of the moneyed members of a church to dictate the tone of the pulpit;
and it is a common accusation against ministers, that they flatter the
prevailing classes in their congregations. If their congregations are
wealthy, they are afraid, it is said, to speak up for the poor, even
when justice is calling out on their side; and, if their congregations
are poor, they take the side of the working-man, right or wrong. I
should question whether temptations so gross as these are much felt.
Far more dangerous are the subtler temptations--to truckle to the
spirit of the age, to keep at all hazards on the side of the
cultivated and clever, and to shun those truths the utterance of which
might expose the teacher to the charge of being antiquated and
bigoted. Let a preacher dwell always on the sunny side of the truth
and conceal the shadows, let him enlarge continually on what is simple
and human in Christianity and pass lightly over what is mysterious and
Divine: let him, for example, dwell on the human side of Christ but
say nothing of His deity, let him enforce Christ's example but say
nothing of His atonement, let him extol the better elements of human
nature but say nothing of its depravity, let him preach frequently on
the glories of the next world but never mention its terrors: and very
probably he may be popular and see his Church crowded; but he will be
a false prophet.[40]
Who were these false prophets, and how did there come to be such
numbers of them? These are questions which an attentive reader of the
Bible cannot help asking; but it is not by any means easy to answer
them.
The prophets whose names have come down to us are not by any means
numerous; but, besides them, there must have been many other true
prophets. There were times when the spirit of religion was breathing
through the community, and then men were not wanting who felt called
to be its organs. The spirit of inspiration might fall on anyone at
any time; no prescribed training was necessary to make a man a
prophet. It might come, as it did to Amos, on the husbandman in his
fields or the shepherd among his flock. It might alight on the young
noble amidst the opening pleasures of life, as it did on Isaiah and
Zephaniah; or it might come, as it did on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the
young priest preparing for his sacred functions.
But some of the more noted prophets endeavoured in a more systematic
way to diffuse the spirit which rested upon themselves, and thus to
multiply the number of the prophets. They founded schools in which
promising young men were gathered and plied with the means of
education available in that age, cultivating music, reading the
writings of the older prophets, and coming under the influence of the
holy man who was at their head. These were the Schools of the
Prophets, and their students were the Sons of the Prophets. Samuel
seems to have been the first founder of these schools. They were
flourishing in the times of Elijah and Elisha, and they probably
continued to exist with varying fortunes in subsequent centuries.
Perhaps all who went through these schools claimed, or could claim,
the prophetic name. Those who took up the profession wore the hairy
mantle and leathern girdle made familiar to us by the figure of John
the Baptist; and they probably subsisted on the gifts of those who
benefited from their oracles. Their numbers may have been very large;
we hear of hundreds of prophets even during an idolatrous reign, when
they were exposed to persecution.
In times when the spirit of inspiration was abroad or when the schools
enjoyed the presence of a master spirit, it is easy to understand how
valuable such institutions may have been, and how they may have been
centres from which religious light and warmth were diffused through
the whole country. But they were liable to deterioration. If the
general tone of religion in the country declined, they partook in the
general decay; an inspiring leader might be taken away and no
like-minded successor arise to fill his place; or men who had received
no real call beforehand might join the school and pass through the
curriculum without receiving it. Only they had learned the trick of
speech and got by rote the language of religion. They had no personal
knowledge of God or message obtained directly from Him; but it was not
difficult to put on the prophet's mantle and talk in the traditional
prophetic tones. The fundamental charge against the false prophets is
always this: "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not
spoken unto them, yet they prophesy."
If I am right in tracing the origin of false prophecy to the schools
of the prophets, this gives a suggestive hint as to the point at which
the same danger may beset ourselves. It is obviously the duty of the
authorities of the Church to make provision for the training of those
who are to be the future ministers of the Gospel; and it is natural
for those who have the honour of the Church at heart to covet for her
service the talents of the gifted. Parents, too, will often be found
cherishing an intense desire that the choicest of their sons should
become ministers. These wishes of superiors have a legitimate
influence in determining the choice of our life-work. The wishes and
prayers of pious parents are especially entitled to have very great
weight. Yet there is a danger of an outward influence of this kind
being substituted for genuine personal experience and an inward call.
