrael. 63
Prof. A. B. Davidson, " when addressing his country
men, is always choked with emotion. His speech
is little else than a succession of sobs. He behaves
before the wickedness and inevitable doom of his
countrymen, with the extravagance of a distracted
mourner in the presence of his dead."1
A man of profound sympathy and feeling, keenly
sensitive, passionately loyal to his God, a true
patriot, it was the agony of Hosea that he lived
through the awful years following the strong rule
of Jeroboam II., when the throne rested in blood,
and nobles, judges, and people, descended from
one villainy to another. He saw the Assyrian peril
drawing ever nearer. And there is no wonder,
that such an experience, breaking in upon such a
nature, was to him " the word of the Lord,"2 leaving
him no option but to obey.
But there is an experience deeper than all^this,
more personal and therefore more bitter, out of
which Hosea reaches the consciousness of his
mission, and particularly his lofty teaching of
Yahweh's relation to Israel. It was his affliction
that he had known the greatest sorrow man can
ever know — short of personal shame — the shame
of a disgraced and shattered home, brought about
by the oft-forgiven, yet oft-repeated unfaithful
ness of the woman he still intensely loved.
That his wife was pure and loyal when he married,
and that the statement of Hosea i. 2, is the record
of later knowledge, surely requires no proof here
1 Expositor : ist Series, vol. ix. p. 246.
8 Hosea i. 1.

64 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe diiobern preacher.
It is referred to in the text as explaining the nature
of Hosea's prophetic work, in seeking to interpret
Israel's relation to God. To make God the author
of a command to marry a profligate woman, or to
suggest that Hosea is later professing a shame
he could not have felt, if his love was fixed on one
unworthy from the first, is trifling alike with God
and His prophet. Hosea's love is indeed wonder
ful. For not once, nor twice, but often he entreats
his wife, and restores her. He is betrayed and
flouted again, and again his love seeks her out,
and brings her back.
Even so had Israel treated Yahweh ! The in
fidelity had stretched across the centuries, and was
flagrant and shocking. Yet Yahweh had as often
cried out, " How shall I give thee up ? '^ Surely
here was a love infinitely beyond the love of Hosea
for his poor, misguided, sinning wife ! A love
unspeakable, seeing the treachery had been so
persistent and colossal, and that the greatness of
the love rejected had been on so large a scale !
" When we consider that all this was absolutely
new, that those thoughts in which humanity has
been educated, and which have consoled it for
nearly three thousand years, were first spoken by
Hosea, we must reckon him among the greatest
religious geniuses whom the world has ever
produced."2 This accounts for, and enables us to interpret,
the characteristics of Hosea's ministry. The
1 Hosea xi. 8.
2 Cornill: The Prophets of Israel, p. 50.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 65
prophet who was the first to use the term " love,"1
in defining God's relation to man, and man's possible
relation to God ; who made this fact the ground
of his entreaty to his countrymen ; the reason for
their repentance and return ; the refrain of all
his offer of Divine mercy ; such a man must always
be the companion, and the closely studied pattern
of those, whose glorious vocation it is to reveal the
heart of the eternal.
(3) Isaiah and Micah were contemporary prophets
of Judah. Differing widely in circumstance, in
attainment, and in statement, yet they are alike
in their insistence upon the ethical and intensely
practical demands of religion.
Isaiah is the aristocrat, the polished and
accomplished statesman. Of noble birth and high
attainment, he is the pattern of how position and
great ability can be consecrated to the service of
God and man.
Micah is the democrat, the lowly countryman,
and the man of the people. Yet in his passionate
loyalty to God, in his pure spirituality, his hatred
of sham and pretence, he takes rank with the greatest
of the prophets. In estimating Micah, we cannot
forget that he is overshadowed by the long and
brilliant ministry of Isaiah in the capital, even as
the very able men in Gladstone's cabinets, were
overshadowed by the outstanding greatness of his
unrivalled genius.
Yet it is due to Micah to say, that the require
ments of practical godliness have never been more
1 Hosea xi. i, xiv. 4.

66 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Iftobern preacher.
finely summed up, than in the words which even
yet are conspicuous, as a classical definition of our
religion : — " He hath showed thee, O man, what is
good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God."1
While Hosea sets forth the tenderness and love
of Yahweh, Isaiah, true to the nature of his solemn
call,2 always urges the greatness, the holiness, the
unsullied honour of Yahweh, upon his people.
But Isaiah always moves in a lofty realm of thought
and practice. And his wonderful public ministry,
lasting over forty years in that small capital, led to
and formed, the " golden age " of prophecy. With
the death of Uzziah in 740 B.C. and with Israel
tottering to its fall — passing out from the history
entirely in 722 B.C. by the overthrow of Samaria,
and the captivity — Judah now became the sole
centre of prophetic interest and activity.
Geographically, as we have seen, Judah lay off
the world tracks of conquest, and, away behind
the fastnesses of her ring of hills, barren in material
resource, and difficult of access, was largely negligible
and unimportant. The probabilities are, that
the growing pride and aggressiveness of Assyria,
aiming far higher, would have left Judah in peace,
with the payment of a yearly tribute, had not her
ambitious and foolish king, with their puppet
advisers, invited attack.
As it was, the real burden and responsibility of
leadership fell upon Isaiah. Nor, with the solitary
1 Micah vi. 8. * Isa. vi. 1—8.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 67
exception and parallel of Jeremiah, does history
offer any finer picture than that of this lofty, gifted
patriot and prophet, standing alone for full forty
years against people, priests, statesmen, and
monarchs, insisting upon the supreme claims of
righteousness, and urging the surer, safer ways of
quiet reliance upon their God.1
Nor does any history offer a finer illustration of
the triumph of moral and spiritual appeal over
material might and rebellion, than the complete
vindication of Isaiah's witness, in the miraculous
deliverance of Jerusalem.2 In the hour of Judah's
deepest darkness and lowest humiliation, the
triumph of faith, and the righteousness which
counselled loyalty to God, shone with a glory even
yet undimmed.
(4) With the death of Hezekiah, and the accession
of his wicked son, Manasseh, a fierce and violent
hatred of the prophets set in, with a terrible re
action in favour of the worst forms of paganism.
Even the king made his firstborn son to pass through
the fire in sacrifice to Moloch, and lawlessness and
debauchery swept over the land as a devastating
flood. Surely — the people argued — the gods ruling
Assyria must be mightier than all other deities, or
Assyria could not have become so powerful, nor
her generals so great in conquest. Notwithstanding
all that Isaiah had said, might must be right, and
so, for a time, idolatry ran riot. Prophecy was
silenced, but at length, as Assyria, threatened by
1 Isa. xxx. 15. 8 Isa. xxxvii. 32-37.
F 2

68 Gbe Debrew propbet anb tbe dBobern preacher.
the onrush of the Scythian power, gave signs of
breaking up, Zephaniah, a disciple of Isaiah,
thunders forth his prophecy of judgment, and
announces his doctrine of " the day of the
Lord." " Yahweh is righteous in the midst of
her; morning by morning he brings his justice
to light."1
As the great-great-grandson of Hezekiah,2 of
royal rank therefore, and with everything to lose
on the material side by associating himself with
the now bitterly hated prophetic order and with
the true religion, his fearless witness is a splendid
tribute to the abiding worth, and the enormous
influence of Isaiah's life-work. Zephaniah is a
conspicuous example of the intense loyalty our
religion inspires in others, loyalty to a human
master, and, much more, to his master's God.
Alike the man and his prophecy — and this is its
permanent value — are possessed with the supreme
place of God. Everything that matters for him
is, that life itself, and all that it stands for, makes
up " God's Day," that ultimately, God's authority
will be unchallenged and final.
Against the blatant materialism of our own time,
and the callous indifference to spiritual appeal
which is the sorrow and burden of the modern
Christian, the confidence and witness of Zephaniah,
is at once an inspiration and a pattern.
(5) Jeremiah stands next in the line of prophets,
and is one of God's choicest gifts either to his own,
or to any succeeding time. Naturally diffident,
1 Zephan. iii. 5. * Zephan. i. 1.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 69
retiring,1 and extremely sensitive, he takes rank
among the greatest of them all. It was his sorrow
that he was called to witness and share the most
critical and terrible days of his nation's life. Yet,
true patriot as he was, his keen sense of loyalty to
God, his recognition of the truth that where
patriotism and righteousness come into conflict,
patriotism must give way, compelled him to pass
judgment upon his nation as utterly unworthy,
because of persistent disloyalty to Yahweh, and
finally, to witness her break-up and overthrow by
a foreign power.
Called to the prophetic office in the thirteenth
year of Josiah's reign (627 or 626 B.C.) his ministry,
like Isaiah's, stretched over the next forty troubled
years, during which he saw five kings ascend the
throne, his land and capital attacked, pillaged,
and destroyed, ending in his own cruel captivity
in Egypt, and the deportation of his fellow country
men to Babylon.
As Hosea, with whom in spirit and in outlook he
had most in common, saw Israel pass to her ruin,
so Jeremiah lived and suffered during the years
when Judah, Pharaoh-like, hardening her heart
and bent upon her own way, was wilfully inviting
her own destruction.
A lover of peace, companionable, responsive to
kindness, warm-hearted and affectionate, Jeremiah's
life was one continued sacrifice. Denied the
dearest human loves,2 often forsaken by his friends
and misjudged, by reason of a devotion to God
1 Jer. i. 6 . 2 Jer. xvi. 2.

70 Gbe fjebrew prophet anb tbe /Iftobern preacber.
they were unable to reconcile with patriotism,
Jeremiah was being constantly driven back upon
himself and his personal friendship with God.
This enables us to understand how he reached a
level of spirituality hitherto unapproached, so
that, beyond any of his predecessors, he is the
prophet of the spiritual, the herald of the " new
covenant,"1 — the law of God written in the
heart — and the teacher of individual worth and
responsibility.2 The high tribute of Dr. Peake in his valuable
commentary on Jeremiah must be reproduced here,
alike for its essential truth, as for its noble state
ment : — " He was the first to break through the
crust of nationalism to the glowing centre of religion.
And he who first proclaimed the truth that religion
is in its essence the communion of the individual
with God, must for ever rank as one of the world's
supreme discoverers in the greatest of all realms."3
(6) Both Nahum and Habakkuk lived through
the period now under review, Habakkuk being
the later of the two, and stretching over into the
exile. Both have as their theme the overthrow
of the tyrant Assyrian power. Both are prophets
of judgment and doom, though, as we shall see,
Habakkuk rises to moral heights, and concerns
himself with moral issues, not to be found in his
earlier contemporary.
A passionate love of God, and an intense hatred
and even scorn of the folly that sets itself against
1 Jer. xxxi. 33. ' Jer. xxxi. 29-30.
8 Jeremia h, vol. i. p. 48 (Century Bible Series) .

Gbe propbet in Hater Ssrael. 71
Him are characteristic qualities of their fiery speech.
Nahum felt, as we ought still to feel, that when
wickedness lifts itself in pride against the eternal
righteousness, and even boasts of its power to do
mischief, it must be met with unsparing condemna
tion. Alike the authority of God, and the rights
of our common humanity demand it. The essential
and permanent value of Nahum's patriotism, roots
itself in a humanitarianism, which makes him, in
a special sense, the prophet of humanity.
Habakkuk, of whom personally, we know little,
becomes to us the greater, the more he is examined.
He believes in God intensely. Before he had uttered
his outstanding message, " The just shall live by
his faithfulness,"1 he had proved its truth, and
had reached it by an experience born of struggle
and deep anguish of spirit. That anguish had
been occasioned by the moral disorder he saw
everywhere. Dr. Peake argues in the Commentary
already referred to, that it is in Jeremiah2 we
probably find the first expression in Hebrew
literature of the problem, Why do the wicked
prosper ? 3 It is impossible to resist the force of
his reasoning. Yet, it is a tribute to the greatness
of the later prophet that Habakkuk also takes his
problem into the secret presence of the Eternal,
and dares to ask questions of God Himself.4
Habakkuk the questioner, the man who wrestles
with the abiding moral problems of the world,
has an intense interest for all who are still per-
1 Hab. ii. 4. z Jer. xii. 1-6.
h, vol. i. pp. 184, 185. 4 Hab. i. 3, 12, 13.

72 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Hiobern preacber.
plexed with the mysteries of wrong and pain. But
it is Habakkuk the believer, who remains for us
both pattern and teacher. He refuses to be baffled
by the mystery he is unable to solve. He meets
doubt, as must every honest inquirer. But he
triumphs over it. And in his triumph of faith,1
he most nearly anticipates one of the greatest
utterances of the New Testament, " This is the
victory that hath overcome the world, even our
faith."2 (7) It is an exceedingly interesting reflection,
that the period of the exile, which, to a superficial
observer of the time, must have meant the final
ruin of Judah as a nation, is conspicuous for a type
of prophetic ministry and service lifting it to a
level of greatness hitherto unapproached.
How often the most exquisite experience of
rapture, and the clearest vision of truth, has been
the gift of the keenest disappointment and sorrow !
It was even so for the people of the exile. The
overthrow of the nation saved the cause of true
religion for the world. What an object-lesson in
all that the prophets had striven to teach, was
the fact, that away in Babylon, under heathen
oppressors, God still cared for them, and was send
ing to them prophets of comfort and guidance !
Their difficulty and their undoing had been their
refusal to denationalize Yahweh, thinking of Him
only and serving Him as one among other gods,
confined to Palestine as His adopted home. Yet
here He was in Babylon, and, notwithstanding
1 Hab. ii. 14. 8 1 John v. 4.

Gbe propbet in Hater Israel. 73
the folly which had ended in their ruin, they were
still precious in His sight !
So the new Judaism of the Restoration was being
trained for the honour of bringing in the one truly
universal religion. And in this work of renewal,
the prophets of the exile and the return " prepared
the way of the Lord."
While the pre-exilic prophets are largely occupied
with the ministry of warning, reproof, judgment,
and impending doom, the exilic and post-exilic
prophets are mainly concerned with the ministry
of comfort and hope, of restoration and renewal.
In this ministry Ezekiel, and the second Isaiah,
are the chief. Haggai, Zechariah, and later, Malachi
are the spiritual leaders of the return, heartening
the exiles as they face the ruin of the old land to
begin the rebuilding of the wastes.
Remembering the immense importance of the
exilic and post-exilic contribution to the growing
whole of truth, we waive for the present any
reference either to the characteristic features of
its teaching, or to the teaching itself. It will
properly fall into its place in the next chapter.
We have earlier referred to the fact,1 that by the
time of the exile, prophecy was taking on some
features of apocalyptic. While the origin of this
change is generally traced to Zephaniah, and finds
its full expression in the Book of Daniel — " our
sole example in the Old Testament of an apocalypse
in the full sense of the term,"2 — yet we find indica-
1 See p. 55.
2 Peake's Commentary, p. 48.

74 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfcobern preacher.
tions of it in Ezekiel, and in the Books of Joel and
Obadiah. A striking instance of apocalyptic is to be found
in Isaiah, chapters xxiv.-xxvii. which, in the
generally-accepted view of scholars, is certainly
post-exilic, and " should be placed in the late Persian
period at the earliest."1 The thought is so ad
vanced and the apocalyptic character is so marked
that it can hardly be earlier than the fourth century.
There are points of contact with Isaiah's teaching
in these chapters, but that is true of later prophets
also. In style, in language, in theme, it is utterly
unlike Isaiah.
(8) Modern scholars place Joel, formerly regarded
as one of the earliest, among the post-exilic prophets.
And for the reason already assigned : — that it ii
partly apocalyptic in style, and that there is nq
mention in it of Israel as a separate kingdom.
God's people are scattered among the nations, and
the land is parted.2 The small community in and
around Jerusalem,3 indicates the period following
the return. Yet in its insistence upon the Divine
right in man, the certainty of Divine rule, and the
finality of the Divine judgment, the Book of Joel
is invaluable for the modern preacher.
(9) Obadiah, the smallest of our Old Testament
books, is, according to Wellhausen, whose view
has been accepted by several scholars,4 the revision
of an older prophecy concerning Edom, already
1 Peake' s Commentary , p. 453.
2 Joe! iii. 2. 3 Joel iii. 17.
* Dr. Peake's Jeremiah, vol. ii. pp. 242, 243.

Gbe propbet in Hater Jsrael. 75
known to Jeremiah.1 Here again, the call is to
courage and endurance in the face of powerful
enemies, and a passionate assurance of the ultimate
victory of Yahweh.
Edom, strong in her rocky fastnesses, saying in
her pride, " Who shall bring me down to the
ground,"2 has hissed at Judah, and jeered over
her downfall.3 But God's judgment draws on,
and the proud shall be brought low.4 How modern
is the picture ! And what material is here for the
preacher, as he enforces the pride of mere external
strength, and its short-lived glory !
(10) The Book of Jonah is the Old Testament
missionary classic, one of the best missionary
manuals we still possess, and as narrative and
literature, forms a perfect gem. Cornill declared
that he had read it at least a hundred times ; that
he " could not even now take up this marvellous
book, nay, nor even speak of it, without the tears
rising to my eyes, and my heart beating higher."5
As an unfolding of the Divine regard for man,
as a revelation of the method by which God sought
to liberalize the Jewish mind and educate it to the
world-view, the universal view, it is unmatched
for beauty. " To the author Jonah embodies
the temper of Israel against which the book is a
protest, and it is perhaps simplest to take his
narrative as a parable in which Jonah stands for
Israel."6 1 Obad. 16 ; Jer. xxv. 27, 28.
2 Obad. 3. 3 Obad. n 14. « Obad. 15.
6 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, p. 170.
• Peahe's Commentary, p. 556.

76 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe rtfcobern preacher.
Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire,
to a devout Jew, was the embodiment of wickedness,
deserving only the rod of swift destruction. In
the reluctance of Jonah, the writer strikingly sets
forth the difficulty and the unwillingness of the
devout Jew, even to think of the idea of repentance
and salvation for such a cesspool of corruption.
And we mark with growing admiration and wonder,
the consummate skill of the writer, as he goes on
to show, how, through the pity and sorrow of Jonah
for the friendly, yet almost worthless gourd which
had given him shelter, he was brought to estimate
the pity and sorrow of God for the thousands of
precious lives in Nineveh, wicked, yet so tenderly
loved !
Surely the whole story, with its happy corrective
of Jonah's narrow nationalism, and his subsequent
obedience to the Divine command, renders the
book one of the most precious and wonderful in
literature. Here again we venture to quote the
conclusion of Dr. Peake : — " The author stands
beyond question among the greatest of the prophets,
by the side of Jeremiah and the second Isaiah.
That out of the stony heart of Judaism such a book
should come is nothing less than a marvel of Divine
grace."1 (n) The Book of Daniel belongs to the Greek
period of history, which began for Palestine in
331 b.c. when it was conquered by Alexander the
Great. It was written to encourage and sustain
the loyalty of the Jews in their life and death
1 Peake' s Commentary, p. 558.

Ghe propbet in Hater 5srael. 77
struggle with Hellenism. This reached its climax
in 168 B.C. when Antiochus Epiphanes attacked
Jerusalem, ruthlessly turning the Temple into a
temple of Zeus, actually offering swine's flesh upon
its holy altar ! Establishing Jerusalem as a Greek
city, he at once made all Jewish observances, in
cluding the rite of circumcision and the keeping
of the Sabbath, to be crimes punishable by death.
This caused the Maccabean revolt, and a time of
terrible persecution and suffering followed.
Though in the Jewish canon this book was not
reckoned among the prophetic writings, nor is
even mentioned in Jewish literature before the
second century B.C., and while it nowhere claims
to be written by Daniel, it is the work of a great
religious genius.
Making the hero of the book a Jewish exile in
Babylon, the writer uses the story to strengthen
the sufferers of that terrible time. He urges upon
his countrymen loyalty to their God, and holds
out to them the assurance of an everlasting Kingdom
of righteousness and truth, which shall bring to
naught every rival power, and fill the earth with
its glory.
Its intrinsic and permanent value for teaching,
its powerful appeal for fidelity, its unconquerable
faith in the ultimate triumph of God's purposes,
secured its place in our prophetic literature, and
gives it a high and permanent value for the
Christian teacher.
Looking back over the long stretch of history
we have sought to cover in this chapter, we may

78 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe flfcobern preacher.
at least claim complete justification for the state
ment, that the prophets, in warning and guiding
the nation to which they belonged, saved the cause
of true religion for the world.
As we contemplate their genius, their fidelity,
their courage, loyalty, and devotion ; as we recall
their value to their own age, and their permanent
place as among the great teachers of the world,
we can only fall in adoring wonder and thankfulness
before the God they so intensely loved. Thankful
most of all that through them He so revealed
Himself and His purpose of eternal redemption,
as by their ministry, to prepare the way for that
greatest gift of all, the final revelation of His un
changing love in the life and death of His Son.

CHAPTER IV.
Tlbe fltoropbetic Contribution to IRevelation.
IT is only when we pass to consider our debt to
the prophets as revealers of truth, that we can
fairly estimate their value, or attempt to
measure their importance, not only as teachers
to their own times and peoples, but to all the genera
tions following. Here it is they stand as among
God's choicest gifts to universal man.
We have only to contrast them with their con
temporary " professional " prophets, belonging to
the royal courts of Israel and Judah, who prophesied
" peace, peace, when there was no peace,"1 or
with the " soothsayers " and " wise men " of
heathen courts, who generally echoed what they
knew their masters desired them to say, in order
to realize how truly these men were raised up by
God as His " spokesmen," and that they spoke
and wrote under the inspiring guidance of the
Holy Spirit of God.
If — as we always must — we except the greatest
revelation of God in the Person and Teaching of
Jesus, it is questionable whether history provides
1 Jer. vi. 14, viii. 11.; 1 Kings xxii. 6.

So Gbe Hebrew propbet anb tbe flbobem preacber.
a parallel to the almost visible disclosure of the
Divine control of events, and to the intentions of
the Divine mind, such as is supplied in the gift
and ministry of the Hebrew prophet. In the
transition of Israel from the nomadic stage to the
life of settlement and growth in Canaan; during
the critical years of the early monarchy, and
still more under the later monarchy ; during and
immediately after the exile, it is difficult (humanly
speaking) to see, how the nation could have escaped
final extinction and forgetfulness, had it not been
for the ministry of restraint, of guidance, of moral
reinforcement and leadership, supplied by the men
who did not shun to declare to their people " the
whole counsel of God," as it was revealed to them.
It is necessary to lay stress upon this, because
now, as then, it is the fashion and habit of men to
discount the value of the teacher, and to exalt
the necessity and importance of the " practical "
man, the man of affairs, of business, and mechanics.
Even in relation to one of the eminence and rank
of Isaiah, the prudential counsels of statesmen
were deemed of greater value, than the advice
and warnings of the prophet. Yet surely, the
barest reflection should enable men to see, that
in relation to any and every realm, the " practical "
man depends upon the " truth " of things, and
the " truth " is brought into the realm of practical
life by the one who sees. The true pathfinder,
even in the world of mechanics, is the man who
first sees, and then declares what experience con
firms to be, the truth ! When this obvious and

Gbe propbettc Contribution to -Revelation. 81
commonplace fact is applied to the Hebrew prophets ;
when further, we recall their intimacy with and
passionate loyalty to, the God of truth, it is easy
to understand their place as an indispensable
" asset " in the nation's life, and their permanent
value to the religious training of the world.
This high claim for the place and ministry of
the prophet — then and now — requires us to look
with some care into the nature of their equipment,
and the character of the training, by which they
became so eminent as the great religious teachers
of their time. And we touch at once the sources
of their knowledge, and the strength of their con
viction when we say, that, like the apologists and
first witnesses of Christianity, they just " declared
the things they had seen and heard."1
God sought them, for He longed to get His
thought enshrined in human moulds, so that
gradually, the world may be prepared for His
luller revelation in Jesus. And the prophets
eagerly sought God, moved as they were by the
deep consciousness of their own and their people's
need, convinced that only as God came to their
help, could deliverance be found.
And it was out of this double search and response,
this interplay of Divine longing and human answer,
that the training and equipment came which made
the prophet the vehicle of the ever-widening revela
tion of God. Necessarily the education, working as
it could only do, through the experience and growing
capacity of these pupils of the Spirit, moved forward
1 i John i. 3. G

82 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dRobern preacber.
from less to more, forming an ever-growing deposit
of living truth, which, cast forth by the prophets
as seed, while enriching their own life, secured the
religious development of the nation.
It is in this directness of contact with God, with
man, with the facts of life as they looked out upon
them, that we find the chief elements of their
training. The Hebrew mind was not given to
abstract reasoning. It did not concern itself with
first principles. It had neither bent nor liking for
philosophical discussion. And therefore the
Hebrew prophet, reflecting the highest and noblest
type of the Hebrew mind, worked directly and
immediately with the actualities of life as they
faced them day by day.
These statements apply with greater accuracy
to the pre-exilic prophets, and would undoubtedly
require considerable modification in the case of
the later prophets. That is only what might be
expected. But in the main, it is true of all. They
were little concerned about theories or abstractions.
Their sense of God was profound and real. Yahweh
was to them a living reality, not a doctrine. To
know His mind, and to declare it, was for them the
chief concern of life. And to bring their fellow-
men to a life of obedience to Yahweh's will, alike
in the interests of the people themselves, and the
prosperity of the community and land as a whole,
was a duty worth any effort, either of service or
of suffering.
Thus, starting with primal, but fundamental,
laws and facts, and keeping a constantly open mind

Gbe propbetic Contribution to IRevelatlon. 83
and heart to the ever-widening horizon of truth,
they became the recipients of an imperishable
wealth of teaching, and the fitting heralds of Him
who at length appeared in Palestine, as emphatically
and finally, " The Truth ! "
(1) We start with the actual contents and im
plications of the prophetic revelation of God. Here
our indebtedness to the prophets is unspeakably
great and permanent. There is no parallel to it. *
The development of the idea of God, from a tribal,
local, and national deity — one among the gods of
the nations — to the sublime monotheism of the
Prophet of the exile, registers the profoundest v
change of thought ever wrought in history, and
we owe it chiefly to the clearer insight and un
wearying persistence of the prophets.
We have only to contrast the crude ideas of the
twelfth century with the fifth century b.c. — the
times of the Judges with the days of Jeremiah,
Ezekiel and second Isaiah — to estimate the work
of the prophets in this fundamental postulate of
refigion, the belief in, and the view of, God.
In the pre-prophetic period, even after the early
settlement in Canaan, Israel shared with all other
nations, the idea of a tribal, local god. Yahweh
had His home in Sinai, as the deities of other nations
had their separate centres, and, seeing Israel had
been chosen as the people of Yahweh, He must be
summoned to fight their battles, and lead them to
victory. The supremacy of the deity, and con
tinued loyalty to Him, largely depended upon
whether He showed superior strength over rival
G 2

84 Gbe ftebrew propbet anb tbe flbobern preacher.
gods, and brought victory to the tribe. Gradually,
as the people settled in Canaan, it was accepted
that Yahweh had transferred His home to the new
land, and the land and people of Canaan had become
His special care. Nor, as yet, judged by the higher
ethical standards of the prophets — taught as they
were of God — had the people as a whole, invested
their deity with what we should regard, as an
ethical content. He is mainly, as the gods of other
nations, a great warrior, largely indifferent to the
life of the people, so long as He is victorious, and
commands the loyalty of His own nation.
In proof of this, let the reader turn to the im
moralities exposed by Amos, as far down as the
eighth century, notwithstanding the work of such
great teachers as Moses, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah,
Elisha, and others. For it must not be supposed
that the lofty view of these leaders, or the modified
monotheism of Amos, was shared by the people
as a whole. Nay, rather, it was against the general
degradation of view, that they rose up in such
indignant protest, which created the need for such
protest, and justified it.
Even Amaziah, the priest of Yahweh, is content
with the prevailing view of deity, which sanctioned
the worship of Yahweh with Canaanite immoralities.
He was quite willing that robbery, oppression, and
the extravagances of wealth should go on unchecked,
even though it bore so hardly upon the poor of
Israel, equally with the rich, the people of Yahweh.
What so shocked Amos was, that this should
represent the contemporary religion, and that it

Gbe prophetic Contribution to "Kevelation. 85
should stand for a view of God, beyond which,
apparently, the Israelites had no"desire to reach.
This protest of Amos, steadily followed up as
it was, enlarged and amplified through growing
knowledge and experience by successive prophets,
enables us to understand how the idea'of God°was
moralized, and why the relation between Him and
His people gradually took on high moral obligations.
Unlike the deities of the surrounding peoples,
Yahweh was a God of character, and demanded
moral qualities on the part of those who acknow
ledged Him. Not that the prophets were the first
to teach this view of Yahweh. Such a moral re
lationship had been revealed from the time of the
Exodus. It had been urged repeatedly by such
leaders as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Nathan and
Elijah. Yet, so slow were the people to under
stand, and so ingrained were the corrupting ideas
of deity, and so persistent the curse of custom,
as to explain the moral laxity in the name of religion,
which was exposed and condemned by Amos.
It was this, first of all, that each prophet in turn
sought to correct. Since Yahweh, their God, was so .
different in moral character from all other gods, they, *
His people, must be true to His moral standards.
Being righteous Himself, they must reflect in their
dealings with each other, a righteousness like unto
His own. In other nations, the god, regarding the
community as a whole or as a unit, was indifferent
to the conduct of the individual. So long as the
community remained uninjured, the individual
could do as he chose. The god assisted the tribe

86 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /l&obern preacber.
or the nation as a whole, and, so long as the proper
sacrifices were offered, and the ritual of the religion
was duly performed, he was quite content.
These were the ideas Israel shared, and to which
they stubbornly and persistently adhered. The
prophets set themselves resolutely to combat and
overturn these unworthy views : — Amos, with his
insistence upon God's demand for righteousness
of life ; Hosea, with his revelation of God's love
and pity, wounded and suffering because of Israel's
unfaithfulness, yet longing for the return of His
bride; Micah, sustaining and enforcing Amos in
his denunciation of ritual as a substitute for right
conduct ; Isaiah, with his lofty teaching of God's
unsullied purity, and his, as yet, unapproached
doctrine of God's greatness. This was the teaching,
and these were the teachers, whose instruction
merged into and prepared the way for, the spiritual
conceptions of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the superb,
even yet, unsurpassed representations of that
religious genius, the second Isaiah. " For thy
Maker is thine husband ; the Lord of Hosts is his
name : and the Holy One of Israel is thy redeemer,
the God of the whole earth shall he be called."1
There the pure monotheism to which the prophets
had led the nation rings out, even though, to realize
and appreciate it, the external bonds of nation
hood had to be broken ! Unsurpassed too for
beauty, the monotheism of Isaiah xl. 9-31, and
unrivalled, for polished irony and convincing argu
ment, the exposure of idolatry in Isaiah xliv. 6-24.
1 Isa. liv. 5.

Gbe propbetic Contribution to •Revelation. 87
Inherent in the prophetic teaching of God, there
lay, as in germ, a high and sacred doctrine of man.
Though this too was reached late, through long
education, involving gross wrong on the part of
tyrants, and intense suffering on the part of the
many, yet the clear and unmistakable enunciation
of individual worth and responsibility such as is
found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, is a further tribute
to the unique and permanent value of the prophet's
work. Primarily, as the late lamented Principal Bennett
points out,1 the prophets are largely concerned
with communities, especially with Israel. The
community or nation was first, the individual
second. From the first the tendency of Judaism
had been to depreciate the unit, and exalt the nation.
It was the Jew that mattered rather than the man ;
and the Jew because he was the citizen of such a
nation, the member of such a family. Individual
interests were of little concern, the only interests
allowed to him were those he shared with the
community. This meant, almost inevitably, that man had
ceased to recognize himself in his individual relation
ship toward God. And further, inevitably, lightly
esteemed by others, man estimated himself lightly,
and individual responsibility was largely unknown.
No wonder that out of generations of such teaching,
the standards of morality were lax, human life
v/as cheap, womanhood was debased, and child-
life largely ignored. As showing the persistence
1 Post-exilic Prophets, p. 238.

88 Gbe fjebrew propbet anb tbe xlBobern preacher.
of this " community view," one of the recognized
prayers of the Rabbis even in the days of Jesus
and the Apostles, gave thanks to God that the
worshipper was not born a Gentile, or a woman !
Now, it was impossible that the prophets, gaining
first-hand such' a lofty view of God as we have just
described, could countenance such an unworthy
view of individual worth and responsibility. So
true it is, that a great and worthy conception of
God determines everything ! If God has made
man, then no man can be despised. He stands
out before God in his individuality, as worth the
whole expenditure of Deity. The prophets, because
they preached a real Theocracy — the authority
and rule of God — in that, and because of it, are
the first heralds of a true democracy, the recognition
of man's right, not as a member of a community,
or class, or birth, but as man, as the offspring and
child of God.
And it is exceedingly significant, as proving the
inherent dynamic of this view — its conquering
power over mere class distinction and prejudice —
that, as the national bond weakened, the truth of
man's individual worth shone forth with increasing
clearness. Hence the later teaching of Jeremiah,
with his distinctive and remarkable emphasis on
the " New Covenant," where, — following the
scattering of the nation — the bond will be no longer
communal, but individual.1
So too, in Ezekiel, living and working among
the exiles, we have a doctrine of individual responsi-
1 Jer. xxxi. 33, 34.

Gbe prophetic Contribution to "Revelation. So
bility, alike for the teacher and the taught,1 which
forms the pattern for us still.
The whole view is well summed up by Principal
Skinner : — " So long as the Jewish state existed
the principle of solidarity remained in force. Men
suffered for the sins of their ancestors ; individuals
shared the punishment incurred by the nation
as a whole. But as soon as the nation is dead,
when the bonds that unite men in the organism of
national life are dissolved, then the idea of individual
responsibility comes into immediate operation.2
(3) We have seen that the prophets sought to
relate everything to God. Their thought always
went to the outlook, the mind, the purpose of
Deity, as an arrow to its mark. They were not
given to speculation, to abstract reasoning, or to
the discussion of origins. What was His thought ?
How did the conduct of man affect Him ? And
how were the actual facts of human sin and con
sequent suffering to be so corrected, as to secure
the happy relationship God desired ?
It is true the prophets did not create the sense
of sin. That goes back to the beginning. No
word is more deeply written in the human con
sciousness than the word " ought." Even in the
days when Israel shared the current tribal view
of religion, the customary morality of heathen
peoples was left behind by the statement, that
" no such thing ought to be done in Israel."3 Un
doubtedly the earlier morality of the nation shared
1 Erek. xxxiii. 1-9, xviii. 20-24.
2 Expositor's Bible, Ezekiel, p. 143. ¦ 2 Sam. xiii. 12.

90 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb the Mobern preacher.
the general prevailing tendency to externalism,
in keeping with the habit of confining religion to
observances or ritual ; and so it came to pass that
practices were tolerated which the prophetic religion
vehemently denounced.
Certainly we owe it to the prophets that they
deepened the sense of sin. They set it forth in
its true light as shocking " rebellion " against God.1
They dwelt upon the infamy of it, the disgrace
of it, as a state of open infidelity against the God
who had taken Israel as His bride.2
Taking the view of God they did, and of the
possibility of such an intimate relationship on the
part of man with Him, marking further the actual
facts of life, the prophets could do no other. It
is true, that, as we have seen, up to the times of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, their treatment of it dealt
chiefly with Israel, and with the " corporate person
ality " of Israel, as the people of Yahweh. It is
further true that the prophets were a long way in
advance of the people, who held on to the non-
ethical quality of actions, and simply regarded
them as trespasses, or divided them into acts of
cleanness and uncleanness. That only serves to
illustrate the greatness of the moral revolution
effected by the prophets. They lifted the standard.
The insertion of this wedge of truth, driven in by
the unsparing faithfulness of a long line of teachers,
prepared the way for the lofty and final teaching
of Jesus concerning the awfulness of sin.
Prof. Whitehouse goes so far as to say " that
' Isa. i. 2. 2 Hosea ii. 5-13.

