figure in which the longings of generations shall be fulfilled, and the
promises of God shall be accomplished. The prophet was more than a
foreteller, as is being continually insisted upon nowadays. There were
prophets who never uttered a single prediction. Their place in Israel
was to be the champions of righteousness, and--I was going to say--the
knights of God, as against law and ceremonial and externalism. But,
beyond that, there underlie the whole system of prophecy, and there come
sparkling and flashing up to the surface every now and then, bright
anticipations, not only of a future kingdom, but of a personal King, and
not only of a King, but a sufferer. All the sacrifices, almost all the
institutions, the priesthood and the monarchy included, had this
onward-looking aspect, and Israel as a whole, in the proportion in which
it was true to the spirit of its calling, stood a-tiptoe, as it were,
looking down the ages for the coming of the Hope of the Covenant that
had been promised to the fathers. The prophets, I might say, were like
an advance-guard sent before some great monarch in his progress towards
his capital, who rode through the slumbering villages and called, 'He
comes! He comes! The King cometh meek and having salvation,' and then
passed on.

Now, all that is to be held fast to-day. I would give all freedom to
critical research, and loyally accept the results of it, so far as these
are established, and are not mere hypotheses, with regard to the date
and the circumstances of the construction of the various elements of
that Old Testament. But what I desire especially to mark is that, with
the widest freedom, there must be these two things conserved which Peter
here emphasises, the real inspiration of the prophetic order, and its
function to point onwards to Jesus. And so long as you keep these
truths, as long as you believe that God spoke through prophets, as long
as you believe that the very heart of their message was the proclamation
of Jesus Christ, and that to bear witness to Him was the function, not
only of prophet, but of priest and king and nation, then you are at
liberty to deal as you like with mere questions of origin and of date.
But if, in the eagerness of the chase after the literary facts of the
origin of the Old Testament, we forget that it is a unity, that it is a
divine unity, that it is a progressive revelation, and that 'the
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy' then I venture to