_PROPHETS WITHOUT A VISION_
ii. 9, 14
In deploring the losses suffered by the daughter of Zion the elegist
bewails the failure of her prophets to obtain a vision from Jehovah.
His language implies that these men were still lingering among the
ruins of the city. Apparently they had not been considered by the
invaders of sufficient importance to require transportation with
Zedekiah and the princes. Thus they were within reach of inquirers,
and doubtless they were more than ever in request at a time when many
perplexed persons were anxious for pilotage through a sea of troubles.
It would seem, too, that they were trying to execute their
professional functions. They sought light; they looked in the right
direction--to God. Yet their quest was vain; no vision was given to
them; the oracles were dumb.
To understand the situation we must recollect the normal place of
prophecy in the social life of Israel. The great prophets whose names
and works have come down to us in Scripture were always rare and
exceptional men--voices crying in the wilderness. Possibly they were
not more scarce at this time than at other periods. Jeremiah had not
been disappointed in his search for a Divine message.[153] The
greatest seer of visions ever known to the world, Ezekiel, had
already appeared among the captives by the waters of Babylon. Before
long the sublime prophet of the restoration was to sound his trumpet
blast to awaken courage and hope in the exiles. Though pitched in a
minor key, these very elegies bear witness to the fact that their
gentle author was not wholly deficient in prophetic fire. This was not
an age like the time of Samuel's youth, barren of Divine voices.[154]
It is true that the inspired voices were now scattered over distant
regions far from Jerusalem, the ancient seat of prophecy. Yet the idea
of the elegist is that the prophets who might be still seen at the
site of the city were deprived of visions. These must have been quite
different men. Evidently they were the professional prophets,
officials who had been trained in music and dancing to appear as
choristers on festive occasions, the equivalent of the modern
dervishes; but who were also sought after like the seer of Ramah, to
whom young Saul resorted for information about his father's lost
asses, as simple soothsayers. Such assistance as these men were
expected to give was no longer forthcoming at the request of troubled
souls.
[153] See Jer. xlii. 4, 7.
[154] See 1 Sam. iii. 1.
The low and sordid uses to which every-day prophecy was degraded may
incline us to conclude that the cessation of it was no very great
calamity, and perhaps to suspect that from first to last the whole
business was a mass of superstition affording large opportunities for
charlatanry. But it would be rash to adopt this extreme view without a
fuller consideration of the subject. The great messengers of Jehovah
frequently speak of the professional prophets with the contempt of
Socrates for the professional sophists; and yet the rebukes which
they administer to these men for their unfaithfulness show that they
accredit them with important duties and the gifts with which to
execute them.
Thus the lament of the elegist suggests a real loss--something more
serious than the failure of assistance such as some Roman Catholics
try to obtain from St. Anthony in the discovery of lost property. The
prophets were regarded as the media of communication between heaven
and earth. It was because of the low and narrow habits of the people
that their gifts were often put to low and narrow uses which savoured
rather of superstition than of devotion. The belief that God did not
only reveal His will to great persons and on momentous occasions
helped to make Israel a religious nation. That there were humble gifts
of prophecy within the reach of the many, and that these gifts were
for the helping of men and women in their simplest needs, was one of
the articles of the Hebrew faith. The quenching of a host of smaller
stars may involve as much loss of life as that of a few brilliant
ones. If prophecy fades out from among the people, if the vision of
God is no longer perceptible in daily life, if the Church, as a whole,
is plunged into gloom, it is of little avail to her that a few choice
souls here and there pierce the mists like solitary mountain peaks so
as to stand alone in the clear light of heaven. The perfect condition
would be that in which "all the Lord's people were prophets." If this
is not yet attainable, at all events we may rejoice when the capacity
for communion with heaven is widely enjoyed, and we must deplore it as
one of the greatest calamities of the Church that the quickening
influence of the prophetic spirit should be absent from her
assemblies. The Jews had not fallen so low that they could
contemplate the cessation of communications with heaven unmoved. They
were far from the practical materialism which leads its victims to be
perfectly satisfied to remain in a condition of spiritual paralysis--a
totally different thing from the theoretical materialism of Priestley
and Tyndall. They knew that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; and therefore
they understood that a famine of the word of God must result in as
real a starvation as a famine of wheat. When we have succeeded in
recovering this Hebrew standpoint we shall be prepared to recognise
that there are worse calamities than bad harvests and seasons of
commercial depression; we shall be brought to acknowledge that it is
possible to be starved in the midst of plenty, because the greatest
abundance of such food as we have lacks the elements requisite for our
complete nourishment. According to reports of sanitary authorities,
children in Ireland are suffering from the substitution of the less
expensive and sweeter diet of maize for the more wholesome oatmeal on
which their parents were brought up. Must it not be confessed that a
similar substitution of cheap and savoury soul pabulum--in literature,
music, amusements--for the "sincere milk of the word" and the "strong
meat" of truth is the reason why so many of us are not growing up to
the stature of Christ? The "liberty of prophesying" for which our
fathers contended and suffered is ours. But it will be a barren
heritage if in cherishing the liberty we lose the prophesying. There
is no gift enjoyed by the Church for which she should be more jealous
than that of the prophetic spirit.
