Now, of course, we have to remember that general statements have to be
interpreted widely, and without punctilious adherence to the words; and
we have also to remember that great mischief has been done, and great
discredit cast, on the whole conception of ancient revelation by the
well-meaning, but altogether mistaken, attempts of good people to read
the fully developed doctrine of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice into
every corner of the ancient revelation. But whilst I admit all that,
and would desire to emphasise the fact, I think that in this
generation, and to-day, there is a great deal more need to insist upon
the truth that the inmost essence and deepest purpose of the whole Old
Testament system is to create an attitude of expectance, and to point
onwards, with ever-growing distinctness, to one colossal and mysterious
figure in which the longings of generations shall be fulfilled, and the
promises of God shall be accomplished. The prophet was more than a
foreteller, as is being continually insisted upon nowadays. There were
prophets who never uttered a single prediction. Their place in Israel
was to be the champions of righteousness, and--I was going to say--the
knights of God, as against law and ceremonial and externalism. But,
beyond that, there underlie the whole system of prophecy, and there come
sparkling and flashing up to the surface every now and then, bright
anticipations, not only of a future kingdom, but of a personal King, and
not only of a King, but a sufferer. All the sacrifices, almost all the
institutions, the priesthood and the monarchy included, had this
onward-looking aspect, and Israel as a whole, in the proportion in which
it was true to the spirit of its calling, stood a-tiptoe, as it were,
looking down the ages for the coming of the Hope of the Covenant that
had been promised to the fathers. The prophets, I might say, were like
an advance-guard sent before some great monarch in his progress towards
his capital, who rode through the slumbering villages and called, 'He
comes! He comes! The King cometh meek and having salvation,' and then
passed on.
Now, all that is to be held fast to-day. I would give all freedom to
critical research, and loyally accept the results of it, so far as these
are established, and are not mere hypotheses, with regard to the date
and the circumstances of the construction of the various elements of
that Old Testament. But what I desire especially to mark is that, with
the widest freedom, there must be these two things conserved which Peter
here emphasises, the real inspiration of the prophetic order, and its
function to point onwards to Jesus. And so long as you keep these
truths, as long as you believe that God spoke through prophets, as long
as you believe that the very heart of their message was the proclamation
of Jesus Christ, and that to bear witness to Him was the function, not
only of prophet, but of priest and king and nation, then you are at
liberty to deal as you like with mere questions of origin and of date.
But if, in the eagerness of the chase after the literary facts of the
origin of the Old Testament, we forget that it is a unity, that it is a
divine unity, that it is a progressive revelation, and that 'the
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' then I venture to say that
the most uncritical, old-fashioned reader of the Old Testament that
found Jesus Christ in the Song of Solomon, and in the details of the
Tabernacle, and in all the _minutiæ_ of worship and sacrifice, was
nearer to the living heart of the thing than the most learned scholar
that has been so absorbed in the inquiries as to how and when this,
that, and the other bit of the Book was written, that he fails to see
the one august figure that shines out, now more and now less dimly, and
gives unity to the whole. 'To Him gave all the prophets witness.' And
when Peter declared, as he did in my text, that ancient Israel, by its
spokesmen and its organs, testified beforehand of the sufferings of
Christ, he is but echoing what he had learned from his Master, who turns
to some of us with the same rebuke with which He met His disciples
after the Resurrection: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that
the prophets have spoken.' The Old and the New are a unity, and Christ
and His Cross are the substance and the centre of both.