Him, come to try and to refine His people. Let them repent, therefore, and renounce their sins, that they may be able to abide the day of His coming and to stand when He appeareth. God will be faithful to His promises; they need not question that, as though it were a vain thing to serve Him. And when He comes to fulfil them, He will divide the righteous from the wicked; He will deliver the wicked as stubble to the flames, and cause the Sun of Righteousness to arise on the righteous, with healing in His wings. The prophecy concludes with a brief admonition (chap. 4: 4-6), in which they are enjoined to remember the law of Moses, but to look for the coming of a better law; to stand in the old ways, but to look for the new. In fine, Malachi is "like a late evening which brings a long day to a close;" but he is also like a morning dawn, which brings with it the promise of a new and more glorious day. With more fulness and distinctness than most of the prophets, he teaches us that that day of blended judgment and mercy of which they had all spoken dawned upon the world when, for the fall and rising of many, the Son of Man manifesteth forth His glory. Not only does the last of the prophets foresee the Gospel day, on which the Sun of Righteousness is to shine out with unclouded splendor; he also foresees the bright morning star which is to herald and announce its advent. And thus Malachi is a link between the two dispensations and covenants. As we close the Old Testament we catch a glimpse of the Christ whom we are to meet, and with whom we are to walk, in the New Testament; and of the Baptist who came before Him, in the power and spirit of Elijah, to prepare His way, and to attest that this was He of whom Moses and the prophets did write. Cox. Chap. 1. To show the people their great guilt, the Lord testifies to His special love for their nation, particularly as compared with the posterity of Esau (verses 2-5); rebukes the priests for their contempt of His worship (verses 6-10); assures them that He will find countless sincere worshippers among the heathen (verse 11); exposes and denounces their heinous sins (verses 12-14). 1. This prophecy, as a whole, comprises so much rebuke for sin and threatening of judgment that it may fitly be called a "burden" in the usual sense—sins and judgments, which it is a heart-burden to think of and to reveal. H. C. 2-5. The "oracle" or prophecy of Malachi opens with a few prefatory verses on Jehovah's love for the sons of Israel—a theme of which the whole book is but a series of variations. And it is surely most appropriate that the closing Scripture of the Old Testament should have for its ruling theme that Divine inalienable love the supreme manifestation of which the New Testament was to record. Cox. 2. The keynote is love. "I have loved you, saith the Lord." The whole of the message comes out of this. What is their present state but an ungrateful rejection of Divine love, and dishonoring of the Divine covenant? Phelps. 2,3. The Lord begins His endeavors to convict the Jews of sin by setting before them the special love He had borne for their nation ever since Jacob was chosen to be the heir of His promises and Esau was rejected. This hating of Esau was rather a not-loving, and looks especially to the fact that God rejected him from being the heir of the promises made to Abraham and Isaac. The history shows that Esau did not value the inheritance of those promises. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him "that profane person," as if to intimate that his rejection was not an arbitrary act of God in the sense of being irrespective of Esau's ill desert. As to the words "I hated Esau," let it be carefully noted that God's hatred is never malign and never causeless. The key to this passage, as to many others, is the fact we are so apt to forget, that God does nothing arbitrarily; that He has a reason, a good and kind reason, for all His choices and acts. We are not here told what His reason for hating Edom was. Nor could we arrive at all the reasons that went to make up His reason without reviewing the entire history of Israel and Edom, and the bearing of that history on the history and welfare of the whole world. If, for wise and kind ends that embraced the welfare of the whole world, God loved Israel, He could do no other than hate Edom, the insolent and implacable foe of Israel. And that His love for Israel did embrace ends of mercy that went beyond Israel is hinted in the closing lines of this brief preface: 'Great is Jehovah beyond the border of Israel.'" Cox. 3. God loved Jacob and hated Esau. The first of these sayings is uttered by Malachi, the last of the prophets, at a time when God had given Israel the most signal proof of His mercy by bringing His people back from their captivity in Babylon. Before the prophet's eyes was Israel, restored against all human expectations, and at the same time the land of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, utterly devastated. At this sight, comparing the opposite conditions of those two kindred and neighboring nations, he places upon the lips of Jehovah these words which sum up the whole of their history: "I have loved Jacob and I have hated Esau." Is it arbitrarily or capriciously that God has conceived this sentiment? The Old Testament says nothing of the sort. It represents Esau as a carnal and profane man, incapable in any way of serving the purposes of God for the establishment of the reign of faith; and the nation descended from him had followed in the footsteps of its first father. Was it not the Edomites who rejoiced in the day of the ruin of Jerusalem, who, with a diabolical hatred, urged the victors to overthrow it even to its very foundations, and who lay in ambush along the wayside, waiting to rob and murder the unhappy fugitives? That is why, though the older of the two branches, Esau and his race, favored as they were with temporal blessings, were morally rejected, while Jacob and his descendants were substituted for them, in view of the superior work which God meant to accomplish. In this there is no arbitrary hatred, no capricious preference; there is a free choice, independent, no doubt, of the human law of primogeniture, but a wise choice akin to that of the artisan who adapts the tool to the work he intends to perform. Godet. The Bible does not say that Esau lost the birthright by Jacob's cheating him out of it. It does not say that Jacob, by attempting to steal the blessing that was designed for Esau, actually secured any good for himself, or took away any good from Esau. Esau lost the birthright because he despised it. He showed this in agreeing to the bargain. But he also showed it in the habits of life he adopted. He preferred a life of excitement, and he knew that he was thus unfitting himself both for enjoying the birthright and for performing the duties it would impose. He married Hittite and Horite wives, knowing that this unfitted him for exercising his birthright; and, as a matter of fact, these marriages, by drawing him to the Horite country, ultimately effected the separation between him and the birthright. Of his own free will he abandoned the promised land, thus eventually losing all his claims there (Gen. 36: 6-8). Meanwhile, Jacob, after wasting half his life in a bootless contest with God over the matter, at last surrendered all his false claims, and let God lead him - and God led him into the possession of all the blessings that Esau had abandoned. W. J. B. 3,4. Whenever the Edomites have set themselves to build themselves up, God has pulled them down. To this day Petra and its dependent towns are "desolate cities," the houses of which "none should inhabit, ordained to be ruins" by God Himself. To this day the rangers of the desert hurry by the abandoned tenements and temples, and through the long rock-hewn avenues, deeming them perilous and accursed, and muttering prayers for the Divine protection. Here, then, according to Malachi, was the proof that God loved Israel. They might be few, feeble, despised, and exposed to a thousand calamities and dangers. Nevertheless, they were at least redeemed from their captivity; Jerusalem was fast rising from its ruins; the temple was rebuilt; a bright prospect of hope illumined their future. Whereas they had but to look out on the mountain range which formed the southern rampart of their land to descry the home of other children of Abraham who were still captives in a strange land, whose cities were left unto them desolate, whose prospect was darkened by an ever-deepening gloom, a night to which there would be no dawn. To what was this difference, this preference, owing, but to the love of Jehovah? Cox. Most remarkably have these words been fulfilled. The style of the remains existing in Petra, the metropolis of Edom, shows that they were framed at dates posterior to the time of this prophecy; and we know in fact historically, that it subsequently became a rich and flourishing city. The intention of the Edomites, as disclosed by the prophet, was therefore accomplished by themselves and their successors; but the Lord's intention has also been accomplished. Of the Edomites themselves, not even a name remains; and their city has for ages remained broken and desolate. The very site, indeed, had long been uncertain, and its place was undetermined in the maps. But, as in the index which closes a book, the various events of centuries are crowded into a few pages; so in these latter days, events that used to be spread over centuries are crowded together into days and years, and the old world history seems tame to the history we live. In this wonderful age events come in "Multitudes, multitudes to the valley of decision;" and old cities and nations—Egypt, Assyria, Edom; Thebes, Nineveh, Petra, are called forth from their tombs; and rattling their dry bones together, and shaking off the time-crust of many ages, they stand up in grim array to bear witness to God's truth. Edom was called—and Petra answered to her name. There she stands beautiful in her coat of many colors; but empty, and void, and waste. Singularly beautiful even in ruin, and with the freshness of youth still upon her brow, the utter desolation in which "the daughter of Edom" lies shut up amid the silence of her mountains, is most impressive and even affecting. Kitto. 6. This reasoning from the honor due and usually accorded to a father is full of force as applied to the great God. How much more a Father is He than any of these "fathers of our flesh," and how much greater! Most forcibly, therefore, does He demand from us, "Where is My honor?" "Where is My fear?" This appeal was made with special pertinence to the priests to whom God had given high responsibilities and ample means of knowing His name and His love. H. C.—If God were disposed to relinquish His claim, the usurpation of another master might be yielded to with the more plausible pretence; but this is not the case. If we believe His word, He never means to part with His right over His creatures. "If I am a Father, where is My reverence? if I am a master, where is My fear?" He cannot suppose, without the utmost absurdity, He will ever divest Himself of His authority, which He could never do without impairing His dignity, and introducing confusion into His empire. He owes it to Himself not to relinquish what we owe to Him. R. Hall. The Fatherhood of God does not subvert the authority of moral law. It does not excuse sin. It summons and encourages to holiness. Mercy does not exclude justice any more than justice excludes mercy. Both are equally universal, and co-operate at every step. It is a great doctrine of judgment which pervades the writings of the minor prophets. These mighty preachers taught that God chastised men because He loved them, that the fiercest retribution moved within redemptive lines. God lets us eat the husks and experience all the bitter harvest of wrong-doing, that we may be brought to ourselves and so return to Him in penitence. No man, therefore, who makes real to himself the unspeakable love of God for him can become indifferent to his moral state. To him God will always be a consuming fire. But on the other hand, the reflection that the moral rule of God is paternal, that love pervades holiness as fire permeates a mass of molten metal, that the perdition of a single soul entails an irreparable loss upon Himself, to avert which He exerts Himself to the utmost, is the mightiest of all incentives to repentance, and the most powerful argument to patience. He is waiting and watching for every one of you, anxious to give the signal which shall make all the bells of heaven ring out because you have come home. Behrends. We may each of us charge upon ourselves what is here charged upon the priests. We are every one of us to look upon God as our Father and Master, and upon ourselves as His children and servants. Our relation to God as our Father and Master strongly obliges us to fear and honor Him. If we honor and fear the fathers of our flesh, much more the Father and Master of our spirits (Heb. 12:9). It is a thing to be justly complained of, and lamented, that God is so little feared and honored even by those that own Him for their Father and Master. Where is His honor? Where is His fear? H. And ye say. From this verse to chap. 2, verse 9, the prophet reproves the priests and the people for sacrificing the refuse of beasts, which, according to the law, ought to have been rejected; and denounces punishment against the priests for not teaching the people their duty in this respect. Abp. Newcome. 7. Mine altar; the table of the Lord. These names may be indifferently used for signifying either the altar or the table of shewbread: and by "polluted bread" may be understood either bread, properly so called, or else the flesh of the sacrifices; so that whether we understand by this variety of words the same or different things—viz., the shewbread by some, and the sacrifices by others, the scope will be the same—that is, to declare the contempt they had of God's service, and that not in one particular kind only, but in all. Pecock. 7,8. The ceremonial law specified, with almost extreme precision, what offerings should be made and how prepared, laying the greatest stress on their being the very best of their kind. The significance of this is obvious. No greater insult could be offered to God than to turn Him off with the refuse of their flocks and herds, and with polluted bread for His altar! Yet this the priests of that day had done, and moreover seemed still to have no sense of their horrible sin! Forcibly does the Lord say, "Offer such presents to your governor; will he feel himself honored?" H. C. 10. The sense of the passage is this: It were better that the temple doors were closed, and that the sacrifices should cease to be offered, than that they should be offered in a form not acceptable to God. B. C.—The service they did render was done in supreme selfishness, for they would not even close the doors of the temple or kindle the fire upon the altar without special pay for it. So utterly mercenary and heartless had they become in all their religious duties! No wonder the Lord declares to them, "I have no pleasure in you!" The pure, loving heart is above all things else first and highest in His esteem; it might almost be said to be all He cares for. H. C. The entire Christian life must bear the character of a daily renewed thank-offering to the glory of Him who in grace bestowed a perfect atonement in Christ Jesus; a thank-offering of willing, undivided devotion of ourselves, with all that is ours, to Him. How much easier would it be once for all to die for the cause of God than, throughout a long course of years, day by day, to live to His glory! How much does it already cost to offer willingly to Him that which we most prize of our possessions; and how much more does it include daily to lay upon the altar before Him our hearts, with all their wishes and desires! But for what other purpose is man, as head of earthly creatures, placed below in such a temple, save that he as priest should offer such a sacrifice, daily consecrating to Him the spiritual offerings of self-denial, love and unconditional obedience? The Israelite might not bring within the holy gates aught that had blemish; and can the Christian dare to speak of faith or gratitude while in his conscience anything remains impure or insincere toward his God? Van O. If we reflect that what we are called upon to offer to God is nothing less than ourselves, our souls and bodies, it must at once be seen that in that perfect, holy, living sacrifice is included every element of character, of endowment, of circumstance, by which each one of us is made to differ from others. Thus it is that not only as men, or as citizens, or as members of families, but as believers in Christ, we have severally a definite and personal work to do, for which we have received in our powers and in our positions the requisite equipment. Only let us be faithful to the ministry which we have received, without attempting to estimate its value or measure its efficacy: only let us be sure that religion is the consecration of our whole nature and not the special attribute of any one part of it; only let us come to God such as we are, bowed down it may be with the burden of toil and care, without the opportunity, as it seems, of preparing an offering for His acceptance: and He will welcome and purify and hallow all that we lay before Him. The results of silent service, of complete self surrender, of patient trust, cannot be measured by our present experience. They survive us on earth and they follow us before the very throne of heaven. We are called then in Christ daily to bring to God our whole selves. This, and nothing less than this, is our rational service. And if so our religion will be as manifold and as personal as our lives, active now through this gift, now through that, and hallowing with the cross all that is truly human. Bp. Westcott. When the hour came in which the true worshippers worshipped the Father in Spirit and in truth, then this incense was offered, even this pure offering. Instead of His being worshipped and served among the Jews only, a small people in a corner of the world, He will be served and worshipped in all places, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same; in every place, in every part of the world, incense shall be offered to His name: nations shall be discipled, and shall speak of the wonderful works of God, and have them spoken to them in their own language. This is a plain prediction of that great revolution in the kingdom of grace, by which the Gentiles, who had been strangers and foreigners, came to be fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and to welcome to the throne of grace as ever the Jews had been. It is twice said (for the thing was certain), My name shall be great among the Gentiles. H. Let us not contrast our sacrifices and zeal merely with those of the Master whose name we bear, and whom we have avouched as our Great Exemplar: let us but measure our endeavors, in their number, and in the prudence, liberality, and perseverance that mark them, with the efforts and spirit of the men of this world, who are without hope and without God. Yielding up the comforts of home and the society of friends, forswearing ease, perilling character, lavishing life, and venturing even upon eternal ruin, as they do, the walks of this world's business and of this world's pleasures are strewed with the voluntary and costly sacrifices of time, property, comfort, life and salvation. But we, with a soul to save, a heaven to lose or win, a Christ to publish, and a God to serve—how shamefully calm are we found, and timid and half hearted! And this, while the world is rushing into ruin, and bearing on its swollen and rapid stream our friends, our neighbors and our children; while the earth which God has promised to bless (and that by human instrumentality) lies as yet, prostrate and groaning, under the curse poured out through all her coasts. The time is coming, and prophecy has foretold it, when in every land there shall be offered to God a pure offering—when, from the closet and the sanctuary, from the hill-top, the field, and the forest-side, where the children of God shall, like Isaac, walk forth at eventide to meditate, the voice of pious supplication shall ascend in one continuous stream; until our globe, as it rolls along its orbit, shall seem but a censer revolving in the hand of the great High-Priest, and pouring out at every aperture a cloud, dense and rich, of incense, fragrant and grateful to God. But, as yet, the ascending cloud is one of far other kind. Its skirts are dark with sullen gloom, and its bosom is charged with indignation and vengeance. Wailing and blasphemy, oppression and outrage, pollution and falsehood, have swollen and blackened it; and with it, a cry goes up, like that from the cities of the plain, piercing the ear of God. Day unto day uttereth speech of human wretchedness, and night unto night showeth knowledge of human wickedness. What has our faith done for its relief? W. R. W. 12-14. The prophet returns again to the sins of the priests, exposing and rebuking them with deserved severity. Who can wonder that the curse of Jehovah falls on such priests and on all such worshippers at His altar? How can He regard it as better than intended insult? Verily God is too great and too holy to be so contemned! Woe to the man who offers such abuse to the Great King whose “name is dreadful among the heathen!” H. C. The charge against the priests is resumed in verses 12, 13, in which we have another graphic picture of their listless and perfunctory ministry. As we study it, we see them lounging about the temple courts, desecrating the name of the Lord by the insolent contempt with which they bring stolen and lame and sick beasts for sacrifice, finding the service an intolerable burden which ought to be their honor and pride, snuffing at the pollutions they themselves have laid on the altar, despising the sacrifices which they themselves have rendered despicable, and crying as they went about their ministry. “What a weariness it is!” Such a picture gives us a far clearer insight into the moral and religious condition of the Hebrews of this time than the facts chronicled in the Book of Nehemiah, and helps us to realize the utter debasement from which that brave and disinterested governor attempted to raise them. For it was “like priest, like people.” When the ministers of the altar treated it with supercilious contempt, how should the people honor it? They did not honor it. They took the priestly infection only too readily, and showed their contempt for the altar which the priest despised by bringing to it illegal offerings and sacrifices. Malachi gives us two instances of such contemptuous and fraudulent violations of the law, and leaves us to infer the rest from these (verse 14). Cox. 13. Should I accept this of your hand? Imagine that you go to your place of retirement reluctantly, listlessly. Your mind, perhaps, is in a state of reaction from the excitements of the day. You are indisposed to thought of any kind. You have no eagerness of search after God; it is not the struggling cry of your heart, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!” From sheer reluctance to endure the labor of thinking, you neglect preparatory meditation. You read the Scriptures indolently; you do not expect or seek for a spur to your own conceptions, in the words of inspired thinkers. Or, imagine that, in the act of prayer, your mind dreams its way through a dialect of dead words; it floats on the current of a stereotyped phraseology, which once leaped with life from the lips of holy men who originated it; but some of which, your memory obliges you to confess, never had any vitality in your own thoughts. It was never original with you; you have never worked it out in your own experience; you have never lived it; it has never forced itself into expression, as the fruit of self-knowledge or of self-conflict. Imagine this as a scene of real life in the closet. Is this a caricature of some possible modes of secret devotion? And if it is not, is it marvellous that such devotion should be afflicted with a want of enjoyment of the Divine presence? “Should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord.” Phelps. 