As we look across the wide field of history we must perceive that
there have been many dreary periods in which the prophets could find
no vision from the Lord. At first sight it would even seem that the
light of heaven only shone on a few rare luminous spots, leaving the
greater part of the world and the longer periods of time in absolute
gloom. But this pessimistic view results from our limited capacity to
perceive the light that is there. We look for the lightning. But
inspiration is not always electric. The prophet's vision is not
necessarily startling. It is a vulgar delusion to suppose that
revelation must assume a sensational aspect. It was predicted of the
Word of God incarnate that He should not "strive, or cry, or lift up
His voice";[155] and when He came He was rejected because He would not
satisfy the wonder-seekers with a flaring portent--a "sign from
heaven." Still it cannot be denied that there have been periods of
barrenness. They are found in what might be called the secular regions
of the operation of the Spirit of God. A brilliant epoch of scientific
discovery, artistic invention, or literary production is followed by a
time of torpor, feeble imitation, or meretricious pretence. The
Augustan and Elizabethan ages cannot be conjured back at will.
Prophets of nature, poets, and artists can none of them command the
power of inspiration. This is a gift which may be withheld, and which,
when denied, will elude the most earnest pursuit. We may miss the
vision of prophecy when the prophets are as numerous as ever, and
unfortunately as vocal. The preacher possesses learning and rhetoric.
We only miss one thing in him--inspiration. But, alas! that is just
the one thing needful.
[155] Isa. xlii. 1.
Now the question forces itself upon our attention, what is the
explanation of these variations in the distribution of the spirit of
prophecy? Why is the fountain of inspiration an intermittent spring, a
Bethesda? We cannot trace its failure to any shortness of supply, for
this fountain is fed from the infinite ocean of the Divine life.
Neither can we attribute caprice to One whose wisdom is infinite, and
whose will is constant. It may be right to say that God withholds the
vision, withholds it deliberately; but it cannot be correct to assert
that this fact is the final explanation of the whole matter. God must
be believed to have a reason, a good and sufficient reason, for
whatever He does. Can we guess what His reason may be in such a case
as this? It may be conjectured that it is necessary for the field to
lie fallow for a season in order that it may bring forth a better crop
subsequently. Incessant cultivation would exhaust the soil. The eye
would be blinded if it had no rest from visions. We may be overfed;
and the more nutritious our diet is the greater will be the danger of
surfeit. One of our chief needs in the use of revelation is that we
should thoroughly digest its contents. What is the use of receiving
fresh visions if we have not yet assimilated the truth that we already
possess? Sometimes, too, no vision can be found for the simple reason
that no vision is needed. We waste ourselves in the pursuit of
unprofitable questions when we should be setting about our business.
Until we have obeyed the light that has been given us it is foolish to
complain that we have not more light. Even our present light will wane
if it is not followed up in practice.
But while considerations such as these must be attended to if we are
to form a sound judgment on the whole question, they do not end the
controversy, and they scarcely apply at all to the particular
illustration of it that is now before us. There is no danger of
surfeit in a famine; and it is a famine of the word that we are now
confronted with. Moreover, the elegist supplies an explanation that
sets all conjectures at rest.
The fault was in the prophets themselves. Although the poet does not
connect the two statements together, but inserts other matter between
them, we cannot fail to see that his next words about the prophets
bear very closely on his lament over the denial of visions. He tells
us that they had seen visions of vanity and foolishness.[156] This is
with reference to an earlier period. Then they had had their visions;
but these had been empty and worthless. The meaning cannot be that the
prophets had been subject to unavoidable delusions, that they had
sought truth, but had been rewarded with deception. The following
words show that the blame was attributed entirely to their own
conduct. Addressing the daughter of Zion the poet says: "Thy prophets
have seen visions _for thee_." The visions were suited to the people
to whom they were declared--manufactured, shall we say?--with the
express purpose of pleasing them. Such a degradation of sacred
functions in gross unfaithfulness deserved punishment; and the most
natural and reasonable punishment was the withholding for the future
of true visions from men who in the past had forged false ones. The
very possibility of this conduct proves that the influence of
inspiration had not the hold upon these Hebrew prophets that it had
obtained over the heathen prophet Balaam, when he exclaimed, in face
of the bribes and threats of the infuriated king of Moab: "If Balak
would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond
the word of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; what
the Lord speaketh, that will I speak."[157]
[156] ii. 14.
[157] Numb. xxiv. 13.
It must ever be that unfaithfulness to the light we have already
received will bar the door against the advent of more light. There is
nothing so blinding as the habit of lying. People who do not speak
truth ultimately prevent themselves from perceiving truth, the false
tongue leading the eye to see falsely. This is the curse and doom of
all insincerity. It is useless to enquire for the views of insincere
persons; they can have no distinct views, no certain convictions,
because their mental vision is blurred by their long-continued habit
of confounding true and false. Then if for once in their lives such
people may really desire to find a truth in order to assure themselves
in some great emergency, and therefore seek a vision of the Lord, they
will have lost the very faculty of receiving it.
