I.

THE PROPHETS OF THE NEW TESTA

MENT.

N examination of the closing years of the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul, like that suggested in the last paragraph of “ The Old Age of Isaiah”* presupposes a fuller knowledge of the history of the Apostolic Church than can be taken for granted in most readers. What is wanted is not merely a survey of the great broad facts of that history as we learn them from the Acts of the Apostles, or as they are stated in manuals and epitomes, but an insight into its inner life, clear pictures before our mind's eye of what men were doing, clear conceptions of what they were thinking and feeling, sympathy with their hopes and fears.

I. As embodying one of the most prominent facts in that inner life, and as being more than most others, forgotten or misconceived, while yet without it we can hardly get below the surface in studying the writings of the two Apostles I have named, I have chosen the subject which stands at the head of this paper, the Prophets of the New Testament. How indistinct our common notions about them are may be shown, I believe, by a very simple test. Of * See p. 213.

the many thousands who hear and repeat the words that God "has built his Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone" (Eph. ii. 20, and Collect for St. Simon and St. Jude in the PrayerBook of the Church of England), there are probably very few, except among the professed students of Scripture, who do not at once think of the Prophets of the Old Testament as those spoken of.

up

They

how

picture to themselves the unity of the older and the newer dispensations, the "glorious company of the Apostles," Peter and John and Paul, and the others, joined with the "goodly fellowship of the Prophets,” with Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, in a divine and everlasting brotherhood. And yet it is demonstrable to any thoughtful English reader that those men of God of the older days of Israel were not, and could not be, those of whom the Apostle spoke. In this very Epistle St. Paul counts and through what instruments God builds up his Church, and the order in which he places them is this: "Christ," he says, "ascended up on high, and gave gifts unto men, . . . and He gave some Apostles, and some Prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers; ... for the edifying (sc. the building up) of the body of Christ" (Eph. iv. 11). This is in itself decisive. Both offices originate in gifts bestowed by the risen and ascended Lord. The familiar, oft-quoted words refer to the Prophets of the Christian, not to those of the Jewish Church. But this is not all. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians there is a like enumeration of spiritual gifts, and functions resting upon them, and the names occur there also in the same combination.

...

"God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, secondarily Prophets, thirdly teachers" (1 Cor. xii. 28). Other instances confirming the inference, if any confirmation be needed, will meet us as we go further.

II. We may assume then, the existence of a body of men in the Apostolic Church, known as Prophets and exercising prophetic functions. Leaving, for a moment, the question what those functions were, we shall gain something by getting a clear view of the extent both of the gift and of the order. This was, indeed, in every way the most striking fact connected with it. Under the old covenant, they had been confined within comparatively narrow limits. If we may think of "the sons of the Prophets " as something like a collegiate or monastic body, dwelling together, trained in music and song, and so prepared to receive divine revelations, even they were but few, and still fewer became recipients of the higher forms of inspiration. And for four hundred years even this had ceased, and the voice of the last mysterious "messenger of the Lord" (such is the signification of the name of the Prophet Malachi) had closed the canon of Old Testament prophecy. The people had even come to reckon the appearance of a Prophet as an epoch of remote chronology, and were looking forward anxiously to the time when one should be raised up to guide and teach them (1 Macc. iv. 46; ix. 27).

*

At last "the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness" (Luke iii. 2), as it had come to Isaiah or Ezekiel. He appeared, re

* Compare especially 1 Sam. x. 5; xix. 20—24; 2 Kings iv. 38; vi. 1.

66

producing the old life in all its austerity, clad in the rough garment" of a prophet (2 Kings i. 8; Zech. xiii. 4) like Elijah, abstaining from wine like the Nazarites and Rechabites, living on locusts and wild honey like the wilder Arab tribes to which the Rechabites belonged. So it was that the people "counted John that he was a Prophet indeed" (Matt. xiv. 5; xxi. 26), while others said of him as men had said of the older prophets (Jer. xxix. 26), that he had a devil and was mad" (Matt. xi. 18; compare John x. 20). So when the greater Teacher came, though the outward form of life was different, though he showed himself as the Master, the Teacher, a Rabbi like other Rabbis (John i. 49; xx. 16), there was this which, even apart from all signs and wonders, made men hold that "a great Prophet had risen up among them" (Luke vii. 16; xxiv. 19). He spake as never man spake (John vii. 46); as having power and "authority, and not as the scribes" (Matt. vii. 29). But up to the day of Pentecost, these were the only two of whom this was said. No trace of this energy shows itself in the wayward, questioning, doubting disciples. But when that day had fully come there was a great and marvellous change. Over and above the mysterious gift of Tongues, with their thrilling notes, and ecstatic doxologies, and languages of many lands, there was the gift of Prophecy also. It was on this rather than on the other that St. Peter laid stress as fulfilling the old prediction, both in its wonderful power and yet more in its wonderful extent, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." Young men and old, yea, even the lowest and most despised, were to share the gift.

"On my servants (i.e., slaves) and on my handmaids (i.e., female slaves) will I pour out in those days of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy" (Acts ii. 17, 18). And from that time, it spread with a wonderful rapidity. Sometimes through the laying-on of the Apostles' hands (Acts viii. 17; xix. 6), sometimes with no human intervention (Acts x. 44-46; xi. 15), the Spirit came upon men, and they spake with tongues, and magnified God, and prophesied. Many of these became conspicuous enough to be named as Prophets in the higher sense of the word-Barnabas, the son of consolation, or, as we might literally interpret the new name thus given to him, the Son of Prophecy (Acts iv. 36); Stephen speaking with the Holy Ghost and with power, in the highest sense of the word, a Prophet of the Lord (Acts vi. 10, 55); and Agabus (Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10); and Silas or Silvanus, and Judas (Acts xv. 32); and Manaen, and, Lucius of Cyrene (Acts xiii. 1); and Timothy, bearing the old prophetic title of "man of God" (1 Tim. vi. 11; Deut. xxxiii. 1; 2 Kings iv. 7); the daughters of Philip the Evangelist (Acts xxi. 8); and last and greatest of them all, Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle of the Gentiles. But even more striking than this list of names is the abounding proof of the presence of the gift in every church of the Gentiles. At Thessalonica men are warned not to "quench the Spirit" which kindled the power, nor "despise" the utterances which flowed from it (1 Thess. v. 20). At Corinth its excess almost threatened disorder, and called for that full exhaustive discussion of it which, more than any other portion of the New Testament, gives us an insight into its nature (1 Cor. xii. and xiv.). At Rome, even though as yet no Apostle had