2 : 1, 2 AND now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, then will I send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings : yea, I have cursed them already, 3 because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will rebuke the seed for your sake, and will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your sacrifices ; and ye shall be taken away 4 with it. And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. My covenant was with him of life and peace ; and I gave them to him that he might fear, and he feared me, and stood in awe of 6 my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found in his lips : he walked with me in peace and uprightness, and did turn many away from iniquity. 7 For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth : 8 for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But ye are turned aside out of the way ; ye have caused many to stumble in the law ; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the 9 LORD of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have had respect of persons in the law. 10 Have we not all one father ? hath not one God created us ? why do we deal treacherously 11 every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers ? Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem ; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loveth, and hath married the daughter of a 12 strange god. The LORD will cut off to the man that doeth this him that walceth and him that answereth, out of the tents of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD 13 of hosts. And this again ye do : ye cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with sighing, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, neither receiveth it 14 with good will at your hand. Yet ye say, Wherefore ? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously, 15 though she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did he not make one, although he had the residue of the spirit ? And wherefore one ? He sought a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his 16 youth. For I hate putting away, saith the LORD, the God of Israel, and him that covereth his garment with violence, saith the LORD of hosts : therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. 17 Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him ? In that ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them ; or where is the God of judgment ? Chap. 2. The corrupt priests are specially exhorted, rebuked, and threatened (verses 1-9) ; the sin of practically divorcing their Jewish wives and marrying heathen women is condemned (verses 10-16) ; and finally the priests are rebuked for denying the justice of God in His providential government (verse 17). H. C. 1-3. If the people, and above all the priests, despise and dishonor Him whom even the foreigner and the heathen are beginning to respect, they cannot hope to escape condign punishment. Nor will they escape it. Jehovah will repay their contempt for Him by exposing them to the last extremities of ignominy. If they do not repent, if they do not give glory to His Name, He will convert their priestly benedictions into curses, as indeed He has done already ; He will make them as the refuse of the festal sacrifices, and cause them to be swept out of the Temple with it. Cox. 1,2. The priests had been deeply guilty in the great apostasy of that age. They had not only failed altogether to teach the people faithfully and truly for God, but they had fearfully seduced them into sin by their pernicious example. Hence the prophet gives them to understand very explicitly that this message of command and rebuke is for them. The threatening is not merely "I will send a curse"—some unknown, indefinite curse—but the curse (so the original has it), referring doubtless to De. 27 : 14-26, "And the Levites shall say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice, Cursed be he," etc., "and all the people shall say, Amen!" To this fearful catalogue of twelve curses the prophet must have referred. To "curse your blessings" is to change them to curses. H. C. 2. This phrase, "I will curse your blessings," is peculiar. It is to be explained as an allusion to Deuteronomy, chap. 28, where specific blessings are promised on condition of obedience ("Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field," etc.), and corresponding specific curses denounced for disobedience ("Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field," etc.). The phrases of Malachi, "if ye will not hear," I "will send the curse upon you," are substantially quoted from De. 28: 15, 20, and the rest of the statement in Malachi is a résumé of the contents of the passage in Deuteronomy. Further, when Malachi says (2: 3), "I am rebuking the seed for your sake," he alludes to the "rebuke in all that thou puttest thy hand unto" of De. 28: 20. In fine, Malachi here formally cites the law of blessings and curses as laid down in De. 28, and declares that it is applicable to the priests of his time, and that their unprosperous condition is to be thus accounted for. Malachi follows this up by citing another "commandment" (Mal. 2: 4, 5). This time the commandment is that of the covenant of the priesthood (Num. 25: 10-13), and perhaps other places. These two instances are characteristic. Malachi assumes that the laws and promises of the times of the Exodus were applicable to his own times. W. J. B. Blessings may be made fatal curses. This holds true with blessings of every kind: with station and wealth, with bodily health and vigor, with great powers of mind, with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom much is given, of him shall be much required. It is required of us to enjoy our blessings by using them: so will they be blessings indeed. So it is with money and influence, with health, with talents and with spiritual knowledge. T. A. Gifts unemployed for Christ are stripped off a soul yonder. How much will go from many a richly endowed spirit, which here flashed with unconsecrated genius and force! We do not need to wait for eternity to see that true possession, which is use, increases powers, and that the disuse, which is equivalent to not possessing, robs of them. A. M. 3. The words imply a doom both publicly disgraceful and intrinsically loathsome. Themselves shall be thrown out and borne away with the offal of their sacrifices, in one promiscuous mass. 5. This seems to refer to some events in the early history of Israel, in which the tribe of Levi manifested a special regard for the name and honor of God, and for this reason was honored with the covenant of the perpetual priesthood. The reference may be either to Ex. 32: 26-29, or to Num. 25: 7-13, or to both. In the former case the whole tribe of Levi came forth promptly to the call of Moses, "Who is on the Lord's side?" and girding on each man his sword, they slew the worshippers of the golden calf wherever they were, sparing not even a brother, companion, or neighbor. To this case Moses reverts (De. 33: 9, 10) in his last blessing upon the tribes. The other case, that of Phineas, has in its favor the fact that for his zeal the Lord said of him: "Behold I give unto him My covenant of peace." H. C. 6. 7. It is the ideal priest whom the prophet has in his mind, the archetype to which every true priest will seek to be conformed. The true priest is one with whom, for his holy fear and self-devoting zeal, God has made a covenant of life and peace—that is, of being and of well-being, for all the blessings that make up human welfare were summed up for the Hebrew in one word—peace. "The law of truth"—the truths which have their root in the Divine law—is the staple of his instructions; it is ever in his mouth; "and no iniquity"—i.e., no sinister perversion of truth, inspired by self-interest or class-interest—is "found in his lips." He "walks" with God in a happy consent and progress; for "how can two walk together except they be agreed?" And to walk is not only to move, but to move onward and forward. Not only does he walk with God, he walks with Him "in integrity and peace:" two lines of advance are specially marked out for him—the generous uprightness, which saves his teaching from sinister perversions, rules his personal conduct, so that he is drawn aside by no selfish or impure motive: and, moreover, he possesses himself ever more fully of all the blessings which conduce to peace or well being. And thus, by his own pure and happy life, no less than by his wholesome and unperverted doctrine, he "brings back many from guilt," convincing the sinful of the mistake they have made, and leading them, through repentance, to that way of life and peace in which he himself is advancing. Nor in all this does he do more than is required of him by his vocation. For whose "lips should preserve knowledge"—a knowledge of the Divine Will as revealed in the law of truth, if not his at whose mouth, as at its native home, men seek that law, "because he is the angel or messenger of the Lord of Hosts?" Cox. His conversation was of a piece with his doctrine. God Himself gives him this honorable testimony, He walked with Me in peace and equity. He did not think it enough to talk of God, but he walked with Him; the temper of his mind and the tenor of his life were of a piece with his doctrine and profession; he lived a life of communion with God, and made it his constant care and business to please Him. He answered the ends of his office, he did turn many away from iniquity, he made it his business to do good, and God crowned his endeavors with wonderful success; he helped to save many a soul from death, and there are multitudes now in heaven, blessing God that ever they knew him. Those ministers, and those only, are like to turn men from iniquity that preach sound doctrine and live good lives, and both according to the Scripture; for as one of the rabbins observes here, When the priest is upright, many will be upright. H. 8,9. The priests of Malachi's time not only fell short of this pure and lofty ideal—all have done that, save only the great High-Priest of our Confession—but they openly and insolently renounced and reversed it. Instead of keeping the way of integrity in their personal conduct, they had "departed from the way" (verse 8). Instead of shedding light on the path of peace by their instructions, they had cast stumbling-blocks before the feet of those who were striving to keep it, and turned them aside, "making many to stumble at the law" in place of smoothing the way for them. And thus they had "corrupted the covenant with Levi;" Jehovah no longer holds Himself bound by it, since they no longer breathe the fidelity and zeal to which it was granted. As they have forsaken His ways, and have driven others to forsake them by their injustice and greed, He will make them as base and despicable in the sight of all the people as His service and covenant have become in their sight—unless, indeed, they should repent and amend, "observe His ways" and "give glory to His Name" (verse 9). Thus ends the section on the priests and their sins. They are convicted of their guilt. They are menaced with retribution. They are shown what they ought to be, and invited to repent and mend. And as the picture of the ideal priest is the most beautiful passage of this section, so also it is the most suggestive; and that, not simply because, since we are all priests unto God by the grace of Christ, it teaches us what manner of men we ought to be, but also because it illustrates the high moral tone of the Hebrew prophets. When they speak of the meaning and essence of sacrifice, they do not represent Jehovah as requiring bullocks and rams. The cattle on a thousand hills are His. They represent Him as speaking with a large scorn of the oblations and offerings that were laid on His altar. What He required was an obedient will, a contrite spirit, a thankful heart; that men should do justice, show mercy and walk humbly with Him. And when they speak of the true priest, it is not his ceremonial exactness in the service of the altar which they hold up to admiration, but his truth, his integrity, his wisdom as a teacher, the moral sweetness of his personal character. And it really is very fine to observe with what native ease Malachi rises into this higher region of thought. While dwelling on the sins of the priests, he moves in the lower, the ceremonial, element; he insists on the maimed rites and blemished sacrifices, on the perfunctory and contemptuous spirit with which they lounged through the service of the Temple. But no sooner does he attempt to frame a conception of what the true priest should be than all that is forgotten; we hear no more of altar and sacrifice; his thoughts are riveted on the moral aspects of the priestly vocation—how holy a man, how wise a teacher, how careful and friendly a guide, the priest should be. When we are thinking only to hear that the sons of Levi are to offer clean and perfect instead of blemished and polluted sacrifices, to delight in the ministrations of the sanctuary instead of despising them, as much to our surprise as pleasure he places before us a lofty spiritual ideal of character and service well-nigh, if not altogether, beyond the reach of mortal powers; he pronounces an eulogium on Levi which we should hardly dare to inscribe as an epitaph on the tomb of the holiest saint, or even on that of an inspired apostle— "The law of truth was in his mouth, And no iniquity was found in his lips; He walked with Me in peace and integrity, And brought back many from guilt." Cox. 10-16. This passage is best understood when considered as one distinct and entire subject. It refers to the sin of practically or actually putting away their Hebrew wives, and taking wives from the idolatrous heathen. Even the priests had done this; and, indeed, they seem to have been foremost. (See Neh. 13: 23-29.) With a masterly hand the prophet calls their attention first in order to the very highest moral considerations—to their obligations to God, their common Father, which bind them to deal faithfully and forbid them to deal treacherously against their fellow-beings, children of the same common Father. In the clause “every man against his brother,” etc., the thing in mind is the obligation that binds a man to fidelity with his wife. “Brother” is used in the general sense of fellow-creature—one who is a child of the same Creator. “The covenant of our fathers” is the covenant of marriage, ordained of God, and given first to the common father of our race. In the clause (verse 11) “Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved,” I take the sense to be, that the people of Judah had abused and dishonored the sacredness which the Lord had attached to His own people in forbidding intermarriages with the heathen, and requiring them to marry within the pale of the covenant people. The Lord had felt a special interest in this law. It recognized a certain holiness in His own people which He had valued as a distinction vital to the preservation of morals and piety among them. The priests and people had profaned this sacredness by marrying the daughters of strange gods—heathen idolatrous women. In verse 12 it is said, “The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this,” be he who he may. This is the ultimate sense of the original rendered, “the master and the scholar.” Its proximate sense, however, is not “master and scholar,” but “the waker and the answerer,” with reference to the night-watch of the priests or Levites in the temple where the party retiring from their watch aroused their successors, who answered to their call. The two parties taken together might include all. The description should apply to the priests; this does, and, moreover, follows strictly the sense of the original. In verse 13, “done this again,” means ye have a second time relapsed into this great sin, the first time being that great apostasy from which they were reclaimed under Ezra. (See Ezra 9) This reform seemed for the time to be thorough, but subsequently the people and priests apostatized again. They “covered the altar of God with tears,” inasmuch as the Hebrew wives, supplanted in the affections of their husbands by heathen wives, fled to the altar to lay their case before the God of their fathers there, and to pour out their sorrows into His ear, and their tears upon His altar. Such scenes as these touched the heart of God, and He could no longer accept the offerings brought to this same altar by these adulterous and apostate priests. The self justifying priests still say, “Wherefore?” [Why make this ado about a thing so trivial?] Because Jehovah is witness between thee and the wife with whom thou hast dealt treacherously. The prophet closes with repeating the exhortation no more to deal treacherously with the wife of their first sacred covenant. H. C. The children of Israel were to be a holy—i.e., a separate people, a people marked off and set apart to Jehovah; not because He did not love other races, but because He did love them, and chose one race to be the channel through which His truth and mercy should flow to all races. But if this one family or tribe was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, it must, at least for a time, be set apart from and raised above them. Hence the laws forbidding intermarriage with the heathen. From the very beginning, too, the Hebrews were taught that the marriage tie was a permanent union, and that, save for the gravest cause, those whom God had joined together should not be put asunder. Though, as our Lord explains, owing to their “hardness of heart,” Moses was compelled to write a precept of divorce, nevertheless his legislation marked an immense advance on the common morality of the time. He taught them that marriage, in place of being a merely natural and temporary alliance, was a solemn covenant to which God Himself was witness; and, instead of permitting them to break the conjugal bonds on any whim and without any legal act, he allowed divorce only in cases of flagrant infidelity, and enjoined that a formal bill or writing be given into the hand of the offending wife. It is to this legislation, and to the influence of it age after age, that we attribute the domestic purity and the aversion to alien marriages which characterize the modern Jews. The influence of their code and history has been about them generation after generation like an atmosphere; they have breathed it unconsciously; it has entered into their very blood. But it was long before they learned their lesson. For many centuries the ancient Hebrews found it almost as hard to be content with one wife as it was to be content with one God, almost as difficult to refrain from the daughters as from the deities of their neighbors—nay, they found it harder and more difficult. For during the Captivity they did learn that there is but one God over all, and forever renounced their idolatries; but long after the return from the Captivity, Ezra and Nehemiah saw, with indignation and dismay, that both people and priests had taken to wife the daughters of foreign races, and that thus "the holy seed had been mingled with the people of strange lands." Worse still, in order to ally themselves with these strange women, many of them had violated the law, divorcing their Hebrew wives without cause. Against this double crime under their law Malachi utters these words of rebuke and denunciation in the name of Jehovah. Cox. 13. Marriage involves a union altogether peculiar. In its perfection it is a spiritual union, and only in it does the life of each party become complete. That this union should be, and should be understood to be for life, is essential to the interests of both parties, to the welfare of children, and to the interests of the State. Only on the condition of such understanding can there be a perfect commitment of each to each, and that perfect community of interest and of life which radically separates marriage from all forms of prostitution and unlawful cohabitation. As thus peculiar and sacred, the original institution of God was that the union should be of one man with one woman, and for life. Under the Mosaic dispensation divorce was permitted on various grounds, but the original ground and sacredness of marriage was not lost sight of. This appears from a remarkable passage in Malachi showing the unreasonableness and evils of both polygamy and divorce, and the displeasure of God toward them. "And this," says he, "have ye done again, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that He regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand." What a picture! Poor wronged women bathing the altar of God with their tears; those who did the wrong seeking to be religious by offerings while they yet held on to the wrong; God rejecting their offerings, asserting the law of marriage, declaring that He made one woman for a perpetual union with one man that the children might be trained for Himself, and implying that this could be done in no other way. The original law of marriage, thus asserted by Malachi, Christ fully restored. M. Hopkins. 14. Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth. "Because the Lord hath been witness" of the contract or matrimonial promises, made according to His law, and with solemn invocation of His name, "between thee and the wife of thy youth"—that is, her whom thou tookest in thy youth, but with whom thou now decalest treacherously, though she were "thy companion," made so according to the institution of God (Gen. 2 : 24; Matt. 19 : 5); "and the wife of thy covenant," by mutual covenant espoused to thee. The conditions of this covenant, God, being witness to it, regards as necessarily binding on both parties, and requires the due performance of it from both. Pocock. 15. The original formation of one man and one woman into "one flesh" or conjugal body, contemplated the rearing of a pious offspring. Other and inferior ends were to be secured by it, but this was its ultimate design. "He did not design it (remarks Howe) merely that there might be a continual descent of human nature, but that religion might still be transmitted from age to age; and this design He never quits." Marriage was a divinely conceived idea for the manifestation of God in man. J. Harris. Did not God at the beginning make but one wife for man? Yet had he the residue, the fulness, the excellency of the spirit. He might have multiplied the human species without number by separate acts of creation; yet He made but one man and one woman. And wherefore, asks the prophet, did He make but one? "That He might seek a godly seed"—that the family might become the educator of the race in the knowledge and the love of God; that the father who should transmit to his son his own physical likeness might also impress upon him the likeness of God; that thus holiness might be hereditary and perpetual; that the life of God, beginning in that mysterious and sacred union in Eden, might flow on in channels of love and purity till the end of time. Alas, that the fountain became corrupt, and has sent forth streams of bitterness and death! J. P. T. Well might the mind be haunted, age after age, with a family ideal never yet realized! Life a sacred thing. Every child a Divine promise. Every family beginning the race anew from a higher point. Brothers and sisters ministering angels to each other's purity and beneficence. Every addition a new element of happiness. Education the rearing of a living temple. Conjugal love a central fountain in warm, fragrant, perpetual play. The father the representative of God; feeding them, as a prophet, with more than angels' food; as a priest, standing at the portico of the temple, to guard it from pollution, or ministering at its holy altar, and finding his spirit purified and refreshed by the service. The mother, the earliest to enter the infant heart, and to take possession in the name of God; radiating on her children the light and life of her own in- tense affection, and invested in addition with the delegated and solemn reverence of paternal authority. Home, the home of the affections, where law is superseded by love, where the lowliest act is consecrated and ennobled by the highest motive, and where separate individual interests are forgotten in the aim of each for the good of all. The family, sending forth its youthful members—each with a heritage of happy recollections and holy habits, impressed with the sanctity and high responsibilities of the domestic constitution, studiously trained and qualified to enter on them, and determined to raise still higher, if possible, in his own new circle, the standard of his own early home. Such are the capabilities of the family, and the sunny visions at which it hints. J. Harris. 17. The sins of the priests had at bottom a deep apostasy in principle and theory from the living God. They had ceased to vindicate the ways of God to man; had ceased to think and speak well of His government; had ceased to regard Him as holy, just and good. H. C.—They denied Him to be the righteous Governor of the world. If He did not delight in sin and sinners, yet it would serve their turn to believe that He would never punish it or them. They said, “Where is the God of judgment? That God who we have been so often told would call us to an account, and reckon with us for what we have said and done—where is He? He has forsaken the earth, and takes no notice of what is said and done there; He has said that He will come to judgment; but where is the promise of His coming? We may do what we please, He sees us not, nor will regard us.” It is such a challenge to the Judge of the whole earth as bids defiance to His justice, and in effect dares Him to do His worst. Such scoffers as these there were in the latter days of the Jewish Church, and such there shall be in the latter days of the Christian Church; but their unbelief shall not make the promise of God of no effect, for the day of the Lord will come. Behold, the Judge stands before the door; the God of judgment is at hand. H. The scepticism indicated by the questions Malachi puts into the people’s mouth is as old as time, and as new as to-day. It is common to all ages and to every heart. The prosperity of the wicked and the delay of Providence are roots out of which doubt forever springs afresh. In our turn we all ask, “If there be a God, and He is just and good, why does He permit good to be overcome of evil?” Cor. 3:1 BEHOLD, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in, behold, he cometh, saith the LORD of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver; and they shall offer unto the LORD offerings in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in ancient years. And I will come near to you to judgement; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers; and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. For I the LORD change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye say, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? yet ye rob me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob me, even this whole nation. Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room 11 enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, 12 said the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you happy: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts. 13 Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein have we 14 spoken against thee? Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we 15 have kept his charge, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are built up; yea, they 16 tempt God, and are delivered. Then they that feared the LORD spake one with another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, 17 for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure; and I will spare 18 them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him 4:1 not. For, behold, the day cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the proud, and all that work wickedness, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith 2 the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go 3 forth, and gambol as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I do make, saith the LORD of hosts. 4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for 5 all Israel, even statutes and judgements. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before 6 the great and terrible day of the LORD come. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Chap. 3. The coming of John Baptist and of Jesus the Messiah is foretold with some of the results (verses 1-5); then exhortations to repentance and rebukes for sin, especially the sin of robbing the Lord of His tithes and offerings (verses 6-12). The spirit of the wicked is contrasted with the spirit of the righteous (verses 13-18). 1. The most ample proof is found in the New Testament that "My messenger" is John Baptist. Our Lord bore witness to John (Luke 7:27): "This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face, who shall prepare the way before Thee." His father, Zacharias, when filled with the Holy Ghost, said, "Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways," etc. (Luke 1:76). Consequently, "the Lord whom ye seek," "the Messenger of the Covenant," can be no other than Jesus the Messiah. But why is He called "the Messenger of the Covenant"? "Messenger" means angel. It is the word usually translated angel. Jesus is the Angel of the Covenant in the twofold sense: (1) Of being the same personage so often called in the Old Testament an "angel"—e.g., Ex. 23:20-23, which if the reader will examine, he will see refers to the uncreated angel who pardons sin, in whom is the name of Jehovah, and who is a perpetual Presence with His Church under both the old dispensation and the new; called "the Angel of the Covenant" also, because so long promised by covenant with the patriarchs and saints of old; and (2) of being especially "the Mediator of the new covenant" (Heb. 9:15); and of "the better covenant, established upon better promises" (Heb. 8:6-13). The person who speaks in this verse is "Jehovah of Hosts." Yet He says, "I will send one who shall prepare the way before Me." The testimony of inspiration thus makes the promised Messiah no other than "Jehovah of Hosts." This name is given Him by Divine authority. H. C. Old Testament passages that speak of a certain being as the "Angel of Jehovah" occur in many different books, and in connection with different periods in the history. Those which belong to the times of the Exodus are Ex. 3:2; 14:19; 23:20, 23; 32:34; 33:2; Num. 20:16; 22:22 seq. This same angel of Jehovah is very prominent in the thought of the post-exilian prophets (Hag. 1:13; Zech. 1:11, 12; 3:1, 5, 6, etc.). In their thought, there are strong analogies between their times and the times of the Exodus, and the Angel that led their fathers into the promised land is leading them. Malachi here quotes, compositely, from the two clauses: "Behold, I send an angel" (Ex. 23:20), and "My Angel shall go" (Ex. 23:23). The Messenger of the Covenant: better, "the Angel of the Covenant," the Angel whom Jehovah in the time of the Exodus covenanted to send before His people. By the only unforced understanding of the matter, "My angel," "the Lord," and "the Angel of the Covenant" are one and the same person. The prophet represents that Jehovah is speaking to these post-exilian people, saying, for substance: When your fathers came out of Egypt, I promised to be with them in the person of My Angel. Later, one of My prophets proclaimed that the way should be prepared before Me. You profess that you are seeking Me as your lord. You profess that you would be delighted with the presence of the covenant Angel. And yet you ask, Where is the God of judgment? You pretend to think that I am pleased with the evil, as well as with the good. In view of this, I announce that I keep My word. I send My Angel. The way shall be prepared for My coming. Suddenly you shall be aware that your lord the Angel is in the temple. And what then? W. J. B. That "Angel" had redeemed Israel from Egypt, had led them through the desert, had been the "Captain of the Lord's host." The name of Jehovah was "in Him." He it is whose coming is here prophesied, and in His coming Jehovah comes to His temple. A. M. —He who should come was the Lord, again Almighty God, since, in usage, too, none else is called "the Lord" (Ex. 23: 17; 34: 23; Isa. 1: 24; 3: 1; 10: 16, 33; 29: 4) as none else can be. The temple also, to which He was to come, the temple of God, is His own. The Messenger and the Angel of the Covenant, plainly, even from the parallelism, is the same as the Lord. Pusey. —All Christian interpreters are agreed that this Lord is Christ, whom God hath made both Lord and Christ, and who is Lord over all (Acts 2: 36; 10: 36); by whom all things were made, are sustained and governed; who is, as the root of the word imports, the basis and foundation not of any private family, tribe or kingdom, but of all; by whom are all things and we by Him; and whose we are also by right of redemption; and so He is Lord of lords and King of kings, deservedly called the Lord. Pococke. It is not possible to find any other person to whom the words of this prophecy will apply. From Malachi, to the destruction of the temple, no one can be named, except the Lord Jesus, who is able to make any pretension to the express characters in this prediction. Mark therefore had good reason to introduce his Gospel with this unexceptionable text of Malachi, in order to show the connection between the Old and New Testament, and that one began where the other ended. There was no Jew at that time who did not agree to the application of this prophecy to the Messiah, according to the letter. No Christian since hath been so wild as to fancy any other sense of it. Even the learned Grotius, so willing and so capable, as he appears to be at other times, to invent double meanings, yields up this prophecy to Christ, as concerning Him only, and no other person. Bp. Chandler. The first words of this chapter seem a direct answer to the profane, atheistical demand of the scoffers of those days, which closed the foregoing chapter: Where is the God of judgment? To which it is readily answered, "Here he is; He is just at the door; the long-expected Messiah is ready to appear; and He says, For judgment am I come into this world; for that judgment which you so impudently bid defiance to." One of the rabbins says, that the meaning of this is that God will raise up a righteous King, to set things in order, even the King Messiah. And the beginning of the Gospel of Christ is expressly said to be the accomplishment of this promise, with which the Old Testament concludes (Mark 1: 1, 2). So that by this the two Testaments are, as it were, tacked together, and made to answer one another. H. 2. Who may abide: Jehovah, in the person of His Angel, they had been taught, was to do great things for His people, and especially for the obedient among them; but He was also to be a severe judge (Ex. 23: 21, 22; 32: 34). Whether His coming would be a joy to any among them would depend on whether they were prepared for it, so that they would receive Him trustingly and obediently. Fuller's: A fuller, in Bible language, is not a workman who thickens the cloth after it has been woven, but a laundryman—one who washes garments or cloths, to cleanse them. Incidentally, bleaching is thought of as part of the cleansing process. There is an implication here that whoever bears the character of base metal may well dread the fire, and whoever bears the character of foulness may well dread the processes by which the fine linen is made clean. W. J. B. 2, 3. "Who shall be able to bear the day of His coming"—the searching ordeal of such moral scrutiny? Not those corrupt priests, so recently before the prophet's mind. Ah! full soon will He scourge them out of His temple, and hurl them down from the high position which they so shamefully desecrate! "Who shall stand when He appeareth?" Some few—those who "looked for redemption in Jerusalem"—will hail His coming as "the horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David;" but the sensual, the worldly, the formal—however carefully they may have covered up their iniquity with the cloak of sanctimonious profession, will be put through such processes of refining and proving as shall surely reveal their dross—"for He is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap"—physical agents which well illustrate the work of the coming Messiah in purifying His Church. The state of the Church and its leading men at that time strongly suggested the need of this purifying work to be done by "the Messenger of the Covenant." H. C. The process alluded to by Malachi in this passage, and further described by Ezekiel (Ezek. 22: 20-22), is very like what is called cupelling in modern metallurgy. The vessel containing the alloy is placed in the midst of the fire, and the blast is applied to the metals, not to the fire. When this is done, nothing but the precious metals, gold and silver, remain. Jeremiah also illustrates this method (Jer. 6: 29, 30). The silver there is mixed with iron, copper and tin. Lead is put with it on the fire. It soon melts. The lead comes to the top, forms a crust, and thus consumes away, but does not purify. But why? Because, as the prophet says, "the bellows are burned." There was nothing to send a blast upon the molten metal, and it remains reprobate "silver." When the refiner has the blast properly directed on to the contents of the earthen vessel, he sits and watches it carefully. When the mass has become thoroughly molten, the surface has a deep orange red color, with a kind of flickering wave constantly passing over it. As the heat is increased, the color of the fused metal becomes lighter. The refiner sits watching until all the orange color and shading have disappeared, and the metal assumes the appearance of a highly polished mirror, reflecting everything around. When the refiner can see himself perfectly reflected, as in a looking glass, he knows that the metal is pure. If he is not satisfied after he has removed it from the furnace, he adds more lead, and repeats the process. So does Jehovah try and sift His people till they have been perfected in the furnace of affliction. Tristram. The images of the refiner's fire and the fullers' soap imply painful processes, of which the intention is to burn out the dross and beat out the filth. It sounds like a prolongation of Malachi's voice when John the Baptist peals out his herald cry of one whose "fan was in His hand," and who should plunge men into a fiery baptism, and consume with fire that destroyed what would not submit to be cast into the fire that cleansed. Nor should we forget that our Lord has said, "For judgment am I come into the world." He came to "purify;" but if men would not let Him do what He came for, he could not but be their bane instead of their blessing. Judgment is the shadow of salvation, and constantly attends on it. Neither Malachi nor the Baptist gives a complete view of Messiah's work, but still less do they give an erroneous one; for the central portion of both prophecies is His purifying energy, which both liken to cleansing fire. That real and inward cleansing is the great work of Christ. It was wrought on as many of His contemporaries as believed on Him, and for such as did not He was a swift witness against them. Nor are we to forget that the prophecy is not exhausted yet; for there remains another "day of His coming" for judgment. A. M. Many processes He has, the great Spiritual Refiner, who sits in the midst of His Church, to make liker to Himself and thus more capable of reflecting His image those on whom He has set His heart, and at whose hands He would fain accept an offering not mean nor poor. Having appointed to them a kingdom, He appoints to them, first of all, to drink of His cup and to be baptized with His baptism. What way is there for any one of us but only this? It was well said long ago, "The way to heaven is by Weeping Cross;" and