it is impossible to pass it by. This
is the activity of the false prophets.[38] It culminated in the
lifetime of Jeremiah, whose whole career might almost be described as
a conflict with them. Again and again he and they came to open war;
and on at least one occasion the whole body combined to take away his
life. Ezekiel was scarcely less afflicted by them. They were perhaps
not so prominent an element in the life of Isaiah, but he also refers
to them frequently; and, indeed, their sinister figures haunt the
pages of all the prophets.

It is a kind of humiliation to speak of them at all, and I would
gladly pass them by; but the figure of the true prophet will rise
before our eyes more clearly by the contrast of the false: and it is
perhaps a duty to look also at the degradations to which our office is
liable. The higher the honour attaching to the ministerial profession,
when it is worthily filled, the deeper is the abuse of which it is
capable in comparison with other callings; and its functions are so
sacred that the man who discharges them must either be a man of God or
a hypocrite. Yet there are plenty of motives of an inferior kind which
may take the place of right ministerial aims. Though it is painful to
speak of such things, yet here again the method which we have adopted
in these lectures, of following the guidance of Scripture, may be
leading us better than we could have chosen ourselves; and it may be
wholesome to have to look at an aspect of our subject which of our own
accord we would avoid.

* * * * *

There are two things in Scripture which I have never been able to
think of without strong movements of fear and self-distrust.

One of them is that, when the Son of God came to this earth, He was
persecuted and slain by the religious classes. His deadly opponents
were the Scribes and Pharisees. But who were the Scribes and
Pharisees? The Scribes occupied almost exactly the position in the
community which is held among us by the literary, the scholastic and
the clerical classes; and the Pharisees were simply what we should now
call the leading religious laymen. Had they been adherents of a false
religion, there would have been nothing surprising in their resistance
to the final revelation of the true God. But the religion which they
professed was the true religion; the Scribes were the expounders of
the Word of God, and the Pharisees occupied the foremost places in the
hous