Ghe propbetic Contribution to "Revelation. 91
the sense of ethical sin was mainly developed in
the national consciousness by the teaching of the
prophets."1 No greater tribute to the debt we
owe them could be paid. For it passed on through
the nation, and so made Israel the custodian of
the loftiest morality and the finest spirituality
the world up to that point had known. Nor can
any teaching which makes light of sin, or attempts
to reduce it to a mere mistake or accident, belong
to the prophetic order or receive prophetic sanction.
A great view of God, and a worthy view of man,
will always compel us to subscribe to the judgment of
God's servants the prophets, who correctly describe
sin as " this abominable thing that God hates."2
(4) When we pass to the question of suffering,
with the related themes of sacrifice, repentance,
and forgiveness, we find the prophetic literature
revealing a wealth of treatment and of treasure,
which, beyond any dogmatic statement, proves
the Divine inspiration and guidance of these teachers
of Israel. The prophets — especially the earlier
prophets — as interpreters of Israel's history, dwelt
mainly upon suffering as penal or disciplinary, and,
if calamity and judgment are to be averted, the
causes of it, in the wilfulness and sin of the people,
must be put away.
It would almost seem, as though in their view
suffering and sin are organically connected. They
insist that suffering is the inevitable consequence
of sin.3 And that Israel should suffer, that in
1 Peake's Commentary, p. 99.
2 Jer. xliv. 4. 3 Amos iii. 10, 11 ; iv. 6-12.

92 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Hiobern preacher.
turn the nations of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt
should be used as " God's scourge,"1 to punish the
nation for its national forgetfulness of God, and
its persistent disloyalty, was only to say that God's
rule was moral, and that any breach of it deserved
punishment. How this view of the relation of sin and suffering
as cause and effect persisted, and how it was re
garded in the popular mind as a general solution
of the whole problem, is seen in the question of the
disciples of Jesus, faced with the suffering of the
man born blind : — " Rabbi, who did sin, this man
or his parents, that he should be born blind? "2
As yet indeed, while the view of the " corporate
personality " of Israel lasted, the idea of the
educative ministries of suffering, its power to culture
and mature the finer qualities of the human spirit,
still more, what we speak of as " vicarious suffer
ing," or the voluntary choice and acceptance of
it as a distinction and honour in the interests of
others, had not emerged.
But, in pointing out the limitation of the older
view, we certainly dishonour the great teachers
of Israel, if we minimize its importance for the
people then, or its necessary content of truth for
men still. The world is moral. God's government
of it is moral and righteous. It is always true,
and it is still necessary to teach, that if men will
break through the hedge of moral permissions,
they will assuredly be punished.3
1 Isa. x. 26; xxviii. 18.
2 John ix. 2. ' Eccles. x. 8.

Gbe prophetic Contribution to •Revelation. 93
The rights of the individual, however, cannot
be ignored. Nor, in the light of actual experience,
could this " general view " and these sweeping
conclusions, escape considerable modification.
What of the individuals of the nation — and they
must have been many — whose secret loyalty, and
whose courageous witness, while including them
in the general condemnation, drove in a sense of
injustice, that their loyalty had counted for nothing,
and was, apparently, ignored ? Was it right that
the innocent should suffer ? If God loved the
people of Israel, did He not also love the units
making up the whole, and was it right to include
the innocent in the judgment and penalty of the
guilty ?
This was the problem definitely raised by
Jeremiah,1 as the break-up of the nation drew ever
nearer. It became the key-note of Ezekiel's teach
ing away among the exiles. Later still, it occupied
the mind, and forms the profound argument of
the author of the Book of Job, as indeed it has
since been and is still, the problem for all who
ponder the question of the moral government of
the world.
The current view was embodied in thej well-
known and oft-stated proverb, " The fathers have
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set
on edge."2 For the first time both Jeremiah and
Ezekiel set themselves to contest the popular idea
as unjust to the innocent, and their protest repre
sented little short of a revolution in thought : — " The
1 Jer. xii. i, ; xv. 18. * Jer. xxxi. 29; Ezek. xviii. 2.

94 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dBobern preacher.
soul that sinneth," says Ezekiel, "it shall
die."1 The truth that one should suffer with and for
others, was indeed held in a crude way, in the old
days of the tribal religion, with its idea of solidarity.
The blood-tie, or the communal bond, or again,
as in the case of Achan,2 the safety of the tribe or
community, made it inevitable, " a regrettable
necessity." There is no indication of it as an act
of religious faith. It is akin rather to the law of
blood-revenge, meeting us in the story of the
religions of the world, and in the earlier narratives
of Scripture.
The story of David, who consulted the oracle
of Yahweh, concerning the three years' famine,
is a case in point. " And the Lord said, It is for
Saul, and for his bloody house, because he put to
death the Gibeonites."3 And when the seven
members of Saul's family were sacrificed, there
was neither thought of virtue on the one side, nor
of wrong on the other. They were offered up as
an act of social justice, and also to turn away the
" anger of Yahweh," who, as the guardian of social
morality, had been offended.
What a contrast is presented to us, and what
a concrete illustration it offers of Israel's religious
development, as we pass from the tenth to the
fifth century teaching on the question of vicarious
suffering ! These dark, suffering centuries have
not been without their value. Not in vain the
1 Ezek. xviii. 4. 2 Joshua vii. 24-26.
¦ 2 Sam. xxi. 1.

Gbe propbetic Contribution to IRevelatlon. 95
discarded and rejected prophets, who have prepared
the way for such teaching as that of the sublime
prophet of the exile I1
For it is here we reach the highest point of teach
ing to which the Old Testament rises, stated in a
form which for sheer nobility and beauty is even
now unsurpassed ! It is where Israel, idealized
and personified as the " Servant of Yahweh," is
represented as suffering vicariously for other nations,
that through such suffering and death, Israel may
be fitted for world-service, and honoured as the
chosen one of God to bring the world of nations
within the family of the redeemed. It does not
lessen the value of this teaching to say that it had
an immediate and national purpose, and that there
is no reason to suppose the prophet saw in vision
the life and work of Him who alone fills out the
glowing picture. Nay, rather, it magnifies the
teaching, and increases its wonder to say, that
there is only one Person in history who in Himself
and in His suffering and death has realized this
superb representation of vicarious sorrow and
service. The deep Christian sentiment of each successive
generation has rightly read the fulfilment of the
prophet's vision in Jesus.
(5) As for sacrifice, while the prophets and the
prophetic writings are full of the idea, it is true, as
Principal Bennett says, " The Old Testament has
no theory of sacrifice."2 The prophets and law-
1 Isa. xiii. 1-4; xlix. 1-6; 1. 4-9; Hi. 13 — liii. 12.
2 Post-exilic Prophets, p. 323.

96 Gbe Hebrew propbet anb tbe /foobern preacber.
givers did not invent sacrifices ; they found them
existing as part of the normal religious life of the
people. It is generally true to say, that originally
it was the natural expression of gratitude, as a gift
to deity, either to win his favour, or appease his
anger, or as a means of communion with him in
the sharing of a common meal.1
Later on, down through the time of the pre-exilic
prophets, the people clearly thought of sacrifice
as a means of securing the help of Yahweh, and as
a protection against their enemies. It was this
formal, commercial, or bargaining view of sacrifice
against which the prophets so sternly and in
sistently protested. They urged that Yahweh
had no pleasure in the mere offering or gift, as
though it represented a payment due. What He
desired, was the sacrifice of the obedient life, the
inward devotion of the heart, expressing itself in
worthy conduct.
(6) We owe it to the prophets that they steadily
kept the ethical significance of the various kinds
of sacrifices before their people, particularly as it
called them to repentance and confession, and
secured for them the answering forgiveness of God.
Speaking from inside knowledge, Dr. Claude G.
Montefiore, makes the striking claim, that, " in
the doctrine of repentance the Jewish religion
developed one of its noblest and most prominent
features. For the nation and for the individual God
has given in the Law the great Day of Atonement,
a day consecrated to human repentance and to
1 Gen. iv. 4; viii. 21 ; Exod. xxiv. 5-11.

Gbe propbetfc Contribution to IRevelatioii. 97
Divine forgiveness, a day which was gradually
becoming more ethical and spiritual, and was
destined, with the fall of the Temple, to become
more ethical and spiritual still. Thus, with its
doctrines of repentance, of the Divine goodness,
and the Divine forgiveness, the Jewish religion
managed very well in the problems of goodness
and of sin. It made things neither too easy nor
too difficult ; man must always strive, but God
would help. Man must always fail, but his own
repentance and the Divine forgiveness prevented
despair."1 The modern preacher will find in the prophets
his models for the present day plea for repentance,
the reasons for it, the nature of it, the happy issue
to which it leads. Save in the call of Jesus Himself,
there is nothing greater in literature than the
pleading of these men, jealous as they were for the
Divine honour.
Where indeed, for tenderness of appeal or true
pathos, can the heart-cry of Hosea be surpassed : —
" O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God ; for thou
hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you
words, and return unto the Lord ; say unto him,
Take away all iniquity, and accept that which is
good"?2 Or where is there to be found a more
exquisite setting of the forgiveness which follows
true repentance than in this immediate reply :
" I will heal their backsliding ; I will love them
freely : for mine anger is turned away from him " ;
and in the promise which follows : "I will be as
1 Peake' s Commentary, p. 623. s Hosea xiv, 1, 2.

gs Gbe 'Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /iftobern preacber.
the dew unto Israel : he shall blossom as the lily,
and cast forth his roots as Lebanon," etc.?1
(7) There is nothing in the prophetic literature
answering to the Christian doctrine of the future
life. It was not to be expected. That could only
come in the " fulness of time." Life, in all that
God meant for it, including, as it did, Immortality,
could be brought to light only through the Gospel.2
We have seen that the prophets were intensely
practical men. They had no inclination — it did
not fall within the scope of their work— to discuss
questions of mere speculative interest. They were
almost entirely, if not wholly, concerned with the
existing and possible relation of their nation to God,
and with the training of a community of people whose
loyalty to Yahweh would make them the " praise
of the whole earth."
The question of personal immortality lay outside
their range. As we shall see later, when we con
sider the Messianic hope they did so much to train,
they believed in a future, and looked forward to
it. But it was a belief bound up with the future
of their own nation, as being too glorious and far-
reaching to be confined within the brief limits of
any given time. And therefore such eschatology
as we find in the pre-exilic life of Israel, is entirely
confined to the questions of the Divine judgment
on Israel and the surrounding nations, and the
ultimate exaltation of Israel.
When we come to the exilic and post-exilic
periods, where prophecy passes more and more
1 Hosea xiv. 4, 5-7. 2 2 Tim. i. 10.

Gbe prophetic Contribution to iRevelation. 99
into apocalyptic, we find the questions of the
future commanding greater prominence, and lead
ing on to the definite teaching of a resurrection
from the dead. Yet even so, in the late apocalyptic
passages, Isaiah xxv. 6-9, xxvi. 14-19, x nothing
more is taught than the resurrection of faithful
Israelites, and not of man as such, and it is to a
resumption of life on earth, in. Palestine, with a
restored Jerusalem, as its centre. And in so late
a writing as the Book of Daniel,3 containing as
it does the most definite statement of the Old
Testament concerning the resurrection life, examina
tion shows it to be qualified by the " many," and
the " many " are those who have been conspicuous
for good or for evil. And here again, it is to a
restored life on earth.
But this " forward look " of the prophets, work
ing upon the generally accepted belief in " survival "
beyond the grave, carried in it as its germ, the
certainty of the later teaching. In this the Hebrew,
as over against and superior to all the religions of
ancient and contemporary life, proclaims its unique,
its Divine origin.
If, for a moment, we leave the prophets, and
pass to that great song-book of the religious life,
the Psalter, we find there the outgoings of longing,
and the statements of a faith in God and the future
on the part of elect souls of that nation, coming
little short of the New Testament hope. Even
yet, the faith of the individual Christian in any
land or circumstance, appropriates the exquisite
1 See p. 74. > Dan. xii. 2.
H 2

too Gbe Debrew propbet anb tbe flftobem preacher.
setting of the sweet singer of Israel, and finds it
sufficient : —
" Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but thee ?
And there is none upon earth I desire beside thee.
My flesh and my heart faileth :
But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever." 1
Or this final aspiration, representing the highest
gain of immortality : —
" As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness,
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." 2
It was impossible that such a God as the prophets
knew, and whom such choice souls as this singer
hymned, should fail of His purpose. And they
were content to leave it there. We pay them the
highest tribute if we say, that they found the im
mortality they desired in loving service of Him,
and as for the rest, they rested in the assurance
of which still another elect soul sang : —
" Thou wilt shew me the path of life :
In thy presence is fulness of jo}' ;
In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." 3
1 Psa. Ixxiii. 24-26. * Psa. xvii. 15. 3 Psa. xvi. 11.

CHAPTER V
Ube /Ibessfanic ifoope an& -Joeal.
IF the claim we have already advanced is true,
that there is nothing in the history of religions,
like the steady development of the local, tribal,
and national conception of Deitj'-, such as existed
in early Israel, reaching at length the sublime
monotheism of the later prophets, it is also true,
that there is no parallel in other religions to what
is generally described as the " Messianic hope of
Israel." Nowhere else do we find the unity and power
of one sustaining, redeeming, all-mastering idea,
such as the glowing picture of the Messianic ideal
embodied ; appearing and re-appearing through
successive generations, now in one form, now in
another, until, in the fulness of time — though,
alas ! Israel knew it not — it received a fulfilment
quite undreamed of in the person and work of
Jesus. In these later days we have been privileged to
witness the crowning proof of Divine action, work
ing in and through Israel's history. It is this

102 Gbe ibebrew pvopbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
which invests the inquiry now before us with such
perennial interest. On the side of Israel's external
or contemporary life — the side which formed the
Gethsemane of the prophets— Israel was even as
other peoples, and her history is as the common
bush of the desert. We follow a story of vacillation
and weakness, of stumbling and shame. Yet, as
we watch it, behold ! the bush burns with a fire,
which, while it does not consume, transforms !
So that instinctively we are made to feel, as we do
not and cannot feel in pursuing the histories of
other peoples and religions, the awe and reverence
that declares the abiding presence of the Divine !
Here indeed we touch the ultimate origin, and
the innermost secret of the Messianic hope of
Israel. With the actual, the historic explanation
of it, we shall be engaged in this chapter. It is
safe here to say, using the advantage of our later
perspective, that the legitimate issue of this hope
is the wonder and glory of Jesus; that God's
purpose in the calling and training of Israel was
too great to be accomplished in any one age, or by
any given cycle of events ; that, beyond any actual
horizon of man's vision, there is
" One far -off, Divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
An event, which, while explaining all the past,
will finally vindicate and declare the God of Israel,
as the Redeemer of the whole earth.
In these last sentences, however — let us face it
frankly and at once — we are reading back from
the line of historic knowledge, and not at all from

Gbe fliessianic t)ope anb 3beal. 103
the line of prophetic vision. Nothing is gained
for truth by supposing that there was given to any
of the prophets the definite portrait of Jesus, or
that they projected in advance the outline of His
life, sufferings, and death. Even supposing such
a portrait to have been given, it would have con
veyed no meaning or value to their own people,
nor is it conceivable that any useful purpose would
have been served by it.
The aim and mission of the prophets was much
more immediate and practical. It was theirs to
warn, to counsel, and to inspire their people ; to
increase among them the knowledge of God, and
to keep alive and active the hope of a glorious
destiny. Filled with an unquenchable enthusiasm
for God, assured that in calling them, God cherished
hopes and purposes for them worthy of Himself,
they sought to make Israel the worthy custodians
of a love and grace, which, being His, must include
a future for them and for the world, in keeping
with One so great, and with a love so gracious.
In all this the prophets were one with the choicest
and noblest of their race from the beginning.
Explain it as we may, the consciousness of destiny
possessed the finest minds of the Hebrew people.
It recurs, like the dominant theme of an oratorio,
through all the varied clash, the discord and
harmony of their long and chequered history.
It would be easy, beginning with the celebrated
passage in Genesis, relating to the enmity and
bruising of the serpent j1 the repeated covenant
1 Gen. iii. 15.

i»4 Ebe Ibebrew prophet anb tbe /liobern preacher.
with Abraham j1 and the famous reference to
Shiloh2 — mistakenly interpreted as Messiah — and
on through the subsequent books of the Bible, to
discover the basis for such a national consciousness
of destiny.
Not that the references given, with the probable
exception of the last,3 or many of the kindred
promises found later, are in themselves Messianic.
True exegesis compels us to say they each have a
bearing and an interpretation more immediately
practical and useful. But they served to form
the habit of the " forward look " on the part of
the best minds of Israel. They assisted the growth
of that optimism, which, even in the darkest days
of national life, was never absent, nay rather, as
we shall see, was often the most radiant and con
fident, when the immediate outlook was most
unpromising. This raises for us once more,4 in a definite form,
the general question of predictive prophecy, of
which Messianic prophecy forms by far the most
considerable portion. While it is no longer possible
to retain the old, mechanical views of inspiration
and prophecy, as an arbitrary possession of the
human personality by a Divine power, using it
as the passive and often unconscious recipient of
visions and messages relating only to some remote
age, we must equally guard against the purely
rationalistic view, that sees in the visions and
1 Gen. xii. 1-3; xiii. 14-18; xvii. r-8.
2 Gen. xlix. 8-12. 3 Peahe's Commentary, p. 166.
' See pp. 33-36.

Gbe /Biessianic Ifoope anb Sbeal. 105
descriptions of the prophets nothing more than a
future ideal state, a golden age of human life, brought
in as the inevitable issue and accompaniment of
a moral evolutionary process.
Such a view, taking no account of the action and
inter-action of the overruling Spirit of God, raises
far more difficulties for the reason than it professes
to remove. As a matter of fact, reading the history
of the nations, we know that it does not so work
out. This rationalistic theory does not cover
either the practical idealism of the prophet's vision,
or the subsequent facts of history. It is unscientific
as well as unhistoric, seeing that on such a theory,
the effects are immeasurably greater than the cause.
Granted such a God as the Hebrew prophets
knew, as seen also in His unfolding purpose through
our world-history, and as finally revealed in Jesus,
it is only to be expected that through those whom
He intimately knew, whose willing surrender, made
them the worthy mediums of revelation, He would,
if He desired, declare purposes and happenings
far beyond the ordinary skill and vision of men to
discern. Surely we may not, for any human theory
whatever, attempt to limit either the freedom or
the power of the Infinite Love !
That the element of prediction in the prophets
is far less than was once supposed, as though it
was history written beforehand ; that many
prophetic references, once regarded as applying
to events far distant — even down to the years and
details of the late European war, with the apportion
ment of territory by the Peace Conference which

106 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flftobem preacher.
followed — found their explanation in fulfilments
much nearer to hand, these are conclusions, not
only in keeping with the findings of the most
reverent scholarship, but, what is even more im
portant, with the general scope and purpose of the
Divine rule and government of the world.
So when we find, as we do, definite predictions
in the pages of the prophets, relating to individuals,
specific events, impending disaster, we say with
Amos : — " Surely Yahweh will do nothing, but
he revealeth his secret unto his servants the
prophets."1 Both Amos and Isaiah foretold the
downfall of the Northern Kingdom, Amos, forty
years before it occurred,2 and Isaiah when Israel's
prosperity appeared to mock the prophet's words.3
And again, Isaiah predicts the safety of Jerusalem,
in the face of the threatening advance and might
of Sennacherib.'1 Jeremiah predicts the death
of Hananiah within twelve months,5 and the
ultimate downfall of Jerusalem.6 Yet, while such
references could be multiplied, it is still true that
definite or specific predictions of this kind are not
the rule. The scope of predictive prophecy is
vastly wider, may we not add, worthier, in its range.
The history of the world is a redemptive history,
and prophecy, as Prof. A. B. Davidson has pointed
out, in such a redeeming purpose was an " absolute
necessity."7 Since redemption is God's goal, and

1 Amos iii. 7. 2 Amos v. 27; vi. 14.
3 Isa. x. 5. 4 Isa. xxxvii. 33-35.
6 Jer, xxviii. 16. 6 Jex. xxxii. 3-5.
' Theol. of O.T., p. 104.

Gbe /Iftessianic fbope anb Jbeal. 107
destruction is His strange work,1 prophecy is part
of the cosmic process by which He will sustain
the hope, enlarge the vision, and extend the
knowledge of men, culminating at length in Him
who fulfilled all prophecy, the Son of man, the
Saviour of the world.
(2) And here it is that we reach the nature and
explanation of the prophecy definitely known as
Messianic. Undoubtedly it is difficult for us,
looking back, to conceive of the Messianic Kingdom
apart from Jesus, the Messiah. But our point of
approach now is the knowledge and standpoint
of the prophets, and clearly, the thought of a
personal Messiah was not an essential element in
the earlier Jewish hope. That came much later.
It begins to find more definite expression after the
exile, though in the main, through all, the emphasis
is rather upon the restored future of Israel, ruled
by the Ideal King as the visible representative or
administrator of Yahweh, than upon any distinctive
personality, that stress is laid.2
The prophets were not concerned with any
particular individual. Their purpose was rather
to strengthen the faith and encourage the hope of
Israel in the anticipation of a glorious future. It
could not be that a God such as Yahweh, or that
a history such as theirs, with such evidences of
Divine selection and purpose, could end in any
partial or national triumph !
The glory of Yahweh their God carried with it
the certainty of a future far more glorious, such
1 Isa. xxviii. 21. 2 Zech. ix. 9.

108 Gbe 'Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
as would make His name a praise and glory before
all the nations of earth.1
The weighty words of Dr. Charles on this theme,
are of the utmost value. " Tlie Jewish prophet
could not help looking forward to the advent of
the Kingdom of God, but he found no difficulty in
conceiving that Kingdom without a Messiah. Thus
there is no mention of the Messiah in Amos,
Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Joel, Daniel :
none even in the very full esehatological prophecies
of Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii., or in the brilliant descriptions
of the future in Isaiah liv. 11-17, lx.-lxii., lxv.,
lxvi., which spring from various post-exilic writers.
Nor is the situation different when we pass from
the Old Testament to the subsequent Jewish
literature. . . . Hence it follows that, in Jewish
prophecy and apocalyptic the Messiah was no
organic factor of the Kingdom. Sometimes he
was conceived as present, but, just as frequently,
absent. When he was absent, the Kingdom was
always represented as under the immediate
sovereignty of God. Thus Jewish prophecy and
apocalyptic represent the Kingdom either as under
the direct rule of God, or else of the Messiah as
God's representative."2
This view entirely agrees with a careful examina
tion of the Old Testament records. The prophets
were concerned with keeping before themselves
and before the nation, the glorious vision of an
ideal future, not only for them, but through them,
1 Ezek. xxxvi. 20, 23 ; Isa. Hi. 6; Jer. xxxiii. 9; Isa. Iv. 12, 13.
2 Expositor, Sixth Series, vol. v. p. 250.

Gbe dftesslanic 1bope anb jbeal. 109
for the world. And, remembering the shocking
unfaithfulness of their own time, and the utter
hopelessness of the situation as they looked out
upon the horizons limiting them, it is as splendid
and as mighty a triumph of faith, as anything to
be found in our long human story. Nothing
could be a truer corrective of our modern pessimism,
as we face the terrible world-situation following
the war, than the overcoming faith and hope which
lived in the happy vision of God's universal rule.
Herein the prophets are still our teachers !
When we turn to our Scriptures we find, that,
apart from the Authorised Version of Daniel ix.
25-26, the term " Messiah " is not found in the
Old Testament. For the Revised Version gives
the more correct rendering, " anointed one."1 The
Hebrew word translated " Messiah," as also its
Greek equivalent, " Christos," meaning " anointed,"
has a very wide and general application in the
Old Testament. So far from setting forth any
particular individual, it is rather in its original
form, an adjective. It is used of things set apart
for Yahweh's use,2 of Israel as a nation,3 of
patriarchs,4 of priests,5 and, very generally, of
kings.6 And in Haggai7 and Zechariah,8 it is
Zerubbabel, Judah's governor in 520 B.C. who is
welcomed as the Messianic prince.
' Dan. ix. 25, 26 (R.V.).
2 Lev. viii. 10, 30 3 Hab. iii. 13.
* Psa, cv. 1.5. 6 Lev. iv. 3.
• 1 Sam. xv. 1 ; 2 Sam. ii. 4 ; 1 Kings i. 3 |. ; Pia, ii. 2 ;
Isa. xiv. 1.
' Haggai ii. 23. ' Zech. iii. 8; iv, 9; vi. 12

no Gbe 'Ibebrew propbet anb tbe ilftobern preacber.
(3) It is with this general view of the Messiah
as " God's anointed " in mind, that we may usefully
follow the development of the Messianic hope in
Israel, and the form it took in successive prophets.
It is a study of entrancing interest. Its chief value
will lie in the fact, that while through the long
centuries, the best minds of Israel held to and
passed on ideals, each in their measure, Messianic,
it is only in Jesus that the sum total of the best
hope of Israel's prophets is realized and infinitely
surpassed. " Prophecy is a unity. A great connecting
purpose runs through it, binding it all together.
It is an essential element in the Divine scheme of
the redemption of the world through Christ. His
work rested upon theirs. His revelation of the
Father was the consummation and the vindication
of their revelation of the God of Israel."1
It was quite natural that the earliest and most
persistent form of the hope which sustained Israel,
should centre in the theocratic kingship. While
this view dominates all the prophets, it is, as might
be expected, prominent so long as the monarchy
lasted. After the destruction of the monarchy,
and particularly as time wore on, the hope centres
in the people as the suffering Servant of Yahweh,
and, later still, at the Restoration, in the
priest, or the union of the priestly and kingly
functions. The foundation of this form of the Messianic
hope, reposes on the Divine promise through Nathan
1 Peake' s Commentary , p. 430,

Gbe Messianic ibope anb 35eai. m
to David, that his house should never cease to bear
rule in the kingdom of Yahweh.1 It is a promise
frequently referred to in Scripture.- David's
establishment and settlement of Israel's national
life had deeply and permanently stamped itself
upon the popular imagination as representing all
that was desirable in national life. While neither
Amos nor Hosea have any reference to the Messiah,
they each go back to the rule of David for their
ideal of national felicity.3 People and prophet
alike idealized David, so that his reign with its
achievements, stood for them as a model and a
pride. In general outline and briefly, the pattern is
made up of a king, wise and good, living in happy
relationship with his people, neither possessing
foes without nor fearing any, but enjoying unbroken
prosperity. This, at any rate at first, filled up
the content of the Messianic ideal. And though,
as might be expected, it was greatly expanded,
these elements are found in all the later develop
ments. " For the heathen poet," it has been said,
" the golden age lies in the past. For the Hebrew
prophet, it lies in the future." We need no other
proof that a Divine intention runs through all
the history of Israel, compelling the " forward
look." But for this, the greatness and glory of
David's reign, as idealized by the people, would
have arrested progress, and fixed the golden age
1 2 Sam. vii. n-16.
2 2 Sam. xxiii. 5 ; 1 Kings xi. 13, 36; Psa. ii.
3 Amos ix. 11 ; Hosea iii. 5.

H2 Gbe Hebrew prophet anb tbe flftobern preacher.
of Israel in the past ! As it was, the prophets,
starting with David, exalted and enlarged the
vision, cherishing the hope and fostering the longing
for a time when the theocratic kingship, ruling all
peoples, would be everywhere acknowledged, and
Yahweh, their God, be enthroned as the undisputed
king of all the earth.
For some of the loftiest visions, and the noblest
statements of the Messianic Ideal, Israel and the
world since Israel's day, is indebted to Isaiah.
Remembering his close association with the royal
house of Judah, it is not surprising that, especially
at first, with such a disreputable representative
of David's house as the wicked Ahaz on the throne,
Isaiah should idealize the figure of the King, or
that later, the glory of the Kingship, as centralized
in Yahweh Himself, who would be Judge, Law
giver, Monarch, and Saviour,1 should fill his thought
and speech.
Isaiah's training and genius was the greatest
gift of God to his own generation. His long and
unique ministry in the capital, his transparent
sincerity and proved loyalty, secured him a com
manding position. In the difficult circumstances
and fiery test of the time, with the enormous power
of Assyria as a constant menace and peril to his
nation, Isaiah found his opportunity.
Never was a critical position more heroically
faced, or more triumphantly overcome. As the
danger grew ever more serious, drawing nearer and
nearer, his faith in God shone forth with ever
1 Isa. xxxiii. 22.

Gbe jflftessiantc "Dope anb jbeal. 113
increasing clearness. Out of the stock of Jesse
would come a scion or branch of the royal house,1
out of the " stump "2 or root of Israel, a new Israel,
a " holy remnant,"3 and thus would God con
found the designs of evil. " The zeal of the Lord
of hosts shall perform this."4 All this places Isaiah
among the premier prophets of the world. No
wonder that preachers have always found in him
the human ideal of their prophetic ministry, and
in his writings one of their most fruitful sources
of sermon material.
For Isaiah's victory of faith, and his sheer
defiance of existing conditions, is one of the greatest
achievements of history. At a time when Syria
and Ephraim were threatening to conquer Judah
and abolish the Davidic dynasty, and Ahaz was
purchasing, at the price of his country's in
dependence, relief from the danger with which the
coalition threatened him, Isaiah sought to re-assure
the king, promising him speedy deliverance and
giving him the sign of Immanuel.5 The faith of
the mother, embodied in the name she is to give
her child, " God is with us," is a reproof to the
king's unbelief.
It is in the significance of the name, as declaring
the mother's conviction that God is with His people,
that we discover the real purpose of the declaration
of the prophet. It is not in the wonderful birth
of the child or in the child himself, that the im-
1 Isa. xi. 1. 2 Isa. vi. 13.
8 Isa. x. 20, 21, 22 ; xi. j 1, 16.
4 Isa. ix. 7; xxxvii. 32. « Isa. vii. 14.

H4 Gbe fjebrtw propbet anb the iibobern preacher.
portance of the passage is to be found.1 The
" Immanuel " of this prophecy is not to be identified
with the Messianic King mentioned later,2 opening
to us, as this wonderful scripture does, the most
striking portrait of the Messianic hope as yet
portrayed. For while it is not necessary to believe that
Isaiah saw the New Testament picture of Jesus
in vision — nothing would have been intelligible
or useful to his own people in such a case — yet it
is certain that " Jesus only " embodies and makes
actual these matchless word-pictures of kingly
rule, and immeasurably transcends them. Only
in Him can we understand the truth of the God-
Man, or explain the wonder of the Prince of tlie
Four Names.3
Such a view makes the contribution of Isaiah
to the faithful of his own time, and to the culture
of true faith in the world, not the less, but all the
more precious and permanent. Later on, under
the better days of Hezekiah, and with returning
hope for the house of David, Isaiah is silent con
cerning the ideal personal king, and is occupied
entirely with the sovereignty and glory of Yahweh
as the God of Israel.
A century later, another great prophet, Jeremiah,
with his contemporaries, Zephaniah and Habakkuk,
facing the certain ruin of Judah, and the victorious
power of Babylon, gives us another illustration of
1 For the whole discussion see Dr. Peake's article " Immanuel,"
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, vol. i. pp. 782-4.
2 Isa. ix. 1-7; xi. 1-9.
3 Isa. ix. 6.

Gbe dBessianfc fjope anb Jbeal. us
the triumph of faith, and the unquenchable hope
which no calamity was able to destroy.
Jeremiah, whose life has been described as " a
Messianic life, filled on the one side with con
secration to his Divine mission, and on the other
with suffering caused by the persecution of those
who did not respect the feelings of a peculiarly
sensitive soul," supplies a distinct and definite
contribution to the Messianic hope of Israel.
Possessed of an intensely spiritual nature,
cultured in the school of suffering for the truth's
sake, an ardent lover of humanity, it is not sur
prising to find the deep spiritual note running
through all his teaching. And when it is re
membered that he lived and worked amidst the
ruin of Judah's external life, that he predicted and
witnessed the final overthrow of Judah as a political
and separate power, we can the more readily appreci
ate the distinctiveness and greatness of his work.
The old order had indeed passed for Jeremiah.
The old covenant of external prohibitions and
ceremonies had done its work. In the loss of its
national life, Israel would discover the true religion,
based on the inward relation and loyalty of the
individual soul to God, and the " New Covenant "
written in the heart. Therein God and Israel
will enter into intimacies more personal, deeper,
closer, more enduring.1 It is round this doctrine
of the New Covenant, looking as it does over the
whole future of God's relation to man, that we find
the value of Jeremiah's teaching.
1 Jer. xxxi. 33, 34 I 2

n6 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe d&obem preacber.
Like Isaiah, he associated the inception of the
new order with the royal house of David, using
Isaiah's figure of the " branch," or " root."1 Like
Isaiah he regarded the royal city of the restored
Jerusalem as the seat and centre of government,2
while over a contented and happily united people
" Yahweh-tsidkenu,"3 — Yahweh is our righteous
ness — will reign.
Yet, while the Messianic hope and future is thus
marked by the national bias, Jeremiah's conception
of religion was too inward and spiritual to remain
there, and, in parts of his writings, the universalism
inherent in his thought breaks through, and he
sings of the time when " nations shall come from
the ends of the earth, . . . and they shall know
that my name is Yahweh."4
Ezekiel shares with the second Isaiah, the dis
tinction and honour of exercising the whole of his
prophetic ministry outside, his own land, being
called to the prophetic office in the fifth year after
his arrival in Babylon.5 If it is true that the exile,
while destroying the nation, saved religion, it is
largely due to the loyalty, the genius, the unsparing
devotion of Ezekiel during his twenty-two years
of ministry.
Against the dark background of national over
throw and ruin, living as a prisoner in the world's
capital of idolatry, derided and rejected by his
fellow-countrymen, Ezekiel's victory over circum-
1 Jer. xxiii. 5; xxx. 9; xxxiii. 15,
2 Jer. xxxiii. 16, 17.
3 Jer. xxxiii. 16.
* Jer. xvi. 19, 21. 6 Ezek. i. 1-5.

Gbe Messianic fjope anb 5beal. 117
stances is a pattern and inspiration to every sufferer
for the truth's sake.1 He stands forth there as
one of the world's noblest confessors ! Defying
his surroundings, and spite of them, he saved
religion from being submerged by the prevailing
heathenism, and rallied the scattered remnants
of the true Israel by his glorious vision of the new
Jerusalem, and the restored sanctuary " in the
midst of them for evermore."2
Ezekiel, as a disciple of his great master and
teacher, Jeremiah, develops the doctrine of the
worth of the individual. Pre-exilic prophets, as
we have seen, exalted the commonwealth of Israel
as a whole. The individual mattered less. The
nation was chief. Now that Israel as a nation
was in ruins, such a view was impossible, hence
the insistence upon the value of the unit. But,
while holding with Jeremiah to the importance
of personality, Ezekiel saw Israel once more as a
saved community, gathered round a restored
sanctuary as the central point of the new national
life. What we have in his pages, is the picture
of a true theocracy, whence should issue the river
of healing and blessing, making everything to live
whither it comes !3 This is the glowing vision,
which remains even yet unfulfilled, and which alone
keeps the world sweet and young !
It is under this ideal of the state as a " church,"
or as itself " a sanctuary," as the symbol of
Yahweh's perpetual presence, that Ezekiel figures

1 Ezek. xxxiii. 31, 32.
* Ezek. xxxvii. 26-28. s Ezek. xlvii. 9.

n8 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb the flftobem preacher.
forth the Messianic hope of the exile. It is a noble
ideal. The more so when we remember how vividly
the exile reminded the people of their failure as
a state or commonwealth, and that, on Ezekiel's
horizon, there were no outward signs to encourage
faith in the future ! Even yet it is an ideal, though
with the shattering of rival faiths and opposing
autocracies everywhere, it is nearer to us in this
twentieth century than we may think.
But for the time, the restored Judaism Ezekiel
did so much to bring into being, failed, even as had
the old, to realize the dream. Instead, it de
generated into the narrowest legalism, and ulti
mately into that Pharisaism which knew not the
true Messiah when He came, and crucified Him.
Yet there it stands even now in the pages of Ezekiel,
a pattern and a hope !
In keeping with this, it is interesting to find, that
while Ezekiel shares the general Messianic view,
that the future of the nation is bound up with a
" prince " of the house of David,1 he lays far greater
emphasis upon the idea of the Messiah as " the
Good Shepherd " of His flock, caring for and ever
seeking His own.2 Out of this too, carrying as
a true priest, the priestly solicitude, springs Ezekiel's
insistence upon the responsibility of the watch
man, or under-shepherd.3 " If the watchman see
the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and
the people be not warned, and the sword come,
and take any person from among them ; he is
1 Ezek. xxxvii. 24, 25,
¦ Ezek. xxxiv, 11, 12. 3 Ez«k. xxaiii. 1-9.

