Sources of the Sage (1): Victorian Understanding of the Old Testament Prophets

George P. Landow

Carlyle and other Victorian sages did not have to create entirely ex nihilo the literary devices with which they carried out this project, since they had the powerful example of the Hebrew prophets. Standing apart from society and charging its members with having abandoned the ways of God and truth had always been the function of Old Testament prophets, and nineteenth-century students of Scripture of all denominations recognized this fact. As the English Evangelical Thomas Scott pointed out in a Bible commentary that remained popular throughout much of the nineteenth century, the Old Testament prophets "were, in general, extraordinary instructors, sometimes in aid of the priests and Levites; but more commonly to supply their defects, when they neglected their duty." Furthermore, according to Scott, these Old Testament prophets

were also bold reformers, and reprovers of idolatry, iniquity, and hypocrisy; they called the attention of the people to the law of Moses, especially the moral law, the standard of true holiness; they shewed the inefficacy of ceremonial observances, without the obedience of faith and love.

In other words, they offered no essentially new message: "The prophets did not teach any new doctrines, commands, or ordinances, but appealed to the authenticated records." Scott's description of the Old Testament prophet who unexpectedly comes forth to instruct his fellows on their spiritual and moral failings in order to help his nation survive applies to the Victorian sage in every respect but one -- Scott's Evangelical emphasis that these figures from the Old Testament also "kept up and encouraged the expectation of the promised Messiah."

Scott's general view of the Old Testament prophets was shared by many who were not Evangelicals. For example, Charles Kingsley's argument that God still sends prophets to guide man is obviously based upon this conception of the prophet as forthspeaker rather than foreteller. According to Kingsley, a Broad Churchman, the lord does not leave us unguarded when

the lying spirit comes and whispers to us ... that we shall prosper in our wickedness ... [but] sends His prophets to us, as He sent Micaiah [sic] to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is death -- to tell us that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind -- to set before us at every turn, that we may choose between them, and live or die according to our choice.

This view of the prophet as divine messenger, or one who speaks out on crucial issues, was recognized even by those without orthodox belief, thus suggesting how widely current it was in the last century. T. H. Huxley, certainly no believer, thus pointed out that "the term prophecy applies as much to outspeaking as foretelling; and, even in the restricted sense of 'divination,' it is obvious that the essence of the prophetic operation does not lie in its backward or forward relation to the course of time, but in the fact that it is the apprehension of that which lies out of the sphere of immediate knowledge; the seeing of which, to the natural sense of the seer, is invisible.''

Last modified 2000