all true pilgrims shall find it so. Treach. Trials are among the most signal waymarks in the pilgrimage of faith, trials at the beginning, trials in the continuance, trials at the end. Yet not trials always, nor trials unmingled, but enough constantly, or at intervals, to prove thee and show thee what is in thy heart, and to lead that heart for healing and rest to God. The history of faith, and of God's discipline for its increase and perfection, ever has been and ever will be a record of trials. Character is read and known in the temper of the soul sustaining them, and they themselves are the costly instruments of God in refining and establishing the soul. We are in the shop of the Great Jeweller, preparing for our places in His palace above; and they whom He means to make the most resplendent, said Leighton in this beautiful figure, He hath oftenest His tools upon. Until this discipline of God have been applied to him, a man knows not of what elements his nature is composed, nor what hidden evils may be festering in his bosom. God must bring them out, and redeem him from them, or he can never be prepared for the kingdom of heaven. G. B. C. The word "character," in its origin, is suggestive. It is from a word which signifies to engrave, to cut into furrows. Thus it means that which is engraved or cut on anything. In life, therefore, it is that which is distinctive in any individual. Or, to put it in a more practical way, it is that which experiences cut or furrow into the life. A baby has no character. Its life is like a piece of white paper, with nothing yet written upon it; or it is like a smooth marble tablet, on which the sculptor as yet has cut nothing. Character is formed as the years go on. It is the writing, the song, the story, put upon the paper. It is the engraving, the sculpturing, which the marble receives under the chisel. Final character is what a man is when he has lived his earthly years. In the Christian it is the lines of the likeness of Christ furrowed and scarred upon his soul by the Divine Spirit, through the means of grace and the experiences of his own life. J. R. M. By secret trials, chastenings, which none but they and God can understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their secret faults and making them understand wisdom secretly; burning out of them the chaff of self-will, and self-conceit, and self-vanity, and leaving only the pure gold of righteousness. How many sweet and holy souls, who look cheerful enough before the eyes of men, yet have their secret sorrows! They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night; and they will carry it, perhaps, for years and years, and to their graves and to the throne of Christ, before they lay it down, and none but they and Christ will ever know what it was—what was the secret chastisement which God sent to make the soul better which seemed to us already too good for earth. So does the Lord watch His people, and tries them by fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnace watching the melting metal, till he knows it is purged from all its dross by seeing the image of his own face reflected on it. Charles Kingsley. There is not one stroke of superfluous agony. Every pulse of anguish is felt by God, as the refiner and purifier of silver watches the furnace, sure to lift the molten metal out, or to cool the fire, when the needed change is wrought. The instant faith's deep discipline is accomplished, Christ stays His hand. F. D. H. Affliction may be the fire, but Christ is the Refiner. Whatever instrument may cause the nerves to agonize and the heart to grieve, the Lord Himself holds it. The tool may be malignity, but the worker is love. We may be in the hand of our enemy, but the enemy himself is in the hand of God. That which aims to destroy is used as the unconscious medium of serving the purpose of that which designs to bless. He is present all through the operation of the trial. As much as the act of refining silver implies the presence of the refiner, the affliction of a Christian implies the presence of Christ. The process could not be carried on without Him. By the side of His afflicted disciple, He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver. There He is, "a very present help in time of trouble." Very present; closer than close, nearer than near; making him who is sorely tried a wonder to himself and a wonder to me. When he comes into the light of the living again, he will look back upon this day's experience with surprise, and say, "I never could have lived through it if Christ had not been with me." There he is, to comfort with assurances of Divine sympathy. No visible friend, however loving, who sits by that poor man, holding his hot hand, or fanning his fevered brow, can even faintly understand the gentle tenderness of the unseen Saviour's heart, for it is infinite. . . . Powers of great usefulness can be educated in no other way. Powers of endurance are unknown where there has been nothing to endure. Powers of rule belong alone to those who have learned to rule by learning to obey. The power of teaching is the special faculty of men who have themselves undergone stern discipline. The power of sympathy is educated in the school of sorrow. Leaders whose souls have never been crucified, and whose plans have never had a failure, are apt to be at best pitiless exactors of righteousness, mere engines for doing duty; iron men, who never melt into compassion; rough men, who knock down weakness, and to whom the fine offices of consolation are all mysteries. No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. C. Stanford. We enter a world of antagonism and opposition the moment we resolve at Christ's feet to be Christians, to be true men, to obey God, to forsake sin, to do our duty. There never comes a time when we can live nobly without effort, without resistance to wrong influences, without struggle against the power of temptation. It never gets easy to be good. We are apt to grow weary of this continued struggle, and to become discouraged that it never ends. But out of this very struggle we get the nobleness and beauty of character after which we are striving. One of the Scotch martyrs had on his crest the motto Sub pondere cresco—“I grow under a weight.” On the crest was a palm-tree, with weights depending from its fronds. In spite of the weights, the tree grew straight as an arrow, lifting its crown of graceful foliage high up in the serene air. It is well known that the palm grows best loaded down with weights. Thus this martyr testified that he, like this beautiful tree of the Orient, grew best in his spiritual life under weights. This is the universal law of spiritual growth. There must be resistance, struggle, conflict, or there can be no development of strength. Men pity those whose lives are scenes of toil and endurance, but God’s angels do not look upon such with pity if only they are victorious; for they are thus climbing daily upward, toward the holy heights of sainthood. The beatitudes in the apocalypse are for those who overcome. Spiritual life needs opposition. It flourishes most luxuriantly in adverse circumstances. We grow best under weights. J. R. M. 4. “Ancient years.” The prophet has in mind pre-exilian times, long gone by, when the temple worship was in its glory. It will be so again, he says, when the winnowed temple ministers become pure in heart and correct in practice. 5,6. The severe purifying processes will be applied to the people as well as to the priestly classes, and especially to those who are personally guilty of the wrongs for which God rebukes the nation. I will come: It is Jehovah, in the person of His Angel, that will come to judgment. Doubtless the prophet has in mind the same wrongdoers whom he condemns in 2 : 11–16, the same who are described in Ezra and Nehemiah as forming illegal unions with foreign women. It is noticeable that Malachi condemns these unions on the ground of their involving treachery to legal wives to whom these men had been previously married, and on the ground of their leading to divorces. He says that Jehovah hates divorcing (2 : 16). Put these facts along with the fact that Ezra and Nehemiah, in describing the cases of these foreign women, never use the terms that properly signify either marriage or divorce, and it may lead to the conclusion that the conduct of these leaders was more humane than many have supposed. False swearers: It should be “the false swearers,” those who had sworn (Neh. 10 : 28 seq.) to keep Jehovah’s laws and abstain from foreign alliances, and see that the temple revenues were maintained, and who had failed to keep their oath. Along with these, Malachi, like most of the pre-exilian prophets, rebukes sorcerers, and those who, in various ways, oppress the weak. W. J. B. 6. The connection of thought here turns on the special significance of the name Jehovah—the ever-faithful and unchanging One—the God of the promises, who hath said and will surely fulfil. If He had not made such promises of enduring protection and mercy to the ancient covenant people, He would even now cut them off at once. It is only because He is Jehovah that His faithfulness spares “the sons of Jacob.” There is a power in that name, “sons of Jacob,” that avails to save them yet, on the score of those never-failing promises. H. C. God, and all that is in God, is unchangeable. His mercy is unchangeable, it “endureth forever.” So His strength, He is called the Rock of Ages. So also His counsel, He may change His sentence, the outward threatening or promise, but not His inward decree. So also His love is immutable; His heart is the same to His people in all the diversity of their outward condition. We may change in circumstances or in opinions, but God does not change. T. Manton. All our changes arise from the imperfection of our nature. We lose what we have, because of our feebleness; and we receive accessions, because we have not sufficiency in ourselves. Defect, limitation and dependence characterize our nature, and hence we change; fulness, infinitude and all-sufficiency characterize the Deity, and hence, during the flow of ages, he remains the same. Wm. Cooke. Every promise which He has made is guaranteed, as well by His natural attributes of wisdom, power and sufficiency, as by His perfect moral rectitude. In this character of truth, the everlasting foundations of His religion are laid. That changes not, because the doctrines taught in it are in themselves true without error, and can never be displaced by new and better discoveries; it fails not, because every gracious promise must by Him be accomplished; and thus the religion of the Bible continues from age to age, and from day to day, as much a matter of personal experience as it ever was. In its doctrines, it can never become an antiquated theory; for truth is eternal. In its practical application, it can never become foreign to man; for it enters now and must ever enter into his concerns, his duties, his hopes and comforts, to the end of time. We know what is true as an object of belief, because the God of truth has declared it; and we know what is faithful, and, therefore, the object of unlimited trust, because "He is faithful that hath promised." R. Watson. The different frames and feelings which distress us do not affect God nor cause any change in His love to us. A changeable God must be an unhappy being like ourselves; but God never changes in His love, purposes and grace to us. He did not love us, choose us and set His heart upon us on account of what He saw in us, but as He viewed us in the Son of His love. We are unrighteous sinners in ourselves; but He sees in Christ an everlasting atonement for our sins, an everlasting righteousness to justify us: therefore He is ever pleased with us in Christ; ever of one mind concerning us; ever rests in His love to us and joys over us: no change in us can ever affect His mind, His love or His joy. W. Mason. It is a source of great comfort and strength amid the changes of human life to know that there is One who changes not. The unchangeableness of God gives a solid basis upon which our thought and hope may rest, and enables us to believe that all the vicissitudes of our life are held within the scope of a never-failing Divine purpose. The changelessness of God is not like that which is found in the uniformity of nature, but is the changelessness of personal character—changelessness in the fundamental principles of action and attributes of character, with the utmost play of variety and change of activity within the limits involved in an immutable moral nature. It is the same changeless love which manifests disapproval and condemnation of sin as manifests approval of goodness. The desire and effort on the part of God to promote the highest good of His creatures as truly require that He should disapprove and condemn sin as that He should approve holiness. God's love, then, in its essential character, is changeless. It is and ever remains the desire and effort to bless, save, and bring to its true life of godlikeness every soul of man. But the mode in which it shall act and the course which it shall pursue, in dealing with individual men, must vary according to the character and attitude of each man toward the love which is seeking his highest welfare. . . . While the love of God is changeless in its tenderness and yearning to bless, it is also changelessly holy and unable to approve or overlook sin. God will ever seek our truest welfare, but He could never promote our truest welfare if He did not condemn our sins. He is changeless in His glorious and holy perfections; but within those perfections themselves there is all the variety and play of passion, feeling and action, which belong to a living, moral personality perpetually exerting His infinite energies in acts of wisdom, power and grace. G. B. Stevens. This sublime idea of the one, absolute, independent, perfect God which fills the pages of the Old Testament, from the first phrase of Genesis to the last of Malachi, which is asserted with authority in the Law, whose breath inspires the prophets, in presence of which psalmists adore and Hebrew sages meditate; this idea which the Son of God has accepted, hailed, confirmed, and which He has transmitted to His Church, making of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at once our God and our Father; this idea which becomes the sentence of death of the nations which reject it, the powerful support of all those that adopt and preserve it; whence did the Israelites derive it? It is their only intellectual treasure, since they had no other grandeur, no other mission in the history of the world than to be its bearers; and it is their own peculiar treasure, for no other nation has shared it with them. We must accept the word which is claimed by the very facts themselves; we must admit that there has been revelation. F. Godet. To the moral education and development of our race, a vivid conception of God's active presence, and conscious, intelligent interest in human affairs is indispensable. It was such a conception which made the Hebrews a peculiar people—nay, in spite of their conspicuous faults, a great people. Their invincible vitality, their distinctive, unconquerable homogeneity, against which so many tyrant persecutors have hurled themselves in vain, would have been melted away in the course of any two of the last twenty-five centuries, had theirs been a pantheistic conception of God. Their survival as a people, though long divested of a country, and even of a chief, is a striking proof of the conservative force that inheres in the idea of a God to whom those who will may draw practically, consciously nearer than are those who know Him not; though these, too, are subjects of His care. The bloodless speculation which vaunts itself philosophy and enlightenment has rarefied the other wherein it works, until "the undevout astronomer" alone can tell what it believes or aims to teach with regard to our theme. But, whatever else may be affirmed or denied thereof, it can hardly be doubted that the general drift of this speculation is toward a weakened sense of moral responsibility. It inspires no such horror of sin or dread of divinely decreed and administered retribution as do the canons of ancient faith. "Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the children of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," becomes absurd self-sacrifice in the contemplation of a philosophy which precludes all retribution which is not the necessary consequence of violating beneficent laws—in whose regard punishment is but another phase of gravitation. In such a philosophy, self-denial finds no aliment, conscience no spur, and the love and practice of virtue no safeguard in that "fearful looking for of judgment" which pursues and overtakes the transgressor. Horace Greeley. 7-12. In the first chapter, Malachi had scathingly rebuked the temple ministers because they did not stand by their duties, even at the cost of hardships, when the people failed to bring in the tithes and offerings. Now he pays his respects to the people who have been guilty of this failure. God counts as robbery our failure to contribute our proper proportion to the support of religious ordinances. With a curse: The Revised Version has, correctly, "the curse." Probably the curse referred to in the first verses of chap. 2—that is, the curse described in De. 28. In the second chapter, Malachi applies the Deuteronomy passage to the priests; now he applies it to "this whole nation." Their way to escape the curse is to be obedient, and the specific obedience now required is that which consists in bringing in all their religious dues. W. J. B. The key-word of the Christian life is "sacrifice"—surrender, and that to God. That is to be stamped on the inmost selves, and, by the act of the will, on the body as well. "Yield yourselves to God, and your members as instruments of righteousness to Him." It is to be written on possessions. Malachi necessarily keeps within the limits of the sacrificial system, but his impetuous eloquence hits us no less. It is still possible to "rob God." We do so when we keep anything as our own, and use it at our own will, for our own purposes. Only when we recognize His ownership of ourselves, and consequently of all that we call "ours," do we give Him His due. Such thoroughgoing surrender is the secret of thorough possession. The true way to enjoy worldly goods is to give them to God. The lattices of heaven are opened, not to pour down, as of old, fiery destruction, but to make way for the gentle descent of God's blessing, which will more than fill every vessel set to receive it. This is the universal law, not always fulfilled in increase of outward goods, but in the better riches of communion and of larger possession in God Himself. He suffers no man to be His creditor, but more than returns our gifts—as legends tell of some peasant who brought his king a poor tribute of fruits of his fields, and went away from the presence-chamber with a jewel in his hand. A. M. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you (verse 7). Although God does not change, man does. And when man changes his attitude toward God, it makes it seem as though God had changed His attitude toward man. If man looks toward God, he sees the loving face of God; but if man turns his back on God, he misses that loving face, and then he is inclined to think that God has become his enemy. There is only one cure for such a trouble as this, and that is for the changeful man to turn back again to the unchanging God. If man and God seem to be in opposition, the fault is wholly man's. Man has turned away from God, and brought about this seeming opposition between the two. If man will simply turn back again, the old loving relations will be re-established. H. C. T. 7, 8. This is why God judges, but does not destroy: He purges out the wicked, and refines the good from their dross, in order that, in His unchanging compassion, He may carry out His purpose of redemption and grace. Thus "the covenant is equipped at all points and sure;" for if the unfaithfulness of man cannot annul it, what can? And that man's unfaithfulness cannot annul it is evident; for "from the days of your fathers ye have departed from My statutes, and have not kept them." This, too, is why God has delayed His coming. It is not that He is slack concerning His promises, but that they will not fulfil the conditions of the promise. Generation after generation they have shown themselves to be a disobedient and gainsaying people. How can He come to them, while they still depart from Him? How can He come, bringing salvation, while they do not keep His statutes? The blessing of the obedient cannot be given to the disobedient. Let them return to Him from whom they have departed, and then see whether He will keep them waiting for Him. But "wherein shall we return?" they object. In what have we departed from Him, that we should retrace our steps? Are not we the chosen race, the holy nation? "Dare a man defraud God?" replies Jehovah. "Yet ye have defrauded Me." "We!" respond the people; "we defraud Thee! Pray, how?" "Ye have defrauded me," answers Jehovah, "even in that in which ye pride yourselves as being most exact, in the least things; how much more, then, in the greatest? Even the tithes and offerings have not been duly paid, although your neglect has been rebuked by a curse, the curse of famine." Cox. 10. This striking passage has the richer interest to Christians because, under the principles of the ancient economy—viz., temporal blessings to the faithfully obedient—it presents to us the great law of His spiritual administration as well, showing that there can really be no limit (short of our utmost capacity) to the spiritual blessings God will give those who, really hungering for righteousness, "open wide their mouth that God may fill it," and hence who honestly use all appropriate means for this result. God is forever the same, and certainly is no less bountiful of blessings under the Christian than under the Jewish economy. "Prove Me;" put My words to the test. H. C. Malachi has told us how the people brought blind and lame and sick—nay, even stolen, beasts for sacrifice; how they offered ewes on pretence that they had no rams in their flocks, and vowed their choicest oxen and sheep, and then, when the moment of pressure was past, brought "that which was corrupt;" how the priests offered "polluted bread" and "unclean sacrifices," and cried, as they discharged their function, "What a weariness it is!" Now even the Hebrews knew that "to obey is better than to sacrifice;" but they also knew that to sacrifice was to obey; and so often as they neglected the lesser obedience of sacrifice, they still more neglected the larger obedience of moral conformity to the Divine Will. In His mercy God only puts them to the lesser test. For the present it shall be enough if they bring "all the tithe" into the store-chambers of the temple. Let them but do that, and He will open the sluice-gates of heaven, and pour down on them the blessing of copious rain; He will rebuke the devouring locust; the fruit of the earth shall no longer be destroyed before it can be gathered in, nor shall the vine miscarry of its grapes. So happy shall be their condition, so fertile their land, that all nations shall call them blessed. Thus the Lord whom they seek will come to them so soon as they are ready for Him, so soon as He can come in benediction. He will come, not only in His temple, but also in their barns and homesteads and fields. Cox. We are not only to worship God with our lips and give Him praise with our tongue, but He has required that we should worship Him with our substance. Our services add nothing to God, therefore it is our good which He seeks in all His institutions of religion. It is our good, our greatest good, that our whole trust should be in the Lord, always and upon all occasions; because He cannot fail us, and everything else will, and, therefore, we must be miserable if we place our trust in anything else than God, and our greatest happiness must consist in a full and absolute dependence upon Him. Now this trust and dependence is produced more by our deeds than our words; more by practising of it than by speaking of it and praising it; and the payment of our tithe is a practise of it, a trusting in God that He will not only accept it and give us spiritual blessings of it, but even that we shall gain by it, as to this world, and prove the richer for it. For it is His blessing only that giveth increase, as to the fruits of the field, so to the labors of our hands, to all our endeavors in whatever vocation. The Lord bids us prove Him herein, try Him, trust in Him, and see how abundant He will be in His blessings to us, and whether He will not return to us tenfold for the tenth we give to Him. But if we dare not trust God so far as to make this small experiment when He provokes us to it, and grudge to give Him the tenth, who gave us all, it is but just with Him to take that from us wherein we trusted, and not to leave us a tenth; but to take the whole from those who durst not trust Him and His promises with a tenth. C. Leslie, 1700. While men are allowed to handle and manage to a certain limit what they are also permitted in a kind of figure to call their property as a part of the discipline of their moral liberty—to try and prove them what manner of men they are—they are also continually to be opening their hands and parting with this substance, putting it clean away from them, cost what it will, laying it on altars, burning it in the fire, beating it small, scattering it as incense on the air, making it the maintenance of the Lord's priesthood, sending it away in the wilderness. Bp. Huntington. Self has got hold of the purse-strings, and the Lord is likely to be robbed of His dues. That is the real secret of diminished contributions in our churches, and that accounts for the fact while God's Church is growing richer at a rapid rate, so many grand institutions for the spread of His kingdom are often at starvation point. "The lust of the eye and the pride of life" steal in, and under smooth pretences commit their shameful larcenies of the moneys which God loans to His stewards. When Christians undertake to cheat God, their sin is sure sooner or later to find them out. T. L. Cuyler. God's claim upon our money gains. In every province of human life God requires His proprietorship to be recognized. The seventh part of our time is hallowed for His service. The firstfruits of corn were to be devoted to religious uses. The firstborn in the household belonged to God, and was to be redeemed by substitution. And now, of all their yearly gains, one tenth was claimed by God. His claim proceeds from His proprietorship. Toward the Hebrews He was obviously and directly landlord. He had put them into possession of their estates, and rightfully could exact from them a rent. And with respect to all national substance, God is absolute Proprietor. He has an original and indefeasible right as Creator; and it is His supreme power that maintains in existence the treasures of the earth. Even the power we have to accumulate wealth is derived from the same beneficent Source. It is His gift, not that He has conveyed to us the irresponsible right in it, but simply in the sense that we had nothing with which to purchase it. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." D. D. God has made the outpouring of spiritual blessing dependent upon man's faithfulness in observing the law of tithes and firstfruits and religious tributes of all kinds: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." We may keep back part of the consecrated price, but the loss will be ours rather than God's. We may account ourselves even clever in making calculations as to how much we can save from the cost of piety and charity, but the great law of compensation will proceed disastrously in our case because of this calculated and irreligious penury: "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly." This law of compensation operates also in the other direction with noble impartiality: "He which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." We imagine that all God's benefactions are spiritual; we have shut Him out from the field and the vineyard; but hear His word: "The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and He shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." But we must not attempt to make an investment of our charity. J. P. We pray for the coming of the kingdom of Christ, and wonder, at times, that our heartless, disunited, inconsistent prayers are not more successful. But what do we expect? Let it be supposed that a convocation of all the Christians upon earth should be held, to implore the conversion of the world. How justly might an ancient prophet be sent from God to rebuke them, and say: "The means for the conversion of the world are already in your hands. Had you been dependent on human charity for support, you might have then expected to see your Almighty Lord erect His kingdom by miracle, or you might have warrantably come to His throne to implore the means necessary for carrying it on by your own instrumentality. But these means are actually in your hands. You are asking Him to do that, the very means for doing which are at this moment locked up in your coffers, or wasted in costly self-gratification. For what purpose has He placed so much wealth in your hands? Surely not to consume it in self-indulgence. "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house to lie waste? Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord, consider your ways." Look abroad over your assembled myriads; calculate the immense resources of wealth placed at your disposal; imagine that you were to be seized with a noble generosity, like that which at different times descended on the ancient people of God, and then say, what enterprise would be too vast for your means? Make this consecration of your substance to the cause of Christ, and then come and ask for the conversion of the world. Till then, ask only, and in common consistency expect only, that He will bless you to the amount of your sacrifices for His cause. J. Harris. Modern missions are maintained neither by the zeal of the few nor by the mere zeal of the many, but rather by the deep-seated impulsive power of a grave and irresistible conviction, pressing on the conscience even of the inert and the selfish; and much more on the hearts of the fervent and devoted. That a Christian has no more liberty to withhold his aid and service from these evangelizing associations than he has to abandon the duties of common life, and that for a man to profess hope in Christ and to deny what he might spare to promote the diffusion of the Gospel, is the most egregious of all practical solecisms. I. Taylor. We have not penetrated to the centre of true Christian activity, we have not risen to the height of the apostolic view of duty to Christ and to the world, until we give because we are indebted to men whose faces we have never seen; to whom the world accounts us not under the slightest obligation; to whom we are indebted simply because the God who made both them and us has distinguished us from them in order that we might bless them, as we may, with the powers and the knowledge which He has given to us! R. S. S. It is the "multitude praying without"—be they few or many, known or unknown—who are the builders of your churches, the senders of your missionaries, the really efficient patrons of your orphan-houses, hospitals and Christian education societies. The finest and firmest machinery in the world is so much dead material without these prayers. I suppose most of you have seen some elaborate and costly specimen of mechanism standing still: every little screw and bolt of the complicated system in its place; every post and bar, flange and transom secure; every bright lever and arm, wheel and tooth, tempered and tested—the whole a splendid embodiment and trophy of intellectual ingenuity and determination, yet silent and inert as icicles, till some lifted gate or opened valve lets in the mysterious motive power which makes it a sure and mighty servant of a purpose beyond it. So are all our best religious measures, till the breath of the Church's prayers joins them to the Spirit from on high. Throughout all its portions the Scripture has no other doctrine. "Be strong, all ye people of the Lord, for I am with you, saith the Lord." "Not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit." "Prove Me if I will not open the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing." F. D. H. 11,12. These verses still expand the promise commenced in verse 10. If you will truly bring in all the tithes and meet all your obligations to God, then I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes—the locust, put here for all forms of destructive agents. All the nations shall witness to your prosperity. H. C. 13-15 contain a rebuke of persons who were impatient under temporal trials, and murmured against God, because they did not at once reap the fruit of their service in temporal prosperity. B. C. The antithesis between what God had said before (verses 10-12), and what these wicked gainsayers reply (verses 14, 15), is much more apparent in the original, especially of verse 15, than in the received translation. First, the pronoun "we," being expressed in full, is slightly emphatic: you say one thing; we, on our part, not admitting what you say, are stoutly maintaining the opposite. Then the verb, "call you blessed" (in verse 12), and the corresponding verb, "call the proud happy" (verse 15), are precisely the same; as if they would say, You claim that the nations shall call God's obedient people blessed; we, for our part, call the proud blessed. So the word rendered "prove" (verse 10) is the same as is here (verse 15) rendered "tempt." You have said, Let My people prove Me. We have to say in reply, that the wicked have proved Thee by scoffing at Thy words; and yet so far from being punished, they are even delivered from all fear and danger. H. C. 16,17. In the third act of this dramatic dialogue (chap. 3: 13-4: 3), in which the prophet is the mouthpiece alternately of Jehovah and of the people, we once more hear the sceptical murmurs of distrust. First comes the charge: "Your words do Me wrong, saith Jehovah." Then follows the "but," the objection: "And ye say, What do we speak against Thee?" And then comes the rejoinder, which gives us a sample of the common talk of the day. Wherever men met for converse they might be heard saying, some, "It is vain to serve God!" others, "What profit is it that we keep His ordinances, and go about with sad faces and in mourning weeds as those who lament the national sins?" some, "We see that the proud are blessed rather than the humble!" others, "The wicked flourish rather than the just!" and still others, "Those who tempt God by their presumption and impiety are nevertheless delivered from peril rather than the meek and the devout!" In short, the general sentiment of the time was that the very blessings promised to the meek, the humble, the sorrowful, were bestowed on the heedless, the proud, the self-confident; and the general mistake of the time was that because they, the Jews, fasted and observed certain outward forms, and these not always the forms ordained by Jehovah, they therefore possessed that piety which He had promised to bless and reward. Now just as in chap. 2: 5-7, Jehovah had rebuked the false and corrupt priests by placing before them a charming picture of the true priest, the ideal Levi, so here He rebukes the foolish and profane talk of the multitude by contrasting with it the conversation of the faithful remnant, the little community of saints, who feared Him and thought on His Name. Unhappily, however, their talk is not reported, at least by Malachi, though, as we have seen, that of the ungodly is. All we are told of it is, that it was full of the fear of Jehovah, and that it was held to be of such value in heaven that, just as the Persian monarch kept a book in which the heroic deeds of any of his servants were recorded, so the King of Heaven "hearkened and heard" when His servants spoke well of Him in evil times, and had their names written in a book of remembrance. When we read, "Then they that feared Jehovah spake often one with another And Jehovah hearkened and heard, And a book of remembrance was kept before Him For those that feared Jehovah, And that thought on His Name," we are not only charmed with the stately music of the lines; we long that we could stand in that happy company of saints, if only for a few moments, and hear what they had to say to each other, and learn what it was that drew them so often and so close together. Is it altogether impossible to recover the words which Malachi has failed to report? It is by no means impossible. Our wish may be fulfilled. We may hear of what they that feared the Lord spake one to another; we may give, on the best authority, some of the very words they used. While the nominal Israel said, "It is vain to serve God," the true, the elect Israel said, "Happy is every one that feareth Jehovah, that walketh in His ways." While the former said, "What profit is it that we serve Him?" the latter said, "They that put their trust in Jehovah are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but standeth fast forever." While the degenerate majority said, "The proud are blessed, the wicked flourish, the boldly bad are saved from all peril!" the pious few said, "Though the ploughers plough our back, and draw long furrows, God will cut in sunder the traces of the wicked; though the proud are green and flourishing for a time, they are but as the grass on the village roofs wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom" (Ps. 135); "though we go forth weeping, sowing a mere handful of seed with tears, through the mercy of Jehovah we come back to the homestead, bearing many sheaves, with songs of joy" (Ps. 136). That these words and the like were used by the faithful few we know, for God kept a book of remembrance in which they were written, not only in heaven, but also on earth; and in the "Pilgrim's Psalm-book" we may read them to this day, knowing that they are the very words sung by the inspired poets of Malachi's time, and familiar on the lips of as many as feared Jehovah and hated evil. Cox. 16. They feared the Lord—that is the beginning of wisdom and the root of all religion; they reverenced the majesty of God, submitted to His authority. In every age there has been a remnant that feared the Lord, though sometimes but a little remnant. They thought upon His Name; they seriously considered and frequently meditated upon the discoveries God has made of Himself in His Word and by His providences; and their meditation of Him is sweet to them and influences them. They thought on His Name; they consulted the honor of God and aimed at that as their ultimate end in all they did. Those that know the name of God should often think of and dwell upon it in their thoughts; it is a copious, curious subject, and frequent thoughts of it will contribute very much to our communion with God, and the stirring up of our devout affections to Him. They spake often one to another concerning the God they feared and that name of His which they thought so much of; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak; and a good man out of a good treasure there will bring forth good things. They that feared the Lord kept together as those that were company for each other; they spake kindly and endearingly one to another for the preserving and promoting of mutual love, that that might not wax cold when iniquity did thus abound. They spake knowingly and edifyingly to one another, for the increasing and improving of faith and holiness; they spake one to another in the language of them that fear the Lord and think on His Name—the language of Canaan; when profaneness was come to so great a height as to trample upon all that is sacred, then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another. H. There is no sweeter entertainment than for travellers to be remembering their country; their blessed home, and the happiness abiding them there, and refreshing and encouraging one another in the hopes of it; strengthening their hearts against all the hard encounters and difficulties in the way; often overlooking this moment, and helping each other to higher apprehensions of that vision of God which we expect. Leighton.