When, a generation ago, in the rural parts of England, the church in
many a parish was looked upon as "a living," to be allocated to a
junior member of the family, who was educated for the position as a
matter of course, the custom, whatever happy results it might produce
in exceptional cases, was not fitted to fill the pulpits of the land
with men of prophetic character. The pious wishes of parents, however
beautiful they may be, require to be made absolutely conditional on a
vocation of a higher kind; otherwise we get a manufactured ministry,
without a message, in place of men in whom the spirit of inspiration
is stirring and who speak because they believe.
* * * * *
Having no message of their own, what were the false prophets to do?
The best they could do was to repeat and imitate what had been said by
their predecessors. It is with this Jeremiah reproaches them when he
says, "Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal
My words everyone from his neighbour." The older prophets used to
begin their utterances with the phrase, "the burden of the Lord;" and
Jeremiah complains that this had become an odious cant term in the
mouths of his contemporaries; and in the same way Zechariah complains
that in his day the great word "comfort," which from the lips of
Isaiah had descended like dew from heaven on the parched hearts of the
people of God, had become a dry and hackneyed phrase in the mouths of
false prophets. How dangerous this habit of stealing the words of
others might become, when practical issues were involved, may be
illustrated by a striking example. The inviolability of Jerusalem had
been a principle of the older prophets, which was quite true for their
times; and Isaiah had made use of it for rousing his fellow-citizens
from despair, when the army of Sennacherib stood before the gates. But
in Jeremiah's time the change of circumstances had made it to be no
longer true; and yet the false prophets kept on repeating it; and no
doubt they seemed both to themselves and others to be occupying a
strong position when, in opposing him, they could allege that they
were standing on the same ground as Isaiah. All the time, however,
they were betraying those who listened to them.
There is a sense in which the truth of God is unchangeable; it is like
Himself--the same yesterday and to-day and forever. But there is
another sense in which it is continually changing. Like the manna, it
descends fresh every morning, and, if it is kept till to-morrow, it
breeds loathsome worms. Isaiah describes the true prophet as one who
has the tongue of the learner--not of the learned, as the Authorised
Version gives it--and whose ear is opened every morning to hear the
message of the new day. What was truth for yesterday may be falsehood
for to-day; and only he is a trustworthy interpreter of God who is
sensitive to the indications of present providence.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the only form which
false prophecy can take is a dried-up orthodoxy, mumbling over the
shibboleths of yesterday. If he who stands forward as a speaker for
God is out of touch with God and has really no Divine message, he may
make good the lack of a true Divine word in many ways. The easiest way
is, no doubt, to fall back on some accepted word of yesterday; but he
may also strike out on the path of originality, announcing a gospel
for to-morrow, constructed by his own fancy, which has no Divine
sanction. Neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy is a guarantee: the only
guarantee is a humble mind living in the secret of the Lord.
* * * * *
I have mentioned that the prophets subsisted on the contributions of
those to whom their oracles were supposed to be valuable. There is,
indeed, very little information on this head; but they are accused of
prophesying for bread, and avarice and a greedy appetite for the good
things of this life are reproaches frequently cast at them. It is not
likely that prophecy can ever have been a paying profession, but it
would appear to have been at least a means of livelihood; and there
are indications that those who enjoyed an exceptional popularity may
have occupied a high social standing. Ezekiel, whose characterizations
of the false prophets are remarkably striking, uses about them a
significant figure of speech. He says that, while a true prophet was
like a wall of fire to his country, standing in the breach when danger
threatened and defending it with his life, the false prophets were
like the foxes that burrow among the ruins of fallen cities. What
mattered it to them that their country was degraded, if only they had
found comfortable places for themselves?