Gbe dBesslanfc ttope anb Jbeal. 119
taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I
require at the watchman's hand." Speech has
never yet, nor ever will, more worthily set forth
the solemn greatness, the unspeakable glory of the
pastoral care !
We cannot usefully pass on to examine the
contribution of the second Isaiah, xl.-lv. and the
section Isaiah lvi.-lxvi., to the development of the
Messianic hope, without a word of explanation.
It is now generally accepted that Isaiah xl.-lv.,
cannot be the work of Isaiah. It clearly belongs
to the exile, and the author probably lived both
in Babylon and in Jerusalem. Isaiah lvi.-lxvi.
obviously belongs to a period later still. The
temple, though not the walls of Jerusalem, has been
rebuilt. While great, it is not sustained on the
high level of the second Isaiah, and there is more
of threatening than in the earlier exilic work.
It is significant that, though we have in Isaiah
xl.-lv., the loftiest view of the future, yet, unlike
all the other prophets, the author makes no reference
to a future Messiah of the house of David. His
theme is the greatness of God, and the future glory
of Israel as the servant and messenger of God to
man, as the prophet of God to the whole earth.1
To say that these chapters of comfort and con
solation (Isaiah xl.-lv.), for beauty of thought
and for true nobility of expression, are even yet
unsurpassed in literature, is not to use the language
of exaggeration. They are indeed, the permanent
treasure-house of humanity. The more s»a.r»hing
1 Isa. xiii. I.

120 Gbe Debrew propbet anb tbe /ftobern preacbcr.
the examination, the more wonderful is the dis
covery of wealth. That they are to us anonymous
in authorship, serves to heighten their wonder,
and to deepen our gratitude to God, who raised
up such a permanent comforter and teacher of the
race. The message of comfort springs from the ex
perience of terrible suffering.1 Written amid the
scenes, and toward the end of bitter exile, with the
near prospect of deliverance in the person of the
Persian conqueror, Cyrus,2 — " God's shepherd,"
or " anointed," the prophet brings to his afflicted
people the word of cheer and hope. " The iniquity
of Jerusalem is pardoned, she has received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins."3 Let Israel
now look up, for surely his redemption draweth
near. From this the prophet proceeds to develop his
distinctive teaching of Israel as the " suffering
servant of Yahweh." Out of the scattered remnant
of those, who, though smitten, sorely afflicted and
tried, suffering even to death, God will yet raise
up a " people who shall sing his praise from the
end of the earth."4 " The Servant," says Dr.
Peake, " is not an ideal distinct from the nation,
but the nation regarded from an ideal point of
view."5 And the nation, thus redeemed through
suffering, becomes God's ambassador and herald
to all the nations.6 Israel reaches his crowning
1 Isa. xl. i. ° Isa. xliv. 28.
3 Isa. xl. 2. 4 Isa. xiii. 10.
6 Problem of Suffering, p. 193.
6 Isa. xliii. 1-4; xiv. 20-25.

Gbe /liessianic f>ope anb Jbeal. 121
mission of salvation for all peoples through the
cross of death, and out of such sacrifice attains
the victory of final conquest.1
And this unique and altogether wonderful state
ment of vicarious suffering is the more remarkable,
when it is remembered that the Old Testament
knows no doctrine of a suffering Messiah. As
we have seen, the prophets associated the Messianic
day with majesty, victory, and final supremacy ;
but such a day would come through life, not through
death, through the triumph of righteousness that
was truly mighty. Right on to New Testament
times, neither prophecy nor apocalyptic associated
the future King or Messiah with a life of humilia
tion and suffering, ending in death. The doctrine
of the Cross was, to the Jews, " a stumbling-block."2
So unlike the Messiah of prophecy, of teaching, of
longing, such as the Jewish people had been led
to expect, was Jesus, that, when He came, He
was not recognized.3 When He began to unfold
to His disciples the necessity of His suffering and
death, the men trained in Jewish lore and hope
were stunned by the announcement,4 while for
Judas — the most Jewish of all the twelve — it
was the final crash of all his hope, and decided his
destiny as a traitor.5
The prophets from Isaiah onward, had laid stress
upon the ideal King. " Behold, a king shall reign
in righteousness."6 The hope alternated between
' Isa. liii. 10-12. s 1 Cor. j. 23. 8 John i. 11.
? Matt. xvi. 21-23.
6 John vi. 70 ; Mark xiv. 17-20 ; Matt. xxvi. 14-16.
• Isa. xxxii. 1.

i22 Gbe Debrew propbet anb tbe /Bobern preacher.
the anticipation of an ideal future kingdom under the
direct rule of God, and of the Messiah, the anointed
of God, as His representative. As we pass to
apocalyptic, and on to the Maccabean times of the
second century B.C. — the golden age of the
Maccabean house — we mark in the literature of
the period an almost utter absence of the figure
of the Davidic Messiah, such as had sustained the
earlier prophets. The expectation now is that
the Kingdom of God will be brought in through
the priestly descent of the Maccabean family of
Levi, the Messiah himself will come of the priestly
house of Judas.
In the first century B.C. however, the high
character of the Maccabees had fallen to the lowest
and worst forms of moral corruption, and popular
expectation relinquished the thought of a Messiah
of priestly descent, and fell back on the earlier
hope of the royal house of David. But, as might
have been expected from such a corrupt and morally
decadent people, the Messiah now looked for was
a man of war, who would, with a " strong hand
and a mighty arm " utterly destroy the hated
Roman power, hold the nations of the world in
awe, and make Jerusalem the praise of the whole
earth. Yet it remains true, that, while we may not
claim that any prophet had before him in advance
the picture of Jesus, it is only in the Royal Son of
God — the Son of man — the great High Priest and
Prophet of the world, that the Messianic hope of
Israel is consummated and surpassed.

Gbe rtftesefanfc *>ope anb 3beal. 123
It is surely a true spiritual instinct and insight
which ascribes to Jesus all, and far more, than the
most glowing ideal of poet and seer ever descried.
Before the glory of the " Sun of Righteousness,"
the stars of that promise by which Israel had
been guided and sustained, pale into insig
nificance. Jesus so fulfilled the Old Testament
picture, as to make every part of it increasingly
precious. At the same time, He so transcended it, as to be
unrecognized by the legitimate guardians of the
hope they inherited from the best of their race.
He was indeed " the Messiah," who, " when he is
come, will declare unto us all things,"1 yet so un
like, so much more than their best hopes, as to be
the " despised and rejected of men." " Here we
have the historical key to the tragedy of the Gospels,
the mental and moral unpreparedness of the chosen
people for God's Anointed, which deepened into
refusal to advance to the venture of faith in Him
on the simple self-evidence of the spiritual quality
and power of His message and Person."2
Jesus unites in His own unique personality every
feature of the ancient hope of His race after the
flesh. He is all that prophetic revelation declared
would mark the future of Israel and Israel's relation
to the world. But He is immeasurably more and
different. He is more than the Messiah of prophecy,
acting for God as the " Anointed One." He is
indeed " The Incarnate God," the Divine head
and centre of His own kingdom, making member-
1 Jons iv. 25. 2 Penke's @*mmenUry, p. 637,

i24 Gbe ftehrew propbet anb tbe fliobern preacber.
ship in it to consist of living relationship to His
Person, declaring itself in loyalty to His will.
The difference, explaining the blindness of Israel,
and the temporary rejection by " His own," is to
be found in the spirituality of His method and
aim, with its notes of equality and universality.
He is a Warrior, but His fight is against evil.
He is a Conqueror, but His conquests are primarily
in the realms of affection, disposition, and conduct.
All other victories follow these. He is a King, and
brings in a Kingdom, but His sovereignty is other
and more enduring than any material greatness,
or than any visible Centre could possibly enshrine.
He is Servant of all and Sufferer for all. In that
and through it, He ascends His throne, ruling ever
more in the City which is itself His temple, in the
glory and worship and service of which, the redeemed
" go no more out."
(4) The persistence and growth of this Messianic
hope, while meaning so much more for the world
than those who cherished it and passed it on, could
ever know, carried in it also a mission of priceless
value to Israel. The religions of the world offer
no parallel. As we pursue the study of it, we are
conscious of that Holy Presence, which led Moses
in awe and wonder to say, " I will turn aside now,
and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt."1
For purposes now made clear in the world-embracing
teaching and work of Jesus, we find in it the ex
planation and the irresistible proof of God's patient
education of Israel.
1 Exod. iii. 3.

Gbe dfteseianic 1bope anb Sbeal. 125
" The real moment of a nation's greatness is
when it has a noble heroic past, and yet looks
forward to a great living future. So long as
prophecy was alive in Israel, the past had real
meaning and the future was full of hope. It is a
striking thing, the significance of which we do well
to ponder, that when Judaism rejected Jesus there
was no more real growth. The possessions from
the past were carefully preserved and mechanically
copied, commentaries enlarged and rules multiplied ;
all this carried to wearisome lengths and ridiculous
refinements, but no real creative force or divine
inspiration."1 Israel's victorious faith in the future was Israel's
salvation. Rising again and again on faith's wings
to this dream-world of hope, her loftiest sons and
daughters were at rest in the midst of great up
heavals, and were able to preach the gospel of
real strength, through the reliance of a quiet and
confident waiting upon God. What incentive it
offered to effort, even when the situation seemed
the most hopeless ! What a motive it supplied
for loyalty, seeing that God has purposes for His
people so glorious ! What a training in faith and
spirituality, as over against the sordid conditions
of their own time, and the material greatness upon
which Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Persia relied !
God would never forsake His people. Let them
only be loyal to Him, and they were for ever
safe. This was the rock-like faith and this the un-
1 Prof. Jordan, Prophetic Ideas and Ideals, p. 156,

126 Gbe "fcebrew prophet anb tbe dftobem preacber.
ceasing burden of the prophets. In the present
broken condition of the world, it is still the only
worthy and redeeming Gospel ! For it is deeply
and permanently true that we are saved by our
hopes and by our faith I1 If we are resting in the
achievements of our yesterdays, or in the actual
possessions of to-day, we are absorbing our capital,
we are facing bankruptcy in the future.
And this serves to make clear another truth of
intrinsic and abiding value in this study of the
forward look of Israel. As we pass from the dark
days of Israel's exile and return, the ministry of
warning, of judgment and retribution, which is
the chief characteristic of pre-exilic prophecy,
we come to the ministry of hope, of comfort and
encouragement, which is the distinctive feature
of the second Isaiah, of Haggai and Zechariah.
This word of comfort and hope indeed, had been
often sung into the dull and heavy ears of Israel,
but it is only as Israel enters her Gethsemane, and
through it faces her Olivet, that it finds its clearest
and noblest expression. " Comfort ye, comfort
ye, my people, saith your God."2
It is the pre-figuring of a truth which finds its
highest illustration in Jesus, and is for us found only
in the joyous secret of companionship with Him.
He faced His Gethsemane under the strengthening
or comforting ministry of song.3 It was under
the impending shadow of the greatest loss, that
1 Rom. viii. 24; Eph. ii. 8.
2 Isa. xl. 1.
8 Matt. xxvi. 30.

Gbe dftesstantc 1bope anb Jbeal. 127
He spoke as He had never done before, of " His
joy."1 While even now, amid the prevalence of evil,
and the delay of His kingdom, we are comforted
— girded for service — as we still maintain the
forward look, believing in the greater to-morrows
of the world, constantly " looking for the blessed
hope, and appearing of the glory of our great God
and Saviour Jesus Christ,"2 whose ever widening
victory, " according to His promise, will establish
" the new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness."3 1 John xv. 11; xvi. 20, 21, 22, 24; xvii. 13.
2 Titus ii. 13. 8 2 Peter iii. 13.

CHAPTER VI.
Hbe ipropfoet an& IReform in Israel.
WE have already considered1 the ministry
and work of the Hebrew prophets as
revealers and interpreters of that truth
by which man truly lives,2 and the deep and abiding
obligation under which they have placed the world,
for that sacred deposit of spiritual treasure by which
its real life has been permanently enriched.
In lifting and leading the thought of their time,
in giving it ideal as well as direction, in sustaining
hope and supplying it with motive and reason,
they did an incomparable service, not only to their
own, but to every subsequent age. Had this been
their only contribution to the sum total of the
world's good, or did it constitute their chief claim
upon our gratitude and study, we could not afford
to ignore them.
Truth and justice require us to affirm, that, as
supplying the strength and the safeguard of eternal
principles, as laying down the permanent bases
of conduct, the prophets still point the way for the
idealists of the world, they remain among our surest
1 See pp. 79-100. 2 Deut. viii. 3 ; Matt. iv. 4,

Gbe propbet anb IReform in Israel, 129
and most competent guides. Their thoughts still
live and burn. Their faith and hope abide. For
the unprecedented difficulties of our twentieth
century, intensified by the world-upheaval of the
European war, the literature of the prophets is
our best modern text-book, they speak the message
our own age most needs to hear and heed.
For this newer, and, as we believe, more accurate
interpretation of the Hebrew prophet and his
work, we are indebted to the modern method of
historical investigation and inquiry. The older
dogmatic, allegorical, and often fanciful method
of interpreting the prophet, tended to remove him
from any absorbing interest in his own people
or time, and made him a visionary, an idealist,
whose work lay chiefly in descrying the history
and destiny of distant generations and centuries,
even down to the detailed events of the late
European war !
Now however, in the light of a careful, historic
study of their words and writings, it is impossible
any longer to argue for such a view, or to hold it.
And indeed, such a judgment, so far from honouring
the place and work of the prophet, does him a very
serious injustice. It implies at least partial in
difference to the movements of his own time, and
so removes him from the position of influence —
now of hope, now of fear — he undoubtedly filled
among his own people. He knew the future. He
never hesitated to declare his knowledge. But
this was because he was such a close and careful
student of the present, and had grasped with such
K

i3° Gbe ibebrew prophet anb tbe /Oiobem preacher.
keen moral sympathy the eternal principles and
laws of human conduct, which, being eternal, act
with constant and unerring aim.

I.
It is then from this point of view, and particularly
remembering the practical purpose of these studies
for those who are still set as " God's forth-tellers,"
that we approach this further examination of the
prophet's work.
i. The prophets did far more than project an
ideal before their people. They declared a definite
programme of daily practice. They urged the
delights of duty. They rang the changes upon the
sanctities, the obligations, the simple necessity of
the word " ought," a word everywhere found and
understood, aside from locality, race, or language,
because embedded in the very structure of the
human soul. They set the moral pace, and became
the incarnate conscience of, and for their people.
No cowards were these speakers of old. Neither
fear of man, nor dread of consequences could bribe
them into silence. They met in turn criticism,
misrepresentation, ridicule, abuse, persecution and
incredible suffering, but nothing was allowed to
soften their speech concerning wrong-doing, nor
weaken the boldness of their testimony to the
truth they knew.
2. Nor must we fail to mark the note of urgency
under which they spoke and wrote. They gladly
surrendered their freedom to the pressure of Divine

Gbe propbet anb iReform in jsrael. 131
guidance, and, as those commandeered of God,
they found their liberty in bondage to the Divine
will. Like Him whose heralds they were, they
had " a baptism to be baptized with," being
"straitened till it was accomplished."1 Hence
their delightful sincerity and singleness of aim.
Hence too, their unfailing courage and untiring
enthusiasm in service. As for their passion for
righteousness, it consumed them. The word in
their hearts was as a burning fire shut up in their
bones, and they could not contain.2 This gave
to their message conviction, eagerness, tone, the
authority of those who received their commission
direct from God.
3. In keeping* with this, and as serving to explain
it, is the range and sweep of their reforming zeal.
They covered the entire field of human relationship
and conduct. A close examination of their writings
reveals an intimate knowledge, alike of human
nature and human activity. They were skilled
physicians of the soul. So thoroughly did they
understand the working of the human heart, and
so accurate is their analysis of human motive and
conduct, that they supply valuable material to
the psychologist. In this particular, the preacher
of to-day will find the prophets and the study of
their methods, a fruitful source of illustration.
The modern student of ethical and social science
is surprised to discover how complete is their
programme of duty. Even amid the complications
of our twentieth-century civilization, it is difficult
1 Luke xii. 50. a Jer. xx. 9.
K 2

132 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe diiobern preacher.
to detect any omission, as it is certainly impossible
to revise their broad moral judgment. Knowing
no class themselves, they addressed in turn every
section of the nation, and neither feared, nor ignored,
nor spared any. Anticipating Mazzini, the Italian
patriot and prophet, each of the prophets of Israel
could have truly said : — " Whatever concerns man,
interests me." Nothing was alien to them that
touched the good of their fellow-man. The
loftiness of their view of God as " One loving
righteousness," inspired and trained a lofty ideal
of human attainment, nor was the standard ever
lowered, nor the pressure of its insistence ever
relaxed. 4. The possession of these qualities lifted the
prophets far beyond the mere politicians and
counsellors of the court and the nation. They
knew nothing of the modern doggerel, " My country,
right or wrong." They were patriots without
being partisans. In the whole range of universal
history, patriotism has no finer illustration or setting
than the pictures : —
(1) Of Isaiah, voluntarily accepting the indignity
of appearing for the course of three years1 in the
streets of his native Jerusalem, " naked and bare
foot,"2 in order to arouse the public conscience of
his people against the policy of an Egyptian alliance,
advocated and encouraged by the statesmen of
his day.
(2) Or of Jeremiah, described so well by Dr.
Peake as one " whose heart was so exquisitely fitted
1 Isa. xx. 3 ' Isa. xx. 2.

Gbe propbet anb "Reform in 3srael. 133
for love, and to whom a home would have been a
welcome refuge from the scorn and cruelty of
his fellows, doomed to a hfe of loneliness uncheered
by wife or children."1 Yet Jeremiah accepts the
Divine decree, and, loving his nation well, and
longing to save his people, in the hope that they
would repent and return, he deliberately breaks
the earthen bottle in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, as
a token of the destruction about to break up his
beloved Jerusalem and Judah.2
The explanation of it all is, that they loved their
people and their land the more, that they loved
God most of all. They believed in the destiny of
their nation, but always as an instrument of blessing
to others, not as an end in itself. And though it
is not to be expected that they should possess the
international mind and outlook of the better
conscience of our twentieth century, surely the
germ of it is in the logic of their teaching. We
hear the coming music of the universal Gospel in
the exile song and invitation of the prophet : —
" Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of
the earth ; for I am God, and there is none else.
By myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth
from my mouth in righteousness, and shall not
return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every
tongue shall swear."3
Happy the nation whose preachers and guides
carry a similar range of vision, and whose patriotism
is equally unselfish and unrestrained !
1 Jer. xvi. 2. Jeremiah, Century Bible, vol. i. p. 15.
* Jer. xix. 1-10. 3 Isa. xiv. 22-23.

134 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Tiiobern preacher.
II.
The conditions of the time created the need,
and supplied the opportunity for the reforming
zeal of the prophet. We have already incidentally
referred to the changes brought about in Israel
by the transference from the nomadic to the settled
stages of their life, following the conquest and
partition of Canaan,1 and particularly following
the division of the kingdom under Jeroboam.
If we are rightly to appraise the place of the
prophet as a reformer, or to realize the clamant
and growing cry for reform, it will be necessary
to watch this development at closer range, and
trace its effect upon the national temper and morale.
An accompanying advantage of this study will be,
that we shall be touching tendencies closely affect
ing our own time, and always calling for the
prophet's vigilance, insight, and courage.
With the end of David's rule — always the
ideal of Hebrew hope — there passed for ever the
older patriarchal and tribal system under which
Israel's entrance into, and conquest of Canaan,
had been established. So long as the kingdom
was one, the family bond of the nation was, to
some extent maintained. The administration of
justice remained uncorrupted as in the patriarchal
days. The costs of government, and the con
ditions of social life were moderate and simple.
The paternal and personal interest of the king
enabled him to be regarded as the father of his
people. 1 See pp. 47-50.

Gbe propbet anb •Reform in Jsrael. 135
But with Solomon, and especially with the
imperialism, pride, and extravagance of his later
years, all this was brought to an end. The old
yeoman and farmer classes were either starved out,
or bought up by a courtier and commercial section,
growing ever more wealthy and arrogant. With
this serfdom began in Israel, leading to a terrible
oppression of the poor. It is easy to understand
therefore, why Solomon, from being the idol and
the pride of his people, should pass unhonoured
and without regret, leaving the seeds of revolution
among those whose loyalty it would have been
easy to preserve.
Under his successor, Rehoboam, things went
rapidly from bad to worse. Instead of easing
burdens, and seeking to win his people, he imposed
an ever-increasing burden of taxation, and gave
revolution its opportunity. Enormous sums of
money, needed for crying reform, were lavishly
expended by later kings upon the adornment of
the royal capitals of Tirzah and Samaria. And
this example of wicked luxury was copied by the
wealthy, lolling "on their beds of ivory,"1 and
living at ease in the security of their palaces of
Samaria. 2
Until the startling appearance of Amos, who,
with an Elijah-like suddenness and boldness ex
posed the actual condition of things, an outside
observer would have said all was well with Israel.
Trade with foreign countries was booming. Towns
were springing up everywhere. As in England
1 Amos vi. 4. 2 Amos vi. i.

136 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
in the years immediately preceding the close of
the war — 1916-1918 — and for eighteen months
following the Armistice, so in Israel in the days
of Amos, signs of wealth, prosperity, abundance,
were everywhere.
But, as is always the case when material wealth
is regarded as the end of life, appearances were
terribly deceptive. And, as should always be the
case, the actual conditions, as against the apparent,
were made known by God's prophets. In the
light of their vivid and glowing pages, we see " a
people festering with social sores ; cruelty and
inhuman oppression, extortion and injustice were
practised upon every one who was not strong enough
to maintain his rights for himself ; the feasts of
Yahweh were the scenes of excess and indulgence
of every kind ; His priests and prophets were
among the worst offenders. And yet, in spite of
this wholesale immorality, the nation was devoted
to Yahweh, and all the externals of religion, ritual,
offerings, and festivals, were kept up with great
magnificence."1 We hear Amos describingfhow the nobles live
in fine mansions, and fare sumptuously every day,
reclining on couches of ivory and cushions of silk.2
Yet these are the men who " have sold the righteous
for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes ; that
pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the
poor, and lay themselves down beside every altar
upon clothes taken in pledge."3 They " swallow
1 Hamilton; The People of God, vol. i. p. 54.
2 Amos iii. 12; vi. 4-6. 3 Amos ii. 6-8.

Gbe propbet anb "Reform (n Sarael. 137
up the needy, and cause the poor of the land to
fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone,
that we may sell corn ? and the Sabbath that we
may set forth wheat ? making the ephah small,
and the shekel great, and dealing falsely with
balances of deceit ; that we may buy the poor for
silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, and sell
the refuse of the wheat."1
Nor was this shocking condition of things peculiar
to the Northern Kingdom, nor even to the earlier
prophets of the eighth century. Micah complains
that in Judah, the heads of Jacob " pluck off their
skin from off them, and their flesh from off their
bones ; who also eat the flesh of my people ; and
they flay their skin from off them, and break their
bones ; yea, they chop them in pieces.'Wfor the
pot, and as flesh within the caldron."2
" Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house
of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, that
abhor judgement and pervert all equity. They
build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with
iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward,
and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the
prophets thereof divine for money."3
A hundred years later, when Jeremiah prophesied,
things had not improved. This enables us to
measure the enormous task the prophets under
took as the reformers of Israel. What stronger
evidence is needed as to the general corruption of
the nation ? Especially when we remember, that
1 Amos viii. 4-6. " Micah iii. 2-3.
3 Micah iii. 9-1 1.

138 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /iBobern preacber.
this denial of elementary morality was exalted
into a religion, and existed side by side with the
most elaborate ritual !
The pages of Jeremiah are filled with his exposure
of social wrongs : — " For among my people are
found wicked men : they watch, as fowlers lie in
wait ; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage
is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit ;
therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.
They are waxen fat, they shine ; yea, they over
pass in deeds of wickedness : they plead not the
cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they should
prosper, and the right of the needy do they not
judge."1 Yet it is all done under a pretence of religious
zeal, and as though, because they kept up a show of
sacrifice and observance, God will condone im
morality, even as an ordinary Semite deity would !
So Jeremiah again and again warns them : —
" Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple
of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple
of the Lord are these. Will ye steal, murder,
and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn
incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom
ye have not known, and come and stand before
me in this house, which is called by my name,
and say, We are delivered ; that ye may do all these
abominations ? "2
1 Jer. v. 26, 28; xxi. 12; xxii. 3, 13, 16, 17.
2 Jer. vii. 4, 9, 10.

Gbe propbet anb "Reform in Jsrael. 139
III.
This general and rapid survey of the prevailing
low ethical standards of the eighth, seventh, and
sixth centuries before Christ, enables us the better
to understand and appreciate the passionate earnest
ness, the vehemence, the reforming zeal of the
Hebrew prophet. What they witnessed touched
them to the quick. It stirred them to a white heat
of moral indignation. It rendered them entirely
indifferent to questions of personal position or
safety. The apparent hopelessness of the situation
as they saw it, lay in the fact, that while the people
as a whole were indifferent to moral distinctions,
they were excessive in their enthusiasm for religion,
and especially for the ritual of religion.
Outrageous wrong and cruel injustice were con-
,doned if only they sacrificed enough, and paid
their religious dues. The only distinction between
Yahweh and the deities of other nations the
majority of the people either understood or cared
for, was, that Yahweh was their national God.
He was to them precisely what Chemosh was to
Moab, so that the same religious means and even
the same immoral conduct which secured the
favour of Chemosh for Moab, ought to win Yahweh's
favour toward them. And so long as they gave
to Yahweh, their God, what other peoples gave
to their deities, Yahweh would be satisfied, and
what mattered anything beside ?
Out of a corrupt and corrupting theology, a lofty
ethic can never come. To rail against theology,

140 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb the /i&obern preacher.
or in any way to lessen and despise it, in order to
exalt morality on the plea that it is " practical,"
is as philosophically false as it is ethically ruinous.
The morals of Israel were bad, because their view
of God was low. Nor was this debased and de
basing idea of God peculiar to the rank and file
of the people. The pages of the prophets con
clusively prove, that it was shared by kings, priests,
and even the official prophets, to whom quite
naturally the people turned for guidance.
Amaziah the priest of Bethel, was the first to
attempt to silence the fearless Amos.1 Hosea
complains of the priests of the Northern Kingdom : —
" Ye have been a snare at Mizpah, and a net spread
upon Tabor."2 "As troops of robbers wait for
a man, so the company of priests murder in the
way toward Shechem, yea, they have committed
lewdness."3 In Judah, Micah charges upon the " heads of
the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of
Israel," that "they abhor judgement and pervert
all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and
Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge
for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire,
and the prophets thereof divine for money ;
yet will they lean upon Yahweh, and say, Is not
Yahweh in the midst of us ? No evil shall come
upon us."4
The pages of Jeremiah are full of the same
story of moral treachery on the part' of those who
1 Amos vii. 10-17. * Hosea v. 2. a Hssea vi. 9.
* Micah iii. 9-1 1.

Gbe propbet an© "Reform in asrael. 141
should have been the first to give him encourage
ment. Pashhur the priest " smote Jeremiah the
prophet," and added insult to injury by putting
him in the stocks.1 Twice was the life of the
prophet sought ; once by his own townsmen of
Anathoth,2 and once by the priests and prophets.3
Jehoiakim the king burnt the roll of Jeremiah's
prophecies and sought to lay hands on the prophet
himself. *
What more terrible evidence of the moral degra
dation of Israel's leaders could be supplied than
the charge of Jeremiah against them? — "As the
thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house
of Israel ashamed ; they, their kings, their princes,
and their priests and their prophets ; which say
to a stock, Thou art my father ; and to a stone,
Thou hast brought me forth."5
So completely were moral judgments perverted
and degraded, that, knowing they were lying and
glorying in it, they deliberately deceived the people,
crying, " Peace, peace ; when there is no peace,"6
inciting to the wrong of silencing one, whom in their
hearts they knew to be true. " Come and let us
devise devices against Jeremiah ; for the law shall
not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the
wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and
let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not
give heed to any of his words."'
1 Jer. xx. 1, 2. 2 Jer. xi. 18-23. 8 Jer. xxvi. n.
4 Jer. xxxvi. 23-26. s Jer. ii. 26, 27. • Jer. vi. 14.
' Jer. xviii. 18.

142 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dBobern preacher.
What hope could there be for leaders so in
different to elemental questions of right and wrong ?
What prospect, save suffering and disappointment
for a people, whose very religion was a degradation
and a shame ?
It is just here that the true greatness and the
saving ministry of the Hebrew prophet shines forth.
But for the prophet the people of Israel must have
shared the final ruin and oblivion of the heathen
peoples of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Persia.
What else could they expect ? They were as
immoral. Their religion was almost, if not quite,
as degraded. They had willingly followed their
leaders, whose teaching of Yahweh, their God, was
no higher than the teaching of the prophets who
belonged to the " Baals " of surrounding nations.
What could avert the same fate ?
Only the abounding grace of that God whom
they so little understood, whose grace had been
abundantly proved in sending to them, through
a long succession, fearless, discerning men,
passionately loving righteousness and truth, and
who, knowing the consequences of wrong-doing,
" shrank not from declaring the whole counsel of
God."1 The prophets saw that the persistent disobedience
of Israel could end only in calamity and overthrow.
They grieved over it. They sought to avert it,
even as Moses entreated Pharaoh for the deliverance
of his people. " Rising up early and saying, Oh,
do not this abominable thing that I hate,"2 the
1 Acts xx. 27. * Jer. xliv. 4.

Ghe propbet anb "Reform in 3arael. 143
prophets, while not able to prevent the ruin of the
nation, saved religion itself, because they persisted
in declaring a lofty and worthy view of God.
It is in this noble presentation of Yahweh as a
God of Character, that the religion of Israel stands
alone and supreme. This is indeed the secret of
its persistence and ultimate triumph. And the
honour of discerning it and compelling its recogni
tion, belongs to the prophets. It was this view
of God which saved them from being mere visionaries
and idealists. They had no option but to declare
the exceeding righteousness of God, a righteous
ness, " able to declare unto man what is his
thought,"1 a righteousness, that, hating deception
and pretence, always sought some practical and
worthy result.
As a summary of its demands, the quiet dignity
and solemn beauty of Isaiah's eloquence remains
unmatched : — " To what purpose is the multitude
of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord : I am
full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of
fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of
bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye
come to appear before me, who hath required this
at your hand, to trample my courts ? Bring me
no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination
unto me ; new moon and Sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with iniquity and the
solemn meeting. Your new moons and your
appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a trouble
unto tne ; I am weary to bear them. And when
1 Amos iv. 13.

144 Gbe f>ebrew propbet anb tbe flbobern preacher.
ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine
eyes from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers,
I will not hear : your hands are full of blood.
" Wash you, make you clean ; put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease
to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgement, relieve
the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow."1 Such a morality and religion as is there taught
may be rejected. But no rejection, though it may
delay, can prevent its final coronation.
IV.
In the light of this examination, we shall not
be surprised to discover the thoroughness and
completeness of the moral range of the prophets.
Coming to them as it did, from the heights of com
munion with God, their teaching swept the entire
circle of human relationship and human duty.
In this — as should always be the case with God's
prophets — they were far above and beyond their
time. So much is this the case, that only their
intense spirituality, the closeness and constancy
of their communion with God, the absolute capture
of their affection by God, explains it.
Apart from this, we have a break in history with
out precedent or parallel ! How else can it be
understood ? These men were of like passions
with ourselves, susceptible as we are to environ
ment, to custom, to the prevailing habit and view-
1 Isa. i. 11-17.

Gbe propbet anb "Reform In Israel. ms
point of their age. Moreover, they were Easterns,
children of heredity and climate, excitable, with
tendencies to clannishness and narrowness, yet
here, in their ethical teaching, they stride away
beyond any known or conceivable standard, urging
a method of life, which, even for our twentieth
century world, fixes a standard and sets a pace
we may well covet to attain !
Again, let us repeat — for the insistence is for us
essential — the character and sweep of their ethic
draws its inspiration from the loftiness and purity
of their theology. What option had they who
knew and loved a God " of purer eyes than to
behold evil,"1 and that cannot look on " iniquity,"
but to denounce it in any and every form ? The
whole truth of the matter is well stated by Prof.
Jordan : — " For the first time in the history of the
world we find what we call " social morality "
presented in the highest expression of the religious
life, and this is done with remarkable clearness
and boldness in the name of Israel's God."2
It is then, in this study of the prophets as
passionate preachers of righteousness, rather than
as foretellers of the future, that we find their truest
message, not only to their own, but to every suc
ceeding age. This is why, " being dead, they yet
speak." This is why, being so modern, they should
be the close and constant companions of those
who are called to declare " the mind of Christ."3
For the 'Wjrongs they pilloried are still our shame.
The tendencies against which they entreated and
1 Hab. i. 13. 2 Peake' s Commentary, p. 89. » 1 Cor. ii. 16.
L

146 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe flbobem preacher.
warned are our danger still. Their exposure of
the selfish greed and scandalous oppression of the
poor under the cover of religious zeal and sanctity,
is an urgent demand of our own time, seeing that
it is constantly " crucifying the Son of God afresh,"1
and still affords the enemies of the Cross occasion
to blaspheme. The ideal so worthily set forth for
Israel by one of the loftiest of their order, even yet
expresses the purpose of that Kingdom for which
we work and wait : — " Thy people also shall be all
righteous : they shall inherit the land for ever ;
the branch of my planting, the work of my hands,
that I may be glorified."2
(i) An examination of the pages of the prophets
reveals the modernness of these ancient preachers
of righteousness. It enables us to understand
how closely they touched the life of their people,
how thoroughly they knew and understood their
time, and how accurately they set forth the working
of the human heart.
It is a mistake to suppose that they were content
merely to denounce wrong-doing. They did this,
it is true, without fear, and entirely without respect
of persons. And their condemnation covers the
whole category of human sin. " There is nought
but swearing and breaking faith, and killing, and
stealing, and committing adultery,"3 says the
tender-hearted Hosea. " Whoredom and wine
and new wine take away the understanding."4
" How is the faithful city become an harlot," cries
Isaiah, " she that was full of judgement, righteous-
1 Heb. vi. 6. 2 Isa. Ix. 21. 3 Hosea iv. 2, * Hosea iv. 11.