The blindness and deadness that characterise so much of the history of
thought and literature, art and religion, are to be attributed to the
same disgraceful cause. Greek philosophy decayed in the insincerity of
professional sophistry. Gothic art degenerated into the florid
extravagance of the Tudor period when it had lost its religious
motive, and had ceased to be what it pretended. Elizabethan poetry
passed through euphuism into the uninspired conceits of the sixteenth
century. Dryden restored the habit of true speech, but it required
generations of arid eighteenth century sincerity in literature to make
the faculty of seeing visions possible to the age of Burns and Shelley
and Wordsworth.
In religion this fatal effect of insincerity is terribly apparent. The
formalist can never become a prophet. Creeds which were kindled in the
fires of passionate conviction will cease to be luminous when the
faith that inspired them has perished; and then if they are still
repeated as dead words by false lips the unreality of them will not
only rob them of all value, it will blind the eyes of the men and
women who are guilty of this falsehood before God, so that no new
vision of truth can be brought within their reach. Here is one of the
snares that attach themselves to the privilege of receiving a heritage
of teaching from our ancestors. We can only avoid it by means of
searching inquests over the dead beliefs which a foolish fondness has
permitted to remain unburied, poisoning the atmosphere of living
faith. So long as the fact that they are dead is not honestly admitted
it will be impossible to establish sincerity in worship; and the
insincerity, while it lasts, will be an impassable barrier to the
advent of truth.
The elegist has laid his finger on the particular form of untruth of
which the Jerusalem prophets had been guilty. They had not discovered
her iniquity to the daughter of Zion.[158] Thus they had hastened her
ruin by keeping back the message that would have urged their hearers
to repentance. Some interpreters have given quite a new turn to the
last clause of the fourteenth verse. Literally this states that the
prophets have seen "drivings away"; and accordingly it has been taken
to mean that they pretended to have had visions about the captivity
when this was an accomplished fact, although they had been silent on
the subject, or had even denied the danger, at the earlier time when
alone their words could have been of any use; or, again, the words
have been thought to suggest that these prophets were now at the later
period predicting fresh calamities, and were blind to the vision of
hope which a true prophet like Jeremiah had seen and declared. But
such ideas are over-refined, and they give a twist to the course of
thought that is foreign to the form of these direct, simple elegies.
It seems better to take the final clause of the verse as a repetition
of what went before, with a slight variety of form. Thus the poet
declares that the burdens, or prophecies, which these unfaithful men
have presented to the people have been causes of banishment.
[158] ii. 14.
The crying fault of the prophets is their reluctance to preach to
people of their sins. Their mission distinctly involves the duty of
doing so. They should not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. It
is not within the province of the ambassador to make selections from
among the despatches with which he has been entrusted in order to suit
his own convenience. There is nothing that so paralyses the work of
the preacher as the habit of choosing favourite topics and ignoring
less attractive subjects. Just in proportion as he commits this sin
against his vocation he ceases to be the prophet of God, and descends
to the level of one who deals in _obiter dicta_, mere personal
opinions to be taken on their own merits. One of the gravest possible
omissions is the neglect to give due weight to the tragic fact of sin.
All the great prophets have been conspicuous for their fidelity to
this painful and sometimes dangerous part of their work. If we would
can up a typical picture of a prophet in the discharge of his task, we
should present to our minds Elijah confronting Ahab, or John the
Baptist before Herod, or Savonarola accusing Lorenzo de Medici, or
John Knox preaching at the court of Mary Stuart. He is Isaiah
declaring God's abomination of sacrifices and incense when these are
offered by blood-stained hands, or Chrysostom seizing the opportunity
that followed the mutilation of the imperial statues at Antioch to
preach to the dissolute city on the need of repentance, or Latimer
denouncing the sins of London to the citizens assembled at Paul's
Cross.
The shallow optimism that disregards the shadows of life is trebly
faulty when it appears in the pulpit. It falsifies facts in failing to
take account of the stern realities of the evil side of them; it
misses the grand opportunity of rousing the consciences of men and
women by forcing them to attend to unwelcome truths, and thus
encourages the heedlessness with which people rush headlong to ruin;
and at the same time it even renders the declaration of the gracious
truths of the gospel, to which it devotes exclusive attention,
ineffectual, because redemption is meaningless to those who do not
recognise the present slavery and the future doom from which it brings
deliverance. On every account the rose-water preaching that ignores
sin and flatters its hearers with pleasant words is thin, insipid, and
lifeless. It tries to win popularity by echoing the popular wishes;
and it may succeed in lulling the storm of opposition with which the
prophet is commonly assailed. But in the end it must be sterile. When,
"through fear or favour," the messenger of heaven thus prostitutes
his mission to suit the ends of a low, selfish, worldly expediency,
the very least punishment with which his offence can be visited is for
him to be deprived of the gifts he has so grossly abused. Here, then,
we have the most specific explanation of the failure of heavenly
visions; it comes from the neglect of earthly sin. This is what breaks
the magician's wand, so that he can no longer summon the Ariel of
inspiration to his aid.