_THE MISSION OF PROPHECY._
EZRA v. 1, 2.
The work of building the temple at Jerusalem, which had been but
nominally commenced in the reign of Cyrus, when it was suddenly
arrested before the death of that king, and which had not been touched
throughout the reigns of the two succeeding kings, Cambyses and
Pseudo-Bardes, was taken up in earnest in the second year of Darius,
the son of Hystaspes (B.C. 521). The disorders of the empire were then
favourable to local liberty. Cambyses committed suicide during a
revolt of his army on the march to meet the Pretender who had assumed
the name of his murdered brother, Bardes. Seven months later the
usurper was assassinated in his palace by some of the Persian nobles.
Darius, who was one of the conspirators, ascended the throne in the
midst of confusion and while the empire seemed to be falling to
pieces. Elam, the old home of the house of Cyrus, revolted; Syria
revolted; Babylon revolted twice, and was twice taken by siege. For a
time the king's writ could not run in Palestine. But it was not on
account of these political changes that the Jews returned to their
work. The relaxing of the supreme authority had left them more than
ever at the mercy of their unfriendly neighbours. The generous
disposition of Darius might have led them to regard him as a second
Cyrus, and his religion might have encouraged them to hope that he
would be favourable to them, for Darius was a monotheist, a worshipper
of Ormazd. But they recommenced their work without making any appeal
to the Great King and without receiving any permission from him, and
they did this when he was far too busy fighting for his throne to
attend to the troubles of a small, distant city.
We must look in another direction for the impetus which started the
Jews again upon their work. Here we come upon one of the most striking
facts in the history of Israel, nay, one of the greatest phenomena in
the spiritual experience of mankind. The voice of prophecy was heard
among the ruins of Jerusalem. The Cassandra-like notes of Jeremiah had
died away more than half a century before. Then Ezekiel had seen his
fantastic visions, "a captive by the river of Chebar," and the Second
Isaiah had sounded his trumpet-blast in the East summoning the exiles
to a great hope; but as yet no prophet had appeared among the pilgrims
on their return to Jerusalem. We cannot account for the sudden
outburst of prophecy. It is a work of the Spirit that breathes like
the wind, coming we know not how. We can hear its sound; we can
perceive the fact. But we cannot trace its origin, or determine its
issues. It is born in mystery and it passes into mystery. If it is
true that "_poeta nascitur, non fit_," much more must we affirm that
the prophet is no creature of human culture. He may be cultivated,
after God has made him; he cannot be manufactured by any human
machinery. No "School of the Prophets" ever made a true prophet. Many
of the prophets never came near any such institution; some of them
distinctly repudiated the professional "order." The lower prophets
with which the Northern Kingdom once swarmed were just dervishes who
sang and danced and worked themselves into a frenzy before the altars
on the high places; these men were quite different from the truly
inspired messengers of God. Their craft could be taught, and their
sacred colleges recruited to any extent from the ranks of fanaticism.
But the rare, austere souls that spoke with the authority of the Most
High came in a totally different manner. When there was no prophet and
when visions were rare men could only wait for God to send the
hoped-for guide; they could not call him into existence. The
appearance of an inspired soul is always one of the marvels of
history. Great men of the second rank may be the creatures of their
age. But it is given to the few of the very first order to be
independent of their age, to confront it and oppose it if need be,
perhaps to turn its current and shape its course.
The two prophets who now proclaimed their message in Jerusalem
appeared at a time of deep depression. They were not borne on the
crest of a wave of a religious revival, as its spokesmen to give it
utterance. Pagan orators and artists flourished in an Augustan age.
The Hebrew prophets came when the circumstances of society were least
favourable. Like painters arising to adorn a dingy city, like poets
singing of summer in the winter of discontent, like flowers in the
wilderness, like wells in the desert, they brought life and strength
and gladness to the helpless and despondent, because they came from
God. The literary form of their work reflected the civilisation of
their day, but there was on it a light that never shone on sea or
shore, and this they knew to be the light of God. We never find a
true religious revival springing from the spirit of the age. Such a
revival always begins in one or two choice souls--in a Moses, a
Samuel, a John the Baptist, a St. Bernard, a Jonathan-Edwards, a
Wesley, a Newman. Therefore it is vain for weary watchers to scan the
horizon for signs of the times in the hope that some general
improvement of society or some widespread awakening of the Church will
usher in a better future. This is no reason for discouragement,
however. It rather warns us not to despise the day of small things.
When once the spring of living water breaks out, though it flows at
first in a little brook, there is hope that it may swell into a great
river.