Gbe propbet anb IReform in Jsrael. 147
ness lodged in her, but now murderers."1 The
pages of Amos,2 Micah,3 and the later prophets
Jeremiah,4 Zechariah,5 and Ezekiel,6 are full of
accusation, and unsparingly they expose the moral
degradation of the nation.
(2) But they were much more than the moral
censors and judges of their people and their time.
They sought to be the moral guides and supply
the true standard of life. If, by letting down the
plumb-line of their loftier code, they condemned
the existing structure, they as earnestly, with an
affection and a patience that never wearied, assisted
such as were willing to heed, in uprearing a structure
far more beautiful and enduring.
(3) They taught the " humanness of God," in
that He was far more concerned that they should
be upright and true, considerate and generous to
their fellows, than that they should imagine Him
to be satisfied or appeased with mere burnt-offerings
and empty ritual.7 Implicit in this teaching was
the truth of hirnpn Jbrotherhood, even though —
as might have been expected — it was the brother
hood of Israelitish men. Yet, once stated, it was
impossible it should end there. The brotherhood
of all men was concealed in the acorn of this truth.
(4) So also the modern, and, as it is now called,
the democratic teaching of equality of opportunity,
was latent in their insistent demand for social
1 Isa. i. 21. 2 Amos iii. 10; viii. 5.
3 Micah ii. 11; iii. 10; vi. 10, 11.
* Jer. vii. 6, 9; ix. 2 ; xxii. 17; xix. 4.
5 Zech. v. 3, 4, 8. ' Ezek. ix. 9; xi. 6, 7; xxii. 23-30.
' Amos v. 14, 15, 21-24; ^a. i- x4-
L 2

•48 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flSobern preacber.
justice, and their vehement denunciation of
oppression on the part of the outwardly rich.1
Outside Israel such a demand was not only unheard
of, it was unthinkable. Only as we remember
this contrast, can we adequately measure the moral
superiority of the teaching of the prophets.
And it is only as we keep this teaching before
the thought of our own generation, that we shall
discover the true adjustments of capital and labour.
In his seventh lecture to the students of Yale
University, Sir G. A. Smith argues with irresistible
force, that when and where the historic study of
the prophets has been neglected, ethical teaching
has been pushed into the background. Whenever
interest in such study has revived, " it has in
variably been accompanied by the application of
religion to every human relation, and to all human
conduct."2 The surest way to a speedy and permanent
settlement of the present industrial suspicion and
unrest, will be found in urging, as the prophets
urged, the doctrine of reciprocal duties as well as
reciprocal rights, and equality of opportunity in
the sight of God.
(5) Nor, in seeking the ideal state, as embodying
the noblest patriotism, did the prophets shrink
from the work of rebuking and counselling the
sovereigns and the statesmen of their day. Purity
in governors and in government was for them, the
true expression of religion, and the only patriotism
1 Amos ii. ii, 12 ; Isa. i. 17.
2 Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the O.T., p. 215.

Gbe prophet anb "Reform in Israel. 149
worth fighting for. They would neither have
been deterred nor deceived by the timid cry : —
" No politics in religion." They would have
regarded it as compromising with iniquity, and the
patching up of a false peace.
The long and agonizing contest of Isaiah with
the wicked Ahaz, and with the short-sighted states
men of Jerusalem, who counselled unholy alliances
with Assyria or with Egypt ; the faithful and oft-
repeated " interference " of Jeremiah during the
fateful years of the later monarchy, are outstand
ing samples of a long fine of witnesses, who, with
an Elijah-like fearlessness, placed country before
personal comfort, love of truth before thought of
ease, and the honour and service of God before all.
In so doing, they were the true builders of Empire.
And in such work, they are the models of all who
seek to build the City of God.
(6) Against the dark background of a world
and society polygamous and grossly immoral, the
prophets always insisted upon the solemnity and
sacredness of the marriage tie, the sanctity and
purity of family life. The exquisitely drawn
picture of Hosea, is one of the masterpieces of
literature. All the more, that it is revealed entirely
for vicarious reasons, as enforcing the sacredness
of Israel's bond, as the chosen bride of God. Far
more effective than any oracle, as guarding the
sanctity of the home, is the example of the tender
hearted Hosea, through the shame and sadness
of his own darkened dwelling, illustrating the
tragedy of broken nuptial vows, and showing,

is° Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /lftobern preacher.
through his own unfailing love and repeated for
giveness, the mercy and grace of Him who longed
to win back to purity and honour the Israel He
so dearly loved !
The generally lofty standard of family life among
the Jewish people through all the centuries, has
been often extolled as at once a pattern and a
pride. How could it be otherwise, when, through
all their history they had listened to teaching so
well stated by the anonymous Malachi : —
" The Lord hath been witness between thee
and the wife of thy youth."1 In the presence of
that estimate of the marriage relation, the modern
tendency to weaken the obligations of the marriage
vow, to make divorce cheap and easy, stands
smitten and condemned. No nation can survive
the lowering of family life, or indifference to the
purity of the home.
To sum up. These great teachers of Israel
served their generation faithfully and well. They
were too great indeed for their own time rightly
to appraise them. They spoke to their own people,
and there were some who heard and understood.
Through this faithful " remnant," though the
nation was lost, the true religion was saved.
In the light of our later knowledge, and with
the truer perspective secured to us by the inter
vening centuries, it is for us to pray that we may
not repeat the folly of those who ignored, or mocked,
and refused the witness of these faithful men.
" Being dead, they yet speak." For they had
1 Mai. ii. 10-16.

Gbe propbet anb "Reform in 3erael. 151
laid hold of the eternal things. They declared
truths, which, being eternal, are for us and for all
men, until the last syllable of recorded time. The
real message of the prophets will never grow old.
" While swings the sea, while ^mists the'mountains shroud.
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,
Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit."1
1 Lowell, Bibliolatres, p. 132.

PART II.
THE MODERN PREACHER.

r

" 'TPHE Prophets are not improved off the
1 face of the earth. They never will be.
They will turn up again and again.
You can no more hope to exterminate them
by culture, than you can hope to produce them
by machinery. You have written about these
people : There are no prophets now. It's all
old-world talk. There never will be any more.
No more prophets ! The prophetical function
never stops. Never will stop."
Jessopp : The Coming oj the Friars.

CHAPTER VII.
Gbe Supremacy of Sesus.
" /~* OD, having of old time spoken unto the
\_J. fathers in the prophets, . . . hath at the
end of these days spoken unto us in his
Son."1 In such suggestive and conclusive speech,
the writer of one of the most precious portions of
the New Testament sums up the authority of the
Old, and introduces the greater and final authority
of the New.
Behind both revelations there moves the eternal
purpose, and the redeeming love of God, conse
crating the organ of speech as the instrument by
which He will achieve the ultimate salvation of
the world. It stamps the function of preaching —
the declaring of the mind and heart of God — with
a distinctiveness and a value unshared and un-
wasting. In keeping with this noble and dignifiedjstate-
ment of the Divine movement toward men, is the
declaration of the evangelists, that " Jesus came
preaching the Gospel of God, and saying, The time
is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand :
Repent ye, and believe in the Gospel."2
1 Heb. i. i.
3 Mark i. 14, 15 ; Matt. iv. 17, 23; ix. 35 ; Luke iv. 18, 19.

156 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /ftobern preacher.
Thus did our Lord — alike the Founder and the
Substance of His Gospel — in His own example and
method, establish the vocation of the preacher,
and set His Divine seal to the prophetic (forth-
telling) order of conveying eternal truth. Jesus
commences with preaching. He did not argue
for it, nor discuss an alternative. It is clearly
to Him the essential and the obvious, and His
action is at once authoritative, universal, and
final. In these later days, when there is a tendency
to ignore, or to minimize the place of the preacher,
and the value of the spoken word, setting over
against it as in competition, the power of the pen,
or the appeal of the picture — as though either
could at some time become a substitute — we do
well to mark carefully the significance of the Divine
example. Remembering who Jesus was, the nature and
sweep of His vision and claim, the permanence of
the Kingdom He came to establish, it is incon
ceivable that His quiet assumption of the method
of preaching, can be accepted as an accommodation
to a particular time or people, or as something to
be set aside at any later age, in favour of a method
more effective still.
We must believe that He deliberately selected
the best and final means of making known the
Eternal Mind and Purpose, and that His pattern
remains for ever as the norm and law of His Church.
On a question so vital as the method of propaganda,
the practice of Jesus becomes the permanent law

Gbe Supremacy of Jesus. 157
of Divine ministry, and seals the function of preach
ing with supreme and permanent authority. It
is further noticeable, that, leaving nothing else
in the way of church organization, preaching is
one of the few things for which He made provision,
as He faced the future.1
1. We shall be in a position to estimate more
accurately the value of Jesus' method and example,
if we briefly glance at the world into which He
came. Religion in Israel had become formal,
pedantic, a burden " grievous to be borne."2 Its
interpretation belonged exclusively to a pro
fessional class who demanded " such respect to
their sayings, that they were to be absolutely
believed, even if they were to declare that to be
at the right hand, which was at the left, or vice
versa."3 In their origin indeed, the " Scribes " contributed
a most necessary and valuable service to the com
munity. It must never be forgotten that we owe
to them, in great part, the preservation of the
precious documents of the Old Testament. The
student of this history stands in reverent awe as
he watches the brooding Spirit of God, raising up
and endowing in those far-away, dark times, patriots
like Nehemiah, and men of letters like Ezra, so
that the priceless heritage of lawgiver, prophet
and singer, forming the chief part of the sacred
canon, may not be lost.
1 Mark vi. 7-12 ; Luke ix. 1-6 ; Matt, xxviii. 16-20 ; 1 Cor.
i. 17, 18, 21-24.
2 Matt, xxiii. 4 ; Luke xi. 46.
3 Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus, vol. i. p. 94.

158 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfcobern preacber.
Ezra — spoken of as a " ready scribe in the law
of Moses,"1 having "set his heart to seek the law
of the Lord and to do it, and to teach in Israel
statutes and judgments,"2 — stands as among the
first and best of a great succession. For two
hundred years or more these scholars — the " wise,"
the " men of understanding " of Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes — were employed in copying, editing,
and interpreting the sacred documents, thus assist
ing the cause of permanent religion, and acting
as a defence against the national tendency to
decline. But gradually, during the Greek period, and
particularly under the persecutions of Antiochus
Epiphanes, the Scribes became mere legalists and
jurists, concerned entirely with the letter, caring
nothing for the spirit of the law.
The testimony of so scholarly, and yet so truly
Jewish a writer as Montefiore, is significant and
final, and enables us to see the process which led
to the deplorable decay of refigion in the first
century of our era : — " Because the law was in
great part a written code, and few possessed it,
it needed oral explanations. Laws needed other
laws, ordinances required ordinances. Explana
tion and exemplification, instances and illustrations,
produced fresh commandments. The law said
that no work was to be done upon the Sabbath.
But what was work ? Human ingenuity made
elaborate — painfully, foolishly elaborate — deter
minations and definitions of work. So one simple
1 Ezra vii. 6. 2 Ezra vii. io.

Gbe Supremacg ot Jesus. 159
prohibition ended in many detailed and sometimes
ludicrous prohibitions. This process, too, was
going on when Jesus lived and looked forth with
His clear and penetrating eye upon the religious
life around Him. The Judaism of the first century
was, therefore, a " legal " religion, and its
" legalism " was on the increase."1
If we turn to look at the world of learning outside
Judaism, we mark the same absence of either the
prophetic insight, sincerity or speech. Like the
religious world, philosophy, research, the quest
of truth, had become formal, lost in words, caring
nothing for reality.
The more serious and highly moral schools of
Grecian thought, which had marked the teaching
of Plato and Socrates in the fourth century before
Christ, had given place to the useless and even
foolish discussions of men utterly unworthy of the
seats they occupied in Athens and Alexandria.
We see at a glance the frivolous, cynical, superficial
life of Athens — formerly the world's chief seat of
learning — in the striking comment of Luke, as he
describes the typical Athenian of his day : — " Now
all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning
there spent all their time in nothing else, but
either to tell or to hear some new thing."2 No
wonder that such superficiality " mocked "3 the
serious spirit and profound learning of Paul,
and knew no better than to speak of him as
a "babbler."4
1 Peake's Commentary, p. 620.
2 Acts xvii. 21. 3 Acts xvii. 32. 4 Acts xvii. 18,

160 Gbe "Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /iBobern preacher.
2. To this world of unreality — the ceaseless
hair-splitting of the scribe, and the wordy, but
useless discussions of the wise — Jesus came preach
ing, telling forth in speech of exquisite simplicity
and earnestness, and with unparalleled " authority,"
the thoughts of God upon everything that vitally
concerned man.
And He did it in such a way that the better
thought, and the deeper consciousness alike of the
individual and of the nation — factors always to
be reckoned with, and constituting the basis of
human appeal — awaking to reality once more,
associated Him with the Messianic ideal of long
centuries as " that Prophet,"1 or still more definitely,
with two prophets, Elijah and Jeremiah,2 honoured
and revered as among their noblest and best.
It was a worthy tribute, not only to the out
standing position of the prophets, but to the
surpassing greatness of Jesus, who, reviving the
prophetic method of telling forth Divine things,
at the same time so enlarged and crowned their
work, as to combine in His own unique personality
their distinctive qualities. While He so completed
and fulfilled their varied ministry, that a later
seer is able to write with absolute truth, " the
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."3
3. The practice of Jesus, let us repeat, sufficiently
indicates and establishes His intention. His
method sets forth the enduring order. He did
not ignore the written word. During the long
1 John iv. 25, 26; John i. 21.
2 Matt. xvi. 14. 3 Rev. xix. 10.

Gbe Supremacy of 3*~ ,0f l6
years of quiet training in Nazareth, as .+ure *
history abundantly proves, He had dihfe^.;on
studied the sacred rolls, and " knew the Scriptures '
from His youth. By the " sword of the Spirit,"
which is the "Word of God,"1 He successfully
resisted the repeated assaults of the tempter,
instantly replying to each attack with material
from that " Book of the Law," 2 He so amply ful
filled, and which had been His " meditation day
and night."3
What is noticeable is, that in an age of Scribes,
and with abundant material to His hand, Jesus
neither wrote, nor laid the emphasis on writing.
So far as we know, He wrote only once, and then
it was in dust.4 Equally striking is the fact, that
at the inception and inauguration of His wider
ministry at Pentecost, transforming the " upper
room " into a temple like to the scene of Isaiah's
call,5 He uses the symbol of " tongues like as of
fire,"6 once more consecrating human speech as
the organ of the Spirit, and gaining forthwith through
Peter's preaching the " first-fruits " of an unending
harvest. This deliberate selection of the prophetic method
as the primary and permanent vehicle of conveying
truth, is second only in importance to the truth
itself. Nor is it conceivable that any change of
circumstances at any time or among any people,
will ever reduce it to a subordinate position.
1 Eph. vi. 17.
2 Deut. viii. 3'; Exod. xx. 4.
3 Psa. i. 2. * John viii. 6.
6 Isa. vi. 1-8. • Acts ii. 3. U

160 Gbe ibebrew rpropbet anb tbe fliobern preacher.
2. To .J1 impression of the importance Jesus
hair-srned to the spoken word is heightened, as we
"'pass to the significance of His action in calling
and training the first preachers of His gospel. It
is hardly too much to say that in nothing is the
supremacy of Jesus as the King of men, and the
Lord of life made more evident. More eloquently
than any formal announcement, it declares the
Divine intention of universal and permanent rule.
Alike in the number and personnel of the twelve,
we see how completely Jesus, while fulfilling the
old, transcends the nationalism of His race.
And where did He find the first leaders, the
nucleus of His new Israel ? Not among the pre
cipitous heights, the deep gorges, or the gloomy
passes of Judea, standing off as it does from the
great world roads of travel, and, where life, though
intense, was cramped ; its outlook always parochial,
and its temper always conservative. Nor, as an
ordinary leader would have done, in its religious
capital of Jerusalem, where a stilted, prejudiced,
and tyrannous ecclesiasticism, made the insertion
of new ideas and methods always unwelcome
and almost impossible.
If the generally accepted view is correct, that
Judas Iscariot — the man of Kerioth — was the only
apostle chosen from Judea, it adds deep significance
to the study of the man, and to the fact that, of
the twelve, he was the solitary failure.1 'There
was a Kerioth in Moab, and some scholars accept
identification with it, though the probabilities are
that the home of Judas was in Judea.
1 John vi. 70, 71.

Gbe Supremacg of Jesus. 163
The gloomy, narrow, conservative nature of
Judas, his choice, development, and rejection,
offer a study of profound interest. Won at first
by the intense earnestness of Jesus, loving goodness
and longing for the redemption of his nation, Judas
had in him the making of an earnest and very
successful apostle. With the gospels in our hands,
we are able to trace, as the weeks and months
passed, the disappointment of Judas with the ideals
and programme of Jesus, as these were gradually
unfolded in the closer companionship of the apostolic
circle. We mark his refusal to open and expand
to the catholicity and spirituality of the Son of
universal Man. We see at length, how, selfishly
and wilfully nursirfg his national programme,
growing more and more apart from the Master,
taking counsel with the enemies of Jesus, he passed
from the possible lover to the actual traitor, and
to the basest treachery.
It was in open, sunny-faced Galilee, with its
spacious roadways, like the Esdraelon plain, linking
East and West ; with its easy access, just below
Nazareth, to the Mediterranean Sea, pictorially,
yet very truly described as the marriage-ring of
nations ; and particularly at the head quarters
of the busy Lake, then a famous industrial centre
in constant touch with Rome, here, among its
humble, truth-seeking, sincere-minded fishermen
and other workers, that Jesus discovered, called,
and equipped the pathfinders and prophets of His
kingdom. And, since they were accepted and transformed M 2

164 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Iftobern preacher.
by the wondrous grace and spell of Jesus, who
amongst men may not be exalted to the highest
rank ? In the presence of Jesus, and for the
urgent need of our modern life, is not the longing
of Moses a possibifity within reach, " that all the
Lord's people may be prophets " P1
True children of nature were these men. Un
trained, rough, head-strong, intensely clannish,
any ordinary observer would have said of either
of them, these men are the most unpromising and
unlikely instruments of a movement destined for
universal rule. The study of their characteristics
enables us to see in their total, a miniature
humanity. Every mood, trait, or temper known
to us is represented in the twelve. And as we
reverently follow the transforming action of Jesus
in the changed disposition, the loftier character,
and the unselfish service of these men, raising them
from obscure positions to be heralds and apostles
of His redeeming purpose, we cease to be baffled
before any of the marvellous works of Jesus. We
feel that His nature miracles are trifling compared
to these life miracles, the glory of His power in
building character. He who made of these other
wise unknown residents of Galilee, " fishers of
men,"2 and apostles of the faith, must be Divine.
The only cause equal to this effect is the first cause
of all, even God !
5. When we pass from the call and invitation of
Jesus to these men, to consider the intimacies and
confidences of constant companionship which
1 Num. xi. 29, 2 Mark i. 17.

Gbe Supremacy? of Jesus. 165
followed, we pass into the Holy of holies of the
Spirit. The words of our earliest gospel are deeply
significant : — " And he appointed twelve, that
they might be with him, and that he might send
them forth to preach."1
The nature of their training explains their sub
sequent transformation, and supplies the secret
of their ultimate power. Ere they are allowed
the privilege and responsibility of speech, they are
first admitted into the sacred college of residence
with Him ! Think of all that meant for them,
and means still ! How more weightily could the
emphasis of Jesus be declared, alike as to the solemn
sanctity of the work of preaching, and the special
character of the preacher's equipment ?
The words of Mark just quoted should be deeply
pondered by every candidate for the pulpit, whether
lay or ministerial. Before and beyond any in
tellectual attainment, the work of preaching
presupposes seclusion with Jesus. This always
first and chief. The " laying on of hands " that
matters, the really valid ordination, is the pressure
of the " hands pierced for us." Nor, until we
know and feel the steady and constant impact of
His personality upon our own, waiting in profound
reverence for Him as lovers, living with Him in
the secret places of His love, can we expect to know
His mind, or understand the treasures of grace
He desires us to make known to others.
This is not to undervalue the work of the study,
nor is it to depreciate the place of true scholarship.
1 Mark iii. 14.

'66 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacber.
It is rather to offer to that side of the preacher's
work an unfailing incentive. It is deeply and
permanently true, that the longing for, and the
effort to secure the highest intellectual efficiency,
will be in exact proportion to the intensity and
fulness of our love for the Person of Jesus. To be
" with Him," makes the preacher evermore a
student, and always the student of the highest
and best. The effective antidote against intellectual
stagnation is abiding fellowship with Jesus. The
true goad to study is the apostle's longing to " know
him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings."1 And in all this,
since Jesus has declared, " Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world,"2 the twelve
possessed no advantage not equally open to disciples
still, with all it involves of inquity, explanation,
correction, and ever-expanding vision.
The significance of this action of Jesus in calling
the twelve to be " with Him," demands yet closer
examination. For through them, and through
what they came to be under His training, we may
read His deepest thought and understand His
permanent longing. Crude, bigoted, even fanatical,
impulsive, retiring, open-hearted, restrained, even
morose, proud, overbearing, uncharitable, trans
formed, triumphant, it would not be possible, in
any time or place, to gather a company of men
more representative of our common humanity,
than the men honoured of Jesus " as the founders
1 Phil. iii. 10.
2 Matt, xxviii. 20.

Gbe Supremacy of Jesus. 167
and the foundation of His Church."1 Looking upon
the men as they were, and as the Master made them,
we may reverently and thankfully say, " This was
from the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes."2
Approximately, and always allowing for modifi
cations necessary in any human characterization,
the twelve may be classified into three main
groups : —
(1) The Boanerges Group, representing men
passion-filled, strong, built on spacious lines. To
these belong the leaders of men, the daring ad
venturers and pathfinders among men. In this
group we find : — Peter, the impulsive enthusiast,
John, the whole-hearted, James, the martyr, and
Andrew, the quiet worker.
(2) The Reflective and Critical Group, repre
senting the persistent quest of the mind for
satisfaction and reality, the longing for truth, the
earnest and legitimate demands of the reason. In
this group we find : — Philip, the questioner,
Nathanael, the guileless and wondering, Thomas,
the despondent, and Matthew, the social.
(3) The Hebraistic and Practical Group, repre
senting the narrow, even the fanatical adherents
of precedent, the conservative, afraid, lest in accept
ing the new, we may not do justice to the old. In
this group, we find : — James, the practical, Simon
Zelotes, the zealot or the zealous, Jude, the hearty,
and last, always a long last, Judas Iscariot, the
traitor. 1 Fairbairn's Studies in Religion, p. 304.
2 Mark xii. 11.

1 68 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
Again, let us say, the classification of the twelve
here attempted lays no claim to accuracy, shading
off as human nature always tends to do, into almost
infinite variety, yet it serves as a general basis for
the study of the men Jesus called to be " with Him."
It is as we watch the action of Jesus in and over
these men, that we find our strongest argument for
His supremacy. Diverse as the apostles were,
with scarcely anything in common when they were
first " apprehended " by Jesus, retaining under
the culture of grace, their own individuality, yet
they were welded and fused into a passion for
Jesus, which, particularly after Pentecost, fitted
them to go forth as the heralds of the Kingdom.
There is nothing in history like the changes Jesus
wrought in the society of these first witnesses,
unless, thanks to His holy name, it is the similar
changes He has been producing ever since, and
never on a larger scale than now !
These are the real miracles, of which all others
are small hints, types, and symbols. We have
been so long accustomed to associate the miraculous
with action in the realm of the physical, that it is
not easy to escape the slavery to that view. What
is the healing of a body to wholeness of life ? The
distinctive miracles of Jesus are spiritual. And
this living, penetrating, permanent power of Jesus
in the realm of human motive and conduct, is His
supreme and unanswerable claim to world-wide
Messiahship !
In these men, let every preacher, every disciple
hopefully say, it is open for the world to see what

Gbe Supremacy of Jesus. 169
companionship with Christ is capable of doing.
The wonder lies, not in the doings of the men, but
in the making of the men themselves. The inspirer
is more than those inspired, especially where, as
here, Jesus had to create the capacity to receive
His inspiration, and the ability and strength to
realize His ends. In Him, and with Him, the
weakest of us may be mightier than we dream, the
sense of insufficiency gives place to the conscious
ness of easy strength.
6. The emphasis of Jesus upon the proclamation
of the Kingdom as His appointed method of ex
tension, is further seen in the sending forth of the
seventy.1 It marks a striking development in
the plan of Jesus, and plainly indicates His wider
objective. It is deeply and permanently significant,
that our Lord links up this new development with
the ever-widening vision of the vastness of the
work to be accomplished, and the need of constant
appeal to Heaven that " labourers " may be raised
up and " thrust forth " into harvest fields so
" plenteous."2 Would the preaching office ever
lack for suitable candidates, if the Church sufficiently
yearned over the world in need, and constantly
kept before her young people the sense of obligation
to go out and meet it ?
But to return. When the twelve were sent
forth, they were specifically directed to limit their
ministry to their own people,3 nor do we find that
they crossed over, even to the half-Gentile districts
on the east side of Jordan. Their ministry and
1 Luke x. 1-9. ¦ Luke x. 2. 3 Matt. x. 5-6.

170 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe rtiiobern preacher.
office belonging to a more permanent order, and
their " college training " in the day by day con
versations with Jesus running its course, their
wider commission would come later.1
The indications of our Lord's intention — not
without its meaning for the twelve — are to be found
in the fact, that while the directions to the seventy
are parallel, almost identical with those issued
earlier,2 no such restriction of area is laid down
for them. They are to go " into every city and
place whither he himself was about to come."3
And, as we know, His ministry compassed the
border land of Tyre and Sidon on the extreme
north-west,4 and the east side of Jordan, covering
the districts of Gadara and Decapolis.5 Gradually,
as they were able to understand it, they must share
His own sense of Divine pressure, " I must preach
the good tidings of the Kingdom of God to the
other cities also ; for therefore was I sent,"6 words
which could only culminate in a world-wide passion
of preaching.
7. It is however, when we come to examine the
substance of Jesus' preaching, and reverently
follow, in the hope of imitating, His exquisite method
and spirit, that the supreme place of Jesus as the
preacher of His own kingdom, shines forth. The
wise preacher, desiring to excel, will constantly
refresh himself with this vision, and so preserve,
1 Matt, xxviii. 19; Acts ii. 17-21.
2 Matt. x. 1-15 : Luke ix. 1-6; x. 1-11.
3 Luke x. 1.
•Mark vii. 24-30. 6Mark v. 1-17 ; vii, 31-37.
8 Luke iv. 43.

Gbe Supremacy of Jesus. 171
from the deadness of routine and habit, the glow
and the glory of his ideal.
The contents of our Lord's message, like the
two arms of His uplifted and redeeming Cross,
concern God and man, and His one, unvarying aim
is, to compass their happy and permanent union.
He touches the heights in God. He sounds the
depths in man, and presently, as is always the case
where the two themes are worthily presented,
deep answers to deep, and the human heart responds
to the ever solicitous, outstretched love of the
Eternal Father.
Remembering the insignificant size of our Gospels
— anyone of them could be read through at one
sitting — remembering too that they must contain
only fragments of the teaching lasting well on to
three years ; remembering further, that the Gospels
duplicate the record of the same gracious words
and deeds, we can only wonder and adore the
range, and the completeness of the Master's teaching
as we have received it.
So viewed, the Gospels are the marvel of
literature, and stand alone. Little as they are in
bulk, they are, as their subject, infinite in their
influence and permanent value. For Jesus is their
subject. As Son of God, Son of man, He sums up
in His own unique personality, all we need to know
of both. This is only to state what Paul, in his
own philosophy of redemption has set forth with
such inimitable beauty : — " For in him were all
things created, in the heavens and upon the earth,
things visible and invisible, whether thrones or

172 Gbe Hebrew propbet anb tbe rtftobern preacher.
dominions or principalities or powers ; all things
have been created through him and unto him ;
and he is before all things, and in him all things
consist."1 And it follows that the preacher who will be true
to His Master, and at the same time answer the
deepest need of his own age, will make Jesus the
centre of his preaching. In every sermon, some
aspect of the Divine face will be seen, some echo
of the gracious Divine appeal will be heard. Our
gospels contain everything we need to know of God,
for Jesus Himself is Deity translated into terms of
life. They tell us all that we need to know of man,
his weakness and strength, his sin and its cure,
his failure and triumph. While life, duty, and
the future, are so set forth, that no conceivable
relationship is left without guidance, no ignorance
unillumined by unfailing light, no despair or sorrow
uncheered by the assurance of^feternal day.
In keeping with the vastness and completeness
of Christ's range of theme, is the wonder and beauty
of His method and spirit, as He unfolded the rich
treasure of His Gospel. He is in all this much
more than the substance of the Preacher's message.
He is the supreme and final model of the Preacher's
method. The comment of our earliest Gospel indicates the
delight and charm which marked alike the manner
and the matter of His preaching. " The common
people — the multitude — heard him gladly," says
Mark.2 Our latest Gospel bears ample testimony,
1 Col. i. 16, 17. s Mark xii. 37.

Gbe Supremacg of Jesus. 173
from quite another point of view, to the same
impressive and wondrous style of Jesus. " Never
man so spake,"1 said the officers, excusing to their
employers their failure to arrest Jesus. Men
accustomed to the rough work of handling men
were held off by an awe and impressiveness in
Jesus, they were quite unable to explain.
Luke supplies a vivid picture of the way Jesus
impressed His audience as He opened His ministry
at Nazareth. The preacher in search of the best
method will dwell upon it often, and always with
profit: — "And all bare him witness, and wondered
at the words of grace which proceeded out of his
mouth."2 In language always easily grasped, because the
language of daily life, Jesus so declared the good
news of His Kingdom, as to compel attention, even
where, through the stringency of His demand, He
failed to secure obedience. Using the figures,
scenes, and appliances of home and work, of love
and life, placing Himself at the level where He
could find the point of contact, He so vividly and
skilfully set before the mental and spiritual vision
of His audience the far-away things of the Divine,
as to make it almost the tangible, and always the
real. As one who " knew what was in man,"3
and all that belonged to life, and whose one aim
was to link all up, as it ought to be linked with
God, He "taught with authority,"4 and so taught
that His audiences " were astonished, and said,
Whence hath this man this wisdom ? "5
1 John vii. 46. 2 Luke iv. 22. * John ii. 25.
4 Matt. vii. 29. 6 Matt. xiii. 54.

174 Gbe ftebrew propbet anb tbe rtftobern preacher.
How wistfully and constantly should the
preacher, sent forth by his Lord on the same glorious
errand, to win men, prayerfully seeking " wisdom
of him who giveth liberally,"1 seek also the
winsomeness of manner and grace of speech, by
which, even when declaring the sterner truths of
God's judgments, he should " by the manifestation
of the truth commend himself to every man's
conscience in the sight of God."2
8. Unaided and unaccompanied, any man's heart
may fail within him as he faces this stupendous
work. Often indeed, as it is, and when he has
done his best, he will be oppressed by the sense
of his own unfitness. In all of which experience,
he shares the burden of the prophets who have gone
before him. In the nature and the exactions of
its demand, the prophet's office has no competitor
nor equal. The world offers no vocation so vast,
so exhausting, so clamant, yet so attractive, as the
work of preaching.
But let every preacher be encouraged as he re
members that his vocation was the chosen vocation
and the unfailing delight of his Lord. Let him
remember further as he seeks the varied equipment
to its effective discharge, and as he prayerfully
prepares his message, how his Master went the
lonely way of long tarrying with the Father, and
how patiently He trained those whom He called
to be " with Him," in their art. And as, at length,
he faces the tremendous responsibilities of its
worthy utterance, let the preacher remember most
1 James i. 5. 2 2 Cor. iv. 2.

Gbe Supremacy of Jesus. 175
of all, that there stands with him " One who is alive
for evermore,"1 whose pierced hand holds the keys
of all kingdoms, and whose generous " well-done "2
never fails to encourage the heart of those who
faithfully serve.
1 Rev. i. 18. 2 Matt. xxv. 21.

CHAPTER VIII.
ftbe Christian lftropbets.
ACCEPTING for our present study the definition
of " prophecy as inspired preaching,"1 it
is just what might have been expected that
the triumph of Jesus, who, as we have seen,2 first
came " preaching the Kingdom of God," should —
through the wonder of Pentecost — find expression
in an order of prophetic utterance so unusual and
spontaneous, as to recall and fill out the old prophecy
of Joel : — " And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; and
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your
old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall
see visions ; and also upon the servants and upon
the handmaids in those days will I pour out my
spirit."3 The study of origins is always an absorbing
interest, the study of primitive Christianity the
most absorbing of all. We feel again the thrill
and glow of a new consciousness of power, and
such an exuberance of joy as made silence im-
1 Peake' s Commentary, pp. 647, 844.
2 See pp. 155-7.
3 Joel ii, 28, 29.

Gbe Christian propbets. 177
possible. The atmosphere is free and bracing.
Carried along by these gracious tides of the Spirit,
untrammelled as yet by organization and officialism,
the universal programme of Jesus is fairly launched
forth upon the. world under the highest sanctions,
sustained by the deep convictions, the enthusiastic
affection and the unrestrained eloquence of first
hand witnesses..
It is not without deep significance, that modern
discussion is once more actively engaged with the
origins of Christianity, and that the problems of
early church organization are commanding the
eager attention of devout scholars. Associated
with this work of re-investigation, are the intensely
practical and living questions of Christian unity,
and the prevalent feeling that we are facing a new
era of expansion and world-wide Christian advance.
It does not fall within our province to discuss
these questions here. The discovery of such a
remarkable document- as the Didache\ or " The
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," and now, the
new situations created for us by the upheaval
of the. Great War, are compelling us to re-examine
the simplicities of the years immediately following
Pentecost. These may serve as partial expla
nations. May it not be reverently urged, as a
deeper explanation, philosophically and spiritually
more accurate, that they are rather proofs of
that never-absent, always-guiding Spirit of God,
pressing forward the Church in these new days to
apprehend the larger truths of the Kingdom, in
order to the achievement of those " greater N

i73 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dlioDern preacher.
Works " by which the Kingdom may the more
quickly come ?
But to return. Jesus had formulated no church
order, nor had He elaborated rules either as to
methods or position. From the first, " the spirits
of the prophets are subject to the prophets,"1 that
is to say, God-inspired men will be their own
mentors, holding court over themselves and their
words, exercising becoming self-restraint, so as
neither to grieve the brooding Spirit of God, nor
give occasion of offence to men. It is of enormous
significance, that, so far as externals were con
cerned, Jesus entrusted the entire fortunes of His
religion to the loyalty of lovers. Hence the spon
taneity, the spiritual ecstasy and even rapture of
the Pentecostal period, creating the conditions
always favourable to the fuller understanding of
the Divine heart, and the prophetic declaration of
the Divine mind. Hence too, the unwasting zeal,
the unfettered action, and — let us longingly add —
the unrestrained ingathering, by which " the Lord
added to them day by day those that were being
saved."2 Would not such experiences of the
free day of the Spirit, constantly ensure for us
similar gracious results ?
It was inevitable that, as the enthusiasm of the
earliest Pentecostal experiences came into contact
with the conservatism and prejudice within the
Jewish Church, and the mass of heathenism and
indifference of that old Roman world outside, and
particularly as the necessities of organization arose,
1 i @»r. xiv. 32. ? Acta ii. 47.