This also is a painful side of the subject. It is inevitable that the
ministry should become a means of livelihood, and yet it is fatal to
pursue it with this in view. It is the least lucrative of the
professions, and yet, in the pressure of modern life, it may tempt men
to join it merely as a profession. Even if it has been entered upon
from higher motives, the attrition of domestic necessities may dry up
the nobler motives and convert the minister into a hireling who thinks
chiefly of his wages.[41] The commercial spirit is nearly omnipotent
in our day; and men who can buy everything for money think that
ministers are procurable in the same way. Thus they tempt men away
with bribes of money from work to which God has called them. I am far
from questioning the importance of the mission of the pulpit to the
wealthier classes; and we must have men of culture to preach to the
cultivated. I would no more think of setting up the poor against the
rich, as the exclusive objects of the Church's attention, than the
rich against the poor. But perhaps the most essential work of the
Church at the present time is to win and to hold the working classes.
I should like to see ministers coveting work among them; and let him
who has learned to wield such an audience, where he can speak with the
freedom and force of nature, beware of being bribed away to a position
where he will be tamed and domesticated, and have his teeth drawn and
his claws cut.
* * * * *
So monotonous is the evil side of the false prophets that one longs
for a gleam of something good in them. Can they not at least be
pitied? May they not have been weak men, who were elevated to a
position which proved too much for them? The times were full of change
and difficulty, and it required a clear eye to see the indications of
Providence. It is not everyone who has the genius of an Isaiah or the
magnificent moral courage of a Jeremiah. Was it not possible to take
a milder view of the world than Jeremiah did and yet be a true man?
May they not at least have been mistaken, when they ventured to emit
prophecies which history falsified?
Such sentiments easily arise in us; but they are driven back by what
we read of the personal character of these men. "Both prophet and
priest," says Jeremiah, "are profane; yea, in My house have I found
their wickedness, saith the Lord." "I have seen," he says in God's
name, "in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit
adultery and walk in lies." Jeremiah's view of them might be thought
to be coloured by his own melancholy temperament; but Isaiah's is not
less severe: "The priest and the prophet," he says, "have erred
through wine, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way
through strong drink." And he gives this terrible picture of them:
"His watchmen are blind, they are ignorant; they are all dumb dogs,
they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they
are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds
that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, everyone to
his gain from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and
we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and to-morrow shall be as
this day and still more abundant." The representations in the other
prophets are to the same effect. Zephaniah passes on the whole class
the sweeping judgment, that they are light and treacherous persons.
But the lowest deep is reached in Zechariah, who foresees a time,
close at hand, when the very name of prophet will be a byword, and the
father and mother of anyone who pretends to prophesy will thrust him
through, to deliver themselves from the reproach of having any
connection with him.[42]
The influence of such a travesty of the sacred office as these
passages describe must have been deplorable; and without doubt it was
one of the principal causes of the overthrow of the Jewish State.
Jeremiah says expressly, that from the prophets profaneness had gone
out over the whole land. They who, from their position and profession,
ought to have been an example to their fellow-countrymen were the very
reverse. They were the companions of the profane and licentious in
their revels, and they joined with scorners in scoffing at those who
led a strict and holy life. So God charges them by the lips of
Ezekiel: "Ye have made the hearts of the righteous sad, whom I have
not made sad, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
should not return from his wicked way."
This is a terrible picture. Yet there have been epochs in the history
of the Christian, and even of the Protestant Church, when its features
have been reproduced with too faithful literality. Let us be thankful
that we live in a happier time; but let us also remember the maxim,
"Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." If a
Church lose the Spirit of God, there is no depth of corruption to
which it may not rapidly descend; and a degraded Church is the most
potent factor of national decay.