—And how often has it happened that, when holding sacred converse with one another, Jesus Himself has joined them, as He did the two disciples on the road to Emmaus when they were conversing of the decease which He accomplished at Jerusalem? And though their eyes are let so that they do not see Him, yet their hearts burn within as He talks with them and opens to them the Scriptures, and they know that it has been the Lord. McCosh. We may sometimes be with Christians, the conversation apparently about God's Word or kingdom, and yet there may be no real ozone in the atmosphere, no converse of heart with heart, no nourishment and no refreshment. On the other hand, there may have been no "religious conversation," and yet the animating and restful influence of affection, friendship and the contact of minds living in the fear and light of God. This is a large subject, and yet one on which each one must find for himself what is right, safe and profitable. Only let us be sincere, and avoid all Pharisaism. The next best thing to grace is nature. Only let us be heavenly-minded and avoid worldliness. For, blessed be God, the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. A. Saphir. He kept an account of them; a book of remembrance was written before Him. It is an expression after the manner of men, intimating that their pious affections and performances are kept in remembrance as punctually and particularly as if they were written in a book; as if journals were kept of all their conferences. Great kings had books of remembrance written and read before them, in which were entered all the services done them, when and by whom, as Esth. 2: 23. God, in like manner, remembers the services of His people, that in the review of them He may say, "Well done, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." God has a book for the sighs and tears of His mourners (Ps. 56: 8), much more for the pleadings of His advocates. Never was any good word spoken of God or for God from an honest heart, but it was registered that it might be recompensed in the resurrection of the just, and in no wise lose its reward. H. God hearkens and hears, records and remembers all that the righteous say. Every word of encouragement spoken to a weary fellow- toiler, every word of sympathy and comfort to an afflicted spirit, every word of quickening to diligence and activity in the Christian life, every kind, generous, loving word that has helped and cheered a struggling, tempted fellow-soul, is heard, remembered and recorded, and one day shall be disclosed again to the mutual, grateful joy of the helper and the helped. So, too, every good word spoken in season to him who owns no Saviour, who has no hope, who is without God, and yet is journeying to an eternal world where trust and hope in a God and Saviour are the conditions of happy existence, every such word will be found on record too; it will contribute to the lasting joy of its utterer and of him that has heeded it. B. From one cause or another we shrink from the responsibility of avowing our deepest convictions. Partly it is from the fear of ostentation and singularity, partly from self-distrust and sincere humility, partly from more unworthy motives. But from whatever cause it may be, by so doing we wrong our friends. We leave unspoken the word which might have cheered or guided or turned them. By our coldness we suffer them to remain in doubt whether God has visited us. If the heart be full, men argue, its feelings will find utterance. If the Christian creed be accepted as the truth, it cannot but color the whole life of the believer. Not to speak then of our highest hopes, not to talk, one with another, of what, as we trust, God has done and will do for us, is to cast discredit on our name. When that is at stake we may well forget ourselves. No one has ever ventured to cast aside his religious reserve without meeting with sympathy for which he had not looked, and gaining courage from the sense of spiritual fellowship. How can it be otherwise? It is not of ourselves we speak, but of God whom we have seen. It is not our own honor which we look for, but the glory of our Father which is in heaven. It is not of any special prerogative we make boast, but of a blessing which is offered as the common heritage of men; for Christ is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. So may we all see Him as our Redeemer and our strength; so may we give Him glory; so may we confess Him before men! Bp. Westcott. What a world would this become were all brought to do God's will! How would there be in each individual soul that fulness of joy which can flow only from thoughts and affections centred upon God, and a will conscious of acting ever in harmony with His will! How would there be perfect agreement among communities of men, that agreement which can only be where the wills of men are brought into union with one another by being in union with the one great Will! How would the glory of God, the one great end of man's being on earth, abound, so that God, looking down on His obedient children, imaging His will on earth, might declare Himself well pleased with the children of men, and pour down on them His blessings with an unsparing hand! Karslake. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ Him that serveth God. Do we not know that He who gave to the earth its richness, and who set the sun to shine in the heavens, and who gave to us that wonderful frame of body and mind, whose healthful workings are so delightful to us, that He gave them that we might use both body and mind in His service; that those faculties which we feel, as it were, burning within us, have their work before them, a work far above their strength, though multiplied a thousandfold; that the call to them to be busy is never silent; that there is an infinite voice in the infinite sins and sufferings of millions which proclaims that the contest is raging around us; that every idle moment is treason; that now it is the time for unceasing efforts; and that not till the victory is gained may Christ's soldiers throw aside their arms and resign themselves to enjoyment and to rest? T. Arnold. Chap. 4. With no break in the continuous thought, this chapter proceeds to contrast the destiny of the wicked and of the righteous (verses 1-3); gives a general injunction to observe the law of Moses (verse 4), and a promise of John Baptist under the name of Elijah, with brief hints of the work he should do (verses 5, 6). H. C. 1. For, behold, the day cometh. The connection of these words with the preceding is so apparent, that there seems no reason why they should have been separated and made the beginning of a new chapter. The words themselves are an image or description of the final judgment on the Jews in their destruction, and an image or representation of the last general judgment on all mankind. The former was certainly then to come on the Jews, if not prevented by their repentance, as it was not; the latter is yet to come, but shall in God's appointed time as certainly come as if it were already present. Of both, therefore, it might then be said, "Behold, the day cometh"—that is, it shall certainly come; and the description is so full of terror, that it may be well applied both to one and to the other. The primary intention, however, of the prophet seems to have been to describe the judgment denounced upon the Jews, to whom he was peculiarly sent to reprove them for their sins, and to admonish them of the consequences of impenitence. Pocock. In my view, the primary reference must be to judgments on the wicked in time, providential inflictions, like that on Jerusalem by the Romans, like the still earlier judgments that fell on the ungodly portion of the Jews in the fearful Syrian wars during the second century before Christ; indeed, embracing all those forms of special infliction which belong to God's providential government over nations and individuals too in the present world. All these are to be taken as prophecies and pledges of that far more terrific vengeance which shall come down on all the finally wicked in the world to come. I would not apply this passage to either this world or the next, to the entire exclusion of the other, but assume that it refers primarily to judgments in this world; then as a type, a harbinger, prophecy, and pledge, it embraces also those heavier, sorer judgments which execute full and unmitigated justice on the ungodly in the world to come. H. C. 2. The Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. The Messiah is called here "the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings," to signify that His light clears up men's understandings and chases away the darkness of their minds, and that His rays and kindly warmth will heal all the diseases of their souls. W. Lowth. This is the joyous, far different lot of the righteous. The fearers of God's name are in strong contrast of character as well as destiny with the proud blasphemers. The rising sun is a glowing and glorious image of hope and joy. "Righteousness" has here the not uncommon sense of deliverance, salvation, blessedness, with no implication of its being strictly deserved on the score of simple justice, and by no means excluding mercy. The reference is mainly to the Messiah as the great fountain of light, peace and joy to the saints of God. His wings are the beams of His light. H. C. Outward riches are but a shadow of the unsearchable riches of Christ; outward life is but a shadow of Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life; outward liberty is but a shadow of that freedom that is to be had in Christ; "If the Son make you free, then are you free indeed" (John 8: 36), importing that no freedom is freedom indeed and in truth but this; outward rest is but a shadow of the rest that is to be had in Him. "Come to Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The sun in the firmament is but a shadow of the Sun of Righteousness and of His glory; roses and lilies are but shadows of His beauty, who is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley; rivers and fountains are but shadows of His fulness, who is the fountain of living waters; not a fountain closed, but a fountain opened to us; plants and trees are but a shadow of the verdure of Him who is the plant of renown, the tree of life. All things that have an excellency in them are but shadows of Him in whom excellencies do concentrate. All the stars of creature-excellencies are but shadows of Him who is the bright and morning Star. Ralph Erskine. With what other testimony is the whole of Scripture charged but that of Christ, Christ, Christ? Christ, in the typical histories of the Old Testament. Christ, in the typical ceremonies of the Mosaic Law. Christ, in the Psalms, as the source of the Christian's consolation, and the key to unlock all the affections of his heart. Christ, in the prophecies, as Captain of the great triumph over evil—predicted with greater clearness as time wears on. Christ, in the Gospels, as the Healer and Benefactor of the race. Christ, in the Epistles, as the Wisdom of God. Christ, in the Revelation, as the Coming One, whose advent is ever imminent, the pole-star of hope, upon which the Christian's eye is ever fixed. The Scriptures are, indeed, full of Christ, and we have His own testimony that we shall read them amiss and discuss them amiss unless our study and our discussion lead us to find Him in them. E. M. G. 4-6. The final admonition.** The closing verses of Malachi are also the closing verses of the Old Testament. As his voice, so also the Voice of Inspiration dies away, and will be heard no more for four hundred years. It was but meet that a revelation so noble as that contained in the Old Testament Scriptures should rise to a high and stately close. And what close could be more lofty than the passage before us? It is a true Mount of Vision on which the prophet stands; and as he looks across the valley at his feet, peering into the years to be, there rises before him the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses, Elijah and Christ conferring together on its summit concerning the things which pertain to the kingdom of God: "Remember the law of Moses;" "Behold, I send Elijah;" "Jehovah cometh." In the previous section of his prophecy, Malachi had predicted the coming of the Lord, of Adonai, the present and active Ruler of men (chap. 3: 1). The day of His coming would be a day of blended mercy and judgment, burning like a furnace for the wicked, shining like a quickening healing sun on the righteous. Who could endure the day of His coming or stand when He appeared? Only those who remembered and kept the law of God, who were living in the obedience of faith. Therefore the prophet exhorts the men of his time, as they would escape the curse, to bear the law in mind, and, as they would secure the blessing, to walk in the statutes and judgments given to Moses in charge for all Israel on Horeb. The very form of his exhortation lends new force, for he so frames it as to bring out the Divine origin and authority of the law. Moses indeed spake the words of this law on Mount Horeb; but Moses, says Jehovah, was "My servant," or minister, and only delivered the statutes and judgments which "I gave him in charge" and gave him in charge "for all Israel"—not only for the men who heard his voice, but for all their succeeding generations. Thus, by a single stroke, the prophet reminds the men of his own time that the Divine law was binding on them no less than on their fathers, and that it was Divine; he eliminates from it all that was merely human and temporary; Moses was only the channel, God was the source from which the law came; Moses uttered, but God gave the law, revealing in it His eternal will and goodwill. Cox. 4. Remember ye the law of Moses.** Ye are not to expect any prophets, for the time to come till the forerunner of the Messiah appears; so your chief care must be to attend to the instructions which Moses has given in his law, the most solemn part of which was delivered to him in an audible manner upon Mount Horeb (Ex. 19: 9; De. 4: 10). This your lawgiver plainly speaks of the Messiah, and instructs you to expect His coming and to obey His commands (De. 18: 15). W. Lowth. With reference to the law, the last chapter of the latest prophet closes with the admonition, "Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments;" and in all the later books this is conspicuously the case. The law of Moses is regarded as a Divine legacy at once inviolate and inviolable. It is certain that at that period those who wrote in such a way could have been conscious of no substantial alteration in books which for long ages had been so esteemed. Leathes.—If there was any truth in the critical hypothesis that the Pentateuch was written by Ezra, how absurd it would be for Malachi, who as a contemporary must have known all about its recent origin, to speak of it as he does in this verse! W. H. G. Observe here, 1. The honorable mention that is made of Moses, the first writer of the Old Testament, in Malachi, the last writer. God by him calls him Moses My servant; for the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance. See how the penmen of Scripture, though they lived in several ages at a great distance from each other (it was above twelve hundred years from Moses to Malachi), all concurred in the same thing, and supported one another, being all actuated and guided by one and the same Spirit. 2. The honorable mention that is made of the law of Moses; it was what God Himself commanded, He owns it for His law, and He commanded it for all Israel, as the municipal law of their kingdom. Thus will God magnify His law, and make it honorable. We are therefore concerned to keep the law, because God has commanded it, and commanded it for us, for we are the spiritual Israel; and if we expect the benefit of the covenant with Israel (Heb. 8: 10), we must observe the commands given to Israel, those of them that were intended to be of perpetual obligation. 3. The summary of our duty, with reference to the law; we must remember it. Forgetfulness of the law is at the bottom of all our transgressions of it; if we would rightly remember it, we could not but conform to it; we should remember it when we have occasion to use it; remember both the commands themselves and the sanctions wherewith they are enforced. The office of conscience is to bid us remember the law. Prophecy was now to cease in the Church for some ages, and the Spirit of prophecy not to return till the beginning of the Gospel, and now they are bid to remember the law of Moses; let them live by the rules of the latter, and live upon the promises of the former. We need not complain for want of visions and revelations, as long as we have the written word and the canon of Scripture complete to be our guide; for that is the most sure word of prophecy, and the touchstone by which we are to try the spirits. Though we have not prophets, yet, as long as we have Bibles, we may keep our communion with God, and keep ourselves in His way. H. 5,6. These are the last words of the Old Testament, there uttered by a prophet, here expounded by an angel; there concluding the law, and here beginning the Gospel. "Behold," saith Malachi, "I will send you Elijah, the prophet;" and "he," saith the angel, "shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias." "And He shall turn the hearts of the fathers unto the children," saith the one; and "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children," saith the other. Thus sweetly and nearly do the two Testaments join together, and thus divinely do they kiss each other; like the two cherubim in the temple oracle, as with their outward wings they touch the two sides of the house, from "In the beginning" to "Come, Lord Jesus," so with their inner they touch each other, the end of the law with the beginning of the Gospel. Dr. Lightfoot. 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. The same person who is called the "messenger" or forerunner of the Messiah (chap. 3: 1). It was the unanimous sense of the Jews, that "Elias should first come and restore all things" (Mark 9: 12; John 1: 21). This they understood of the coming of Elias in person. (See Ecclus. 48: 10). Our Saviour has interpreted this Elias to be John the Baptist (Matt. 11: 14; 17: 12, 13). W. Lowth.—This prophecy was to receive its fulfilment in the person of John the Baptist, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah. This meaning of the passage was confirmed by our Lord on two several occasions. B. C. John Baptist was the Elias that was to come (Matt. 17: 10-13, and very expressly Matt. 11: 14). This is Elias which was to come; and verse 10, the same of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger (chap. 3: 1). Elijah was a man of great austerity and mortification, zealous for God, bold in reproving sin, and active to reduce an apostate people to God and their duty; John Baptist was animated by the same spirit and power, and preached repentance and reformation, as Elias had done; and all held him for a prophet, as they did Elijah in his day, and that his baptism was from heaven and not of men. When God has such work to do as was formerly to be done, He can raise up such men to do it as He formerly raised up, and can put into a John Baptist the spirit of an Elias. H. The Gospels hardly record a single sentence or figure of speech employed by John the Baptist, the germ of which may not be found in the prophecy of Malachi the messenger. So that he who really "searches" the Scriptures with fidelity and patience, whatever sceptical prepossessions he may bring to the quest, is more and more impressed with the sense of a vital unity in them which can only be accounted for by the guiding and controlling inspiration of one and the self-same Spirit. Cox. The Baptist was the only second Elijah promised to the Church, and we do not look for another. Why, indeed, should another come? He would have no work to do. When the day of final judgment arrives men will be divided into the two great classes in which they have chosen their respective places—the believing, waiting Church upon the one hand, the unbelieving world that has steeled itself against Christ, upon the other. The former need no Elijah-work. The latter would not profit from it. No time of new probation then begins, but only the full and perfect manifestation of a probation ended. Even now the course of time is running on lines which do not change, which only reach their terminal issues in the world's great assize: "He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still, and he that is filthy let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous let him do righteousness still, and he that is holy let him be made holy still" (Rev. 22: 11). W. Milligan. The great and dreadful day of the Lord. The Messiah is by this prophet contemplated chiefly as a judge, the day of the Lord is regarded as beginning with His first advent, since His work of judgment really began then, and is carried forward through its various phases and successive steps, until its final consummation is reached in the awful terrors of the last great day. Moses and Elijah, who are here joined together in contiguous verses, as representing severally the law and the prophets, which testified alike of Christ's advent and sufferings, appeared in glory with the Redeemer on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9: 30, 31), bearing to Him the homage and the witness of the Old Testament, in which they are the most prominent figures. It is after them that the description of the two witnesses of the book of the Revelation (Rev. 11: 3) is evidently modelled (see verses 5, 6), which has led some to the opinion that this prophecy of Malachi is to have an additional fulfilment prior to Christ's second advent. W. H. G. To warn in mercy before He smites in judgment, is evermore the order of God's throne. Hence the second Elijah should come before the Jewish people and polity should be smitten down by the terrible Roman arms. They were fearfully corrupt already. It was foreseen that they would become yet more so before and during the Messiah's incarnation. Hence the last warnings of the Baptist came in the hour of their greatest moral extremity. 