The situation is the more remarkable since the first of the two
prophets was an old man, who even seems to have known the first temple
before its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar.[33] Haggai is called simply
"the prophet," perhaps because his father's name was not known, but
more likely because he himself had attained so much eminence that the
title was given to him _par excellence_. Still this may only apply to
the descriptions of him in the age of the chronicler. There is no
indication that he prophesied in his earlier days. He was probably one
of the captives who had been carried away to Babylon in his childhood,
and who had returned with Zerubbabel to Jerusalem. Yet all this time
and during the first years of his return, as far as we know, he was
silent. At length, in extreme old age, he burst out into inspired
utterance--one of Joel's old men who were to dream dreams,[34] like
John the Evangelist, whose greatest work dates from his last years,
and Milton, who wrote his great epic when affliction seemed to have
ended his life-work. He must have been brooding over the bitter
disappointment in which the enthusiasm of the returned captives had
been quenched. It could not be God's will that they should be thus
mocked and deceived in their best hopes. True faith is not a
will-o'-the-wisp that lands its followers in a dreary swamp. The hope
of Israel is no mirage. For God is faithful. Therefore the despair of
the Jews must be wrong.
[33] Hag. i. 1, ii. 9.
[34] Joel ii. 28.
We have a few fragments of the utterances of Haggai preserved for us
in the Old Testament Canon. They are so brief and bald and abrupt as
to suggest the opinion that they are but notes of his discourses, mere
outlines of what he really said. As they are preserved for us they
certainly convey no idea of wealth of poetic imagination or richness
of oratorical colouring. But Haggai may have possessed none of these
qualities, and yet his words may have had a peculiar force of their
own. He is a reflective man. The long meditation of years has taught
him the value of thoughtfulness. The burden of his message is
"Consider your ways."[35] In short, incisive utterances he arrests
attention and urges consideration. But the outcome of all he has to
say is to cheer the drooping spirits of his fellow-citizens, and urge
on the rebuilding of the temple with confident promises of its great
future. For the most part his inspiration is simple, but it is
searching, and we perceive the triumphant hopefulness of the true
prophet in the promise that the latter glory of the house of God shall
be greater than the former.[36]
[35] Hag. i. 5, 7.
[36] Hag. ii. 9.
Haggai began to prophesy on the first day of the sixth month of the
second year of Darius.[37] So effective were his words that Zerubbabel
and his companions were at once roused from the lethargy of despair,
and within three weeks the masons and carpenters were again at work on
the temple.[38] Two months after Haggai had broken the long silence of
prophecy in Jerusalem Zechariah appeared. He was of a very different
stamp; he was one of the young men who see visions. Familiar with the
imagery of Babylonian art, he wove its symbols into the pictures of
his own exuberant fancy. Moreover, Zechariah was a priest. Thus, like
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he united the two rival tendencies which had
confronted one another in marked antagonism during the earlier periods
of the history of Israel. Henceforth the brief return of prophetism,
its soft after-glow among the restored people, is in peaceable
alliance with priestism. The last prophet, Malachi, even exhorts the
Jews to pay the priests their dues of tithe. Zechariah, like Haggai,
urges on the work of building the temple.
[37] Hag. i. 1.
[38] Hag. ii. 1 _seq._
Thus the chronicler's brief note on the appearance of two prophets at
Jerusalem, and the electrical effect of their message, is a striking
illustration of the mission of prophecy. That mission has been
strangely misapprehended by succeeding ages. Prophets have been
treated as miraculous conjurers, whose principal business consisted in
putting together elaborate puzzles, perfectly unintelligible to their
contemporaries, which the curious of later times were to decipher by
the light of events. The prophets themselves formed no such idle
estimate of their work, nor did their contemporaries assign to them
this quaint and useless rôle. Though these men were not the creatures
of their times, they lived for their times. Haggai and Zechariah, as
the chronicler emphatically puts it, "prophesied to the Jews that were
in Jerusalem, ... _even unto them_." The object of their message was
immediate and quite practical--to stir up the despondent people and
urge them to build the temple--and it was successful in accomplishing
that end. As prophets of God they necessarily touched on eternal
truths. They were not mere opportunists; their strength lay in the
grasp of fundamental principles. This is why their teaching still
lives, and is of lasting use for the Church in all ages. But in order
to understand that teaching we must first of all read it in its
original historical setting, and discover its direct bearing on
contemporary needs.
Now the question arises, In what way did these prophets of God help
the temple-builders? The fragments of their utterances which we
possess enable us to answer this question. Zerubbabel was a
disappointing leader. Such a man was far below the expected Messiah,
although high hopes may have been set upon him when he started at the
head of the caravan of pilgrims from Babylon. Cyrus may have known him
better, and with the instinct of a king in reading men may have
entrusted the lead to the heir of the Jewish throne, because he saw
there would be no possibility of a dangerous rebellion resulting from
the act of confidence. Haggai's encouragement to Zerubbabel to "be
strong" is in a tone that suggests some weakness on the part of the
Jewish leader. Both the prophets thought that he and his people were
too easily discouraged. It was a part of the prophetic insight to look
below the surface and discover the real secret of failure. The Jews
set down their failure to adverse circumstances; the prophets
attributed it to the character and conduct of the people and their
leaders. Weak men commonly excuse their inactivity by reciting their
difficulties, when stronger men would only regard those difficulties
as furnishing an occasion for extra exertion. That is a most
superficial view of history which regards it as wholly determined by
circumstances. No great nation ever arose on such a principle. The
Greeks who perished at Thermopylæ within a few years of the times we
are now considering are honoured by all the ages as heroes of
patriotism just because they refused to bow to circumstances. Now the
courage which patriots practised in pagan lands is urged upon the Jews
by their prophets from higher considerations. They are to see that
they are weak and cowardly when they sit in dumb despair, crushed by
the weight of external opposition. They have made a mistake in putting
their trust in princes.[39] They have relied too much on Zerubbabel
and too little on God. The failure of the arm of flesh should send
them back to the never-failing out-stretched arm of the Almighty.
