name only, and, secondly, whether the signs which he gave in Yahaweh's name came to pass.

This applies, of course, only to prophets who were properly such. In the secondary sense of being a disciple, one of the sons of the prophets, one might become a prophet merely by becoming connected with prophets whose gifts were recognized.1

I have not the hardihood to expect that every one will accept the opinion I am advocating as to the costume, the freedom from excited conduct, the ordinaThe prophet tion, of the prophets; but every one will cer- especially a tainly recognize the significant fact that these manly man things are only slightly touched in the records; and this fact constitutes nine-tenths of the value of the view I offer. At least no stress is laid on matters of regulation costume or of marvellous personal bearing or of ordination. In Deuteronomy the phrase, "of your brethren, like unto me," stands in contrast to the characteristics alike of the priests and of the heathen practitioners of magic arts. Unlike these, the prophet is a man of the same sort with other men. A distinguishing thing in the religion of Israel is its proclamation that a manly man is the truest channel of communication between man and God. We cannot too strongly recognize the manliness and the manfulness of the prophets, as set forth in the Old Testament, or of Jesus and the apostles as set forth in the New.2

1 Either in these organizations or in other forms and at other dates, there is reason to hold that the prominent prophets had their disciples, some of whom were permanently attached to them, looking to them for instruction, and assisting them in their work. See such passages as Isa. viii. 16, 1. 4; Jer. li. 59-63. It may be assumed that literary and theological studies generally formed a part of the training of the disciples of the prophets.

2 I suppose that no careful student will hold that the positions which I

of insignia

To repeat this once more. According to the records. a prophet might be judge or king or priest or general or The absence statesman or private person, in fine, might occupy any position in the commonwealth; noteworthy as a prophet, he was simply a citizen with a special work to do. The prophets as such had no settled position in church or state. They were sent by God on individual missions, natural or supernatural, to supplement the routine administration of secular and religious affairs. The bible refuses to present any other picture of a prophet than that of a citizen, like other citizens, holding a commission from God, and endowed with the gifts requisite for accrediting his commission. This agrees with everything that we shall hereafter learn concerning the prophets. The human individuality of the prophet is emphasized, to the neglect of outward appearance, or official character, or other like things. In the scriptures as they stand, leaving out the exceptional instances that serve to emphasize the rule, our attention is withdrawn from external marks, and fixed upon the personal man or woman whom God has appointed to be prophet.

In this there is a significant contrast between the religion of Israel and other religions. The conception of religion which thus exalts manhood, when considering our relations to Deity, is a fine conception. Men sometimes speak of this conception as if it were the new product of the thinking of the last decades of the nineteenth century. When men exploit twentieth-century religious ideas, they give prominence to this: the recognition of

maintain as to the absence of outward insignia can be positively disproved; and that no one will dispute that it is better to form our conceptions of the prophets more by the facts that are positively stated, and less by accessories that some suppose are alluded to, than many are in the habit of doing.

the truth that the most human man or woman is the person most suitable to be the prophet of the Lord. It is not a small thing among the glories of the religion of Yahaweh that it has recognized this truth from the beginning. This conception characterizes the monotheism of the worshippers of Yahaweh, as differing from all other religions. It characterizes this monotheism as expressed in the earliest records we have concerning the prophets, as well as in the latest. It is one of the phenomena which mark that religion as, among the religions, the one fittest to survive.

CHAPTER V

THE FUNCTIONS OF A PROPHET - NATURALISTIC AND SUPERNATURALISTIC

IN the preceding chapter we have tried to answer the question: How did the prophet look when you met him? and other affiliated questions. In the present chapter the question becomes: How, in his character as prophet, did the prophet occupy himself? What did he do?

We need from the outset to guard against two mistaken assumptions, the assumption that the prophets were merely or mainly predicters of events, and the reactionary assumption that they exercised no supernatural gifts.

No scholars hold that the prophets were mere givers of oracles or predicters of the future; and yet this phase The assump- of their work has been so emphasized that wrong impressions are common.

tion that

One needs prophecy is prediction to reiterate the statement that a prophet is not characteristically a person who foretells, but one who speaks forth a message from Deity. To regard him as mainly a foreteller involves a narrowing of the idea of his mission that is all the more mischievous because of its being popularly very common. The argument from fulfilled prediction has been made so prominent among the proofs of the divine origin of the scriptures, and again in advocating the claim of Jesus to be the Christ, that many have come to think of prediction as being substantially the whole of prophecy, and even to interpret the prophetic writings as if they must

It

needs be regarded as predictive throughout.1 This state of things renders it necessary to repeat the statement that prophecy and prediction are different terms. greatly obscures the prophecies to count them as predictive only. In bulk, predictions constitute but a small part of them, and what predictions there are consist almost entirely of promises and threats.

This is one bad assumption. But we should not forget that the opposite assumption is as bad or worse. Prophecy is not prediction, but it does not The worse follow that prophecy does not include predic- contrary tion. The absence of supernatural endow- assumption ment for the prophets is a thing to be proved, not a thing to be assumed. Prediction should neither be interpreted into the prophetic utterances, nor interpreted out of them. The predictive element in prophecy may be genuine and important, even if it is only a part and not the whole.

function

Taking the matter up positively, let us repeat once more that the functions of the prophet are correctly indicated by the etymology of the English The name word. A prophet is a person who speaks out indicates the the special message that God has given him. The priesthood, and, in a modified sense, the judge or king or other secular authorities, were, in their routine duties, the exponents of the will of Yahaweh in Israel. The prophets were his spokesmen for the purposes not covered by the routine administration of affairs.

1 This is not confined to advocates of old-fashioned opinions. Several scholars have published, for example, arguments for the Maccabæan date of the book of Daniel, based on the assumption that prophecy and prediction are equivalent. They say that inasmuch as the book of Daniel is peculiarly predictive, the editors of the Hebrew bible would certainly have placed it among the prophets if it had been in existence when the writings of the prophets were collected.