Gbe Christian prophets. 179
such a free ahd unrestrained ministry as that of
the apostles and prophets would be liable to serious
and even gross abuses. This was indeed what
happened, as we shall see later. Evidences of it
are traceable in Paul's repeated references to' the
nfeed of order in the growing community of
Christians.1 It is however a tribute to the persistence of the
prophetic spirit and ministry, that, long after what
has been described as the " triumph in the primitive
Church of the ministry of office over the fninistry
of enthusiasm," we find a mdst fitting and delight
ful unconventionality of method ahd freedom Of
movement in those received and honoured as the
prophets of the Lord.
Even as the Hebrew prophet spoke under the
consciousness of Divine pressure, so the earlitest
New Testament picture of these " speakers for
God " reveals the same Divine authority and
closeness of communion. Fresh from the solitude
and training of the wilderness, John— the prophet
of thg Most High,2 like another Elijah flinging hirh-
self unannounced upon Israel^-canie' " preaching
the baptism of repentance1 unto remission of sins."3
Zacharias, breaking down the old division of priest
and prophet, under the compelling ministry of the
Holy Spirit,4 bursts forth into ecstatic and
prophetic utterance concerning JesUs. Simeon,
the " righteous and devout,"5 under a similar
pressure, in the act of blessing, declares concerning

1 1 Cor. xiv. 23-33, 4°- ! Luke i. 76. s Mark i. 4.
1 Luke i. #7. * Luke ii. 25.

N 2

180 Gbe fljebrew prophet anb the iliobem preacher.
Jesus the sorrow out of which will come the greater
revelation.1 Anna — a prophetess — as representing
the womanhood of the new order, " spake of him
to all them that were looking for the redemption
of Jerusalem."2
When we pass from the Divinely-chosen heralds
belonging to the dawn of the new order, to those
who, after Pentecost, continued the holy testimony,
we find the same freedom from official restraint,
the same opportunity to follow the obvious pointr
ing of the Holy Spirit. As we move through all
the stir and expansion of the Acts, we breathe an
atmosphere of unrestrained liberty, altogether
favourable to the exercise of the prophetic gift,
in the direct inter-relation and communion of the
human with the Divine. Hence we have the
record of prophets in Jerusalem, Judas or Barsabbas
and Silas, " chief men among the brethren," " being
themselves also prophets,"3 and of prophets " who
in these days came down from Jerusalem unto
Antioch,"4 which forthwith became the capital
of Gentile Christianity. In and from this new
centre, Agabus,5 Barnabas, Simeon Niger, Lucius,
and Manaen,6 fulfil their prophetic ministry, . all
of them, in the characteristic language of the Acts,
" signifying by the Spirit,"7 or " being set apart
by the Holy Ghost."8
, And of this list, greatest of all, the writer of the
wondrous Apocalypse, described by the angel as
1 Luke ii. 34-35. 'Luke ii. 36, 38.
3 Acts xv. 22, 3.2. • Acts xi. 27. 5 Acts xi. 28.
• Acts xiii. 1. ' Acts xi. 28. 8 Acts xiii. 2.

Gbe Christian prophets. 1S1
one "with thy brethren the prophets,"1 who,
"being in the Spirit,"2 writes concerning that
"testimony of Jesus (which) is the spirit of
prophecy."3 How profoundly significant and instructive, as
indicating undreamed of possibilities for the Church,
setting forth as it does, the picture of a true
Theocracy, God's will finding free and unhindered
expression through willing and surrendered lives !
It is easy to understand that rapid expansion
would call for organization, and with the growth
of officialism the human element would necessarily
come more prominently into view. As early as
the appointment of the seven,4 we mark the first
effort of the Church as an organization. During
the lifetime of Paul, and in the far-flung line of
churches stretching across Asia and Europe even
on to Rome, we recognize that the work of ad
ministration was essential alike for purposes of
consolidation and expansion. We are not, surprised
therefore to find such officers as " bishops and
deacons " recognized and saluted in a late, perhaps
the last letter of Paul.5 Yet for a long time sub
sequent to the rise of the official class, the freedom
we have noted as belonging to the charismatic
ministry, i.e., the "ministry of gift" bestowed by
God, as distinguished from the " ministry of office,"
conferred by man, remained unchallenged. In
keeping with this, throughout Paul's letters, when
1 Rev. xxii. 9. See. also Revelation, International Critical
Comrn. vol. i. Intro., pp. 39, 43,
2 Rev. i. 10. 3 Rev. xix. 10.
' Acts vi. 1-6. 8 Philipp. i. I.

isa Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /iftobem preacher.
dealing with ranks, and gifts, and offices in the
Church, while the lists themselves vary, the pro
phetic always takes rank with the apostolic.1
As supplying confirmation and illustration of
the New Testament portrait of the Christian
prophet, and at the same time enlarging it, we
may again refer a little more at length to the dis
covery and contents of " The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles." The testimony of Harnack
to the importance of this fragment is worth
quoting : — " ^Vhat the Didache has done for us is
to, supply a missing link in the history of the sub-
apostolic age."
This valuable manuscript was discovered by
Bryennios, a bishop and metropolitan of the Ortho
dox Eastern Church in 1873, in the Jerusalem
Convent in Cpnstantinople. It probably belongs
to the early years of the second century.
Beneath the quaintly definite, even stringent
tests by which the apostles and prophets were
estimated and judged, a study of this document
enables us to understand better the influence they
exercised, and the esteem in which they were held.
We are further able to estimate more accurately,
not only the rapid extension of Christianity through
out the Empire, but the extraordinary linking up
and welding of the scattered churches into a
unity, before which ultimately the solid mass of
heathenism was compelled to give way. We dis
cover too, that these apostles and prophets were
itinerating evangelists, going from place to place,
1 1 Cor. xii. 28 ; Rom. xii. 6-8 ; Ephes. ii. 20; iii. 5, ; iv. 11.

Gbe Christian prophets. 183
from one Christian community to another, preaching
the Word, instructing converts, inspiring, com
forting, and reproving as the need required. " It
would be impossible to exaggerate the significance
of these travelling apostles, prophets, and teachers.
It is true that we have few records of their activity,
and that their names have nearly all perished ;
but the general results of their work are very
apparent, and the few references we have to them
show how numerous and how diligent they must
have been."1
That such a travelling ministry as the Didache
describes would be abused is easily conceivable.
Men so honoured as these apostles, prophets, and
teachers were, would be the envy of the un
scrupulous, and their imitators would impose upon
the warm-hearted and generous disciples of the
scattered churches. It is indeed clear, alike from
the pages of the New Testament, 2 and the safeguards
laid down in the Didache, that such false prophets
were very numerous, and that they constituted a
real danger to the growing Christian community.
These safeguards may appear to us quaint and
even crude, yet it is certain they were the outcome
of immediate necessity, the fruit of many a painful
experience. As over against that, let it be re
membered, that the very severity of the tests they
applied to their prophets, reveals an accurate under-
Standing of what the religion required, and a resolute
1 McGiffert's, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age.
p. 641.
* 1 Johm iv. 1 ; 3 Pet. ii. 1-3.

1 84 Gbe "fcebrew propbet anb the rfftobern preacher.
purpose to preserve the loftiness of its ideal. In
all this, these early Christians are our pattern still !
What they insisted upon from their teachers, was
the exhibition of the spirit of Jesus. Anything
contrary to that, stamped them as false !
Hospitality for these travelling evangelists was
expected of the churches visited, and most explicit
directions are laid down : —
" Now concerning the Apostles and Prophets,
according to the decree of the gospel, so do ye.
Let every apostle that cometh to you be re
ceived as the Lord ; but he shall not stay save
for one day ; but if there be necessity, the next
day also ; but if he stay three, he is a false
prophet. And let the Apostle when he departs
take nothing save bread (to last him) till he
reaches his night's lodging. But if he ask for
money, he is a false prophet. But not every
one that speaketh in spirit is a Prophet, but
(only) if he have the ways of the Lord ; from
their ways then shall the false prophet and
the Prophet be known; And every Prophet,
though he teach the truth, if he doeth not
the things that he teacheth, is a false prophet.
But every Prophet, approved, genuine, who
doth (something) for a worldly mystery of the
Church, yet not teaching others to do as much
as he doth himself, shall not be judged of you ;
for he hath his judgement with God. For
even so did the ancient prophets also. But
whosoever saith in spirit : Give me money
or any other things — ye shall not listen to

Gbe Christian prophets. 1S5
him : but if he tell you to give on behalf of
others that have need, let no man judge him."1
While apostles were expected to itinerate, and
not reside in any given church or community, it
was open to the prophet to do either. As a settled
pastor, he occupied the highest place of honour
in the congregation. He officiated in the Eucharist
as a high-priest; and while others were expected
to confine themselves to a prescribed formula of
prayer, the prophet is " to be allowed to give thanks
as much as he will."2 For the prophets of local
churches the following directions are laid down :—
"But every genuine Prophet who willeth
to settle with you, is worthy of his meat; (In
like manner a genuine Teacher is worthy, he
too like the workman, of his meat.) So every
first-fruit of the products of wine-press and
threshing floor, of oxen and sheep, thou shalt
take and give as a first-fruit to the Prophets ;
for they are your high-priests. But if ye have
not a Prophet, give to the poor. If thou art
making a batch of bread, take the first-fruit
and give according to the commandment.
In like manner when thou dost open a jar of
wine or oil, take the first-fruit and give to the
Prophets. But of money and raiment and
every possession take the first-fruit as may
seem good to thee, and give according to the
commandment."3

1 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, chap. XI.
5 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, chap. X.
8 Chap. XIII.

1S6 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb the /foobern preacher.
Before passing from the consideration of the
place and function of the prophet in the early
Christian Church, it is important to point out that
there is 110 barrier, either of sex or position, to the
exercise of the prophetic ministry. It is of great
significance, as indicating the wider horizons of
Christianity, that the New Testament follows the,
prophetic, not the priestly order, and therefore,
given the essential qualifications and call, woman
has an equal right to the work of preaching as man.
In the history of Israel, women appear from time
to time as inspired prophetesses. With Moses is
associated Miriam, described as a " prophetess,"1
who claims her right in the words, " Hath, the
Lord indeed spoken only with Moses ? hath he not
spoken also with us ? "2, In the time of the Judges,
Deborah ranks not only as a prophetess, but as
judge.3 In the time of Jeremiah we have Huldah,
the prophetess to whom the messengers of Josiah
applied when they were directed to " inquire of
the Lord."4
We have already referred to the striking instance
of Anna the prophetess,5 standing midway between
the old and the new, breaking out into ecstatic
utterance, as, meeting the wondrous babe in the
glory of the temple communion and vision, she
declares to the assembled worshippers the fact of
redemption now brought so near.6 The passing
reference to the four daughters of the evangelist
1 Exod. xv. 20. - Xum. xii. 2.
3 Judges iv. 4, 5. * 2 Kings xxii. 13-20 ; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 22.
6 See p. 180. • Luke ii. 38.

Gbe Christian prophets. 1S7
Philip, as those "which 4id prophesy,"1 — in those
larger d^ys of the Spirit when " sons and daughters
shoukj prophesy"2 — may stand for a ministry
much more widely exercised than our records declare.
It is easy to exaggerate tbe scope and purpose
of Paul's injunction, " Let the women keep silence
in the churches,"3 and especially to ignore the local
difficulties and delicate situations associated with
the early government of the widely scattered,
rapidly extending Christian communities. Paul's
directions arid general discussion of the public
position of woman in the church, must be read
in the light of the eastern position of that day, not
in the wider point of view of our western practice,
a point of view he did so much to make ppssible.
As" over against the narrower— and' for perfectly
valid reasons temporary — injunction, forbidding
the public ministry of women, we must place the
great Pauline declaration of principle, that " in
Christ Jesus there can be no male and female."4
Every other direction is an accommodation to
existing prejudice or weakness, and an illustration
of the love that seeks by all means to save. No
such restrictions or expediences could permanently
live when once the essential unity of all in Christ
was understood.
In these greater days of the Son of man, hearing
as we may the clamant call for world-evangelism,
let us unfeignedly rejoice, that the ministry of
preaching, is' now recognised as the opportunity
1 Acts xxi. 9- ! Acts ii. 17.
8 1 Cor. xiv. 34 ; i Tim. ii. 12. ' Gal. iii. 28.

iss Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dBobern preacher.
of the consecrated and duly qualified womanhood
equally with the manhood of our churches. S°
far the delay of the Kingdom may be partly ex
plained by our unwillingness to recognise such ah
equality of right, and that too often, on grounds
of sex, we have limited and discouraged the exercise
of the prophetic gift.
Surely the Lord, who gladly accepted the fruit
of the Samaritan woman's evangelistic zeal,1 and
who, in the larger day of His risen life, gave to
woman the first commission to go and make Hirn
known,2 is calling His Church to requisition these
unused reserves of effective service, that, through
the quickened ministry of prophet and prophetess
alike, He may the more quickly come to His
own! Unquestionably the place of the prophet in the
primitive Church was a very important one. And
his contribution to the rapid spread and establish
ment of the new faith as the recognised exponent
of it, must have been invaluable.
We may judge as to the measure of the importance
of the prophets in the early Church, by the esteem
in which they were held. They were regarded as
the special gift of God, moving and speaking under
the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit. Free of
any external control, those who were approved as
prophets were also so far beyond the criticism and
judgment of men, that the author of the " Didache "
classes any such criticism with the sin against the
Holy Ghost. " Every Prophet speaking in spirit
1 John iv. 28, 29, 39-42. 2 John xx. n-18.

Gbe Christian prophets. 189
ye shall not try nor judge ; for every sin shall be
forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven."1
Such a position, however, carried with it great
perils. Indeed, the higher the regard in which the
prophet was held, the greater was the need of self-
discipline and watchfulness on the part of the
prophet, and the more exposed was the office itself
to the unscrupulous place-seeker and imitator.
Remembering the excitability and credulity of
the Eastern mind, remembering too the long line
of churches stretching from Jerusalem to Rome,
composed largely of Gentile Christians, exposed
to their old pagan associations, with its mantic
ecstasies of professional magicians, diviners, and
soothsayers, it is not a matter of surprise that as
the second century wore on, the separate office of
the prophet declined in authority, and that instead
of the old formula, " God continually confers on
the church, apostles, prophets and teachers," the
word now was, " The church is founded in the
(written) word of the prophets, (the Old Testament
prophets) and the apostles (the twelve and Paul)."
The rapid expansion of the early Church called .
for the appointment of duly qualified officers to
administer its affairs, to be responsible for its
discipline, and, generally to regulate its order.
Such officialism inevitably carried with it responsi
bility and authority. It need occasion no surprise
therefore, that, with the growth of organization,
the- possibility of a rivalry between the unregulated
activity of both the itinerant and settled prophet
- l The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, chap, XL . .. .

190 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe fliobem preacher.
—however unintentional and regrettable at first —
would be likely to end in the victory of What has
been already described as the " ministry of offiee,"
over the " ministry of enthusiasm." To this con
sideration, we must add the mischief wrought in
the churches by the rapid multiplication Of the
counterfeit or false prophet, calling often for prompt
and drastic action on the part of those responsible
for the fair name and true prosperity of the Church.
We can easily understand that such discernment
as was necessary, with the consequent discipline
of the offending hirelings, would result in suspicion,
conflict, and division, between the authority of
gift, and the authority of position, always tending
to widen the cleavage which had already set in.
Add to this the very real dangers— always present
in the Church— -of a lowered spiritual tone, a too-
ready accommodation to worldly standards, a
tendency to rely on machinery rather than on
personal devotion, and we may call up a generally
aceurate position of the Church in the second
century. It was out of such conditions that the movement
known as Montanism had its rise. Beginning in
an attempt to revive the place of the prophet, it
ended in discrediting the office, and in the final
passing of the prophet as a separate order in the
Church. The movement originated at Pepuza, in Phrygia,
about the year 156. Montanus (said to have been
a heathen priest before his conversion), not Only
claimed to be a prophet, but te be the Paraclete

Gbe Cbristfan prophets. 191
whom Jesus had promised to His disciples. With
him were associated two prophetesses, Prisca and
Maximilla, who declared that they were the new
incarnations of Deity, with authority to supersede
the teachings of the apostles, and even to say more
than had been said by Jesus Himself.
They held that the coming of Jesus was near at
hand, that He would shortly set up His Kingdom
at Pepuza and Tymion, to which Phrygian towns
all Christians were summoned to assemble in
preparation for the return. As against what they
regarded as the secularizing of the church, they
enjoined greater separation from the world, fastings,
celibacy, the sin of second marriages, and a general
tightening of discipline.
Almost simultaneously with this new movement
a bitter persecution of Christians broke out in
various parts of the Empire. Inasmuch as every
such outbreak of suffering was taken as a sign of
Christ's near return, it served as a stimulus to the
Montanist movement, so that it rapidly spread
throughout Asia Minor, to Rome, to Southern Gaul,
and even to North Africa, where it won a notable
convert in the person of Tertullian.
This strange revivalistic movement of the second
century— and it has its parallels, down to the
Irvingite excitement of the early nineteenth century
—left its mark upon the growing Church. It
succeeded as we have seen, in discrediting the
prophetic function in which it gloried, and of which
it foolishly claimed a monopoly. It strengthened
the officialism against which it rose in protest, and

i92 Gbe 'Ibebrew propbet anb .tbe diobern preacher.
which it sought to destroy. But as such fanaticisms
often do, even in its exaggerations it called attention
to essential phases of truth in danger of being over
looked. Particularly it exposed the growing peril
of reliance upon mere human appointments and
authority, it forced the Church to see — and this
is its permanent contribution of value — that only
as churches are the unhindered organ of the Holy
Spirit's presence and power, can they justify their
place or realise their Divine mission to the world. .
But though the local position of the prophet in
the early Church stood thus discredited, so that
it disappears from the ecclesiastical official lists-
even as the term apostle does — the need and the
work of the prophet remained and remains still,
And, thank God ! the response to the need, and
the achievement of the work, have never been want
ing. Within and without the ranks of the regular
ministry, the true prophets of God are an unbroken
succession. To deny it would be to deny the
presence of Jesus in and with. His people, always
raising up, empowering and thrusting forth men
and womefi, who, moved by the inward promptings
of the Holy Spirit, feeling like Jeremiah, God's
word " in their hearts as it were a burning fire shut
up in their bones,"1 " cannot but write and speak
the things God gives them to write and speak."2
Nor will this redeeming and essential ministry
fail, until " love's work complete," " prophecy
shall be done away,"3 in the universally acknowl
edged " fulness of him that filleth all in all."4
1 Jer. xx.. 9. 2 Acts iv. 20, 3 1 Cor. xiii, S. * Eph. i. 23.

CHAPTER IX.
Gbe place of tbe preacber in xlbobent 3Life.
IT was the distinctive glory of the Hebrew prophet
that he stood for God and man as the living
oracle of the eternal Spirit, and in such vital
correspondence with the eternal mind, as to mediate
between the timeless and the passing. Knowing
the thought of God, his work was the translation
of the Divine purpose into the forms and characters
of current thought and speech.
This is precisely the place and work of the
preacher. This correctly defines the nature of
the holy succession, and in this specific way, the
man called of God to preach continues the work
of the ancient prophet.
The remark of Hermann Schultz that " A
religion which is growing has Prophets ; a religion
completed has Scribes," is profoundly true.
Christianity is a growing religion. What was said
concerning the resurrection scene of Jesus, that
He rose "as it began to dawn,"1 may very truly
be said of the revelation our risen Lord brought
to light,2 by His gospels. It is always facing
1 Matt, xxviii. i. a 2 Tim. i. 10.

194 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe xflbooern preacher.
new problems, greeting new light, going out to new
conquests. If the advent and work of Jesus ended
one dispensation, it opened another, and, concerning
its ever-enlarging scope, alike of thought and action,
we may thankfully affirm, " no man can shut it."1
The closing of the sacred canon was not the end
of revelation. The gift of the eternal Spirit at
Pentecost, breaking up the varied wonders of
redeeming grace into the " many tongues " of
universal man, suggests a full-toned harmony of
expression, requiring ever new settings and adapta
tions of the one eternal music.
This fact alone creates the office, and calls for
the utterance of the modern prophet. It is not
his work to invent a gospel, any more than it was
the work of his Hebrew prototype to declare his
personal opinions or views of current events. It
is emphatically to declare " the gospel he has re
ceived,"2 but whose ever widening meanings and
adaptations to the changing forms of human thought
and development, require the living organ in living
touch with God and with men.
And this is surely a sufficient answer to those
who, in writing or in speech, affirm that the modern
pulpit is decadent, and that the work of preaching
is supplanted by the increase of education and
scholarship, the power of the modern press, or
the popularity of the picture. But why set in
antagonism, or place as in unholy rivalry agencies
which are indispensable, or may be useful to the
1 Rev. iii. 8.
2 i Cor. xi. 23 ; xv. 1 ; Gal. i. 9.

Gbe place of the preacher in dfcobern %\t$< >95
equipment and effectiveness of the preachen-S^
work ?
We have particularly in mind here, the work of
the scholar, bringing to the preacher the treasures
of scholarship. The ministry of the one is essential
to the other, and both are the gift of God. To
speak of them as superior and subordinate, or to
set one against the other as though they represented
opposing aims, is to confuse thought, and erect
barriers, which, being artificial, are false. The
work of the preacher combines the ministry of
instruction, persuasion, and appeal. For the
effectiveness of his ministry, he requires the
researches of the scholar, who patiently pursues
the study of origins, weighs evidence, eliminates
human accretions from our sacred documents, and
thus constantly offers to the preacher the valuable
results of the trained expert.
When the work of constructing the Mersey
Tunnel commenced — uniting Cheshire with the
busy city of Liverpool — workmen on either side
of the river, acting under the guidance of skilled
leaders, started operations on the same day and
hour. So perfect was the workmanship, that, as
the workers neared the centre of the river, they
could hear the workmen from the opposite side,
and ultimately they met at the same point.
Similarly, the work of the scholar and preacher,
bent on the same glorious errand, culminates in
making plain the road by which the preacher, in
the life-travel of his brief opportunity, may assist
his fellow-pilgrims to the city of true desire. o 2

196 G6e Ibebrew propbet anb tbe ffliobern preacher.
y There are other reasons for dismissing as artificial
or partisan the discussion of the claims made for
education, the press or the cinema, to rival and
supplant the pulpit.
The growing knowledge of psychology enables
us the better to understand wby the organ of
speech has been ordained of God as a primal means
of conveying truth. It is the impact of life upon
life which is creative and quickening. We may
at any time test, as we recall our experience with
our fellow-men, and especially as we study the
crowd, how the influence of the living voice,
accompanied by the play of tone, or of look,
or the outgoing of personality, as " virtue "
goes forth from the speaker, will act and re-act
upon emotion, desire and will, producing immediate
and permanent results in character and conduct,
altogether impossible to cold type, or the
mechanical and stilted impression of the moving
picture. Beyond all, the reason assigned by Paul for the
distinctiveness and primacy of the preacher's office,
the reason which satisfied his own mind and heart,
is also sufficient for us': "It was God's good pleasure
through the foolishness of the preaching to save
them that believe."1 This effectually silenced all
criticism, and holds the field against the suggestion
of a rival. So long as the present order remains,
the permanence of preaching is secured. A
vocation, resting upon and founded in the infinite
wisdom and deliberate choice of the Eternal Love
1 i Cor. i. 2Ji.

Gbe place ot tbe preacher in d&obem Xite. 197
is, like His Church, built upon rock, and will, with
it, equally endure.
But while, as we have seen, the office of the
preacher, and the function of preaching, rests broad-
based in the counsels of the Eternal Wisdom and
Love, no true " speaker for God " presumes upon
that, nor must he claim a hearing by reason of his
official ordination, or separation to the sacredness
of the pulpit. He must justify the inherent assump
tion of primacy by his work. As God's living
oracle, mediating between the eternal and the
temporal, interpreting and relating the one to the
other, the preacher must " have understanding
of the times, to know what Israel ought to
do."1 The Hebrew prophet was always abreast of his
age. He studied deeply and interpreted accurately
the actual conditions of his day. He was for men
" God's expert," applying eternal truth to the
passing phases and conditions of life. He was the
hardest worker, the closest observer, the keenest
thinker, the most ardent and eager lover of his
day. He lived for God, and therefore he toiled
and wrought for man. With the result, that,
while his supremacy in the nation was frequently
challenged, and his counsel rejected, yet his premier
position as God's messenger was never successfully
contested, and, as the man who knew the times,
he easily commanded the first place.
The modern preacher is called to deserve and
command the same unassailable supremacy in the
1 1 Chron. xii. 32.

198 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe JBobem preacher.
life of men, and in the guidance of human affairs.
By its power to interpret the highest truth, and
therefore the truth comprehending all that really
concerns man, by its creation of the right atmosphere
in which truth may be clearly seen, and all relation
ship rightly appraised, the pulpit possesses a place
unshared by either parliament, press, or picture.
Where it is really " worthy," it abides under the
benediction of God's own peace, and is established
in the hope and confidence of man. Concerning
such a pulpit, it may be truly said : — " the gates
of hell shall not prevail against it."1
These are admittedly high claims for the place
of the pulpit, and for the work of the preacher.
But a vocation so ordained of God, especially on
its prophetic side, cannot be too sacredly esteemed
and guarded.
i. We turn now to look at our modern world,
as the Hebrew prophet faced the world of his day,
and our inquiry concerns the conditions, dangers,
demands, and needs, of our own century, particularly
as its course has been deflected and determined
by the world-upheaval of the Great War. We
have but to glance at the outwardly complacent
and hopeful signs of world-progress, as we crossed
the imaginary line separating the nineteenth from
the twentieth centuries, in order to find how com
plete the deflection has been, and how entirely the
War has formed one of those great watersheds of
history, by which, in the forward and upward
movement of the world, new situations are
i Matt. xvi. iS.

Gbe place ot tbe preacher in /iftobern Xffe. 199
presented, and new adaptations of thought and
method are required.
Intellectual and reasoned atheism was a force
spent and exhausted. Scholarship, science, and
discovery, working independently and in fields far
apart, had made of our Bible a book, more reason
able, more human, and therefore more Divine,
than our fathers knew or could have known.
Distance was being annihilated, bringing the world
of opportunity to our doors. Long-standing
divisions were being healed in the churches, so that
bitterness and separation were giving place to co
operation and union. A general expectation pre
vailed throughout Christendom, that the first
century of missionary sowing — the nineteenth —
would be followed by a century of world-saving
harvest. This found its legitimate and worthy
fruit in the World Missionary Conference of
Edinburgh, 1910, the greatest assembly of Christian
workers in the history of the Modern Church. The
aims and longings of that Conference, interpreting
the outlook and faith of the Christian world of that
day, finds expression on the first page of the nine
volumes recording the work of that assembly ; —
" The Church is confronted to-day, as in
no preceding generation, with a literally world
wide opportunity to make Christ known.
There may have been times when in certain
non-Christian lands the missionary forces of
Christianity stood face to face with as pressing
opportunities as those now presented in the
same fields, but never before has there been

200 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfcobern preacher.
such a conjunction of crises and of opening
of doors in all parts of the world as that which
characterizes the present decade. It is like
wise true that never on the home field have
the conditions been more favourable for waging
a campaign of evangelization adequate in
scope, in thoroughness, and in power."1
From these dreams and assurances of " conditions
never more favourable for waging a campaign of
evangelization," we were startled by the dramatic
suddenness of a war, which even now, as we recall
its tragedy of horror, baffles us by its unprecedented
magnitude and its world-shaping results. We
discovered what we ought to have made clear long
ago, that while the world outside Europe was
rapidly moving towards democratism, our European
civilization was a thin veneer, and rested upon
foundations autocratic and feudal. Such a founda
tion was ripe, rotten-ripe for destruction. The
war has done the world the service of declaring
that such a foundation is neither right toward God,
nor just toward man. That a true democracy
everywhere should prepare the world for a real
theocracy. That there is room in this world for
one autocrat only, and that His name is Jesus !
2. The conditions therefore under which the
modern preacher works and makes his appeal are
radically and permanently changed. And the
change is for the better. It supplies the " more
favourable conditions for waging a campaign of
evangelization," believed to exist in 1910. With
1 World Missionary Conference, vol. i. p. 1.

Gbe place of tbe preacher in fliobern Xife. 201
the removal of the autocratic, the mediaeval and
feudal basis of society, our Gospel of freedom, of
brotherhood, of true equality, where " there can
be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither
bond nor free, there can be no male and female, for
ye are all one man in Christ Jesus,"1 for the first
time comes to its own, and secures its opportunity
of glorious witness.
But the modern situation is beset with danger,
to which of all men, the preacher who will be the
prophet of his generation, must be sensitive and
alert, and concerning which he must " Cry aloud,
and spare not."2 The materialistic philosophy
and practice out of which the war came, has not
been destroyed by the baptism of blood and tears
through which we have lately passed. That indeed
should have been its effect. Had the world profited
by its latest agony, as was hoped, and as it ought
to have done, it would have forthwith and finally
abandoned materialism as the bottom curse, flinging
it into the deepest hell of wrath, a hell terrible as
the "wrath of the Lamb,"3 or as the " consuming
fire "4 of the eternal Love of God.
So far from that, on the surface at least and for
the present, the war appears to have established
materialism and given it deeper root. It has found
expression everywhere in an orgy of selfishness,
which takes the form either of inordinate greed or
riotous indulgence, as though life had no higher
meaning or end than external possession or passing
enjoyment. 1 Gal. iii. 28. 2 Isa. lviii. 1.
3 Rev. vi. 16. * Heb. xii. 29.

202 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
The conditions against which Amos1 and Hosea2
contended in Samaria, and Isaiah3 in Judah, have
had their counterpart in our own fair England,
on the continent of Europe, and in the mighty
states of the West. Suddenly the delineations
and warnings of the prophets have acquired a
modern illustration and fulfilment altogether un-
looked for. For the years during and since the
war, our Annual Drink Budget records amounts
exceeding everything in our history, while the
disgusting scenes of the boxing-ring, and the
attractions of the race-course, with its attendant
mania of gambling, have secured, what the official
reports have described with monotonous repetition,
as " record crowds."
Nor is this hasty survey of the dangers attending
the modern conditions of the preacher's work, in
any sense exaggerated. So far from that — the
records of our daily press being witness — it errs
in its limited range, and in its under-statement of
the facts. Nor is the exposure of such conditions
a pleasant task. Nor again is the expositor of
modern dangers and perils likely to be more accept
able to his own time and people, than were his
predecessors of Israel and Judah. The word
" pleasant " has been greatly over-valued in recent
times, as though it were a " cause " rather than
an accompaniment, an " end in itself " rather than
a by-product of duty nobly done. The Hebrew
prophet was not called to consider pleasantness,
but truth. He cared little for favour, he cared
1 Amos viii. 4. " Hosea iv. 1, 2. a Isa, v. 11, 12; viii. 19.

Gbe place of tbe preacher in /Hiobem Xife. 203
everything that he should be known as one faithful.
Much less does this necessary work of diagnosis
and denunciation belie our earlier statement, that
the changed world into which we have come, and
in which we work, " is a change for the better."
That remains true. And its truth adds eagerness
to the preacher's longing, and passion to the
preacher's appeal, as he sees the greater good
within easy range, yet so likely to be lost in a vain
pursuit of the things that perish.
3. It follows that the modern preacher, constantly
taking stock, as he must do, of the world of his
own day, is faced by the insistent demand of the
hour, and is burdened by a knowledge of the still
more urgent needs of the time to which he is sent
as the " oracle of God." Like his Hebrew pattern,
the preacher, while taking his message with all
its tremendous implications direct from God, must,
at the same time, keep close to men and to the
realities of his day. For is not his supreme aim
to mediate the two, in order that as " God's
ambassador," he may succeed in his ministry of
reconciliation P1 Like his Lord, therefore, he
must "know what is in man,"2 his desires and
hopes, the nature of his demands, the whole tendency
and direction of his manner of life.
But it is as God's oracle that he must know man.
This point of view must determine the line of his
approach, alike to his fellow-men and to their
demands. Similarly, it must supply the qualifica
tion, as it enforces the duty of discerning between
1 2 Cor. v. 20. ! John ii. 25.

204 Gbe 'Bebrew propbet anb tbe /ftobern preacher.
the "demand" of men and their "need." It is
true that the preacher comes to men as " the servant
of all," yet " One is his Master, even Christ."1
" If he wash the disciples' feet it must be not merely
as a poor serving brother, but with the kind dignity
of the agent and apostle of Christ." The demand
of the uninstructed age, and often alas ! the un-
spiritual within the Church, must not be allowed
to over-ride the one instructed in the mind of
Christ.2 Just as we have not to invent a gospel, but to
declare the gospel we have received, so neither have
we to echo the desires of the world, nor concede
without discrimination the demands of men. Our
work is to lead the world, not to echo it ; to con
front it with a positive, " Thus saith the Lord " ;
even to resist it to the point of our own rejection,
in order that, refusing the " demand," we may
open men's eyes to their " need " as in the sight
of God. The confusion between " demands " and
" needs," is like the confusion often met with
between " prejudices " and " principles." We re
quire to search them through and through as with
" the candle of the Lord," that we may successfully
expose the one, and usefully expound the other.
The modern preacher is placed in an age when
the demand is for what is popular. The age is
restless, impatient of delay. It calls for quick
returns. Success is gauged by numbers rather
than by quality, by immediate results rather than
by permanent issues.
1 Matt, xxiii. 10. ' i Cor. ii. 16.

Che place of tbe preacher in flsobern life. 205
And the agony of the modern prophet is, that he
often finds this demand from within the Church,
and this arithmetical estimate of his ministry,
from among those whom he might fairly expect to
be as his own right hand, and the sharers of his
holiest ideals. The demand being for longer and
more frequent " socials," and for shorter " sermons,"
the preacher is made to feel that unless he cuts his
message down, his influence will be weakened, and
those responsible for his support will fall away.
This is but another way of saying that the cry
of men is always forian easy gospel, a gospel which
makes little demand upon what they regard as
essential and precious. Our modern world is par
ticularly prone to this heresy. Its strain and
tension in other realms, re-acts upon religion most
of all, so that religion itself is regarded as " merely
a refuge and a balm for men so jaded with the pursuit
of the world as to be fit on Sundays for no more
than a warm bath or a sacred concert."1
To all such appeals of popular opinion and mere
love of ease, the preacher, always " speaking the
truth in love,"2 must make clear to his time, its
deepest need, its abiding obligations to the Eternal
Law and the Eternal Love. It must never be for
gotten that the preacher is the constant recipient
of other " demands," and is impelled by the pressure
of an inward sense of " need " he must obey.
" Whether the people will hear, or whether they
will forbear,"3 the preacher has no option ; he serves
1 Principal Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind,
p. 146.
» Eph. iv. 15. 8 Ezek. ii. 5; 111. 11.

206 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb the fliobern preacher.
under orders he disobeys on peril of his own soul.
As " the prisoner of the Lord,"1 he cries out, like
Paul, " Necessity is laid upon me ; for, woe is
unto me if I preach not the gospel."2 And as one
thus called, chosen, equipped of God, it is not for
an uninstructed age, or an unspiritual Church,
because it finds the material support for the preacher,
to " call the tune," or attempt to exalt a popular
demand into the realm of duty or right.
The preacher is therefore compelled, irrespective
of consequences, and always discriminating between
" demand " and " need," to tell his age that the
gospel he brings is not easy, only as love for its
Author makes it so. He has to challenge the best,
not the worst in man. He must appeal to the
heroic, not to the cowardly. It is his task to make
clear that the most exacting demand of Jesus is
at the same time the " one thing needful." And
it is his duty to point out that only in obedience
to such a call, can the age be delivered from the
ruin which all history declares is the penalty of
neglecting God.
The whole case, applying with special force to
the present situation, has been so well stated by
the late Principal Forsyth that we take the liberty
to quote his words as the conclusion to this section
of our theme : " It is not cheer that we need, but
salvation, not help but rescue, not a stimulus but
a change, not tonics but life. It is the authority
of a Redeemer, of one who is the organ to us
of a new world. The first duty of every soul is to
1 Eph. iv. i. 2 i Cor. ix. 16.

