TRUE STATESMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRUE STATESMEN.

THE EARLY PROPHETS,

(By S.)—Xo. 1. The great men of Old Testament times whom we are accustomed to speak of a's prophets, were characterised chiefly by their personality and their message. The term by which we designate them was borrowed from the Greeks. It means one who speaks for another. And that is what tliev did. They were mer. of lofty spiritual and moral character who did not speak for themselves, but for another, that other being God. Thcv did not call themselves prophets. They did. however, what was tantamount to it: they gave it as thenunshakable conviction that tliev were prompted by God. and were invested by Him with authority to speak for Him to the people among whom they lived. There was a time when it was sup posed by many good people that their chief task was to foretell future happenings, and that prophecy was a synonym for prediction, and those of tiiem who ventured to assume the role of interpreters were too often led to j make fanciful rather than factual pro- j nouncements —pronouncements, as Spurceon once put it. out of their- own heads. Intelligent readers of their Bible know now that the chief aim of the prophets was not to foretell future happenings, but to guide their contemporaries in their own land in their life nnd thought. Yet they did sometimes foretell future happenings, and the fact that men saw their prognostications coining true was one of the proofs to them that tliev were inspired. The greatest of their prognostications was that a time ■would come when One who would be more than a mere man would establish the Kingdom of God on earth, and would eventually bccome the true King of men. It was their religions conceptions that constituted tlieir prophecies; it was not so much what they foretold, and. as they were artists, they addressed these conceptions to the imagination of tliei'" contemporaries. Their phraseology and imagery, like their feelings and emotions, were their own. Their conceptions were the outcome of their intuitions which, as well as their thought, were influenced by the Spirit of God. And that was what they themselves declared. They were more than preachers of righteousness and teachers of theology and ethics. They were social and moral reformers. They not only spoke out fearlessly against the follies and evils of their age, they not only warned their fellow men of th'! Xemesis that would follow their lapses into the idolatry of the surrounding nations, they not only recalled them to high ideals of faith and practice —they were the true statesmen of their day. and its best political advisers. They read the signs of the times better than others, they saw more clearly the bearing on the future of their country of the movements and tendencies that were operating around them, and they exposed the fallacies of the popular statesmen, and laid down the principles that should guide them in their relations with other peoples. The world has seen many prophets since tlieir day, but none of them on the same level of inspiration and genius.