A Wayfarer's Faith: Aspects of the common basis of religious life

by T. Edmund Harvey

CHAPTER III. THE PROPHET IN THE CHURCH.

FOR the individual and the community alike the deepest influences are expressed in life rather than words, yet it remains true that through the symbols of spoken thought life must again and again come to expression. In former days this was realised in the value set upon prophecy, if we may use the word in its broadest and highest sense, as the forth-telling, in the language of human thought, of the Divine will present behind our lives and at work amid the world.

One of the changes that strike one most in organized Christianity to-day, compared with the Church of earlier times, is the general absence of prophecy in this sense, in all but very occasional crises. The prophetic instinct is not dead indeed, but men find its highest manifestations rather outside the Church of earlier times. The leaders of the Church have been too often content to repeat the messages of the prophets of a former day rather than to seek for a living voice within their midst. Yet those who know anything of the life of the Church from within, judged not merely by this incomplete [p.34 ]expression, but seen as it affects the daily lives of countless men and women, must surely agree that in spite of all the trammels of convention and tradition the Church has still a life to pass on and a message to deliver for the needs of to-day. Those who would have it become once more the school of the prophets will surely be willing to look for a few moments at the picture which has come down to us of what place prophecy filled in the Church life of the earliest days, and how the prophet was supplanted, not killed, as some have thought, by the priest, but rather silenced by the iron grip of organization.

In the fourteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians is preserved for us a picture the meetings of an early Christian Church, full of interest to the historian.

It is clear from this description that an important part was usually taken in these gatherings by men who gave to their fellow worshippers what they believed to be God's message or revelation to them. This was something quite distinct from the recitation of a hymn or a passage of Scripture, or from the interpretation of scripture, or again from the teaching of doctrine. It is regarded by the Apostle Paul as the highest spiritual gift, one earnestly to be desired, although it was not given to all, but only to some. Of the nature of this ministry we get a glimpse in his description of the way in which an unbeliever who enters the assembly is convinced by it. [p.35] The ministry goes to his inmost self, reading the needs of his heart.

"If all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.[3]

The message of prophecy is one, as it seems, which reaches the subconscious self of the incomer, who suddenly beholds the realities of his own inner life in this flood of light that flows in upon him, piercing through the veil that custom and convention had wrought about him. But the prophetic word does not merely give this fuller knowledge of his own nature to the stranger; it puts him also into touch with a higher self. He sees in a flash of revelation not only the evil in his own life, but the source of power to set it right, here in the midst of this assembly, and bowing himself before it he confesses the Divine Presence.

If we ask how this prophetic ministry is conceived as coming to those who exercise it, it would seem from the words of the Apostle that it is not by exercise of the intellect that prophecy comes, though the understanding is to be cultivated in connection with another highly prized gift, that of teaching. But the Corinthians are urged to long after the gift of prophecy most of all; they [p.36] are to prepare themselves for it, then, by prayer, the door through which our life opens out into the Divine life and is fed from it. The teacher thinks over what he knows of the needs and difficulties of his fellows, ponders over the truths that have been made clear to him in the past, searches amongst the sayings of the Lord, the teachings of the Apostles, the words of the Law or the prophets of old, for help for the present. Not so the prophet. He may, indeed, go through all this preparation of thought, but the essential preparation for his work is prayer; prayer in which he must be willing to lay aside, if need be, all these thoughts of this. The prophetic spirit reaches out to realize the condition of those to whom it is to minister, and upward in search of light and strength from its only source.

Sometimes it is not given to the prophet to reach conscious hold of Him by whom we are all upheld, and then all his ministry may be but a cry for help, with a deep sense of need. Sometimes he feels the presence very near, and as he keeps close to the Father's hand, those about him are given to feel it too.

Or, perhaps, some word of the Lord, or some thought of other days is suddenly illumined by a fresh light, and his message is to hand on the fire from the altar, that those about him may light their torches too.