* * * * *
Allow me, gentlemen, to say, in closing, that I believe the question,
what is to be the type and the tone of the ministry in any generation,
is decided in the theological seminaries. What the students are there,
the ministers of the country will be by-and-by. And, while the
discipline of the authorities and the exhortations and example of
professors may do something, the tone of the college is determined by
the students themselves. The state of feeling in a theological
seminary ought to be such, that any man living a life inconsistent
with his future profession should feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and
have the conviction driven in upon his conscience every day, that the
ministry is no place for him.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] As this subject is somewhat novel, the following collection of
texts may be acceptable; but it is not given as exhaustive:--
Isa. ii. 6; xxviii. 7; xxx. 10, 11; xlvii. 13; lvi. 10-12.
Jer. ii. 8, 26; iv. 9; v. 31; vi. 14; xiv. 13-16; xviii. 18; xxiii. 9-40
(_locus classicus_); xxvi. 8; xxvii. 9, 16; xxviii. xxix. 8.
Ezek. xii. 24; xiii. (_locus classicus_); xiv. 9; xx. 25; xxi. 23; xxii.
25, 28.
Micah ii. 11; iii. 5, 11.
Zeph. iii. 4.
Zech. x. 2; xiii. 2-4.
[39] "Sicut autem cuius pulchrum corpus et deformis est animus, magis
dolendus est, quam si deforme haberet et corpus, ita qui eloquenter ea
quæ falsa sunt dicunt, magis miserandi sunt, quam si talia deformiter
dicerent."--ST. AUGUSTINE.
[40] Even popularity honestly won may be a great snare. Vanity, it must
be allowed, is probably the commonest clerical weakness; and, when it is
yielded to, it deforms the whole character. There are few things more
touching or instructive than the entries in Dr. Chalmers' journal, which
show with what earnestness he was praying against this, in the height of
his popularity, as a besetting sin. If this were common, there would not
be the slight accent of contempt attached to the name of the popular
preacher which now belongs to it in the mouths of men. The publicity
which beats on the pulpit makes veracity, down to the bottom of the
soul, more necessary in the clerical than in any other calling. "A prime
virtue in the pulpit is mental integrity. The absence of it is a subtle
source of moral impotence. It concerns other things than the blunt
antipodes represented by a truth and a lie. Argument which does not
satisfy a preacher's logical instinct; illustration which does not
commend itself to his æsthetic taste; a perspective of doctrine which is
not true to the eye of his deepest insight; the use of borrowed
materials which offend his sense of literary equity; an emotive
intensity which exaggerates his conscious sensibility; an impetuosity of
delivery which overworks his thought; gestures and looks put on for
scenic effect; an eccentric elocution, which no _human_ nature ever
fashioned; even a shrug of the shoulder, thought of and planned for
beforehand--these are causes of enervation in sermons which may be
otherwise well framed and sound in stock. They sap a preacher's
personality and neutralise his magnetism. They are not true, and he
knows it. Hearers may know nothing of them theoretically, yet may feel
the full brunt of their negative force practically."--AUSTIN PHELPS,
D.D., _My Note Book_.
[41] "That which in its idea is the divinest of earthy employments has
necessarily come to be also a profession, a line of life, with its
routine, its commonplace, its poverty and deterioration of motive, its
coarseness of feeling. It cannot but be so. It is part of the conditions
of our mortality. Even earnest purpose, even zealous and laborious
service, cannot alone save from the lowered tone and dulness of spirit
which are our insensible but universal and inveterate enemies in all the
business of real life. And that torpor and insensibility and deadness to
what is high and great is, more than any other evil, the natural foe of
all that is characteristic and essential in the Christian ministry; for
that ministry is one of life and reality, or it is nothing."--DEAN
CHURCH.
[42] This may perhaps help to determine the age of the portion of
Zechariah to which this passage belongs. Is there any proof elsewhere
that a degradation of the prophetic office as deep as this had taken
place, or was imminent, at the period to which it is usually assigned?
