[Footnote 72: 1 Samuel iii. 9, 10.]
Not long after, his renown spreads amongst the people; he is not pontiff, he is not even priest. [Footnote 73]
[Footnote 73: Samuel propheta fuit, judex fuit, levita fuit, non pontifex, ne saoerdos quidem.—St. Jerom adv. Jovinianum.]
But he is pre-eminently the seer: "Is not the seer here?" Such is the question addressed to some young maidens by the men who are in search of Samuel. Saul meets him without knowing him, and says to him, "I pray thee tell me where the house of the seer is." "I am the seer," replied Samuel; and soon after, it is Samuel himself, who, in compliance with the popular vote, approved by God, proclaims Saul king. But at the moment when he thus changes the theocracy in Israel into a monarchy, he foresees the vices and perils attendant upon the new government, and opposes to them the element of resistance drawn from their national beliefs and traditions; he transforms the order of prophets into a permanent institution; he founds schools of prophets, independent servants of Jehovah, consecrated to the defence of his law and the enunciation of his will; constituting a sort of congregation independent of both Church and State; leading, in fixed and appointed places,—at Rama, Bethel, Jericho, Jerusalem,—a life in common, but with out exclusive privileges; the sons of the prophets are brought up near their fathers; but still the mission of prophecy is accessible to all who have the call from God: "Go, thou seer," said the priest Amaziah, in his anger, to the prophet Amos, "flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court. Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son: but I was a herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: and the Eternal took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." [Footnote 74]
[Footnote 74: Amos vii. 12-15.]
The prophets are neither priests nor monks: sprung from all the classes of the Jewish nation, their vocation is essentially independent. They belong to God alone, and await divine inspiration to oppose, as it may happen, at one time the tyranny of the kings, at another the passions of the populace, at another the corruption of the priesthood: their only arms, the commands of God and the gift of prophecy. The functions assigned to them are as different as the places and circumstances of their life; but they are ready to take any part and to encounter any peril: some of them, like Elijah and Elisha, are men of action and of combat; the others, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, are narrators, moralists, prophets; some devote themselves to attacks upon the acts of violence and impiety committed by the kings, the others to the vices and corruption of the people; the same spirit, however, animates them all; they are all interpreters and labourers of Jehovah; they defend, all of them, the faith of God against idolatry, justice and right against tyranny, the national independence against foreign dominion. In the name of the God of Abraham and of Jacob, they labour and succeed in maintaining or in reanimating religious and moral life amidst the decay and servitude of Israel. "All the time," says St. Augustine, "from the epoch when the holy Samuel began to prophesy, to the day when the people of Israel was led captive into Babylonia, is the period of the prophets." [Footnote 75]
[Footnote 75: De Civitate Dei, l. xvii. ch. 1.]
To accomplish their mission, to ensure their hard-earned successes, they had other arms than lamentations and exhortations, arising out of what was past and inevitable; other expedients than pious reproaches and expressions of regret. These defenders of the ancient faith of Moses do not shut themselves up within the external forms and rites of their religion; they pursue the moral object that it proposes; they insist upon the spirit that vivifies it. "Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth" (said the Lord, according to Isaiah): "they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." [Footnote 76]