Gbe place of tbe preaeber in jfaobern life. 207
find not its freedom, but its Master."1 In the
declaration of that gospel of Redemption and
Authority, the pulpit has no competitor, nor the
preacher any instructor but Jesus only.
4. The challenge and call of such a situation is
the most solemn and urgent ever addressed to the
heart and mind of man. Its appeal to the modern
pulpit for interpretation and direction is pathetically
insistent. It constitutes an opportunity for the
pulpit almost without parallel. On a scale nothing
short of world-wide, we have been and are the
witnesses of a history and a movement greater
than- anything that has happened since the birth
of Jesus. In the shattering of dynasties which
has recently taken place, we have seen every possible
rival of Jesus tried and found wanting. The logic
of events has shut the world in to the answers of
our gospel.
It is surely the exercise of this prophet function,
authoritatively and fearlessly applying the wondrous
fulness of that gospel to current events, for which
the world waits. From the ruin of the old civiliza
tion, resting as it did on material foundations, the
prophets of God should insist that the upbuilding
of the new order must rest on the permanencies of
God's appointments, and the character that God
builds. The word of Isaiah to his panic-stricken,
compromise-loving people, is precisely the word
of the modern prophet to an age, which, ignoring
the obvious lessons of the war, tends to re-construct
1 Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, pp. 56, 57.

208 Gbe fcebrew propbet anb tbe /ifcobern preacher.
our modern world on the ruinous foundations of
compromise and external force. " In returning
and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness and in
confidence shall be your strength."1 For in
dividuals and for nations it is permanently true,
that they find their only safety in abandoning all
false alliances, and in resuming relations of loyalty
to the Eternal Law and the Eternal Love. And
that the strength which is strength indeed, is rooted
in the contented assurance of companionship with
the all-sufficient God ! Surely it is the duty of
the pulpit to compel the statesmen and leaders of
all peoples to heed these counsels of Eternal Wisdom,
and shape their course by the guidance of this
Eternal Light !
It is not contended that the application of this
prophetic ministry to international, national,
social, and domestic relationships, is either easy or
pleasant. It must, on the contrary, be avowed
that it is a work of extraordinary difficulty, re
quiring insight, knowledge, patience, fearlessness,
and tact. For the preacher, unlike the politician
or the writer for the daily press, must always be
independent of party or class. Since the preacher
is first and always God's man, he must, like Paul,
" henceforth know no man after the flesh,"2 by
which is here meant, that, as a preacher of God's
truth, and in a place which should never be the
platform of a partjr, he must ignore the schools
and factions into which men of necessity are
grouped. As a man, the preacher may not be
1 Isa. xxx. 15. 2 2 Cor. v. 16.

Gbe place of tbe preacher in diobern %ite. 209
denied his political or his civil rights. No church
has the right to exact political disfranchisement of
the man it calls to be the spiritual guide, of its
affairs. But neither has any preacher the right
to pervert the function of the pulpit to encourage
class strife, or to mere party political propaganda.
As a preacher, he must impartially apply the
Gospel entrusted to him, irrespective of class,
speaking there, as John Knox told Queen Mary,
" as one who has no option, but to speak the things
God has given me to speak, and to fear no flesh
on the face of the earth."
That such a prophetic, fearless, truth-speaking
ministry will often be far from popular, that it will
cause some to take offence and fall away, is but
to know and share the burden of the prophet's call.
It is to stand in the line of the true prophetical
succession. This however, while it will cause
disappointment and give pain,1 is neither the first
nor tbe abiding concern of the preacher. He knows
full well, that, while he has nothing to gain by the
favour of men, he has nothing to fear from their
dislike. To cut across personal prejudices, to smite public
wrong and political intrigue, to refuse to be the
" echo " of a popular cry, and claim the right to
be a " voice " speaking for and on behalf of God,
to denounce as sectarian and wicked the modern
creed, " My country, right or wrong," this is not
pleasant to flesh and blood. But it is the dis
tinctiveness of the prophetic office that it " confers
1 John vi. 66-67. P

210 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe dBobem preacher.
not with flesh and blood,"1 and takes no count of
either position or consequences.
It never willingly gives pain, but even though
the preacher knows he will wound, he dare not
modify, or withhold, remembering the greater
pain of disloyalty to his Lord. He will always
" speak the truth in love,"2 being assured it is the
truth God would have him speak.
Such prophets are the need of every age. Never
more were they needed than now. Never was the
field of the world whiter to the harvest of such a
ministry than at the beginning of this new day of
the Son of Man. Let the pulpits of all lands be
filled with such seers and speakers for God, and
in such a case, the greatest days of the pulpit and
of the lands are yet to be !
1 Gal. i. 16. 2 Eph. iv. 15.

CHAPTER X.
XTbe preacber's Equipment.
FROM the discussion of the opportunity and
call for a truly prophetic ministry such as
we have just outlined — in our view the
most insistent need of this or of any age — we pass
naturally to consider the nature and scope of the
equipment required for a work so great, and for
a purpose so glorious.
In every department of thought and action, there
is a growing tendency to place the emphasis upon
the specialist, the expert. As the world grows
older, and the boundaries of knowledge are ex
tended, it is found that while general knowledge
is assumed as indispensable, the need for the
specialist, devoting himself to some particular
department of investigation, and making the
pursuit of truth there his life-work, is regarded as
essential to the growing whole.
All this is to the good, and is the necessary sequel
of advance. Through it we come to understand,
into what richly-stored inheritances of knowledge,
usefulness, and enjoyment we have entered, and
how wondrous in resource, is the wisdom and love
of our bounteous and all-glorious Lord. p 2

212 Gbe ibebrew prophet anb tbe dfoobem preacber.
It is possible to exaggerate the importance and
value of the specialist, to the point of depreciating
the contribution and service of the many. The
world of thought and action owes more than can
be told to the ministry of average gift. As the
highest peaks of a mountainous district are made
possible by the lower ranges out of which they
rise, so the expert is made possible, because of the
equally faithful, though less prominent contribu
tions of the many.
Writing as we do here, with the Methodist
ministry particularly, though not exclusively in
view, we include the expert in his art, and also the
man of average standard. In the Pauline sense
of absorbing passion for the Person and programme
of Jesus, we may all become experts, adopting
his motto as ours, saying, " This one thing I do."1
In the spirit that longs for the widest recognition
and the speedy enthronement of Jesus, we may
all share the eager desire of Moses, saying, " Would
God that all the Lord's people were prophets, that
the Lord would put his Spirit upon them ! "2 The
truth is, the work and range of the preacher is so
vast, that exaltation or depreciation of the human
instrument runs the risk of misplaced emphasis,
while forgetting the weightier considerations
essential to success.
It is of the first importance that the preacher
shall be possessed by his art, as a master passion.
We place this as among the chief of what is some
times vaguely spoken of as natural endowment.
' Phil. iii. 13. " Num. xi. 29.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 213
Granted this, and much of what goes under the
science of hermeneutics and homiletics may be left
to take care of itself. Training can and will do
much with the preacher's voice, with style, with
the manner of delivery, even with the development
of the personality that makes for pulpit effectiveness.
But nothing will atone for the lack of love for
the work. In this sense, the preacher is born, not
made. And out of it arises the sense of vocation,
the assurance that this place of " God's speaking
man," and no other, is the ordaining will of God
for us. To be thus borne on toward the pulpit
by a power outside ourselves, is to be in the true
prophetic succession, for so were led all the prophets
who were before us. The choice of the pulpit must
never be a choice among equals, still less must it
be in competition with other walks of life, as afford
ing an easy way out. It must be this, or, " Woe
is me ! '^
Of all the pitiable objects in God's world, an
ease-loving and idle minister is the most despicable,
and of all tragedies over which surely angels weep,
it is the sight of a preacher who dreads the oppor
tunity of delivering his message, not because he
feels the overwhelming greatness of truth, but
because some other attraction outweighs the lure
of the pulpit, or some stronger love absorbs both
mind and heart.
The words of an acknowledged master of the
modern pulpit — Dr. J. H. Jowett — to the students
in Yale University may be cited, as a model within
1 1 Cor. ix. 16.

214 Gbe fjebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
the reach of all : — " I love my calling. I have a
growing delight in its services. I am conscious of
no distractions in the shape of any competitors for
my strength and allegiance. I have had but one
passion, and I have lived for it, the absorbingly
arduous yet glorious work of proclaiming the grace
and love of our Lord Jesus Christ."1
2. And this love of teaching and enforcing the
message of the gospel, must be like the love of the
God who inspires it, unwasting in its strength, and
unwearying in its service. It must be the fuel
giving life and direction to our loftiest ideals.
While receiving from all realms, and appreciating
the glory of attainment in other ways of life, no
achievement and no success gained by others in
their own spheres, must ever diminish the glory of
our art, or lower ideals that, like the horizon,
widens as we travel toward it.
The prophet preacher will never stagnate, nor
be content to repeat the messages of his yesterdays.
Alive in every part, and keenly sensitive to the
growing whole of truth, he will, seer-like, be always
upon his watch tower, looking for and listening to
the latest movement and message of God, that he
may decipher its meaning to the modern mind
and to the latest need.
3. To preserve the freshness and to maintain
the level of the true ideal of preaching, the preacher
must be, in the most intimate and sacred sense,
" The Friend of God."2 This need as distinguished
from what we have already spoken of as natural
1 The Preacher : His Life and Work, p, 3.
' Isa. xii. 8 ; James ii. 23.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 215
endowment, is the Alpha and Omega of the
preacher's equipment, and in order of importance,
takes first place. Every preacher should covet
the distinction which secures the title, " A great
divine," not in the realm of theological science first,
but in the more intimate and personal realm of
inseparable friendship, with its unmistakable marks
of spiritual culture, insight, and identity of aim.
It is not too much to say that this intimacy of
relationship, more than any other condition, made
the Hebrew prophet, and explains his easy
supremacy over every other class of his time.
We may refer the reader to the fuller discussion
of this aspect of the prophet's training in Chapter
II, of this Lecture,1 in justification of the state
ment now made. The outstanding personalities
of the prophets reached the height and wrought
the work they did, because, beyond any gift of
nature, or acquirement of study, they were the
confidants of God, living and moving in the rapture
of closest companionship with the Divine.
And just because this truth touches conditions of
attainment that do not and cannot change with
time or place, it is not too much to add that it is
thus, and in no other way, that the truly success
ful preacher is made.
Nor is this surprising when one gets down to the
root meaning of the word, companion, as " one with
whom we feed ! " This goes far deeper than any
question of study, or any acquisition of knowledge.
The companionship of the man who will effectively
1 pp. 27~33-

216 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe iHbobern preacher.
speak out to his age the mind of God, bespeaks
such a constancy of communion with the eternal,
that the character of the human medium takes
the mould of the Divine. The whole bearing of
such a preacher will suggest the strength and
permanence of the Divine home in which he dwells.
In all this life of daily communion, living upon
" every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God,"1 the preacher must lead the way, and
become the constant " example to his flock."2
This will tell even more than his uttered word, and
will serve to give the spoken message larger meaning
and added weight. Such a life of entire absorption
in God, and the things of God, means cost. To
obtain possession of this chief pearl of entrance
into the innermost sanctuary of the Divine secret,
many a pearl of lesser value will have to be sur
rendered. It means paying the price of time, the
expenditure of nerve force and soul force, the
sacrifice of popular applause, the forfeiting of other
wise lawful hobbies and ambitions, even as, in every
case, it meant all this and more for the prophets
of Israel. We cannot secure the highest success
on cheaper terms.
Let it be frankly said, the preacher can " get
through " at lesser cost. But the risks of the lower
level are tremendous. The whole ministry will
be impoverished. From the triumphs of a prophetic
ministry we shall descend to be the mere hucksters
of sermons, lacking alike in strength and in saving
grace. And the final cost may turn out after all
1 Deut. viii. 3 ; Matt. iv. 4. 2 1 Pet. v. 3.

Gbe preacber's Equipment. 217
to be the greater, involving possibly the price of
life itself !
4. Yet all this intense absorption in the Person
and programme of the Divine, must find its justifi
cation and its practical value in a more effective
service of man. Of all men, the preacher can least
afford to be regarded as one aloof from his fellows,
viewing their struggles from afar, or as one whose
relation to men is official and occasional. Even
the appearance of such remoteness is fatal to
success. Beyond all others, the preacher must be " The
Friend of Man," deserving the suggestive and
honourable designation, " a great human," because
of him it may be truly said, that
" He to his heart with warm embrace hath taken,
The universal sorrow of mankind,"
and that, like his Lord, he comes to rank as " chief
of men," because he delights in the lowliness of
ministry which makes him " servant of all." In
a sense deeper than Pope meant, and for ends in
finitely worthier, it is particularly true of the
preacher, that
" The proper study of mankind is man,"
and to that study he must gladly and constantly
offer in willing sacrifice all the treasure of his heart
and brain, entering into the significance of that
fragment of our Lord's utterance not recorded in
the Gospels, " It is more blessed to give than to
receive."1 1 Acts xx. 35.

218 Ghe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacber.
But this too means cost. If, like his Lord, the
preacher is to " know what is in man,"1 — surely
the elemental necessity for one whose life-work
is the " cure of souls " — the training will be at once
prolonged and severe. On the one side, it will be
a constant trial of faith, as, again and again, he is
compelled to face the downright perfidy and villainy
to which human nature can descend, and of which
it is capable.
On the other side, it will be a constant source
of hope and joy as he marks the heights of nobility
to which it can rise, and the ever unfolding great
ness of the nature Christ died to save. It may be
permitted a working minister to say, that often
the preacher's heart sinks within him, as, after the
most painstaking teaching and effort, he beholds
the pitiful smallness of human nature, even religious
human nature. ;
Yet again, the preacher knows the thrill of a
joy like to the joy of his Lord, as he discovers in
unexpected ways and places, treasure of rarest
worth, fit to adorn the Redeemer's crown. And
yet once more, the preacher who eagerly and un-
wearyingly works in the field of human experience,
will find it perennially fruitful. It will be constantly
supplying material, particularly illustration for
his pulpit work. It will maintain his ministry in
freshness, and give him incentive to work at his
maximum of strength.
5. It follows inevitably that the preacher must
be, and will remain to the end, a diligent and
1 John ii. 25.

Gbe preacbev's Equipment. 219
painstaking student. Always he will feci, with
a distinguished President of the British Association
of Science,1 that, in respect of actual attainment,
" the island of his knowledge is relatively small, and
is surrounded by a vast ocean of the unknown."
He will therefore set forth again and again to
explore the unknown territories, that he may
compel them to yield their treasures to the ever-
insistent demands of his beloved art.
One cannot remain long in the company of the
Hebrew prophets without being impressed that
they were earnest and accurate students, sparing
neither time nor pains, so that they could speak
with clearness and with power the truth as they
received and understood it. They were the
theologians, the psychologists and philosophers
of their day. And their range of knowledge
in these realms of truth remains even yet
the admiration and the pattern of the modern
preacher. For his own incentive and guidance, the preacher
will often recall the nature and range of the studies
with which the minds of the Hebrew prophets
were concerned. (1) To know God, and to be the
authoritative exponents of His Divine purposes,
alike to Israel, and to the larger world outside ;
(2) to know man, his emotions and yearnings, his
hopes and fears, his strength and weakness, his
capacity for splendid attainment, making him a
trae son of God, his possible depths of treachery ;
(3) to know life and interpret it, being the first to
1 Lord Salisbury.

220 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe flftobern preacher.
supply the world with a true philosophy of un
mistakable history, revealing its unchanging laws,
its tendencies, its subtle play of alternatives, and,
beyond all, its Divine, far-reaching plan. These
were the realms in which these ancient students
worked. Of these studies they never tired. Con
cerning them, their knowledge broadened " from
precedent to precedent," until they stood as experts
and authorities, the true teachers of their own, and
of each succeeding age.
And these are still the realms within which the
preacher must diligently work, and concerning
which he must not allow the most advanced of his
congregation to excel him.
So far as strength and opportunity allows, he
must have an eye upon every field of truth. All
knowledge is grist to his mill. He cannot afford
to be an entire stranger to anything that will assist
his intellectual enlargement. Knowledge and the
preacher must be lovers true, inseparable in com
panionship, never exchanging glance or word except
on terms of intimate affection.
Even so, however, the working minister, having
upon him " the care of all the churches,"1 having
regard also to considerations of health, and to
the limitations of time, will be reluctantly compelled
to leave many a specialized and attractive field
of study as the favourite ground of some in his
congregation, and, in such realms, especially in
these later days, the preacher will at once allow,
that he is easily outstripped.
1 2 Cor. xi. 28.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 221
Yet, we repeat, on the themes of God, Man, Life,
on all the practical questions arising out of his
gospel,1 — to use Paul's phrase — the preacher must
excel and be first among equals. This is only what
is asked of the man of business, of letters, of art,
and even when the preacher has done this so well
that he is an acknowledged master of his science,
what does he more than others ?
On this whole question, a teacher universally
trusted and loved — the late Principal of Mansfield
College — has spoken so wisely, and with all his
usual grasp, that we venture to reproduce his
words here, as being particularly appropriate to
our immediate time : —
" Our unsolved practical problems are an
innumerable multitude ; while the speculative
problems which are the vital factors of our
practical, fonn a vaster multitude still. And
without the Church neither can be solved ;
and the Church cannot solve them apart from
the reason and the speech it uses to persuade
men. (i) There are large questions as to the
Scriptures : — how they came to be and when ;
what is the text and who are the authors of
the books ; what is the relation of the narratives
they embody to older narratives ; what the
books severally and as a whole mean, whether
we can still speak of them as a revelation, and
claim for them the rank of authorities in
refigion. (ii.) Then there are large questions
as to Christian doctrine : — whether God exists,
1 Rom. ii. 16.

222 Gbe tiebrew propbet anb tbe jflfcobem preacher.
and whether He created and now rules ; how
the ideas of creation and growth are related,
whether they are contradictory, comple
mentary, or mutually supersessive ; how we
are to conceive God, whether as solitary or as
social ; how we are to conceive Christ, whether
as God or as man, or as both ; and if as both,
in what way are His natures related. And
how man is to be conceived, whether as mortal
or immortal, whether as individual or as race,
whether as, by birth, sinless or sinful, whether
as worth redeeming or as infinitely worthless.
(iii.) And along with these go problems,
innumerable and profound, which may be
termed ethical, as belonging to applied
Christian thought : — how best such thought
may be made to permeate and guide, to
organize and control the individual, societ}',
and the state ; whether it has anything to
say to our industrial confusions and conflicts,
our economic perplexities and fiscal distress,
our political parties and national ambi
tions."1
6. While it is true that the knowledge of the
preacher, ever-growing, ever-changing, will, from
time to time require the re-statement and often
the re-setting of truth, it is also true, and a further
essential of his equipment, that he shall come to
be known as a man of intense conviction, and of
fearless courage. Only so, will he be counted
worthy to stand in the succession of the prophets,
1 Fairbairn's Studies in Religion and Theology, pp. 419-20.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 223
or his ministry deserve the designation of being
truly " prophetic."
Even in the questions last mentioned by Dr.
Fairbairn, as the preacher applies the ethics of Jesus
to " our economic perplexities and fiscal distress,
our political parties and national ambitions," he
must fearlessly and dogmatically insist in urging
the use of the Golden Rule, and the broad-based
principles of righteousness upon which everywhere
and always Christ laid emphasis. Concerning
" industrial conflicts and political parties," it may
often be that the preacher will not possess the
technical knowledge to decide, nor should he ever
bring the pulpit down to the arena of party political
strife. Enougii for him to enunciate the principles
of justice and truth upon which his gospel securely
rests. But upon the eternal things of his Gospel, when
he is dealing, as in the main he will be, with the
great themes of God, Man, Sin, Redemption,
Character-Building, Conduct, the preacher must
speak " as one having authority." It will be here
that Conviction will inspire Confidence. " Whether
the people will hear, or whether they will forbear,
yet (they) shall know that there hath been a prophet
among them,"1 seeing that the message carries
the prophetic ring of absolute sincerity, the con
viction born of first-hand knowledge, and the
personal experience of its power. The preacher
must be beyond alike the fear of man's displeasure,
and the weakness of man's flattery. If the suspicion
1 Ezek. ii. 5.

224 Gbe fjebrew propbet anb tbe ^Biobern preacber.
is created that he considers mere position, or trims
to any particular individual prejudice, then he
loses even where he hoped to gain, and no one will
lament his ruin as a " speaker for God."
If, when the preacher has faithfully delivered
his message, some members of his congregation
shall threaten to withhold their support, or decide
to refuse attendance upon a ministry so heart-
searching, then happy is the preacher who, review
ing the substance of his message, can say without
boast or regret : — " I hold not my life of any
account, as dear unto myself, so that I may
accomplish my course, and the ministry which I
received from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel
of the grace of God."1
7. Unyielding" in conviction and fearless in
utterance, the preacher must be a pattern of the
gentleness that makes the truly great,2 winning
and inspiring men by '-i-the meekness and gentle
ness of Christ,"3 skilled in the art of helpful
sympathy, and known as one who can be trusted
with the deepest confidences of the human heart.
The preacher who will stand in the succession
of the prophets, and discharge a ministry truly
prophetic, must therefore possess as an essential
of his equipment, the vicarious spirit and outlook,
being, for the sake of others, " a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief." This is, in part, the
meaning of what is significantly called, " the
prophet's burden," being, beyond others, a man
of the people, " moved with compassion for them "
1 Acts xx. 24. ! Ps. xviii, 35. J 2 Cor. x. 1.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 225
— being down in the swim with them — " because
they are distressed and scattered, as sheep not
having a shepherd,"1 and constantly taking their
cares and longings to his heart, as though they
were his own.
In this respect, the life of the preacher-prophet,
like that of his Hebrew prototype, will be for the
most part lonely, his experience being the more
tragic, that it is so largely borne in secret, and
cannot be generally understood. He will inspire
confidence, and will in turn, from time to time —
without requiring or desiring it, and certainly with
no accompaniment of priestly pretensions — receive
confidences he will carry deep and secret as the
grave. Yet none will know the cost by which
this ability to receive the secrets of men has been
won, nor understand the agony he endures, as,
more than others, he sees and knows and feels
the evil of the world.
But it is not alone the evil he is pledged to fight,
which constitutes " the burden of the prophet,"
and for which he vicariously suffers ; it is on God's
account, and for the sake of the truth men despise
and cast out, that he treads the winepress of sorrow,
and drinks in secret the cup of bitterness. This
was the greater part of the burden shared in turn
by each of the prophets of Israel. We have seen
how, through the poignancy of his own rejected
love, Hosea threw up the sympathy of his sorrow-
stricken heart to the Eternal Love, as he hears
God cry out : — " How shall I give thee up,
1 Matt. ix. 36. Q

226 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe /TBobern preacher.
Ephraim ? How shall I deliver thee, Israel ? "1
" Though I have taught and strengthened their
arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me.
They return, but not to him that is on high."2
It is before the mystery of this human wilfulness,
spurning the omnipotence of Infinite Love, and
preferring the husks of the world's emptiness,
that the preacher bows in prostrate agony before
God. Often and often as he descends the pulpit
stair, and returns humiliated and dejected to pass
a sleepless night, in the consciousness of failure
to win a verdict for his Lord, he cries out " Who
hath believed our report ? and to whom hath the
arm of the Lord been revealed ? "3 This too is
part of " the burden of the prophet." No true
preacher can escape it. Indeed, he will not wish
to escape it. In this way, he is constantly making
" acquaintance with grief." Grieved for the people
whose refusal of the word of life has strengthened
the might of evil ; grieved for the truth deserving
so much more and better of himself and his people ;
grieved beyond all, for His Master's sorrow and
His Master's loss. The preacher who knows
nothing, or feels infrequently, this agony of the
rejected Cross, should examine his credentials
afresh, and tremble lest he should gravitate to the
ranks of those who " prophesy for hire."4
8. When we pass to affirm as a further essential
to the equipment of the preacher, that he must,
of all men, possess an unconquerable faith, a radiant
hope, a sunny and winsome disposition, making
1 Hosea xi. 8. • Hosea vii. 15. 8 Isa. liii. 1. • Micah iii. 11.

Gbe preacber's Equipment. 227
him as he faces his work, " an incurable optimist,"
we are not conscious of any contradiction or con
fusion either of fact or statement, least of all do
we ignore the trath of vicarious suffering just
discussed. We are but stating its logical, its only
possible issue. It is indeed, because of the dis
tinctiveness and supremacy of his faith, "as seeing
him who is invisible,"1 that he is able to " endure."
The writer to the Hebrews supplies the com
mentary to this concluding section of our study,
when, in citing the unequalled and unapproachable
example of our Lord's vicarious life and work, in
speech unmatched for suggestion and beauty, he
links the suffering and the joy : — " Who for the
joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising shame."2
Yet more. We reverently pass at once to the
experience of Him who is the Redeemer, and also
the lofty pattern for the preacher. The nearer
Jesus travelled to His Gethsemane, the more He
iucreased the emphasis upon His joy.3 It was
then, that so far from speaking as one depressed,
He rang out for Himself, and for His followers,
His loftiest song of triumph.4
That the preacher should pass in and out among
men, and amidst the often depressing scenes of
his work, as one who understands the music and
healing of the merry heart,5 and who rays out
sunshine as he walks, is only what men should be
led to expect. Where he comes, hope should be
1 Heb. xi 27. 2 Heb. xii. 2. 3 John xvi. 20, 22. 23; xvii. 13.
4 John xvi. 33. 6 Prov. xvii. 22.
Q 2

228 Gbe ibebrew prophet anb tbe xHiobern preacber.
left as a lane of light-beams, and the incentive to
the braver endurance or the victorious effort should
follow as an inevitable sequel.
For is he not the specialist of hope ? Does he
not live to expound a gospel, which, in its essence
as in its goal, is the death of despair, nay more, of
death itself ? Does he not live by his faith ? And
is not his the faith in the assured victory of good
over evil, of truth over every kind of falsehood ?
By reason of such a faith, and as the issue of it,
does he not always behold the coming dawn,
stretching on to the eternal noon of the day of
God ? Is it conceivable that one, whose joyous
work it is to announce a marriage, the eternal
union and victory of the good, should carry before
men a gloomy countenance, or appear unto men
as those who fast ? x
It was the possession of this deathless hope and
the exercise of this unconquerable faith which
sustained the prophets. This gave them their
elevation and power over their own time and
people, and made them rank with the loftiest
teachers of the race.
We have already pointed out2 how it carried
forward and secured the growth of the Messianic
hope in Israel, by which, even in the darkest days
of the exile, the consciousness of destiny was kept
alive, and victory was wrested from seeming defeat.
We too have recently passed through our baptism
of blood. In the agony caused by the " greatest
war in history," we have experienced a " trial of
1 John iii. 29; Matt. ix. 15. 2 See pp. 107-27.

Gbe preacher's Equipment. 229
faith " without parallel in the memory of living
man. Yet we have had no eclipse of the best things,
such as that witnessed by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel
or second Isaiah. Even in the " darkness which
might be felt," these prophets saw the coming
day, and in the midnight of their sorrow, they sang
their most jubilant and triumphant song of victory.
By their faith they conquered. Their faith
compelled their optimism, and their optimism
became the invincible credential to the validity
of their faith.
Here then it is, ignoring the separating centuries
and the distinctions of East and West, that the
modern preacher joins hand and heart with the
Hebrew prophet. Sons of the same hope are they,
comrades in the same holy service, believers
in the same assurance of victory because of " that
Messiah who has indeed now come,"1 and who in
a very real sense is always coming.
Yet with an emphasis impossible to the loftiest
prophet of old, and with a conviction born of un
mistakable history, the modern preacher may the
more confidently face his day of trial, and ring out
above all the discordant notes of his age the music
of final triumph.
For in these later days He to whom the prophets
witnessed, and who is the highest revelation of
God, has given to us this gracious and welcome
assurance — at once a promise of power and a pledge
of victory — " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world."2
1 John iv. 25. 2 Matt, xxviii. 20.

CHAPTER XI.
Hbe preacber an& tbe Cburcb.
WHEN we were discussing the relation of
the preacher to the conditions and claims
of our modern life,1 we confined our treat
ment of the theme to the need and call of the world
outside the Church. The limitation, though in
tentional at that point, cannot be allowed to remain.
It requires the correction and enlargement which
the present examination seeks to supply.
Using the term now in its most Catholic in
terpretation, the Church is so essential a part of
our modern life, and stands in such a redeeming
relation to it, that no attempt to understand the
modern position or need can be successful, which
ignores its ministry and witness.
It is part of the prevailing habit and temper to
speak slightingly of the Church, and to depreciate
the value of its work. Yet it cannot be denied
that theTChurch, while not of the world, is in the
world asjthe mediator of the Divine Spirit, and as
an appointed channel of Divine answer and healing.
1 See pp. 198-210.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 231
It is only as we carefully examine and attempt to
appreciate its appointed place, that we are in a
position to praise or blame. As yet, the severest
critic of the Church has not been able to offer the
world a more competent instrument of human
progress. This study is further required as we consider
the position of the modem preacher. He stands
in a relation of the closest intimacy to the Church,
receiving his commission through the Church as
sealing and confirming the Divine call to preach.
As one " deriving all his ministerial status from
the Church, at no time and in no point independent
of or above her, he is her representative and her
organ in a very special way."1 And thus there is
established as between Church and preacher
reciprocal obligations and duties equally sacred
and binding upon both.
But before we proceed to define the nature of
these obligations and duties, it will be useful to go
back to the standpoint of our studies in the earlier
part of this lecture.
In some essential features the Hebrew prophet
and the modern preacher, though living and working
under conditions entirely unlike, are yet closely
and permanently related. Both receive their call
from God. Both are primarily responsible to
Him. In their fearlessness and courage, in their
spiritual freedom and directness of access to God,
1 Quoted from Dr. A. S. Peake's valuable article on Methodist
Union. See Methodist Recorder for July 7, 1921, p. 4. The
whole article will repay careful study.

232 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe rtftobern preacber.
in their passionate zeal for the Divine honour, the
modern preacher may claim equality of right and
duty with the ancient prophet.
Where the Divine voice is clearly heard in the
secret temple of the soul, neither the Hebrew
prophet nor his modern successor could consent
to any limitation of the liberty of prophesying.
It can never be too often urged, that loyalty to
the Divine direction, and faithfulness in the dis
charge of Divine duty, may sometimes require
serious divergence from the prevailing ecclesiastical
order, and even rebuke or denunciation of existing
religious practice. As when Amos, Isaiah, and
Jeremiah, withstood priestly claims, or our own
Bunyan insisted on his right to preach, even when
Church authority forbade. Obedience to the Divine
will is always the governing factor, and represents
a court of decision from which there is no appeal.
The conditions of the ancient and modern world,
which, as we have already pointed out, were so
different, make it difficult to carry the parallel much
further. There is a certain independence belonging
to the coming and going of the Hebrew prophet that
the modern preacher may not claim. That is partly
due to the fact that he lived and moved in times
when society, so to say, was in the making, and
organization was almost unknown.
Religion was there, and the religious bond, but
— as among all primitive peoples — it was the bond
of the clan, the tribe, the nation. And, right on
through all the pre-exilic times, it was the nation,
not the Church, that counted. Even the temple

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 233
of Solomon, while it gave great importance to
Jerusalem, and required a numerous body of officials
and a succession of priests, yet did not create
a Jewish Church. It is true that Isaiah received
his call and went forth to his prophetic mission
from the temple, and the worship of the temple,
yet the temple authorities of that day neither
commissioned him, nor received him. Like the
rest of the prophets, he carried forward his work
in the face of opposition from recognized ecclesi
astical circles.
Up to the time of the discovery of the law by
Hilkiah, under Josiah, in the days of Jeremiah,
worship still went on at different shrines, and side
by side with the worship of the heathen cults. So
fittle do we know of any ecclesiastical order in
pre-exilic days, that anything like dogmatism is
impossible. It has been truly said that " out of the ruins of
a nation there came a Church." And from the
later days of the exile, and the period following
the exile, we may see the rise and trace the growth
of that great Jewish organization which was destined
to prepare the way for the universal Christian
Church, in whose interests we are permitted to live
and work.
It does not fall within the scope of this chapter
to follow the movement of which Ezekiel is the
great prophetic leader. Much had led up to it.
While the discovery of the Law had given Jerusalem
and the temple a religious supremacy entirely
unshared, and an exclusive position as to the

234 Gbe fjebrew propbet anb tbe rtliobern preacber.
offering of sacrifice, the exile, and the years that
followed, had given to the Scriptures— the Law
and the Prophets — a supremacy hitherto unknown.
It had created the need for study and teaching,
for schools and teachers, hence the work of rabbi
and scribe. Hence too, the rise of the " synagogue "
where worship could be regularly carried on, apart
from the recurring annual feasts at Jerusalem.
The need of the time — as always in the providence
of God — supplied the man. No greater service
was ever rendered a people, than that which was
so freely given by Ezekiel. Israel, no longer a
nation, having learned by the bitter experiences
of captivity, the folly of rejecting God, the remnant
was fitted to become what God had always desired
them to be, a true Theocracy, a people of God, for
God. What they needed for the new order in Palestine
and elsewhere, scattered as they would be hence
forth, was a religious constitution, by which there
could be embodied and passed on to succeeding
generations, the truths and laws by which man
everywhere truly lives. And as Dr. Skinner says :
" It was fitting that this new era of religion should
be inaugurated through the agency of one who
combined in his own person the conservative
instincts of the priest with the originality and
spiritual intuition of the prophet."1
^This valuable contribution of Ezekiel to his
own and to all succeeding time is permanently
enshrined in the nine concluding chapters of the
1 Ezekiel. Expos. Bible, p. 389.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 235
book which bears his name.1 The goal of all Divine
effort, alike for the individual life and for the
world, is contained in the closing sentence of the
book, setting forth the name by which the city of
God's desire is to be known, " Yahweh-Shammah,"
" The Lord is there."2
The name sets forth a longing and describes a
character. With this as a key, the modern preacher
will find in the otherwise dreary detail of these
chapters, untold wealth of sermon material. Here
is sketched the possibility of that state, which,
apart from the reigning, transforming power of
God's redeeming presence, will always remain a
disappointing dream, a hopeless fancy. Here is
the programme of the truer socialism, the only
socialism that either can or ought to be.
1. It is with this glorious vision of Ezekiel as
a setting and background, that we may now proceed
to the work of this chapter. Keeping in view the
picture of this " high churchman "3 of the Old
Testament, and remembering the enriched content
supplied by Him, who in the New Testament filled in
the outline and surpassed it, we are justified in assum
ing and pleading for a high doctrine of the Church.
2. For while it is trae that Jesus spoke chiefly
of the Kingdom, and neither created any external
organization nor left any instructions or rules for
its management — except indeed, the law of love4 —
the Church was implicit in the Kingdom, and was
intended as the essential instrument of its spread.
1 Ezek. xl.-xlviii. 2 Ezek. xlviii. 35.
3 Peake' s Commentary, p. 91. ' John xiii. 35.