[39] Psalm cxviii. 8, 9.
Have we not met with the same mistaken discouragement and the same
deceptive excuses for it in the work of the Church, in missionary
enterprises, in personal lives? Every door is shut against the servant
of God but one, the door of prayer. Forgetting this, and losing sight
of the key of faith that would unlock it, he sits, like Elijah by
Kerith, the picture of abject wretchedness. His great enterprises are
abandoned because he thinks the opposition to them is insuperable. He
forgets that, though his own forces are small, he is the envoy of the
King of kings, who will not suffer him to be worsted if only he
appeals to Heaven for fresh supplies. A dead materialism lies like a
leaden weight on the heart of the Church, and she has not faith enough
to shake it off and claim her great inheritance in all the spiritual
wealth of the Unseen. Many a man cries, like Jacob, "All these things
are against me," not perceiving that, even if they are, no number of
"things" should be permitted to check the course of one who looks
above and beyond what is seen and therefore only temporal to the
eternal resources of God.
This was the message of Zechariah to Zerubbabel: "Not by might, nor by
power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Who art thou, O
great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he
shall bring forth the head stone with shoutings of Grace, grace unto
it!"[40]
[40] Zech. iv. 6, 7.
Here, then, is the secret of the sudden revival of activity on the
part of the Jews after they had been slicing for years in dumb apathy,
gazing hopelessly on the few stones that had been laid among the ruins
of the old temple. It was not the returning favour of the court under
Darius, it was not the fame of the house of David, it was not the
priestly dignity of the family of Zadok that awakened the slumbering
zeal of the Jews; the movement began in an unofficial source, and it
passed to the people through unofficial channels. It commenced in the
meditations of a calm thinker; it was furthered by the visions of a
rapt seer. This is a clear indication of the fact that the world is
ruled by mind and spirit, not merely by force and authority. Thought
and imagination lie at the springs of action. In the heart of it
history is moulded by ideas. "Big battalions," "the sinews of war,"
"blood and iron," are phrases that suggest only the most external and
therefore the most superficial causes. Beneath them are the _ideas_
that govern all they represent.
Further, the influence of the prophets shows that the ideas which have
most vitality and vigour are moral and spiritual in character. All
thoughts are influential in proportion as they take possession of the
minds and hearts of men and women. There is power in conceptions of
science, philosophy, politics, sociology. But the ideas that touch
people to the quick, the ideas that stir the hidden depths of
consciousness and rouse the slumbering energies of life, are those
that make straight for the conscience. Thus the two prophets exposed
the shame of indolence; they rallied their gloomy fellow-citizens by
high appeals to the sense of right.
Again, this influence was immensely strengthened by its relation to
God. The prophets were more than moralists. The meditations of Marcus
Aurelius could not touch any people as the considerations of the calm
Haggai touched the Jews, for the older prophet, as well as the more
rousing Zechariah, found the spell of his message in its revelation of
God. He made the Jews perceive that they were not deserted by Jehovah;
and directly they felt that God was with them in their work the weak
and timid citizens were able to quit them like men. The irresistible
might of Cromwell's Ironsides at Marston Moor came from their
unwavering faith in their battle-cry, "The Lord of Hosts is with us!"
General Gordon's immeasurable courage is explained when we read his
letters and diaries, and see how he regarded himself as simply an
instrument through whom God wrought. Here, too, is the strong side of
Calvinism.
Then this impression of the power and presence of God in their
destinies was deepened in the Jews by the manifest Divine authority
with which the prophets spake. They prophesied "in the name of the God
of Israel"--the one God of the people of both kingdoms now united in
their representatives. Their "Thus saith the Lord" was the powder that
drove the shot of their message through the toughest hide of apathy.
Except to a Platonist, ideas are impossible apart from the mind that
thinks them. Now the Jews, as well as their prophets, felt that the
great ideas of prophecy could not be the products of pure human
thinking. The sublime character, the moral force, the superb
hopefulness of these ideas proclaimed their Divine origin. As it is
the mission of the prophet to speak for God, so it is the voice of God
in His inspired messenger that awakes the dead and gives strength to
the weak.
This ultimate source of prophecy accounts for its unique character of
hopefulness, and that in turn makes it a powerful encouragement for
the weak and depressed people to whom it is sent. Wordsworth tells us
that we live by "admiration, love, and hope." If one of these three
sources of vitality is lost, life itself shrinks and fades. The man
whose hope has fled has no lustre in his eye, no accent in his voice,
no elasticity in his tread; by his dull and listless attitude he
declares that the life has gone out of him. But the ultimate end of
prophecy is to lead up to a gospel, and the meaning of the word
"gospel" is just that there is a message from God bringing hope to the
despairing. By inspiring a new hope this message kindles a new life.