LECTURE VI.
THE PREACHER AS A MAN.
Gentlemen, in the foregoing lectures I have finished, as far as time
permitted, what I had to say on the work of our office, as it is
illustrated by the example of the prophets; and to-day we turn to the
other branch of the subject--to study the modern work of the ministry
in the light cast upon it by the example of the apostles.
* * * * *
When we quit the Old Testament and open the New, we come upon another
great line of preachers to whom we must look up as patterns. The voice
of prophecy, after centuries of silence, was heard again in John the
Baptist, and his ministry of repentance will always have its value as
indicating a discipline by which the human spirit is prepared for
comprehending and appreciating Christ. I have already given the reason
why I am not at present to touch on the preaching of Christ Himself,
although the subject draws one's mind like a magnet. After Christ, the
first great Christian preacher was St. Peter; and between him and St.
Paul there are many subordinate figures, such as Stephen, Philip the
Evangelist and Apollos, beside whom it would be both pleasant and
profitable to linger. But we have agreed to take St. Paul as the
representative of apostolic preaching, and I will do so more
exclusively than I took Isaiah as the representative of the prophets.
It is, I must confess, with regret that I pass St. Peter by. There is
a peculiar interest attaching to him as the first great Christian
preacher; and there is something wonderfully attractive in his rude,
but vigorous and lovable personality. Besides, a study of the
influences by which he was transmuted from the unstable and
untrustworthy precipitancy of his earlier career into the rocklike
firmness which made him fit to be a foundation-stone on which the
Church was built would have taught us some of the most important
truths which we require to learn; because these influences were,
first, his long and close intimacy with Christ and, secondly, the
outpouring on him, at Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit; and there are no
influences more essential than these to the formation of the
ministerial character.
But I have no hesitation in devoting to St. Paul the remainder of this
course; because, as I indicated in the opening lecture, there is no
other figure in any age which so deserves to be set up as the model of
Christian ministers. In him all the sides of the ministerial
character were developed in almost supernatural maturity and harmony;
and, besides, the materials for a full delineation are available. It
is my intention to speak of St. Paul, first, as a Man; secondly, as a
Christian; thirdly, as an Apostle; and fourthly, as a Thinker.
* * * * *
To-day, then, we begin with St. Paul as a Man. If I had had time to
set before you what St. Peter's life has to teach us, its great lesson
would have been what Christianity can make of a nature without special
gifts and culture, and how the two influences which formed
him--intimacy with Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit--can supply
the place of talents and educational advantages; for it is evident
that, but for Christ, Peter would never have been anything more than
an unknown fisherman. But St. Paul's case teaches rather the opposite
lesson--how Christianity can consecrate and use the gifts of nature,
and how talent and genius find their noblest exercise in the ministry
of Christ. Paul would, in all probability, have made a notable figure
in history, even if he had never become a Christian; and, although he
himself delighted to refer all that he became and did to Christ, it is
evident that the big nature of the man entered also as a factor into
his Christian history.
Once at least St. Paul recognises this point of view himself, when he
says, that God separated him to His service from his mother's womb. In
Jeremiah's mind the same idea was awakened still more distinctly at
the time of his call, when Jehovah said to him, "Before I formed thee
in the belly I knew thee, and, before thou camest forth out of the
womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the
nations." This implies that, in the original formation of his body and
mind, God conferred on him those gifts which made him capable of a
great career. Here we touch on one of the deepest mysteries of
existence. There is nothing more mysterious than the behaviour of
nature, when in her secret laboratories she presides over the shaping
of the rudiments of life and distributes those gifts, which, according
as they are bestowed with an affluent or a niggardly hand, go so far
to determine the station and degree which each shall occupy in the
subsequent competitions of the world. It is especially mysterious how
into a soul here and there, as it passes forth, she breathes an extra
whiff of the breath of life, and so confers on it the power of being
and doing what others attempt to be and do in vain.