236 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe d&obern preacber.
That Jesus refrained from establishing any such
external society, and that He left His religion free
to adapt itself to the inevitable changes of time,
of place, of variety of temperament, is evidence
of His unique position as claiming universal rale.
The Kingdom sought, only in a larger and better
way, the Theocracy of Ezekiel's vision. Its aim
was the establishment of God's reign everywhere.
It sought all men and embraced all time. And it
was impossible that any external organization
could be permanently fitted to be the embodiment
of ideals so inward and spiritual.
It is easy for us to see this now in the light of
later knowledge and the teaching of history. But
that Jesus saw it and acted upon it, leaves us in
no doubt as to His Divine nature and His place
in history. Only Deity could have entrusted the
whole fortunes of His Kingdom to this one touch
stone and talisman, " for my sake,"1 relying
only on the loyalty of lovers. Looking over
it all, and remembering the results still flowing
from it, we find Paul's glowing language the most
fitting expression of the heart : " 0 the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of
God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and
his ways past tracing out."2
It was then the ideal of the Kingdom — the true
Theocracy — as embodied in the Person, the teach
ing, the life and death of Jesus, that created the
Church as the visible organ of the Kingdom. This
is the germ of that teaching which finds its ablest
1 Matt. x. 39. 2Rom. xi. 33.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Church. 237
and worthiest expositor in Paul, whose doctrine
of the Church forms our standard literature on
the theme, and should be treasured as a most
precious inheritance.
Paul too, was a high churchman, and always
stood for the sacred character of the Church. How
eagerly he pleaded for its unshared supremacy, how
jealously he guarded its honour, how untiringly
he laboured for its success ! And while Paul, more
than any apostle, had to do with the gradually de
veloping organization of the early Church, repeatedly
discussing it in his letters -,1 while he, more than
others, was honoured in founding churches, yet
he always distinguishes between the Church as the
spiritual organ of Christ's activity — the body of
Christ2 — and the external instrument through
which He works.
It is a distinction of the first importance, and
should be always steadily borne in mind. Especially
in these days when we are being driven back upon
the questions of Church origins, organization, and
unity. Take the phrase just referred to — a
favourite expression of Paul — and examine the
classic passage where the phrase occurs, and where he
is discussing the question of unity.3 His emphasis
here is not, as in the discussions in Romans xii. or
1 Corinthians xii. upon questions of external organ
ization or variety of service and office in the com
munity of believers. It is much more inward,
spiritual, dealing with essences, not forms. Examine
1 Rom. xii. 6-8 ; i Cor. x.-xii.
2 Eph. i. 23; iv. 4, 12 ; Col. i. 18; ii. 17. 3 Eph. iv. 4.

238 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe jfflbobern preacber.
the sevenfold enumeration of Ephesians iv. 4 : —
" One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all." The, most
outward and material term in this perfect group
of seven is the term " body." But is not this
" body " the sum total of Christ-loving men, women,
and children, all the world over, and throughout
all time ? Is not this the Church Christ loved, and
for which He gave Himself up P1 And is not this
the Church He redeems, " that he might present
the church to himself a glorious church, not having
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it
should be holy and without blemisb ? "2 And is
not this Catholic view the fruit of Christ's own
teaching : — " For whosoever shall do the will of
God, the same is my brother, and sister, and
mother."3 3. This brief examination of a profoundly im
portant theme, supplies us with the material for
maintaining a high doctrine of the Church even
as an external organization, and enables us rightly
to urge the supreme place of the churches in the
life of the world and of men. Seeing that the
Church visible is the necessary outcome and the
appointed instrument of the Church spiritual and
invisible, the organ of the body of Christ, every
question touching the Church is important, and
all its ministries, appointments, and activities,
share a significance and value belonging to the
Divine source from which it comes. As an idea
and as an institution, it is supreme, holy, Divine.
1 Eph. v. 25. 2 Eph. v. 27. * Mark iii. 35.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 239
The Spirit of Jesus is its life. The teaching of
Jesus is its pattern and rale of conduct. The life
of Jesus is its unchanging law. The death, and
triumphant victory of Jesus over death, supplies
the secret strength of its redeeming ministry, and
is the unfailing pledge of final supremacy.
Being visible, it is, as to organization, manage
ment and regulation, pliable, adaptable, subject
to the inevitable changes of locality, condition,
and time. Being visible too, it will, when the
Kingdom has fully come, pass with the things
that pass, having done its work. It is this high
doctrine of the Church, alike as to its origin, its
mission, and its destiny, for which we must ever
plead, and which, against all opposition, we must
steadfastly maintain.
4. The Church as an institution created by
Christ and ruled by Him, endowed with the
illuminating presence and the unlimited power of
the Holy Spirit, is ideally the trae Vicar of Christ
upon earth. It is an ideal the sanctity and
splendour of which, every member of it should
cherish and strive to reach. As Dr. Fairbairn
long ago taught us : — " The Church ought to be
the incarnation of Christ, as Christ was the in
carnation of God." In place of the modern ten
dency and practice of depreciating the place and
function of the Church, we should be busy demand
ing for it the place it fills in the thought and
programme of its Lord.
5. Inherent in this view of the Church, is the
secret of its possible unrivalled authority. An

240 Gbe Debrew propbet anb tbe /ifcobern preacber.
authority derived from its Divine head, conveyed
to no priestly class — for each member in it is equally
a priest before God, representing God to man,
and man to God — and resting in and with the
Church, on the sole condition of loyalty to its Head.
It is not too much to say, that had the trae unity
and loyalty of the Church been maintained, then
the Church would have been a power in the world
as real and as irresistible as the Omnipotence of
God. Nor is it difficult to define the nature and sphere
of the authority which is the birthright and privilege
of the Church to exercise as the visible body of
Christ, and for which a truly prophetic ministry
will always plead. The authority of —
(i) Spiritual insight and instruction lead the
way. When Peter, touching the highest point
his faith had as yet reached, and, in the light of
the clear illumination such faith revealed, made his
great confession of Jesus, as the Christ, " the Son
of the Living God,"1 he opened the door to that
fact of our Lord's true Messiahship upon which
the Church securely rests. It was the master idea
of the spiritual kingdom, and opened the way to
all its treasures.
We are here dealing with the Church as the
spiritual teacher and guide of men. The critical
questions involved, and the long controversies that
have followed concerning the power of the " keys,"2
are outside our purpose. All kingdoms are opened
by the keys of master ideas.
1 Matt. xvi. 1 6. a Matt. xvi. 19.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 241
And since spiritual truth, the knowledge of God,
of Jesus as the revealer of God, of Man, of Life
and Immortality, forms the master light of all
our seeing, and the inspiration to all right doing,
it follows that the Church holds the secret of the
world's trae illumination and instruction.
To whom is still committed the power of the
keys opening the doors of sealed kingdoms ? By
whom are such keys used, applying the truth to
any realm we will ? Is it not to ardent lovers ?
to eager and persistent students ? to those who,
knocking with a determination that takes no
refusal, and overcoming every resistance by yet
greater effort, are rewarded with the unqualified
welcome which says : — " Be it unto thee even as
thou wilt ! " No kingdom is hermetically sealed
to the eagerness of love.
It is for just such an authority of spiritual
guidance and illumination that our bewildered gene
ration waits. Since the days of Peter's confession,
there has been no greater opportunity than now
for the one who knows and possesses the mind of
Christ. And while the opportunity for the spiritual
instructor, skilled in the secrets of God, is open to
all disciples who qualify in the university of affection
for Jesus, it is for the experts of the pulpit to lead
the way. But the price of leadership for the pulpit,
as in other realms, is the passion of love, and the
knowledge which comes of love's compelling power.
The preacher must never be less than the prophet.
The world of our time, burdened with a conscious
ness of need and ignorance before which all the

242 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /Biobern preacber.
philosophies of men are helpless, is turning away
in a disappointment bordering on despair, from
long trusted leaders and systems. May we not
truthfully say, that the condition of the world, and
the fulness of time, has created the demand for a
ministry truly prophetic ?
And not the world only, but the Church itself
needs such a ministry for its own quickening and
inspiration. In this respect, the words of Prof.
Jordan, written in the opening years of the present
century, have acquired a new significance and
value : " The Church needs many gifts to minister
to her varied life, but without prophetic men she
cannot live at all in any valid sense ; without men
inspired and inspiring she declines into a mere
machine, and a machine can never represent the
living Christ."1
(2) The Church is further called to exercise the
authority of Moral and Spiritual leadership. It
is or should be the incarnate conscience of the
community. It should act as the Divine search
light for the world, penetrating to every realm and
to every individual, always rebuking the wrong,
always revealing the infallible standard of con
duct. This authority is implicit in the sovereignty
and victory of Jesus, who, as the sole Head of the
Church, seeks, that He may obtain, the undivided
allegiance of universal man.
Such a view represents a claim and should stand
for a fact, which at once and for ever removes the
Church from the controversies, either of states, or
1 Prophetic Ideas, p. 362.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 243
of parties, or of creeds. The Church cannot be a
part of any state, or subservient to any, for she
knows no state as such, any more than she knows
colour or sex. The view or the practice which
would reduce the Church to the control of the state,
humiliates the Church, while it robs the state of
the authority it has put in chains. The Church
is above all states, and, while at the service of all,
is always the law for them all.
Similarly, to associate the Church with any
political, social, or economic school, is to degrade
her sovereignty as the incarnate conscience of the
community, and reduce her to the position of the
chieftain of a particular section or clan. Political
parties, social distinctions and economic theories,
like man-made creeds, are always subject to re
vision, to the fickle changes of passing moods, or
to the merciful oblivion of the scrap-heap. The
heterodoxy of to-day becomes the orthodoxy of
to-morrow, and that again is repudiated later as
a creed outworn. All of which should serve as a
warning against the tendency to identify the aims
and mission of the Church with the partial and
changing views of men.
The Church is in its spirit as timeless and change
less as its Lord. It is universal in its love of men.
It remains unaffected by the clash of human opinion,
and will abide until the last unit of the race has
heard the voice of the Son of God.
Part of the work of truly prophetic preaching
is to plead for, and seek to make actual this moral
and spiritual leadership of our modern world.
r 2

244 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb the flBobern preacber.
Such leadership is inherent in the very standing
and mission of the Church. The voice of the Church
should be to men as the voice of God, authoritative,
compelling, final. Such an authority rests not
upon claim, but upon character. It resides not
in any individual, however gifted or prominent.
Nor does it proceed from any given locality, such
as Rome or Canterbury. It belongs rather to the
corporate personality of the whole community of
Christians, each translating the mind and deed of
Christ in daily life, and so creating the atmosphere,
and insisting upon the ethic, by which wrong
everywhere is condemned, and righteousness is
exalted as the one thing needful.
The Canaan of God's desire for humanity will
only be reached as the Church becomes the pillar
of cloud and fire, preceding and accompanying the
slow-moving, upward march of men. Without
such leadership, nations, like individuals, do not
truly live. They exist. And existence degenerates
into a vulgar and pitiful scramble for supremacy,
ending in dishonour and failure.
Seeing that only to the Church, among the in
stitutions of the world, is committed this authority
and privilege of spiritual leadership, it is out of
this view that there springs the most insistent and
urgent demand for closer unity. The present
divided condition of Christendom, at this late date
of the world's life, is a scandal. For the division
is still, in many quarters, a contention and a rivalry
on the part of those who should be agreed and busy
in the higher business of getting God's will done on

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 245
earth. Moreover, the division weakens the witness
of the Church, and her voice of commanding
authority is feeble or lost, in the divided counsels
of those who should speak as one. For the lack of
such commanding utterance the Church has often
been discounted and humiliated before the world.
Of this humiliation, the recent world-war afforded
a tragic example. There were critical periods
during those awful years when the world waited
for a moral lead. Such a lead would probably
have saved untold wealth, alike of men and material,
and shortened the period of the world agony. Yet
while each communion and every Church longed
for peace, and was eager to ensure it, we were too
divided to count in the counsels of the world.
It is the reproach of the Church, and an illustra
tion of the folly of our divisions, that the one mani
festo which sounded forth the high moral note, and,
while not condemning the war, pointed out possible
avenues of peace, came from outside the Church.
The voice that — with an eloquence worthy of
the best Roman or Grecian oracles — arrested
the attention of the world, and submitted the
" points " which ultimately led to counsels of
conciliation, travelled across the Atlantic from
one, who, though for the moment discounted,
will some day be adjudged as a prophet of his
generation. The authority for which we have pleaded is
strikingly set forth in the introduction of a book
deserving deep and earnest study, written by a leader
of thought whose contributions we shall greatly

246 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe /iBobern preacber.
miss in the difficult days ahead : — " It is the
company of the Saints that shall judge the civiliza
tions of the world, fixed in faith's everlasting seat,
and sure in the re-creative Word."1
(3) Beyond all, the Church must declare her
authority, and prove her right to supremacy, by
the ministry of Redeeming service. It is in the
actual work of saving men, and going about, like
the Son of Man, " doing good " that the Church
will become both the instructor and the leader
of the world. Happily the signs are abundant
that more and more the Church will be henceforth
engaged on the practical work of " the Father's
business." It is perhaps, as yet, too much to hope that the
Church has seen her last serious division, though
happily, all the present indications encourage such
a hope. Our point of view has changed. The
Bible, and the faith it inspires, around which such
long and bitter controversies have raged, is now
better understood, and, thanks to modern scholar
ship, is made so much more reasonable. Let it
not be thought that we are indifferent to questions
of theology and. doctrine. We are profoundly
concerned with them. The difference is, that we
no longer discuss these in order that they may be
formulated into a creed, but rather that they may
aid us the more accurately to interpret the Divine
purpose, and get God's will done. We are con
cerned less with speculation, and more interested
in service. We are more tolerant with difference
1 Principal Forsyth's Theology in Church and State, p. 25

Gbe preacher anb tbe Cburcb. 247
of view, that we may the more eagerly agree around
the healing Cross.
This intensely practical temper and bent of the
Church is all to the good. It is of the very essence
of the gospel, and the gospel in its saving and
redeeming power. The ministry of the Church is
supremely a sacrificial ministry. It is this aspect
of it which gives the Church its distinctive place
and invests it with a greatness entirely unshared.
We must steadily and persistently keep to the
front the truth, that we are not called to entertain
men, but to save them. Our work as churches
is not the exposition of theories, economic, social,
or religious. It is the urgent and ever wonderful
declaration of the fact of Redeeming Love, going
to the uttermost of sacrifice, that salvation may
be to the uttermost of human need. Only let us
be true to these notes and forces of the Church,
and we shall so help to secure its place and estab
lish its supremacy in the life of men, that " the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."1
6. It is into the service of such a Church that
the preacher is called, and for whose honour, ex
tension, and final victory he must labour to the
last ounce of his strength. This at once defines
the nature and scope of our discussion concerning
the relation of the preacher to the Church. His
call to preach receives the confirmation of the
Church. His appointment and solemn ordination to
its service, and through it to the service of God and
man, is by the permission and order of the Church.
'Matt. xvi. 18.

248 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flftobern preacber.
The true safeguard against high clerical or sacer
dotal pretensions is to be found in maintaining a
high doctrine of the Church. If we regard the
Church as it is affectionately described by Paul,
as " the body and the bride of Christ," and if every
member of the body is the " brother, sister and
mother " of its great Head,1 there can be no right,
nor privilege, nor authority belonging to any
separated class within it, which is not equally open
to all. Every believer, that is to say, every member
of this mystical body is equally a priest unto God,
called to the holy ministry of representing God
to man, and man to God.
There is plenty of room within that view for a
high doctrine of the Church. There is none what
ever for a high clerical view of the ministry. The
thought of lording it over God's heritage,2 or
of ministerial prerogative, or of putting on airs as
one superior, will be offensive and painful to one
whose chief desire is to make himself " an example
to the flock."3 " It is enough for the disciple that
he be as his master,"4 and He was " in the midst
of us as he that serveth."5 Paul and Apollos are
" but ministers through whom ye believed."6 The
qualifying term of Paul's comparison is in order
to the exaltation of Christ, and the value of winning
new witnesses for Him. Where the greatness of
service is recognized, where the responsibility of
the watchman's post is felt, and where the office
of guardian is lovingly cherished, there will be no
1 Matt. xii. 50. 2 1 Pet. v. 3. 3 1 Peter v. 3.
* Matt. x. 25. 5 Luke xxii. 27. 6 1 Cor. iii. 5.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 249
desire to make claims, nor will there be any thought
of mere position or authority.
7. It is from such a view as is here presented
that we reach the truly worthy and lofty estimate
of the pastoral office. While the preacher, even
as His Lord, will always look out upon men as
" sheep not having a shepherd,1" and will consider
the world as his field,2 yet the Church will be
his special care, and all its interests the object of
his immediate and constant solicitude. And while
the range of his sympathetic and prayerful concern
will embrace the Church Catholic — the whole Church
as the bride of Christ — elemental honesty will
compel him to give to the Church that has called
and ordained him, and which has entered into
certain obligations on his behalf, his first and
unceasing attention.
Certain specific considerations will now follow : —
(1) The preacher will take to his heart, and will
work for and seek to promote, the purity and honour
of the Church. This will be as dear and as sacred
to him as his own honour. If its purity is ever
marred, or its fair fame threatened, he will feel
it as a personal blow, and will sorrow that the
general impact of his witness as the representative
of the Church has been weakened. He will be the
severest mentor and critic of his own bearing and
speech and deed, constantly judging himself,
" giving no occasion of stumbling in anything, that
our ministration be not blamed."3
He will constantly hold up before his people the
1 Matt. ix. 36. 2 Matt. xiii. 38. * 2 Cor. vi. 3.

2so Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe disobern preacber.
loftiest ethical and spiritual ideals, and will utterly
refuse to accommodate his standards of teaching
to those of his flock who may find the doctrine
hard, or who criticize it as impracticable.
Taking as his standard, the great teaching of
the letter to the Ephesians, he\ will jealously guard
and unwearingly work to preserve the dignity of
the Church as there set forth. He will make the
longing and activity of Jesus his own, and will so
labour that the joy of his Lord may be realized,
when He will " present the church to himself a
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or
any such thing ; but that it should be holy, and
without blemish."1
(2) The desire and purpose of the preacher will
go beyond this, and will reach forth to the positive
insistence upon the distinctiveness and beauty of
Christian culture. As upon the finished work of
the pillars in the porch of Solomon's temple was
the beauty of " lily work,"2 so the preacher will
pray and work that " the beauty of the Lord "
may be seen in every feature of the Christian
character. He will look for and demand the
" more than others " of Christian discipleship, and
will make his people quite familiar with the doctrine
of the " second mile."3
The world must be trained to expect from the
Church the finest specimens of trae culture. The
beauty of the Christian disposition and service
must be so compelling as to need neither claim
nor announcement, yet once seen, will secure the
1 Eph. v. 27. 2 1 Kings vii. 22. 3 Matt. v. 41.

Gbe preacber anb tbe Cburcb. 251
admiration which is never far removed from worship.
And the preacher will watch for this as one who
" must give account."1 The picture of it will be
before him as he prepares his sermons. When he
beholds signs of its appearing in his members, he
will rejoice as a gardener who has lovingly watched
a tender plant, and is made glad in the assurance
of coming beauty. The time is ripe for a truly
prophetic ministry devoted to preaching the gospel
of grace and charm.
(3) And it is all that the preacher may help to
secure the increase and victory of the Church as
the " bride " of his Lord. The preacher lives for
the conquest of the Church. Under the pressure
of the " pierced hand," he has deliberately and
finally abandoned the ideals and pursuits of other
men that he may devote himself to this. And,
seeing he has laid hold of the " kingdom that can
not be shaken,"2 his aims are the greatest of all
men, and the object of his pursuits the most
ambitious. He does not need to depreciate the
conquests of other realms, nor speak of them as
unworthy. The conquest for which he lives is
away from all competition and comparison. As
his successes are assured, all other legitimate
conquests are made worthier still.
And the preacher is the more intent on his busi
ness, as he remembers the trath emphasized by
Sir Robertson Nicoll in his book, entitled Princes
of the Church. " The world is increased by every
being born into it, but the Church has no natural
1 Heb. xiii. 17. 2 Heb. xii. 28.

252 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe xlftobern preacber.
increase, only a supernatural. The Church lives
by capture, by booty, by winning over from the
world the citizens that make her number." Nor
is the preacher content so long as a single unit
remains outside the fold.
8. While the Church expects from the preacher
that he will give himself without reserve to the
promotion of her peace and true prosperity, the
preacher has the right to look for generous loyalty
on the part of the Church. Wilfully to neglect
either co-operation in service, or generosity of sup
port, is criminal. It impairs the honour and fair
name of the Church. Paul is here also our greatest
teacher, and out of his experience of the ignorance
and selfishness, the culture and overflowing
generosity of the churches of his day, he has made
abundantly clear in his writings, what is the duty
of the Church to those upon whom it has laid
hands, and of whom it rightly expects so much.
We go back to experiences such as that reflected
in i Corinthians ix. and the last chapter in the
delightful letter to the generous church at Philippi,
to find, it may be, not ancient history alone, but
very modern, and to discover lessons which need
to be taken to heart in our time.
That is a poor loyalty which, having called and
trained a minister to preach, is indifferent to the
services of the Church, or excuses itself, often for
the flimsiest reasons, from the ministrations of the
preacher. The Church has a right to expect great
things from the man it has set apart. It can
scarcely expect too much. So also the preacher

Gbe preacber anb the Cburcb. 253
has a right to expect that the Church will un
tiringly labour to secure the best conditions and
the right temperature in which the teaching and
administrative functions of the preacher can be
carried on.
Indifference, neglect, small criticism, resentment
of trath because it cuts across personal preference
and desire, these are fatal, alike to the health of
the Church, and the success of the preacher. The
modern disregard of the solemn claims of worship,
the growing habit of Sabbath pleasure-seeking, on
the part of Church officials and members, indicates
a weakening of loyalty to the Church, and is grossly
unfair to the preacher whom it is pledged to assist.
We place a far greater emphasis on this question
of happy and unfailing co-operation, in sympathy,
in ideal, and in service, than upon the necessary
questions of financial support. We do so partly for
the reason, that if the one is secured, the other will
not fail, but chiefly for the reason, that if there is a
practical boycott of the preacher's public ministry, or
general indifference to his trae mission, no financial
considerations will ever atone for that lack.
It is enough here to say, that the duty of the
Church to the preacher is not discharged, unless
he is removed from all legitimate financial anxiety
for his support. This is clearly the argument of
1 Corinthians ix. It is the conclusion of the simplest
ethic. And, for the rest, it should be enough to
say that it can safely be left to the enlightened
conscience of the Church.
9. The supreme care of the Church, including

254 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe flBobern preacher.
all its appointments, gifts, and service, is the honour
of Jesus. Like Paul we must ever feel and say,
" unto him be the glory in the church."1 For
Him we work and for His coming we wait. " He
is the head of the body, the church ; who is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead ; that in
all things he might have the pre-eminence."2
The world of to-morrow belongs to Him. The
issues of the Church, its sufferings ahd its triumphs,
are in His secure possession. The loyalty and
the effort are ours. The victory and the glory of
it, belong to Him alone.
And if, in any moment of depression, stung by
a sense of failure, or sickened by some exhibition
of unworthiness, the preacher should be tempted
to weaken in enthusiasm, or relax in effort, let him
refresh himself by remembering the distinguished
succession to which he belongs. Let him recall
the splendid history and high achievements of the
Church. Let him trace the red stream of sacrifice
flowing down through successive generations,
making everything to live whither it has come.
Then, rising from his momentary depression and
from his historical review, let him link himself to
that uncounted host who form the membership
of the Church triumphant, the helpers of his faith
and the sharers of his ideals, and he will return
to his work comforted and renewed, as one who
has seen the face of the King, and heard afresh
His inspiring promise, " Lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world."3
1 Eph. iii. 21. 2 Col. i. 18. 3 Matt, xxviii. 20.

CHAPTER XII.
Gbe preacber's 3og anb Crown.
i. -""pHROUGHOUT this study, we have earnestly
| sought to maintain a truly worthy view
of the office and work of the preacher.
While its significance for others can never be
exaggerated, its claim upon the affection and
service of the preacher must know neither com
petitor nor rival. No effort will be spared to secure
the highest possible efficiency. No familiarity
will ever be allowed to degenerate into mere routine
or commonplace. His horizon will widen as his
travel advances, and the realms of attainment
yet to be explored will always preserve the fresh
ness and grandeur of his calling.
2. In this estimate of the preacher's work, in
the untiring devotion with which the aim of it is
pursued, as also in the satisfaction of its assured
result, Paul is our greatest human model. That
he cherished the honour of his calling, and accepted
the opportunity of it with adoring gratitude, is
abundantly proved in such declarations as these : —
" It was the good pleasure of God, who separated

256 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacber.
me, even from my mother's womb, and called me
through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I
might preach him among the Gentiles."1 " Unto
me, who am less than the least of all saints, was
this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ."2
That he loved his ministry, and found his un
ceasing delight in teaching and serving, is a trath
written across every page of his letters, and de
clared in every fresh outpouring of his heart. " Ye
are in our hearts to die together and live together."3
" And I will most gladly spend and be spent for
your souls."4
But it was in the fruit and proof of his ministry
as seen in the transformed lives of his converts,
that he found the highest joy of life. It is given
a most fitting expression in his earliest writing : —
" For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying ?
Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at his
coming ? For ye are our glory and our joy."5
While, in acknowledging the affectionate generosity
of converts who were the first-fruits of his European
labours, he says, in one of his latest letters,6
" Wherefore, my brethren beloved and longed
for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the
Lord, my beloved."7 Therein is revealed to us
the heart of the true shepherd, forgetting all the
anguish of loss, and the toil of the weary search
1 Gal. i. 15. 2 Eph. iii. 8. 3 2 Cor. vii. 3.
1 2 Cor. xii. 15. 5 1 Thess. ii. 19, 20.
' See Dr. Vincent, Philippians, International Critical Comm.,
Intro, xxiv. Also Peake's Commentary, p. 872.
' Phil. iv. 1.

Gbe preacher's joa anb Crown. 257
in the joy of recovery, and in the knowledge that
the Great Shepherd and Bishop of souls rejoices
that the lost is found. The culmination of the
preacher's training, sacrifice, and service, is in the
joyous assurance that " day by day those who are
being saved,"1 are added to the Church. With
less than this no preacher can be content.
3. When we proceed to examine further the
reasons for this lofty estimate of the work of preach
ing, and this exultation of Paul concerning the
fruit of the preacher's work, we are brought face
to face with considerations which should never
be absent from the preacher's thought : —
(1) Preaching is a Divine commission. The
preacher must always feel that he enters the pulpit
under the sanction of an authority, he neither can
nor desires to disobey. " It was God's good
pleasure," said Paul, " through the foolishness of
the preaching to save them that believe."2 And
being His pleasure, it becomes at once the obliga
tion and the delight of those upon whom He lays
His arresting hand.
The preacher is not responsible for this method
of revealing God's will. He is not required to
argue for it, much less does he ever need to apologize
for it. He accepts it, because God wills it, and is
quietly confident that its ample justification will
be presently declared in. its results. This was
what Dr. Horton meant in laying down as the main
theme of his Yale Lecture the following proposi
tion : — " Every living preacher must receive his
1 Acts ii. 47. * 1 Cor. i. 21.

258 Gbe f>ebrew prophet anb tbe flfcobern preacber.
message in a communication direct from God, and
the constant purpose of his life must be to receive
it uncorrupted, and to deliver it without addition
or subtraction."1 It is this which brings the
preacher into the line of the true prophetic suc
cession, and makes him in the only worthy sense,
" a speaker for God."
If the preaching of the Gospel as a method of
Divine appeal to men thus rests upon Divine
authority, it follows that neither the Church nor
the preacher may, on any pretence, set it aside.
Neither the artist, nor the priest, can take the place
of the prophet. Art, whether of picture or of
music, and ritual, have their place, nor need any
attempt be made to disparage their power of appeal.
But it cannot be successfully argued that they
have the sanction which belongs to preaching, or
that they possess the power to accomplish the
same beneficent and permanent results. Useful
as adjuncts, they should never become the
substitutes for preaching.
(2) It will serve as a further justification of this
estimate of the preacher's work, if we consider the
nature of the service intended by the ministry of
preaching. Let the preacher, and indeed his people
also, often recall the language of matchless beauty
in which Paul sets forth at once the nature and the
range of the preacher's work. It will act as a
corrective of routine on the part of the preacher,
and as a corrective of indifference on the part of
the people. With what exquisite delicacy the
1 Dr. R. F. Hort»n Verhum Dei, p. 17.

Gbe preacher's Jog anb Crown. 259
nature of the work is described, where the whole
passion of a pure, strong man's love for his work,
and for his Lord, declares concerning his people,
" I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy :
for I espoused you to one husband, that I might
present you as a pure virgin to Christ."1 With
equal beauty and strength is the range of the
preacher's work declared, " whom we proclaim,
admonishing every man, and teaching every man
in all wisdom, that we may present every man
perfect in Christ."2
And if the preacher himself is worthy, if he has
worked as eagerly and as earnestly in the realm
of the unseen, as his people have toiled for the
bread that perisheth, so that he comes to them with
the light of the Eternal in his mind and heart, and
with the message of the Eternal on his divinely-
touched lips, then deep will answer to deep, spirit
to spirit will speak. He will have done his people
a service not possible to either artist or priest.
It is in such a ministry that the preacher finds
his people, even as Coleridge declared the Bible
found him. And such will be the power of the
impact, that it will go everywhere and touch every
thing. The mind of his people will be delivered
from error, and their heart from fear. Beauty
will take the place of barrenness. Strength and
hope will change the scenes of weakness and despair
into the homes of happy song. The week will be
transfigured with the light of the holy mount.
The work of the home, the office, the mill, the mine,
1 2 C«r, xi. 2. s C»l. i. 28.
S 2

260 Gbe Ibebrew propbet anb tbe aiobern preacber.
and the shop, will be weighed and judged in the
scales of the sanctuary. The ever-growing culture
and sweetness of life will silence criticism. Fresh
witnesses will be constantly raised up to go forth
and repeat the same glowing testimony elsewhere.
(3) If to that, we add the universal application
of preaching as God's instrument, and, so far as we
know, His final method of making known His will,
we are supplied with a still further justification of
the high place accorded to preaching, and the
satisfaction of Paul as he contemplates its glorious
result. Whatever may be said as to the place of verses
9-20 in the closing chapter of our earliest gospel,1
and the command of verse 15 : " Go ye into all the
world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation,"
it will be agreed that the Gospel is world-wide in
its purpose, and that the argument of Paul is un
impeachable and final. " How then shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed ? and
how shall they believe in him whom they have
not heard ? and how shall they hear without
a preacher ? "2
We have not to contemplate any successor to
or substitute for the preacher. That preaching
will ever become obsolete is unthinkable. So long
as men need the Gospel, and the work of redeeming
men remains an unfinished task, so long will there
be a demand and a place for preaching. No hint
is ever given in Scripture that it will be supplanted
by another method. There will come a time in-
1 Mark xvi. 2 Rom. x. 14.

Che preacher's 5og anb Crown. 261
deed, when " prophecies shall be done away," and
when "tongues shall cease,"1 but not until Love's
final triumph is complete, wherein the Eternal Love
will be the only and the universal Law. That
however takes us forward toward the consumma
tion of all things, to secure which the preacher
works, and the assurance of which forms part of
the preacher's joy.
4. We have already referred2 to the ministry of
suffering through which, like his Lord, the preacher
reaches his joy. It is impossible to escape it. It
should be equally impossible to desire to escape
it. It is inherent in the nature of the work itself,
in the claim of that Gospel he is called to declare,
and in the evil of the world in which his work is
done. If the preacher is to stand in " the goodly
fellowship of the prophets," he knows that his
whole bearing and mission is a constant challenge
to the ordinary standards and common practices
of the world, and that he must inevitably excite
opposition and antagonism.
It is part of his distinctive honour, the price of
his joy, that beyond others, he lives the sacrificial
life, and ever regards himself as " the servant of
all." It begins with the opening of his ministry.
It ceases only as he passes into the joy of his Lord's '
eternal presence.
In accepting his call and separation to the
" ministry of the word," he makes the initial sacri
fice of the ordinary, yet entirely legitimate material
ambitions of men. And he does this without
1 1 Cor. xiii. 8. 2 See pp. 218, 224-7.

262 Gbe fjebrew propbet anb tbe /toobern preacber.
whine or regret, as the only course possible to him.
Nor will such sacrifice ever bulk in either thought
or speech. As soon as the pressure of the pierced
hand is laid upon him, he will set his face resolutely
toward the Jerusalem of his desire as a winner of
men, neither listening to those who seek to remind
him of what he has renounced, nor tempted by any
desire to boast as though he had done some notable
and worthy thing.
The initial renunciation of the preacher is main
tained as he steadily pursues his ministry. As
" God's watchman," he belongs not to himself,
but to his fellows, and lives only to do them good.
" All things are lawful to him, but not all things
are expedient,"1 and, so that the ministry be not
blamed,2 nor the weakest of men find " occasion
of stumbling in him,"3 he will refuse to allow him
self certain diversions, amusements, pursuits, in them
selves harmless and legitimate, yet for him not good.
He knows, or should know, that a fierce light
beats upon the pulpit, and that he who is set as
the " steward of the mysteries of God,"4 and as
the expositor of the high standards of the Gospel
must be above suspicion or reproach. Not that
he will ever become the ascetic, the pedant or the
fanatic, repelling those he seeks to win by a seeming
want of breadth, or a wholesome enjoyment of
life. He will rather by the winsomeness and charm
of his disposition, his sheer delight in the joy of
service, and by the fuller " manifestation of the
1 i Cor. vi. 12. z 2 Cor. vi. 3.
3 1 John ii. 10. ' 1 Cor. iv. 1.

Gbe preacher's Jog anb Crown. 263
truth " be constantly " commending his gospel and
his Master to every man's conscience in the sight
of God."1
And what a constant expenditure his work is !
Expenditure of which his people know nothing,
and for which there is no equivalent of payment
in kind. What a ceaseless drain upon his mental
and spiritual nature it represents ! What soul
sweat his study should witness, as even there, the
need of his people and the agony of the world
stretches out before him ! Of what an outgoing
of virtue he will be conscious as he stands in his
pulpit as God's messenger, and deals with the
problems of eternal life ! How carefully must
he watch, in order to repel the temptations peculiar
to his position, and with what anxiety will he guard
the strength and the freshness of his early ideals !
The temptation to mere professionalism and
routine ; the fear of man, and what is even more
subtle, the favour of man, suggesting the weakening
of some much needed rebuke, or the refusal of
some Divinely prompted message, which, as the
word of the Lord, should be uttered as the pro
phetic warning for the time ! How the preacher
will be tempted to consider consequences, and ask
whether he is required to risk the inevitable dis
pleasure, and it may be the loss of some, whose
favour he would prefer to keep !
Let it never be supposed that the work of preach
ing and the life of the preacher is the call to a place
of ease. It is the most costly vocation on earth.
1 2 Cor. iv. 2.

264 Gbe ftebrew propbet anb tbe rtiiobern preacber.
5. But it is also the most precious and the most
fruitful in joy, concerning which it is profoundly
true, that the joy triumphs in and over the sorrow.
If, of all men, the preacher should be the most
keenly sensitive, finely trained in every faculty,
quick to respond to the. slightest approach of need,
it clearly follows that such sensitiveness will not
be without its answering compensation and reward.
For is there not included in it the capacity of ex
quisite enjoyment ? Such an eager appreciation
of the beautiful in character, and such a secret
delight in the increasing victory of truth over false
hood, and of right over wrong, as openly to share
the joy of his Lord, who daily sees the accomplish
ment of His. travail of soul and is satisfied !
This is in truth, the preacher's joy and crown.
And its value, is so intrinsically precious, it sets
forth a result so much to be desired, that we may
not lay this study down without making an
attempt to understand its constituent elements,
and enforce the need of unceasing effort to win it
as our own.
(1) Into what royal society and to what rare
fellowship the preacher is admitted ! "In one of
his sonnets Matthew Arnold tells of meeting with
a minister, ' ill and o'erworked,' on a broiling
August day in the East End of London, and asking
him how he fared in that scene of sin and sorrow.
' Bravely,' was the answer, ' for I of late have been
much cheered with thought of Christ.' "1 Dr.
1 Quoted from Dr. Stalker's The Preacher and his Models,
p. 201.

