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]