"The English words 'prophet, prophecy, prophesying,'" says Dean Stanley, "originally kept tolerably close to the Biblical use of the word. The celebrated dispute about 'prophesyings' in the sense of 'preachings' in the reign of Elizabeth, and the treatise of Jeremy Taylor on 'The Liberty of Prophesying,' _i.e._, the liberty of preaching, show that even down to the seventeenth century the word was still used as in the Bible, for preaching or speaking according to the will of God. In the seventeenth century, however, the limitation of the word to the sense of prediction had gradually begun to appear. This secondary meaning of the word had by the time of Dr. Johnson so entirely superseded the original Scriptural signification that he gives no other special definition of it than 'to predict, to foretell, to prognosticate,' 'a predicter, a foreteller,' 'foreseeing or foretelling future events;' and in this sense it has been used almost down to our own day, when the revival of Biblical criticism has resuscitated, in some measure, the Biblical use of the word." [Footnote: _History of the Jewish Church_, i. 459, 460.] The predictive function of the prophet is not, then, the only, nor the prominent feature of his work. By far the larger portion of the prophetic utterances were concerned with the present, and made no reference to the future. The prophet exercised his office in many ways. Moses was a prophet, the first and greatest of the prophets; but we have from him few predictions; he interpreted the will of God in the enactment of laws. Samuel was a great prophet; but Samuel was not employed in foretelling future events; he sought to know the will of God, that he might administer the affairs of the Jewish commonwealth in accordance with it. Elijah and Elisha were great prophets, but they were not prognosticators; they were preachers of righteousness to kings and people, and they delivered their message in a way to make the ears of those who heard them to tingle. And this, for all the prophets who succeeded them, was the one great business. The ethical function of these men of God came more and more distinctly into view.