Gbe preacher's 3og anb Crown. 265
Kennedy describes it as an actual incident. Such
a possible privilege indeed have all the saints, for
none may claim a monopoly of Heaven's King.
Yet by the very nature of his work, as a constant
attendant upon the business of interpreting and
declaring the King's will, the preacher shares this
privilege in an eminent degree. And if it is true
as the old philosophers laid down, " that we become
like that we lovingly look upon," what an oppor
tunity the preacher possesses as he often passes
in to the audience room of the King, and looks
lovingly upon the ineffable beauty of Jesus !
Further, as a student industriously bent on his
Father's business, he has open entrance to the
companionship of the world's aristocracy of mind
and heart. It too, is an aristocracy entirely im
partial and thoroughly democratic, ready to impart
its treasures to any inquirer, who is prepared to
bring the capacity and the desire to be taught,
Books know no distinction of class, and, wisely
chosen, as wisely and diligently used, they are pre
pared to impart their treasure of instruction, and
their sources of enjoyment without measure. It may
be taken for granted that, so far as means and
opportunity allow, the preacher will from time to
time gather round him the choicest and the best,
seeing that he is called to be an expert in the highest
science known to man. In his Yale Lecture,
Dr. Jowett describes the preacher's study as an
" oratory." What a joy that preacher knows,
who, seeking his place of communion and vision
as diligently as the merchant his office or the work-

266 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dfcobern preacber.
man his bench, unselfishly, always with his people
and his work before him, consults his silent friends,
and by earnest conference with them constantly
enlarges the boundaries of his knowledge !
But, as keeping constantly in touch with the life
he seeks to save, the preacher will be the com
panion and the confidant of his fellow man. One
of the secret sources of his joy, and an unfailing
incentive to his best effort, will be the study of
human life as he sees it in the light of its possible
union with Jesus.
The writer recalls with gratitude, as one under
obligation, the practice and advice of one whose
ministry, in a busy midland industrial centre, was
a conspicuous and an abiding success. Week by
week through the long years, it was his custom to
spend one evening each week in the crowded market-
square, listening to the speech of the people, watch
ing their movements, seeking their point of view,
and studying first hand the perennially interesting
problems of human life. He advised the psycho
logical study of the crowd as they jostled each other
in the market place. It corrected a tendency to
aloofness, and to a manner of address not sufficiently
intelligible to the mind of the average man. In
the case referred to, the practice was justified in
a ministry which throbbed with a true human
interest. And the advice was golden, acting always
as a safeguard and a guide.
(2) And what an unfailing source of delight
springs from such a first-hand knowledge of life !
It will make great demands upon the resources of

Gbe preacher's 3og anb Crown. 267
the preacher, yet what a gain in the freshness and
variety of his teaching ! A crowd of interests will
always serve to save him from either dulness or
monotony. Time will never drag heavily for him,
nor will he ever wish to exchange his sphere for
less exacting ways of life.
Seeking, finding, guarding, training, will represent
a quartette of interests, making up the happy music
of laborious days. The unsoiled delights which
spring from the sheer joy of serving, will be for him
an ample and an abiding heaven. There is surely
no vocation known to men so full of the novelty,
the awe and wonder of things, as that of the preacher
who lives and works among the mysteries and
reverences of human life. The truth our Carlyle
urged upon his day, needs now to be recalled and
pressed, " the true Shechinah is man."
Yet even more, we need to recover our Lord's
estimate of the value of the unit, and ponder the
significance of His prolonged and careful ministry
to the individual.1 It was He who, while caring
for the ninety and nine safely guarded, looked out,
and taught us to look out with anxious solicitude
for the " one " in peril, declaring the always im
pressive truth, that "it is not the will of your
Father which is in heaven, that one of these little
ones should perish."2
The modem emphasis is placed on the psychology
of tbe crowd, and modern science tends to dwarf
the significance of the unit. The preacher must
resist the tendency, and refuse it as an instance of
1 John iii. 1-15; iv. 1-26. 2 Matt, xviii. 14.

268 Gbe ibebrew propbet anb tbe dftobern preacher.
false perspective. It is only from Jesus' reverence
for the individual soul, that we pass to a true
psychology of universal man.
(3) And when the preacher is permitted to see
unfolding before him and before the world, the
growing beauty and the widening usefulness of
individual character, he shares a joy such as springs
from no earthly source. It should be the legiti
mate, the expected fruit of his ministry. In this
respect, says Beecher, " there is no profession so
high as that of the Christian ministry." And he
adds, " as the sheaves are the proof of good
husbandry, so are good men after the pattern of
Jesus Christ the only proper test of a good
ministry." This is the process and the issue for which the
preacher will plan and work. He will draw his
programme of personal character and activity on
a scale worthy of such a result. Its ideal will be
constantly before him in vision and in longing.
He will look for the first signs of its unfolding more
eagerly than the husbandman searches for the
earliest promise of the later harvest. It will deter
mine all his studies, and decide the plan of his
public teaching. Such will be his faith in the
transforming power of truth, to overcome natural
tendencies and make radical changes in established
habits of life, that no effort will be spared to secure
so worthy a result. No disappointment will daunt
him, nor will any delay exhaust his patience.
Knowing that he deals with life, and with the laws
of growth, he will be sustained by the steadiness

Gbe preaeber's 3og anb Crown. 269
of long views, and by the assured glory of the
result. But yet more. The preacher knows that in this
realm of life-building, the making of individual
character on the grand scale, the shaping of
personality according to the mould of Jesus, he
possesses a secret and declares a truth unshared and
unknown in any other realm. He knows that in this
most practical and most essential of all pursuits,
his Gospel is tfie specific and holds the field. It
is not even claimed that any religion known to
men, can build life of such a quality and according
to the measurements of Jesus. Here at least is a
field, where the claim and the achievement of Jesus
are unique.
He knows further, that in all God's wide domain
there is nothing so wonderful and so attractive as
human life developed on the model of Jesus ; that
there is no evidence for His Gospel so cogent and
so irresistible, as the argument of changed and
ennobled character. Every such witness forms
the centre of a new set of influences, which radiate
far beyond the limit of human thought, and which,
beyond the power of human calculation, contribute
to the extension of the kingdom.
It is just here, in the realm of transformed life,
representing the many-sided loveliness of the
Christian disposition and conduct, that the ministry
of the preacher comes to its own.
Looking upon the wonder and the glory of it,
gratefully remembering its power as evidence, with
its possibilities of ever-widening harvests, the

27o Gbe ibebrew prophet anb tbe tffoobem preacber.
preacher exultingly exclaims, " Ye are our glory
and our joy ! "
(4) Growing out of that fact, we discover another
element of the preacher's joy, in the enlarging
witness and the increasing usefulness of the Church.
The Church is the preacher's special care, and for
its honour and prosperity he toils and prays with
out ceasing. It must never be allowed that the
Church exists for the preacher, but rather that the
preacher lives for the Church. Yet the preacher
so feels the honour, the reputation, the prosperity
of the Church to be his own, that he suffers if either
its honour is imperilled or its decline is registered,
even as he particularly rejoices when its fair name
is upheld, and its prosperity is conspicuous and
constant. For the preacher understands that when the
Church is truly prosperous, and when her converts
are many, it is well with the entire community.
Her increase registers the achievement of the
people's good. Her weakness and decline mean
the delay of human progress, and the triumph of
the enemy of man. As the guardian of the in
dividual and social good, as the builder of national
strength, as preacher of the rights of universal
man, and as pledged to the work of bringing in
" new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness,"1 the living organism of the Church
is the mightiest factor in human life. It is there
fore everything to the world that the Church should
go forward from victory unto victory. And in
1 2 Pet. iii. 13.

Gbe preacher's Jog anb Crown. 271
such a march of triumph, none will more rejoice
than the preacher who lives to bring such a triumph
near. (5) But beyond all, and as the goal of all thought
and effort, the preacher will find his crowning joy
in the assurance of the growing fame of Jesus. It
is His increase the preacher seeks. All his life
purpose finds expression in the ardent desire to
set the Saviour forth.
The perfection of art is so to illustrate it, that
the art is forgotten in the wonder and glory of its
result. The supreme achievement of preaching
is attained when the preacher has succeeded in so
hiding himself and his art behind the wonder of
his message, and the glory of his Lord, that no man
is seen, save " Jesus only." The best sermon is
that which sends the people out to discuss the
greatness of the truth, not the merits of the preacher,
and which in turn, will lead them so to magnify
the grace of Jesus, that, concerning Him, the
ancient testimony will become the normal ex
perience of our modern world, compelled to say of
the Saviour of men, " He could not be hid."1 No
preacher will be content with any success short of
establishing the unquestioned supremacy of Jesus.
" That in all things he might have the pre
eminence."2 In such glowing words Paul sums
up his massive argument, that Jesus is the explana
tion and the goal of all Divine movement, stretching
away from the first dawn of creation to the final
consummation of all things
1 Mark vii. 24. 2 C»l. i. 18.

272 Gbe Hiebrew propbet anb tbe dftebem preacber.
And as the ages grow old, and as the range of
His triumph increases, the music of Paul's speech
finds an ever enlarging response, breaking forth
into ever fresh settings of delightful harmony
among those who look and wait and work for His
appearing. Is there not in our time a wistfulness
of longing, a growing expectation and belief, that
the purpose declared by Paul as the crowning work
of Divine activity in the world, can be and should
be realized even within our own generation ?
May it not be that in the present crisis of our
world history, we have reached a time of un
precedented opportunity for our Gospel and for
our Lord ? Have we not been brought to the
threshold of days great with promise, and en
couraging the faith that the crown of world conquest
is now open, as never before, to our Redeeming
Lord ?
It is on that note of high expectation and
victorious faith we end. Any other conclusion
for a prophetic religion, established and confirmed
by Him who has fulfilled the old, and brought in
the new, is impossible and unthinkable. The
time is ripe for a world advance toward the final
coronation of Jesus as the rightful King of men.
Let the Church throughout all the world, that
Church " built upon the foundation of the apostles
and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief
comer stone "x be wise to discern the signs of the
times, and swift to enter doors now thrown wide
open as by the hand of God.
k Eph. ii. 20.

Gbe preacher's Jog anb crown. 273
Granted such readiness of obedience to the
eagerness of our Divine Leader, and, far beyond
anything perceived by the greatly gifted Jeremiah,
the prophet of the. New Covenant, we may be
privileged to rejoice in the glory of that day when
" they shall teach no more every man his neigh
bour, and every man his brother, saying, Know
the Lord : for they shall all know me, from the
least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the
Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, and their
sin will I remember no more."1
1 Jer. xxxi. 34.

GENERAL INDEX.

Aaron. 10.
Abiathar. G.
Abraham. 10.
Achan. 94.
Agnosticism. 4.
Ahab. 15, 17, IS.
Ahaz. 55, 113.
Ahaziah. IS.
Alexander the Great. 70.
Amaziah. 60, 62, S4.
Amos, first literary prophet. 20, 31,
32, 35, 37, 38, 44, 55, 59, CO, 84.
Anna, a prophetess. 180, ISC.
Antioch, capital of Gentile Christi
anity. 180.
Antiochus Epiphanes. 77, 15S.
Apocalypse, Writer of. ISO.
Apocalyptic. 55, 73, 71, 99, 108, 122.
Apostles, characteristics. 1C-1-8.
limited ministry. 1C9.
Ark. 11.
Asherah. 40.
Ashtoreth, cult of. 17, 25.
Astarte, priests of. 17.
Assyria. 3, 50, 55, 07, 70.
overthrown. 50.
Athaliah. Is.
Athenagoras. 31,
Baal-worship. 6, 1C, 10, 4 7.
Babylon. 50, 72.
Babylonian. 53, 55, 50, 59, C9, 72,
116.
Belshazzar. 57.
Bennett, Principal, W. H. S7, 95.
Bethel. 14, 46, 02.
Blood-revenge, Law of. 94.
Brotherhood. 147.
Bryennios, IS?

Canonical Prophets. 88.
Captivity of Judah. 53.
Chaldean Power. 55.
Charismatic Ministry. 181.
Charles, Dr. R. H. 108, 1S1.
Chemosh. 25.
Church. 230-253.
as Vicar of Christ. 239.
duty to the minister. 252-3.
its authority. 239.
leadership of. 210-6.
organization of. 157, 1C7, 177,
181, 189.
unity of. 244-G.
Community view of man. 88.
Companion, meaning of term. 215-G.
Comparative Religion. 3.
Cornill, Prof. 10, 10, 22, 69, 04 75,
Covenant, The New. 115.
Cyrus. 57, 120.
Damascus. 4 9, 55.
Dan. 40.
Daniel. 38, 73, 99.
value of Book. 70-7.
David. 14,47,48,94,111.
Davidson, Prof. 10, 35, 63, 100,
Deborah. 10, ISO.
Democracy, A true. 88.
Development. 138.
Didache. 177, 1S2, 185, ISO.
Divination. 5, 0, 7-9.
Edersheim, Dr. 157.
Edom. 74, 75.
Egypt. 49, 50, 55, 50.
Eldad. 10.
Eli. 11.
Elijah. 2, 10, 15, 16, 18, 38, 44, 46.

276

ffieneral 5ti&££.

Elisha. 15, 10, 20, 38, 10.
Emerson. 42.
Ephod. 0.
Eschatology. 98-9.
Ethbaal. 17.
Ethical standards. 84.
Exile, Period of. 72, 110, 233-!.
Ezekiel. 38, 55, 59, 73, S<, 110,
233-6.
Ezra, the scribe. 157-8.
Family Life. 149, 150.
Fairbairn, Dr. A. M. 107, 201-2
239
Forsyth, Principal. 205, 207, 240.
Galilee. 50.
Gibeah. 14.
Gilgal. 14.
God of the tribe. 6, 16, 18.
God, character of. 21, 23.
the reality of. 61.
Gurdon.Prof. 56,57.
Gospels as literature. 171.
Grecian schools of thought. 159-00
Greek period. 76, 158.
Habakkuk. 70, 71, 114.
Haggai. 57, 73, 1"9, 126.
Hamilton, Dr. l.'.o.
Hebrew mind, The. 1, 82, 89.
Hellenism. 77.
Hezekian's death. C7.
Hilkiah. 233.
Hiram. 48.
Hophra. 56.
Horton, Dr. R. F. 258.
Hosea. 32,37,59,02-1,149,225.

Israel's decline. 135,137,138.
distinctiveness. 18, 21, 22.
early history. 4-22.
Northern. 50.
overthrown. 53.
Jehoiakim. 50, 141.
Jehoram. IS.
Jehoshaphat. 15.
Jeremiah. 36, 38, 39, 59, 08, 71, 115,
132, 273.
Jericho. 14.
Jeroboam II. 49, 55, 63.
Jerusalem, Fall of. 53, 56.
a Greek city. 77.
miraculous deliverance. 07.
prophets in. lie, 119.
Jesus, as Messiah. 100, 108, 220.
as Model. 172, 174, 2C7.
as Preacher. 155, 156, 170-3.
choosing apostles. 162-8.
companionship with. 164-9, 178.
pre-eminence of. 5 J, 79, 157, loo,
170, 271, 272.
Jezebel. 15, 17.
Job, book of. 93.
Joel. 71, 176.
John, the Apostle. 38.
the Baptist. 38, 179.
Jonah, book of. 75, 70.
Jordan, Prof. 125, 242.
Josiah. 69, 233.
Jowett, Dr. J. H. 213, 214
Joyce, Dr. G. C. 7-9, 10, 31.
Judah, position of. 49, 66, 102
captivity of. 53.
Judas Iscariot. 102, 103,
Lowell, J. R. 151.

Idolatiy. 6 7
Immanuel. 113, 114.
Individual responsibility. 87.
worth. 88, 89, 117.
Internationalism. 50, 52.
Isaiah. 31, 36, 38, 40, 52, 55 59,
S5-7, 112, 119, 126, 132, 233

Maccabean Revolt. 77.
times. 122.
Malachi. 67, 73, 150.
Man of God. 12, 20.
Manasseh. 67.
Marriage. sacredness of. 149, 150

©eneral 3-nbej.

277

Maximilla. 191.
Mazzini. 132.
McGiffert, Dr. A. C 153.
Medad. 10.
Medes. 65, 56.
Megiddo. 50.
Messiah, as God's anointed. 109,110.
as the Good Shepherd. 118.
as a man of war. 12 2.
Messianic Ideal, The. 101, 111,
122, 123.
as a church. 117.
as a Theocratic Kingship. 110,
111, 112, 121.
origin of. 101,102,103.
persistence. 124.
realized in Jesus. 102,123.
Micah. 29, 38, 59, 65.
Milcom. 25.
Milton. 5S.
Miriam. 10, 186.
Mizpeh. 46.
Modern World Our. 198-200.
challenge of. 207.
and the preacher. 191,195,203.
the War. 201.
Moloch, Fire of. 0 7.
Monarchy in Israel. 80.
Montanism, its rise. loo.
its results. 191, 192.
Montefiore, Dr. 96, 158
Monotheism. 41, 101.
Moral revolution. 90.
Moses. 2, 81, 212.

Nahum. 50, 70, 71.
Naioth. 13.
Nathan. 110.
Nebuchadrezzar. 56.
Necho of Egypt. 50.
Nineveh. 76.
NicoU, Sir Robertson. 251, 252.

Obadiah. 15, 71.
Omri, house of. 20.
Origins, study of. 170,177.

CO, 55, 56, 72, 83.

Palestine. S, :
Pashhur. 141.
Paul. 38, 53, 54.
his doctrine of the Church. 237,
238, 248.
the preacher's model. 20S, 250,
252, 255, 200.
Peake, Dr. A. S.
on Immanuel. 114.
on Jeremiah. 70, 71, 74, 76.
on the book of Jonah. 76.
on the preacher and the Church.
231.
on problem of suffering. 120.
Pcake's Commentary. 9, 13, 34, 73,
71, 75, 76, 91, 97, 104, 110, 123,
145, 159, 176, 235, 256.
Penuel. 40.
Period of transition, A. 11.
Persian period. 57.
Philip, his four daughters. IS 7.
Preacher, The.
a great human. 217, 218.
a great divine. 214, 215,
a man of conviction. 2U5, 206,
222, 223.
a man of faith. 220-9.
a pattern of gentleness. 224.
a student. 31, 214, 217, 218, 221,
265.
and the pastoral office. 249.
equipment of. 212, 225.
his burden. 205, 20S, 226.
his relation to the church. 200
231, 247-8, 251, 270.
independent of parties. 208,223.
Preaching, and psychology. 27, 38,
131, 106, 200.
as God's instrument. 156, 157
260.
cost of. 216, 221-5, 261, 203.
delight of. 218, 264-71.
its importance. 155, 198, 209.
Jesus the centre. 172, 271.
not decadent. 194.
no substitute for. 171, 19J-0, 19S,
258-60.
Prediction, element of. 1, 33, 104-7,

j;3

General 3nbe£.

Prophets (Christian The). 177, 180,
182-6.
decline in authority. 100-2.
no barrier of sex. 186-8.
Prophets (Modern The).
agony of 205.
a pressing need. 207.
not popular. 207-0.
one with the ancient. 202-3, 229.
Prophets (Hebrew The).
beginnings. 2, 1, 0, 27, 28.
call. 33, 41, 43
false. 26, 79, 190,
forward look. 31,33,99,101,111,
120.
growth and gift. 3, 81.
— moral guides. 7, 21, 51, 52, 57.
names. 28, 29.
point of contact. 3, 39, 82.
post-exilic. 55, 73, 74, 00.
pre-exilic. 73, 82, 90.
psychical training. 27, 30, 30,
reformers. 131, 139, 145.
religious authority. 70, 80, SI,
revealers of truth. 33,79.
^~-«Tcaching of God. 83-6, 113,
117.
Forgiveness. 91.
Future. 98, 99, 107, 108, 125.
Man. 87, 88.
Repentance. 91, 07.
Sacrifice. 91, 05, 00.
Sin. 80, 00, 01, 116.
Suffering. 91-5.
Spirituality. 32, 7".
Puritanism, a parallel. 45.
Rabbi, prayer of. 88.
Ramah. 13, 14.
Ramoth Gilead. 15.
Rationalistic theory. 101, 105,
Rchoboam. 49.
Remnant, The 54.
Restoration of Judaism. 73.
Revolution in Israel. 49.
Samaria. 17, 10.
Fall of. 53, 60.

Samuel. 0, 9, 10, 11, 12.
Saul. 6, 11.
Schools of the prophets. 10,12,13.
later history. 14, 18, 19, 20.
Scribes, their origin. 157, 158.
Scythians. 56, OS.
Seats of Justice. 47.
Seer. 3,5,9,12,29,42,51.
Selection of Israel. 1, 2.
Semites, genius for religion. 1,21.
Semitic mind. 5.
Seventy, The. 109, 170.
Shechem. 14, 16.
Shemaiah. 39. ^.
Shiloh. 101.
Simeon. 179.
Skinner, Principal J. 89, 234, 235.
Smith, Sir G. A. 20, 50, 148.
Smith, Prof. Robertson. 2.
Smith, Dr. Payne. 13.
Social morality. 131, 145, 148.
Solomon. 18, 47, 10.
his Government. 48, 49.
Sons of Asaph. 11.
Specialist, The. 211, 212.
Suffering, Servant, The. 95, 120.
Syncretic tendencies. 18, 19, 25, 17
48.

Tabor. 16.
Teaching of the Twelve. See
Didache.
Tekoa. 31, 60.
Tertullian. 191.
Theocracy, A real. 88, 117, 181.
200, 231.
Tilgath Pileser IV. 55.
Tribal system. 5, IS, 21, S3, 04.
Unknowable, The. 5.
Urim and Thummim. 5.
Uzziah. 66.
Vicarious suffering. 94, 121.
Vincent, Dr. M. R. 256.
Vocation, sense of. 39, 213,

General $n&ei\

2/9

Watchman, Duty of. 110, 202.
Welch, Dr. A. C. 11, 00.
Western Asia. 4,
Whitehouse, Dr. O. C. 12, 00.
Woman, Position of. 27, 186, 1S7,
ISS.
World Missionary Conference. 199,
200

as a national Baal. 5,10, 24,46, 84.
fight for supremacy. 17, 18, 19,
24, 41.
holiness of. 86.
home of. 25, 32, 83.
morality of. 21, 34, 41, 85, 92.
servant of. 95, 120, 121.
Tsidkenu. 116.

Yahweh. and Baal-worship. 6, 10, 19, 45,
47.
approach to. 6, 19.
as a God of character. 4, 21, 23,
85, 113.

Zacharias. 179.
Zechariah. 57,73,109,126.
Zephaniah. 68, 73, 114.
Zerubbabel. 109.
Zeus, Temple of. 77.

SCRIPTURE INDEX.

GENESIS.
Chap. Verses Page
III. 15 103
IV. 4 00
VIII. 21 06
XII. 1-3 104
XIII. 14-18 104
XVII. 1-8 104
XX. 7 10
XXVIII. 12 5
XXXVII. 5 5
XL. 8 5
XLIX. 8-12 104
EXODUS.
III. 3 121
VII. 1 10
XV. 20 [10,27, 186
XX. 4 101
XXIV. 5,11 90
XXXIV. 20 27
LEVITICUS. IV. 3 109
VIII. 10,30 1U9
NUMBERS. XI. 26 10
XI. 29 164, 212
XII. 2 ISO
XXI. 29 25
DEUTERONOMY. I. 4 25
VIII. 3 128,
[101,216
XVIII. 10,12 6
XXXIV. 10 [10,27

JOSHUA.
Chap. Verses Page
VII. 24,26 94
JUDGES.
IV. 4 [10,27
IV. 4, 5 186
VII. 13, 15 5
IX. 37 5
1 SAMUEL.
HI. 4-10 13
IV. 22 11
VII. 17 13
IX. 6 [29,51
IX. 0-14 [6,12
IX. 0 [5,12, 29
X. 5,10 14
XIV. 30, 37 11
XIV. 41 5
XV. 1 100
XVI. 10,17 5
XVIII. 10 5
XIX. 19 13
XXIII. 9 [0,11
2 SAMUEL.
II. 4 100
VII. 1, 2 28
VII. 11,16 111
VIII. 15 47
XIII. 12 SO
XXI. 1 94
XXIII. 5 111
1 KINGS.
I. 34 109
III. 2S 47
IV. 25 47
VII. 22 250
XI. 5 25
XI. 7 18

1 KINGS (eontd.)
Chap. Verses Page
XI. 13,36 111
XI. 40 49
XII. 11 49
XII. 22 29
XII. 28,20 46
XVI. 33 46
XVII. 18 29
XVIII. 4 15
XVIII. 19 17
XVIII. 26-28 5
XVIII. 39 41
XIX. 16 19
XXII. 6 79
XXII. 11,12 15
2 KINGS.
II. 1,3,5 11
II. 7 15
III. 15 19
IV. 7-0 29
IV. 3S [14,15
V. IS 19
VI. 1-7 15
IX. 1-3 20
X. 18 19
XIII. 14,15 20
XXII. 13, 14, 20 27,
186
XXIII. 13 25
XXIII. 29 56
1 CHRONICLES. XII. 32 197
XXI. 9 28
XXV. 1-3 14
XXIX. 29 14
2 CHRONICLES.
XXXIV. 22 186

Scripture Jn&ej:.

2S1

EZRA.
Chap. Verses Page
VII. 6 15S
VII. 10 158
PSALMS. I. 2 101
II. Ill
II. 2 1119
XVI. 11 1O0
XVII. 15 100
XVIII. 35 221
XXV. 14 33
LXXIII. 21-26 100
CV. 15 109
PROVERBS.
XVII. 22 227
ECCLESIASTES. X. 8 92
ISAIAH. I. 2 90
I. 11-17 144
I. 14,17 [147-8
I. 21 147
V. 11,12 202
VI. 1-8 [06,161
VI. 1-9 40
VI. 3 38
VI. 13 113
VII. 14 113
VIII. 19 202
IX. 1-7 111
IX. 6,7[ll3-4
X. 5 100
X. 20-22 113
X. 26 92
XI. 1-9 111
XI. 1 113
XI. 11-16 113
XX. 2, S [37,132,
XXIV.-XXVII. 74,
108

ISAIAH (contd.)
Chap. Verses Page
XXV. 0-0 00
XXVI. 11-19 99
XXVIII. IS 92
XXVIII. 21 107
XXX. 9-11 26
XXX. 15[07,20S
XXXII. 1 121
XXXIII. 22 112
XXXVII. 32 113
XXXVII. 33-35 100
XXXVII. 32-37 67
XL. 1[120,126
XL. 2 120
XL. 18-26 45
XL.-XLV. 119
XLI. S 215
XLII. 1 119
XLII. 1-1 05
XLII. 10 120
XLII. 19 20
XLIII. 1-4 12M
XLIII. 27 29
XLIV 8-20 45
XLIV. 28 120
XLV. 1 109
XLV. 20-25 120
XLV. 22, 23 133
XLIX. 1-6 03
L. 4-9 95
LU. 6,13[95,10S
LIII. 1 226
LIII. 10-12 121
LIII. 12 95
LIV. 5 [32,86
LIV. 11-17 108
LV. 12-13 108
LVI.-LXVI. 119
LVIII. 1 201
LX. 21 146
LX.-LXII. 108
LXV.-LXVI. 108

JEREMIAH. I. 4-10 38
J. 6 69

JEREMIAH (contd.)
Chap. -Verses Page
II. 26-27 141
V. 13 20
V. 20-28 138
VI. 13-14 20
VI. 1J [79,1 11
VII. 4-10 138
VII. 0-9 147
VII. 25 53
VIII. 11 79
VIII. 21 36
IX. 1 36
IX. 2 147
XI. 18-23 141
XII. 1 03
XII. 1-6 71
XV. IS 93
XVI. 2 [69,133
XVI. 19-21 110
XVIII. 18 141
XIX. 1-10 133
XIX. 4 147
XX. 1-2 141
XX. 9 [40,131, 192
XXI. 12 138
XXII 3-17 138
XXII. 19 117
XXIII. 5 110
XXIII. 22 33
XXV. 27-28 75
XXVI. 11 141
XXVIII. 16 106
XXIX. 27 50
XXX. 9 116
XXXI. 29 9 3
XXXI. 29-30 70
XXXI. 33 70
XXXI 34 27.3
XXXI. 31-34 88,
115
XXXII. 3-5 100
XXXIII. 9 108
XXXIII. 15 116
XXXIII. 16-17 116
XXXVI. 23-26 141
XLIV. 4 [91,142

2S2

Scciptutc Snfecs.

EZEKIEL.
Chap. Verses Page
I. 1-5 116
II. 6 205, 223
III. 11 205
IX. 9 117
XI. fi-7 147
XVIII. 2 93
XVIII. 4 94
XVIII. 20-24 89
XIX. 10-14 5 7
XXII. 23-30 147
XXXIII. 1-9 [89,118
XXXIII. 31-32 117
XXXIV. 11-12 118
XXXVI. 20-23 108
XXXVII. 24, 25 118
XXXVII. 26-28 117
XL.-XLVIII. 235
XLVII. 9 117
XLVIII. 35 235

DANIEL.
IX. 25,26 109
XII. 2 90

HOSEA. I. 1 63
I. 2 03
II. 6,13 00
III. 5 111
IV. 1-2 202
IV. 2 146
IV. 11 146
IV. 11-14 47
V. 2 140
VI. 9 140
VII. 15 220
IX. 7 29
XI. 1 05
XI. 8 [64,226
XIV. 1-2 07
XIV. 2-4 62
XIV. 4 05
XIV. 4-7 OS

JOEL.
Chap. Verses Page
II. 28,29 176
III. 2 74
III. 17 74
AMOS.
II. 6,8 136
II. 6 7 47
II. 7,8 47
II. 11,12 148
II. 12 26
III. 2 2, 35
III. 7[33,106
III. 8 28, 61
III. 4-8 CO
III. 10 147
III. 10,11 91
• III. 12 136
III. 15 48
IV 6-12 91
IV. 13 143
V. 10-13 01
V. 14-15 147
V. 21-21 147
V. 24 52
V. 27 106
VI. 1 135
VI. 3-6 61
VI. 4 135
VI. 4-6 136
VI. 14 106
VII. 10-13[47,60
VII. 10-17 140
VII. 11 60
VII. 15 61
VIII. 1-2 60
VIII. 4 6 137, 202
VIII. 4-7 01
VIII 5 147
VIII. 5-6 47
IX. 11 111
OBADIAH. 3 75
11-14 75
15 75
111 75

MICAH.
Chap. Verses Page

II. 11

147

HI. 2-3

137

III. 8

29

HI. 9-11

137-

140

III. 10

147

III. 11

226

VI. 8

06

VI. 10-11

147

NAHUM.

Ill 18,19

50

HABAKKUK

I. 3

71

1.12,13 71

, 145

II. 4

71

II. 14

72

III. 13

100

ZEPHANIAH.

I. 1
08
III. 5
OS
HAGGAI.
II. 23
100
ZECHARIAH. III. 8 109
IV. 9 109
V. 3, 4, 8 117
VI. 12 109
IX. 9 107
MALACHI. II. 10,16 15ft
III. 1 89
Scripture JnOej.

283

MATTHEW.

LUKE.

ACTS.

Chap. Verses Page

Chap.

Verses

Page

Chap.

Versei Page

IV.

4 [128

,216

I.

67

179

II.

3 161

IV.

17-23

155

I.

76

179

II.

17 187

V.

41

250

II.

25

179

II.

17-21 170

VII.

29

173

II.

34-35

180

II.

47 [178,257

IX.

15

228

II.

36-38

180

IV.

20 192

IX.

35

155

II.

38

186

VI.

1-6 181

IX.

36[225

,249

IV.

18-19

155

XI.

27-28 180

X.

1-15

170

IV.

22

173

XIII.

1-2 180

X.

5-6

169

IV.

43

170

XIV.

17 54

X.

26

248

IX.

1-6 [157,170

XV.

22-32 180

X.

39

236

X.

1

170

XVII.

18 159

XII.

50

248

X.

1-9

169

XVII.

21 159

XIII.

38

249

X.

2

169

XVII.

82 159

XIII.

54

173

X.

1-11

170

XX.

24 224

XVI.

14

160

XI.

46

157

XX.

27 142

XVI.

16

240

XII.

60 [42

,131

XX.

35 217

XVI.

18[198,247

XXII.

27

248

XXI.

9 187

XVI.

19

240

XVI.
21-23
121
XVIII.
14
267
ROMANS.
XXIII.
4
167
,
JOHN.
II.
16 221
XXIII.
10
204
I.
11
121
XXV.
21
175
I.
21
160
VIII.
24 126
XXVI.
14-16
121
II,
25
173,
XI.
33 [63, 236
3 59
6-8 [182, 237
XXVI.
30
126
203
,218
XII.
XXVIII.
1
193
III.
1-15
267
XII.
XXVIII.
16-20
157
III.
29
228
XXVIII.
19
170
IV.
1-26
267
XXVIII.
20[166,229
IV.
26, 26
123,
1 CORINTHIANS.
254
160, 229
I.
17-24 157
IV.
28, 29
188
I.
21 [196,257
MARK.
IV.
39,42
188
I.
23 121
I.
4
179
VI.
66-67
209
II.
16 [145,204
I.
14-15
155
VI.
70
121
III.
5 248
I.
17
164
VI.
70-71
162
IV.
1 262
III.
14
165
VII.
46
173
VI.
12 262
III.
35
238
VIII.
6
161
VII.
17 69
V.
1-17
170
IX.
2
92
IX.
16 [206,213
VI.
7-12
157
XIII.
35
236
X.-
-XII. 237
VII.
24
271
XV.
11
127
XI.
23 194
VII.
24-30
170
ixvi.
20,22,23
227
XII.
28 182
VII.
31-37
170
XVI.
20-24
127
XIII.
8 [192,261
XII.
11
167
XVI.
33
227
XIV.
23,33,40 179
XII.
37
172
XVII.
13
127,
XIV.
32 178
XIV.
17-20
121
227
XIV.
J4 187
XVI.
9-20
260
XX.
11-18
188
XV.
1 194
284

Scripture Jrt&es.

2 CORINTHIANS.
Chap. Verses Page
II. 16 38
IV. 2 174,263
V. 16 208
V. 20 203
VI. 3 249,262
VII. 3 266
X. 1 224
XI. 2 269
XI. 28 220
XII. 16 256

GALATIANS. I. 9 194
I. 15 256
I. 16 210
III. 28 187.201

EPHESIANS. I. 23 192, 237
II. 8 126
II. 20 182,272
III 5 182
III. 8 256
III. 21 254
IV. 1 206
IV. 4 237
IV. 11 182
IV. 4-12 237
IV. 16 205,210

EPHESIANS (contd.)
Chap. Verses Page
V. 25 238
V 27 238,260
VI. 17 161
PHILIPPIANS. I. 1 181
III. 10 166
III. 13 212
IV. 1 256
COLOSSIANS. I. 16,17 172
I. 18 237,
254, 271
I. 28 259
II. 17 2S7
1 THESSALONIANS. II. 19-20 256
1 TIMOTHY. II. 12 187
2 TIMOTHY. I. 10 98,19!
TITUS.
II. 13 127

HEBREWS.
Chap. Verseo Page
I. 1 156
VI. 6 146
XI. 27 227
XI. 38 54
XII. 2 227
XII. 28 261
XII. 29 201
XIII. 17 261

JAMES.

I.

5

174

II.

23

215

1 PETER.

V.

3 216,248

2 PETER.

II.

1-3

183

III.

13 127,276

1 JOHN.

I
1-3
81
II.
10
262
IV.
1
183
V.
4
72
REVELATION.
I.
10
181
I.
18
175
III.
8
194
VI.
16
201
XIX.
10 160,181
XXII.
9
181
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