6. How often do we see the hearts of parents borne down with almost crushing solicitude in the tenderness of their love for the souls of their children! What but this turning of the hearts of parents to their children begets such agonizing prayer of Christian parents for ungodly children, and of converted children for yet unconverted parents? Hence it was the Spirit of the Lord that moved this prophet to touch by one master-stroke the central influence of John Baptist's preaching. When the men whom he called so mightily to repentance had bowed their hearts to this high behest, their next thought was that of renewed care and love for their children. If we had been present in that revival, we should have found it by no means unlike all the true revivals of our day in this one most precious feature. Such a revival of the home and household affections is eminently pleasing to God. In such a soil religion thrives. Where the hearts of fathers turn with loving, tender interest toward their children, and the hearts of children in like manner to their fathers, the Saviour finds a congenial home and takes up His abode. It seems to be implied that if John's preaching had altogether failed of this result, the gospel of salvation from the lips of Jesus might have fallen powerless upon the world, and left to Judea and to the nations of the earth only the remediless "curse." How forcibly, then, comes the appeal to us to cherish the tenderness of mutual love and earnest care for others' souls, especially within the dear circle of family relationships, lest the Gospel should fail to bless us, and lest we doom ourselves and those we ought to love to a moral ruin for which God has no remedy! Thus close the admonitions of the last prophet of the Old Testament age, and with them the volume of Scripture as it stood till in the fulness of time the Messiah came. H. C. The Old Testament closes with a cherem or curse; and the omen has been fulfilled. In vain came the law by Moses; the Messenger was sent in vain; in vain did the Lord Himself come to His temple. Israel would not hearken, repent, obey. And she was proscribed. The doom was pronounced, the interdict felt. Her land was smitten with desolation; and, to this day, all her pleasant places lie waste. Her children were driven forth to wander, smitten and afflicted, through the earth, aliens in every land; and, to this day, they stand before us a monument of the wrath of God against sin. The Jews are to Christendom what the cities of the plain were to the Jews. The curses with which they drove their Lord and Christ to the cross have in very deed come home to roost; and they who would not accept the salvation of God have long been "scattered and peeled" by His judgments. The fair olive and stately palm of Israel have been stabbed and rent and scathed as by stroke after stroke of angry lightnings; all the bolts of heaven having fallen on them, hurling the blackened splinters to the very ends of the world, to bear witness in all lands that there is a God who judgeth in the earth. Cox. With Malachi prophecy ceased, and Israel was left to herself four hundred years. But at last, immediately before the fulfilment of the Messianic promises, the whole old dispensation appears summed up and embodied once more in the greatest of them that are born of women; in one, who went before the Lord, like the aurora before the sun, till, in unrivalled humility, he disappeared in its splendor. John the Baptist, by his earnest preaching of repentance, his abode in the wilderness and his ascetic life, personified the law; while, at the same time, pointing to Him, for whom he was not worthy to do the most menial office, who should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire, to the Lamb of God, which bears the sins of the world, he also embodied the cheering word of promise. Schaff. This last of the mighty line of prophets gives strong utterance to the "hope of Israel"! One clear voice, coming from we scarcely know what lips, proclaims for the last time, "He comes! He comes!" and then all is silence for four hundred years. Here is the concentration, in this last prophetic utterance, of that element of forward-looking expectance which marked all the earlier revelation. From the beginning the selectest spirits in Israel had set their faces and pointed their fingers to a great future, which gathered distinctness as the ages rolled, and culminated in the king from David's line, of whom many psalms sung, and in the suffering servant of the Lord, who shines out from the pages of the second part of Isaiah's prophecy. This Messianic hope runs through all the Old Testament, like a broadening river. "They that went before cried, Hosanna; blessed is He that cometh." That hope gives unity to the Old Testament, whatever criticism may have to teach about the process of its production. The most important thing about the book is that one purpose informs it all; and the student who misses the truth that "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" has a less accurate conception of the meaning and inter-relations of the Old Testament than the unlearned who has accepted that great truth. We should be willing to learn all that modern scholarship has to teach about the course of revelation. But we should take care that the new knowledge does not darken the old certainty that the prophets "testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and of the glory that should follow." Here, at the very end, stands Malachi, reiterating the assurance which had come down through the centuries. A. M. In the interval between the closing of the Old Testament and the destruction of Jerusalem One appeared in whom centred every line of history and of prophecy. He led a life, as man, in which the most daring gainsayer cannot suggest a flaw. He also claimed to come as fulfilling the older Revelation, and Himself foretold the downfall of the earthly Jerusalem, since the purpose of its separation from the world had been accomplished. He, in fact, commenced by the foundation of the Christian Church a new kingdom, in which the promised King should reign, "to whom it was a light thing that the Jews should be saved," since to Him all the Gentiles also were to be given. Such an One rose from the grave after having to the letter accomplished, both in life and death, all that prophecy had foretold of His earthly career, and then sent down the long-promised gift of the Holy Spirit, the inward teacher of the heart, the builder of that spiritual temple which was to supersede the material edifice on Mount Moriah; and such temple (though, alas! too slowly and imperfectly) is gradually rising throughout the civilized world, to the honor and glory of the Triune Jehovah. Surely this continuity of events establishes that the written word has its outward counterpart, that the Old Testament is but the germ of the New, and the one is connected with the other as indissolubly as the Word of God made flesh is forever united to the nature of regenerated man. Lord Hatherly. Since the Old Testament has so many and such vital connections with the New—connections which enter into the very substance of both; since its whole scope and aim is to prepare the way for the Messiah, to adumbrate His offices, and to educate the covenant people for His coming, we need not wonder at the constant appeals which the Saviour and His apostles make to its pages. It is throughout a perpetual prophecy of the Gospel, and so they manifestly regard it. E. P. Barrows. The Bible reveals God's purpose to form a spiritual kingdom in the world, submissive to His government, obedient to His law, and to gather the members and the citizens of this kingdom out of all countries and peoples of the earth—a conception that was not possible to either Greek or Egyptian, and that certainly was not more possible to the Jew, except as he \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) \( \therefore m = \frac{3}{11} \) THE ## The Fourfold Gospel, THE FOUR GOSPELS CONSOLIDATED IN A CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE, PRESENTING THE LIFE OF CHRIST IN THE ORDER OF ITS EVENTS; THE TEXT ARRANGED IN SECTIONS; WITH READINGS AND COMMENTS SELECTED FROM THE CHOICEST, MOST ILLUMINATING AND HELPFUL THOUGHT OF THE CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. Second Edition. So they read in the book in the law of God, distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to unders and the reading.—NEHEMIAH viii. 8. That form of writing which in my judgment is of all others most rich and precious, is positive divinity, collected upon particular texts of Scriptures in brief observations; not dilated into commonplaces, not chasing after controversies, not reduced into method of Art. . . . For I am persuaded that if the choice and best observations upon texts of Scripture which have been made dispersedly in sermons. . . . leaving out the largeness of exhortations and applications thereupon, had been set down in a continuance, it had been the best work upon divinity which had been made since the apostles' times.—BACON, Advancement of Learning. 1884. The Purpose and Plan of the Volume—Prefatory Statement . . . . . . 5 # Preliminary Facts and Thoughts: I. The New Testament 7 II. The Fourfold Gospel. 8 III. The Four Gospels: their Distinctive Characteristics . . . . . . . 9 IV. The Life of our Lord 16 The History of Christ, as recorded by the Evangelists . . . . . 1-166 19 (For Synopsis of this History, see pages 674-677.) # Summarized Topics: Of the Divine Trinity 167 589 The Person of Christ 168 591 Doctrine of Messiah as disclosed under the Theocracy . . . 169 592 Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King 170 594 Christ, the Divine Man: His Doctrine and Character . . . 171 595 Admissions of Skeptics concerning Christ . . . . . . . 172 599 The World before and at Messiah's Advent . . . . . . 173 604 Christ's Doctrine of the Kingdom, the Key to His Ministry . . 174 607 Christ and His Kingdom in Subsequent Human History. . . 175 609 New Testament Intimations of the Second Coming of our Lord. . 176 611 The Miracles of Christ 177 615 The Temple: its Structures and Priesthood. . . . . . . 178 618 The Synagogue: its Officers and Service . . . . . . . 179 626 The Scribes: their Traditions and Schools . . . . . . . 180 630 The Targums and Midrash; the Talmud and Masora . . . 181 632 Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. 182 638 Family and Religious Life of the Jews 183 642 The Basis and Change of the Sabbath. 184 644 Historical Summaries: concerning the Jews and Jerusalem . . 185 646 Palestine, the Scene of the Labors of our Lord . . . . . 186 652 Physical Map, Descriptions and Diagrams. The Jordan and the Dead Sea 187 655 Jerusalem and its Vicinity 188 660 Galilee and its Sea 189 666 Synopsis of the History: Sections, Topics, Chapters, and Verses from Each Gospel 674 Table to find Any Verse of Any Gospel 678 Authors cited, and Key to Abbreviations 682 | Frontispiece: JERUSALEM IN HER GRANDEUR.* (On steel, from Selous.) | | SECTION | PAGE | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | BETHLEHEM. Illustration | 6 | 33 | | | EASTERN INN. Illustration | 7 | 36 | | | NAZARETH AND PLAIN OF ESDRAELON. Sketch-map. English survey | 10 | 46 | | | NAZARETH. Illustration | 10 | 48 | | | ESDRAELON AND LOWER GALILEE. Map | 11 | 50 | | | SKETCH-MAP FOR THE GOSPEL HISTORY | 12 | 56 | | | MAP OF JORDAN RIVER AND VALLEY. American survey | 12 | 58 | | | ROCKY HILLS OF THE WILDERNESS, NEAR JERICHO. Illustration | 15 | 69 | | | HIGH RIDGE OF CENTRAL PALESTINE. Sketch-map | 22 | 96 | | | JACOB'S WELL, and VALE OF SHECHEM. Illustrations | 22 | 98 | | | SHECHEM AND MOUNTAINS. Sketch-map | 22 | 100 | | | SEA OF GALILEE. English survey | 26 | 112 | | | PLAIN OF GENNESARET. Illustration | 26 | 115 | | | COUNTRY WEST OF SEA OF GALILEE. English survey | 34 | 140 | | | SEA OF GALILEE. English survey | 34 | 141 | | | CHORAZIN, ON THE LAKE. Illustration | 45 | 178 | | | TRICLINIUM, OR DINNER-COUCH. Illustration | 46 | 182 | | | THE DEMONIAC FROM THE TOMBS. Illustration | 59 | 221 | | | ESDRAELON AND LOWER GALILEE. Map | 62 | 233 | | | TIBERIAS AND SEA. Illustration | 66 | 243 | | | LAKE OF GENNESARET. Mr. Macgregor's map | 67 | 247 | | | SKETCH-MAP FOR THE GOSPEL HISTORY | 74 | 270 | | | ONE SOURCE OF THE JORDAN. Illustration | 74 | 271 | | | SOUTHERN SPURS OF HERMON. English survey | 76 | 281 | | | SYRIAN SHEEPFOLD. Illustration | 93 | 335 | | | SKETCH-MAP FOR THE GOSPEL HISTORY | 114 | 395 | | | BLIND BARTIMEUS. Illustration | 115 | 399 | | | BETHANY. Illustration | 117 | 405 | | | MOUNT OF OLIVES. Illustration | 119 | 412 | | | SEA OF TIBERIAS. Illustration | 164 | 576 | | | GROUND PLAN OF TEMPLE AREA AND COURTS | 178 | 619 | | | GOLDEN GATE OF JERUSALEM, and SOLOMON'S PORCH. Illustrations | 178 | 620 | | | SACRED ENCLOSURE AND INNER COURTS | 178 | 623 | | | THE GOLDEN CANDLESTICK, and THE GOLDEN TABLE. Illustrations | 185 | 651 | | | PHYSICAL OR SURFACE MAP OF PALESTINE | 187 | 654 | | | WEST AND EAST PROFILE SECTION | 187 | 655 | | | SOUTH AND NORTH PROFILE SECTION | 187 | 656 | | | THE VALLEY OF THE JORDAN. Illustration | 187 | 657 | | | MAP AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF THE DEAD SEA | 187 | 658 | | | NORTH BAY OF THE DEAD SEA. Illustration | 187 | 658 | | | THE DEAD SEA, MIDWAY OF THE WESTERN SHORE. Illustration | 187 | 659 | | | ROCK PLAN OF JERUSALEM | 188 | 660 | | | OUTLINE OF ANCIENT JERUSALEM | 188 | 661 | | | POOL OF SILOAM, LOOKING NORTH. Illustration | 188 | 662 | | | PROFILE SECTION EAST AND WEST THROUGH JERUSALEM | 188 | 663 | | | SOUTH WALL, EAST ANGLE. Illustration | 188 | 664 | | | VICINITY OF JERUSALEM. Sketch-map | 188 | 665 | | | THE PLAIN OF GENNESARET. Illustration | 189 | 668 | | | LAKE OF GENNESARET. Map | 189 | 671 | | * By permission of the holder of the American copyright. It is a Life of Christ, wherein the words of the inspired Biographers are woven into a consecutive, complete story, and accompanied with select thoughts from garnered studies of the wise and devout that have sought to interpret that story. It is prepared, not for reference, but for continuous reading or study. It is the fruit of an endeavor to meet the needs of the large class of intelligent persons who have neither time nor taste for extended statements or discussions, and who desire matured thoughts set in few and acceptable words. It aims to answer every important question respecting the meaning of the text, and the related facts of history, geography, and social life. This it seeks to do by presenting in readable sentences, and in clear concise form, reliable results of Biblical scholarship and research. The reach of exploration has been widely extended; and the material finally selected has been sifted from a five-fold amount carefully gathered from more than two hundred authors. As a valuable peculiarity, the citations are mainly taken out of a body of continuous thought; the matter is, therefore, characterized by peculiar freshness, vigor, and fervor. Since truth thus set forth carries with it spiritual kindling and unction, and since such living truth of itself effectively quickens feeling and moves the will, matter formally hortatory or "practical" has been omitted. Further, since the entire body of comment is selected exclusively from cultured and scholarly writers, and is infused with the results of the best criticism, matter formally critical has been found in great part unnecessary. The Plan of the work is distinguished by these features: I. An orderly arrangement of the text in convenient portions, or Sections. II. Appended to each section is a brief Reading. This comprises a few suggestive sentences related to the subject-matter of the text, with more or less of an experimental bearing. Its purpose is to widen the vision and intensify the force of truth, and so help to deepen spiritual insight and quicken devout feeling. III. A complete but compact body of Note and Comment. This is explanatory of the sense, or meaning of the text, and suggestive of the underlying or interwoven spirit. It is descriptive of persons, places, customs, and incidents. The matter is full, succinctly stated, and proportional; disclosing also the connections of the text. It is composed of such additions or expansions of thought as flow naturally, manifestly, and justly from the Scripture, and are demanded for an intelligent apprehension of its meaning. These thoughts are chosen from learned, judicious, and devout writers of the Christian centuries. For the most part a single statement or interpretation is given, that a clear, positive impression may be made. For a similar reason, the results only of studies or discussions, or, at most, summaries of reasoning, are presented. Redundant statements, conflicting opinions, and special allusions for the learned, have been excluded. Care has also been taken, as far as possible, to avoid mere paraphrase or amplification, which dilutes and weakens the text; fragmentary definition and piecemeal exposition; technical and obscure forms of thought and expression; all purely speculative matters; things merely curious, conjectural, or probable; and, lastly, encumbering references and distracting foot-notes. IV. A special feature of this volume is the single continuous narrative constructed out of the Four Gospels, giving a complete and connected view of our Lord's life and ministry. In this narrative is faithfully incorporated every word and phrase of each Gospel, or else its equivalent or concurrent expression in another, and no words are added to those found in the Gospels. The valid objections to such a chronological narrative have been fully borne in mind. The reader is distinctly informed that inspiration has given the form of Four Gospels, and the specific form of each of the four; and the individuality of the Gospels is recognized throughout. In the introduction and in the commentary are carefully noted the distinctive characteristics of each of the four writings. And it is implied throughout that the order is assumed upon probable grounds alone. But there are obviously so many and so great advantages in consecutively unfolding the connections of the Christ-life, as fully to justify this undertaking on behalf of the great body of intelligent and even professional readers. By exhibiting the Gospel narrative as other histories are written, the reader receives all the information furnished by the complementary accounts. With the complete detail of every transaction, parable, and conversation, as variously recorded by two or more of the Evangelists, each event or saying will be more satisfactorily studied and better understood; the interest in the study, and the impression wrought by the clearer knowledge, will be deepened. With more vividness of reality will stand forth the sequence of events, and the differing characters, motives, and utterances of persons connected with the history. And, what is of highest importance both in a critical and devotional point of view, thus only can the thread of the sacred Biography be clearly traced; the marked progress in Christ's doctrine and self-disclosure be fitly apprehended; and the silently increasing purpose of that marvellous life, with its blending of all divine and human perfections, be fully appreciated. Patient and painstaking endeavor in the study of the four records, and comparison of the differing arrangements of leading harmonists, has been the condition under which the work has been done; and careful consideration has been given to the placing of each incident in the entire history. In its general order, the arrangement herein adopted accords with the conclusions reached by a majority of the best qualified investigators. In addition to these prominent features, provision has been made for all needful auxiliary information. In this are included Maps and Diagrams of special interest and value, prepared with the aid of the latest and most authoritative researches. This matter, where practicable, is embodied in the comment. But a large portion of it, comprising specific topics applying to the entire narrative, is placed with orderly arrangement in sections immediately succeeding the Life of Christ. To these valuable sections the reader's attention is specially directed. In conclusion, as summarizing the distinctive points of the volume, we may refer to its substance, comprising select portions of the most valuable thought contained in the entire literature of the New Testament; to the completeness of the comment, including the explanation of the sense, the exposition of the spirit, and all the related facts of history and incident; to the convenience of arrangement, by which all that bears upon the text is brought into direct connection with it (thus avoiding the recurrence to other volumes of commentary or cyclopedia); and, as a real though minor advantage, to the attractive variety in the subject-matter and style. Explanation respecting points of detail.—1. To lessen the bulk and increase the richness of the volume, the citations in many cases have been condensed; yet in no case has the thought been altered or marred, nor has its form been cramped into mere aphorism. 2. To secure the uniformity essential in minor particulars, a common rule of omission has been applied to the formal use of initial capital letters, and to the prefix to apostolic and saintly names. 3. For necessary brevity, also, the names of Matthew, Luke, and John are generally represented by the initial letters, M., L., and J.; while the name of Mark is distinguished by adding its terminal k: thus, Mk. The term New Testament unquestionably proceeds from the institution of the Lord's Supper. The Lord designates the Eucharist the New Covenant in his blood, in the strict sense of the term. The writings which record the foundation of this new and eternal covenant are themselves called the New Covenant, the New Testament. This designation, also, indicates the connection and the contrast between these writings and those of the Old Covenant. The universal character of the New or Christian Covenant as compared with the old or Jewish is indicated by the language in which each is expressed. The Greek of the New Testament was the universal language of the civilized world, while the Hebrew of the Old was the peculiar dialect of the chosen race. Lange. The New Testament begins with the person of Christ, the facts of his manifestation in the flesh, and the words he gave from his Father; and accustoms us by degrees to behold his glory, to discern the drift of his teaching, and to expect the consequences of his work. It passes on to his body the Church, and opens the dispensation of the Spirit, and carries us into the life of his people, down into the secret places of their hearts; and there translates the announcements of God into the experiences of man, and discovers a conversation in heaven and a life with Christ in God. It works out practical applications, is careful in the details of duty, provides for difficulties and perplexities, suggests the order of churches, and throws up barriers against the wiles of the devil. It shows us things to come, the course of the spiritual conflict, the close of this transient scene, the coming of the Lord, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal judgment, the new creation, and the life everlasting. T. D. Bernard. The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books, which may be thus classified: 1. The FIVE HISTORICAL BOOKS; namely, the Four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles. 2. The FOURTEEN EPISTLES OF PAUL; namely, Ten addressed to eight Churches, and Four to three individuals—Philemon, Timothy, and Titus. 