Christian Literature copies from The Outlook an article by its editor, Lyman Abbott, on the question: "What is a Prophet?" In answering the question Mr. Abbott claims that there have been men in all the ages since the close of revelation, even in our own age, who are just as truly prophets as were Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel. He names among these, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Luther, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Swedenborg, Maurice, Bushnell, Channing, Finney, Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks. I suppose that modesty forbade him to name also the successor of Beecher, Lyman Abbott. This numeration is alone sufficient to show that his conception of a prophet differs very widely from that held by writers of the Bible. In other words, it shows the one distinctive peculiarity of a prophet, miraculous inspiration, is denied by Mr. Abbott. [117]

      But at one place in the essay the writer seems to assume that the modern prophets are in reality favored with inspiration. He says:

      In a true sense, every real preacher is a prophet. He is not a prophet if he does not receive a message direct from God which he can communicate to man--if he is not a foreteller, an interpreter, a divine messenger, he is not a true preacher.

      I suppose that Mr. Abbott considers himself a "real preacher," and therefore a real prophet. Let him then communicate to us some message that he has received "direct from God" before he asks us to agree with him. The Plymouth Church supposed him to be a real preacher when they chose him as the successor of Mr. Beecher. I wonder if they have ever received from him a message which he received "direct from God." If they have, I should think that it would have found its way into some of the New York papers, and especially into his own. As he calls his paper The Outlook, I suppose that it keeps an outlook for such things, and yet if it has ever contained any, the world is none the wiser for it. Mr. Abbott should not keep his light hid under a bushel. If he is receiving messages "direct from God," he is an unfaithful steward while he keeps them to himself.

      But Mr. Abbott, though he does not demonstrate his proposition by giving an actual example of a message received "direct from God," undertakes to argue that there must be prophets now, notwithstanding this failure. He says:

      To deny to the Christian church prophets; to assume that prophecy ceased with the close of the New Testament canon; to draw a sharp line between the prophets before and the prophets subsequent to the first century--appear to me to foster two errors: One, that which implies to the Hebrew prophets an infallibility which they never claimed for themselves; the other, to deny to the church, since Christ, that presence of a living, [118] speaking, interpreted God, which was characteristic of the Hebrew church, and which Christ distinctly and emphatically declared should continue to be characteristic of the Christian church.

      I am not able to see that drawing such a line would impute to the Hebrew prophets "an infallibility which they never claimed for themselves;" it would be only saying that we have now no prophets. And it seems to me that if the prophets that we now have are fallible, we have little use, for them. If a man receives a message "direct from God," and then is incapable of reporting it with entire certainty to me, I believe that I can dispense with his services, and remain content with the messages which the prophets of the Bible have delivered. They could report their messages with perfect accuracy, and prove both that they did this, and, more important still, that the messages actually came from God, by working miracles. So long as our modern prophets fail to do this, we must not be blamed for doubting whether the messages which they bring come from God at all. Indeed, I am quite sure that the messages which came from the prophets in Mr. Abbott's list, at least some of their messages, actually came from the devil. I am sure of this, because they contradict messages which certainly did come from God through the prophets of old.

      The other error involved in drawing the sharp line between modern prophets and those of old, is as invisible to my eyes as the one just disposed of. If Christ "distinctly and emphatically declared" that "the presence of a speaking God" should be continued to be characteristic of the Christian church, it was omitted from his sayings reported in the New Testament; and I think that this must be one of the messages which Mr. Abbott has received "direct from God." But here, as in every case [119] of the kind, I can not be sure that he has received such a message, especially when I remember that the "presence of a speaking God" is not a fact in modern church history.

      I might quote other vagaries from this article; but I have said enough, I think, to show how wild a man becomes when his "outlook" is a look outside the Bible, and far away.

[SEBC 117-120]