3. The SEVEN GENERAL EPISTLES; the Second and Third of John, though addressed to individuals, being placed as appendices to the First. 4. The REVELATION OF JOHN, though in the form of an Epistle to the Seven Churches of Asia, is rightly placed in a class by itself, as the one great prophetic book of the New Testament. 5. The unanimity of Christendom on the twenty-seven books of its sacred code is permanent, universal, unalterable, and not less firm than that of the Jews for their canon. It is even a unanimity still more astonishing; since that which we wonder at in this family of Israel, which has always kept its sacred oracles free from every mixture through thirty-four centuries, this very marvel we have here to admire in all the families of the nations, which equally preserve the New Testament in the midst of their most ardent disputes and their profoundest divisions; which preserve it in the most uncultivated churches, notwithstanding their ignorance; in the most idolatrous, notwithstanding their traditions, as in the most rationalistic, notwithstanding their infidel literature and all the wanderings of their teachers. It is a unanimity, we may say, the more striking that it is only on this one point. It is a wonderful and manifestly providential fact, that, on this point alone, there can be found nowhere in the documents of history any account of public constraint, any collective action of counsels, any prescription of emperors—although from the fourth century they meddled with everything else in the church—in a word, not an act of human authority which was intended to impose on the churches the acceptance of a sacred code, or to force any individual conscience to admit into the canon a single one of the twenty-seven books now constituting the New Testament. An. THE testimony of Christian Antiquity is clear and consistent, that the Four Gospels were delivered by the Holy Spirit to the Church of Christ through the instrumentality of those persons whose names they bear; that they were written in the order of time in which they are now placed; that these Four Gospels, and they alone, were received from the beginning as divinely inspired histories of our blessed Lord; and that these Four Gospels were identical in name, in form, and in matter, with those received by ourselves at the present day. Wordsworth. It was no part of the design of the writers to secure that chronological accuracy of arrangement and of detail which is “essential to history, but which forms no portion of the plan of a memoir.” Out of the vast array of facts and events which were crowded into the life of Jesus, the Holy Ghost leads each writer to select those which will best serve the special purpose of each; and to arrange them in accordance with his own design, now following the order of time and now departing from it. Those facts and truths were brought forward which suited the practical end in view, and they were put in that order which seemed best fitted to secure the one great result, the acceptance of Jesus as the Saviour. Gregory. God has been pleased to give us the life, as never a life was given, by those four, each different, yet each the same; a separate mirror to take in the side presented to it, but all disclosing in life-like harmony the one grand person, each so absorbed in his theme that he himself is forgotten, his personality lost in the object—all eye, all ear, all heart for Christ alone. If this were not divine, we might say that it is the perfection of biography; it makes the historian nothing; it makes him he looks at all in all, and it puts every one of us where the witness himself stood, and lets us take in the great life as he did. It is one testimony to the greatness of the life that it so burned and fused itself into these men that they can do nothing but reflect it again, with this unconsciousness which is higher than the highest art. There was inspiration guiding them, true, but this inspiration took, as its most powerful instrument, the overmastering might of that wonderful personality. Ker. No literary fact is more remarkable than that men, knowing what these writers knew, and feeling what they felt, should have given us chronicles so plain and calm. They have nothing to say as from themselves. Their narratives place us without preface, and keep us without comment, among external scenes, in full view of facts, and in contact with the living person whom they teach us to know. The style of simple recital, unclouded and scarcely colored by any perceptible contribution from the mind of the writers, gives us the scenes, the facts, and the person, as seen in the clearest light and through the most transparent atmosphere. Who can fail to recognize a divine provision for placing the disciples of all future ages as nearly as possible in the position of these writers? We feel that we see Jesus as he was. No human being that ever trod the earth has left behind a representation of himself more clear and living, and more certain in its truthfulness, than is that which we possess of the Prophet of Nazareth in Galilee. Bernard. The truth of God was not to be presented in a fixed and absolute form, but in manifold and peculiar representations, designed to complete each other, and which, bearing the stamp at once of God’s inspiration and man’s imperfection, were to be developed by the activity of free minds, in free and lively appropriation of what God had given by his Spirit. Neander.—Each Gospel has its own features, and the divine element has controlled the human, but not destroyed it. But the picture which they conspire to draw is one full of harmony. The Saviour they all describe is the same loving, tender guide of his disciples, sympathizing with them in the sorrows and temptations of earthly life, yet ever ready to enlighten that life by rays of truth out of the infinite world. Townsend. It can be shown that the Gospel sums up in the record of the Incarnation all that was evolved of spiritual import in the long discipline from the Captivity to the Advent; that the time at which the Gospels were written was at once most suited to their publication, and yet least likely to have given birth to them; that they grew up as it were spontaneously in the Church without effort and without design, and yet have a distinct relation in their fourfold diversity to the past and future wants of the Church; that in the difference of letter there is a perfect unity of spirit; that there is a special tendency and plan in the writing of each Evangelist; that the varieties of detail and succession of incidents converge to one common point, and conduce to one common end; and that in particular parts the teaching of the different Gospels may be combined into a whole of marvellous symmetry and completeness. And herein we see a noble view opened of the relation of the Gospel to the former and future history of the world, and of the Gospels to the Gospel itself. We feel that deep sense of the continual presence of the divine influence, and that firm conviction of the unerring truthfulness of the sacred writers, which can only be gained by a comprehensive view of the complete subordination of every part of the Scripture to the training of man and the realization of his hopes. We find nothing superfluous in the repetitions of the Gospels, and nothing inconsistent in their variety, any more than in the fresh groupings and different prospects of some earthly scene. We understand, with the great master of Alexandria, that “every word, if rightly viewed, effects a special purpose;” for revelation is not a vain thing for us; it is our life. Westcott. 1. MATTHEW.**—This first Evangelical Record of Christ’s miracles, preaching, death, resurrection, and ascension, was composed for the use of that country in which our Lord’s life was passed. The Gospel was first offered to the Jews. It was circulated in that city in which our Lord suffered: a striking proof of the confidence of the Apostles in the truth of Christianity. And its reception and public reading, as not only a true history but as divinely inspired, in the church of Jerusalem at that period, is one of the strongest evidences that could be given of its veracity and inspiration. Wordsworth. The Gospel by Matthew connects the New Testament most intimately with the Old, by the Old Testament genealogy of Jesus. In this Gospel, the life of Jesus is presented as forming part of the history and life of the Jewish nation; and hence as the fulfilment of the hereditary blessing of Abraham. Jesus is here set before us as the new-born King of the Jews, as the promised Messiah, and the aim and goal of every progressive stage of the Theocracy. He is the great Antitype of Old Testament history, in whom everything has been fulfilled—the types in the law, in worship, in historical events, and in gracious interpositions—in short, the fulfilment of the Theocracy. In and with him the Old Covenant is transformed into the New, the Theocracy into the kingdom of heaven, the demands of the law into the beatitudes, Sinai into the Mount of Beatitudes, the prophetic into the teaching office, the priesthood into redemption by suffering, and the kingship into the triumph of almighty grace, restoring, helping, and delivering a fallen world. Lange. The Gospel for the Jew.—Matthew wrote his Gospel for the Jewish race, the first of the three great representative races of which the civilized world of his day was made up. A representative Jew, he was eminently fitted by his nature and by his experience, Jewish and Christian, for the work of preaching and embodying the Gospel for the Jewish race. For the Jew, the man of the covenant and of prophecy, the credentials of Jesus must be drawn from Moses and the Prophets. In his origin, human and divine, in the capital facts of his life, in his character, private and official, in short, in his work and in his kingdom, he must be shown to meet the requirements of the Messianic Scriptures. Jesus must be set over against the prophetic Messiah, so that they shall both be seen to be one and the same. This Gospel takes the life of Jesus as it was lived on earth, and his character as it actually appeared, and places them alongside the life and character of the Messiah as sketched in the Prophets, the historic by the side of the prophetic, that the two may appear in their marvellous unity and in their perfect identity. The Jew who once took its truths and facts into his mind could not get them out again, for it connected the name of Jesus of Nazareth indissolubly and forever with all the religious knowledge and hopes of the descendant of Abraham, and with all the glories of his past national history. In short, the Old Testament doctrine of the Messiah, as announced in the Protevangelium, in the opening of Genesis, and unfolded through all the ages till the final words of Malachi, is the only key to the first Gospel. This appears in its entire plan, which is the unfolding of the central idea that Jesus is the Messiah of the Prophets. It appears likewise in the omissions and additions made by the Evangelist, both of which have been made to adapt it to the Jewish soul and its needs. It appears no less clearly in all its incidental variations from the others, and in all its incidental, at first view almost accidental, peculiarities—the entire production being moulded and shaped and colored in its narratives, sentences, and words, by its Jewish reference and adaptation. Outline of Matthew's Gospel.—1. The Advent of the Messiah (1 : 1 to 4 : 12). Matthew demonstrates, by way of introduction, that Jesus had the origin and official preparation of the Messiah of the Prophets. 2. The Public Proclamation of Messiah's Kingdom (4 : 12 to 16 : 12). He demonstrates that Jesus did the public work and bore the public character of Messiah, the King and Prophet, in the period devoted chiefly to the proclamation of the coming kingdom of heaven, with divine power in Galilee. 3. The Distinct and Public Claim of Messiahship (16 : 13 to 23 : 39). He shows that, after the rejection and the retirement from the public ministry in Galilee, Jesus openly claimed to be the Messiah, and abundantly proved the righteousness of his claim both to his disciples and to the people. 4. The Sacrifice of Messiah the Priest (24 : 1 to 27 : 66). He demonstrates that, after his public rejection by the Jews, Jesus fully established his claim to be the Messiah by fulfilling the Messianic types and prophecies in laying the foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven by his own priestly sacrifice. 5. The Triumph of Messiah the Saviour and King (28 : 1 to 20). Matthew shows in conclusion that Jesus, after his death, fully established his claim to the Messiahship as the risen Lord and Redeemer. Gregory. 2. MARK, the Gospel for the Roman.**—The second Gospel was written for the Romans, the second of the three great representative races of the then civilized world. They represented the idea of active human power in the ancient world. They embodied that idea in the state or empire, as the repository of law and justice. They came in process of time to deify the state as the grandest concrete manifestation of power. With the consciousness of being born to rule the world, they pushed the idea of national power to universal empire. For the Romans, the Gospel must present the character and career of Jesus from the Roman side or point of view, as answering to the idea of divine power, work, law, conquest, and universal sway. It must exhibit Jesus as adapted, in his power and mercy, in his mission and work, to the wants of the Roman nature and world. To the Roman these are the credentials of Jesus, no less essential than prophecy to the Jew, or philosophy to the Greek. The second Gospel itself everywhere bears the marks of its Roman origin and aim. This is manifest in its entire plan, which involves the presentation of the divine power and activity of our Lord, and which views his life as one career of conflict and conquest ending in the universal sway of the kingdom of God. It is no less manifest in the omissions and additions made by the Evangelist, all of which are explained by his Roman design. Mark prepared this Gospel from the preaching of Peter, for Roman readers, the men who were the workers, conquerors, and rulers of the world. He was, like Peter, originally a man of action rather than of deep and abiding principle, a man of fervor and enthusiasm rather than of persevering effort; but he was transformed, by the power of the same Christ who transformed Peter, into the man of rapid, continued, and effective effort in the missionary work of the Church. Three men had to do chiefly with the shaping of his character after the Roman ideal. He was made to feel the influence of the gentle and merciful spirit of Barnabas, whose fellow-worker for Christ he was in his early life. He received the impress of the tremendous sustained energy of Paul, whose companion he was in the Apostle's earlier ministry, and again at Rome during his captivity. He was moulded by the restless, unwearying activity of Peter. Thus fashioned in character by these great Apostles and preachers, he was providentially brought into the widest and most varied contact with the Empire, in its customs and language, in its law and legions, from the centre of authority at Rome to its remotest limits. Mark was probably not personally cognizant of the facts of the Gospel, save perhaps the later ones. Peter, the man of deeds rather than words, was therefore appointed to supply in his preaching, out of his vivid memory, and after his striking manner, the materials for the Gospel; while Mark was appointed, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and in accordance with his character and training, to give it final shaping. Gregory.—Like Peter, he is contented to lay the foundation of the Christian faith, and leave the superstructure to others. It is enough that Christ should be presented in the most vivid light, unfolding the truth in acts rather than in words; for faith will translate the passing deed into an abiding lesson. Everything centres in the immediate facts to be noticed. The living portraiture of Christ is offered in the clearness of his present energy, not as the fulfilment of the past, nor even as the foundation of the future. In substance and style and treatment the Gospel of Mark is essentially a transcript from life, a tracing of the life of the Lord in the fresh vigor of its outward power. If all other arguments against the mythic origin of the Evangelic narratives were wanting, this vivid and simple record, stamped with the most distinct impress of independence and originality—totally unconnected with the symbolism of the Old Dispensation, totally independent of the deeper reasonings of the New—would be sufficient to refute a theory subversive of all faith in history. Westcott. Outline of Mark's Gospel.—1. The Advent of the King and Conqueror (1 : 1 to 2 : 12). The Evangelist brings forward the Almighty King in his Divine Person and Kingdom. Jesus appears as exercising the prerogatives of God himself. 2. The Conflict of the Almighty King (2 : 13 to 8 : 26). He exhibits Jesus in the teaching, work, and conflict of the period of public ministry devoted to the continued proclamation of the coming Kingdom of Power. Here, too, Jesus appears as the Son of God, wielding almighty power, in its most tangible forms. The Roman, the man of power, is thus irresistibly attracted toward him. 3. The Claim of the Almighty King (8 : 27 to 13 : 37). Jesus, the Almighty Conqueror, is exhibited as distinctly claiming the right to the Kingdom of Power, to be won through suffering and rejection, and both explaining and maintaining his claim. 4. The Sacrifice of the Almighty King (14 : 1 to 15 : 47). He exhibits Jesus preparing for the setting up of the Kingdom of Power through his sacrificial sufferings and death. The scenes of the last days are left to depend for their impressiveness upon the power of the naked facts of the final struggle with the Jewish authorities and the death upon the cross—facts depicted with the life-like touch of an eye-witness, and fitted to draw from every true Roman the exclamation of the centurion at the cross, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" 5. The Universal Empire established (16 : 1-20). The appropriate conclusion of this Gospel, in which Jesus, the Almighty King, is exhibited as conquering death and taking the Universal Kingdom, and as organizing the work of conquest. All this was just what was needed to commend Jesus as a Saviour to the Romans. It was, moreover, a true view of the man of Nazareth, in whose many-sided character was found not only the Messiah, the ideal Jew, but also the universal Conqueror and King, the ideal Roman. This Jesus, the inheritor of all the true power and manhood found in the Roman nature, and adding to this a divine power and manhood, is the Jesus represented by Mark. Gregory. 3. LUKE, the Gospel for the Greek.**—The chief facts touching the origin and design of the third Gospel, as presented by most trustworthy witnesses, are, that Luke wrote the Gospel which bears his name; that it was substantially that which he and Paul had proclaimed to the Greek world; that it was produced and published among Greek peoples; and that it was written for the Greeks as representing the Gentile world and suited to commend Jesus to them as their Saviour. The Greek looked upon himself as having the mission of perfecting man. Through all the ages, in literature and art, in statecraft and gymnastics, he was working toward his one great idea of the perfect man. In his ideal, intellect and taste held the supreme place. His aim was not the beautiful man in the lower sense merely, but thinking, reasoning man, with his intellect full-summed, farthest reaching, most gracefully working. He accordingly bequeathed to the world the grandest models of beauty and of thought that the unaided human mind has ever produced. These characteristics of the Greek brought him into sympathy with man as man, and made him in the ancient world the representative of universal humanity. A Gospel for the Greek must be shaped by the Greek idea; must present the character and career of Jesus of Nazareth from the Greek point of view, as answering to the conception of a perfect and divine humanity; must exhibit him as adapted, in his power and mercy, in his work and mission, to the wants of the Greek soul, and of humanity as represented in it. Reason and beauty, righteousness and truth, dignity and earnestness, must be exhibited as they meet in Jesus in their full splendor, and his divine tenderness and compassion must have universal sweep. It must open the way to a mission grand enough for man here, and must bring to light an immortality beyond. In short, the Gospel must meet the true and correct the false in the Greek ideal. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/