mighty king and leader of men; and here "the desire of all nations" may be some figure in history: but we cannot fill to their utmost capacity these profound passages until we put Christ into them. Often the interpretation comes after the vision; we do not know what the prophecy means at the time, but two centuries after, two thousand centuries after, the real meaning comes; then we remember the word of the prophet, how he said, "The desire of all nations shall come." The desire on our part is sometimes unconscious; we do not know what we are seeking for. There are some unbelievers who do not want to be unbelievers, but who are really struggling after a real, true, saving faith. Sometimes the desire is unexpressed; yet it touches the whole agony of life, and throws a colour upon the whole experience of progress. We say, What is it that troubles us? And the answer is, We cannot tell. Why are you not content with time and space and immediate action? We cannot tell. Why not find in the summer all the heaven you want? We do not find all the heaven we want even in the fullest summer; we accept the summer itself as a letter in the literature we are reading, as a tone in the music we can almost overhear. What is this longing of the soul, what is the meaning of this palpitating force that will not rest, but always says, More, more! Why this ineffable discontent? It is because we are made in the image and likeness of God, and until we find God, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the God of providence, the God of salvation, and the God of inspiration and edification, we cannot rest. The light is a mockery to us because we want that other light that pales the sun and constitutes the very glory of heaven.

What will be the end of all this shaking, convulsion, revolution, and the like? The end is indicated in clear words: "I will fill this house with glory" (ver. 7); "In this place will I give peace" (ver. 9). God always gives with both hands: "I will give glory "; see him making the sun that is to put out all other suns: "I will give peace"; see him creating the tranquillity beside which all other calmness is foam and tumult. He may give these gifts concurrently, or he may give them separately; but we are to be assured of the fulfilment of the promise by these gifts only. If we are sitting in the night time, then we have not entered into the

There

mystery of this prophecy; we are in fear, tumult, and continual agitation; then we have not realized the presence of God. are those who can never be quieted or at all contented unless they be helping God to keep his truth right. So long as they can be busily engaged wearing themselves out in doing nothing, they suppose that God is safe, and the door of eternity is locked top and bottom, and well guarded by blacksmith's bolts. What poor aid is ours! We say unless we live and write and teach and preach, things will all go wrong. Oh, ye apprentices to the Deity, ye who try to do work for which you seek the admiration of heaven, know ye that God is the builder of his own city, the keeper of his own house, and that not one stone can be touched by fire or by storm, because it is the Lord's building, and he will bring on the topstone with shouting of "Grace, grace unto it!" and he will fill the whole house with glory, as with the very morning of heaven. Whatever we do let us do it quietly, lovingly, simply; and let us know that we do it by permission, and not by any right arising out of our own capacity or brilliance of gift. It is not in man to buttress the sanctuary of God; it is not in man to do any mischief to the sanctuary that shall be of a permanent kind. "The Lord of hosts"; "THE LORD OF HOSTS"; "THE LORD OF HOSTS": by this name doth the King ride forth in this chapter. It is a name of significance; it means not only strength and majesty, it means resource. God's bank has in it gold and silver; God's arm has in it omnipotence. "Oh, rest in the Lord, wait patiently for him, and he shall give thee thine heart's desire." Not because of our fighting and controversy and anger and tumult, but because of the divine oath, will the whole earth be filled with the glory of God.

ZECHARIAH

(B.C. 520-510).

[NOTE. "Zechariah, the son of Barachiah and grandson of Iddo, was probably of the priestly tribe (see Neh. xii. 4), and returned from Babylon, when quite a youth, with Zerubbabel and Joshua. Whether Iddo was himself a prophet is not clear (compare Hebrew and LXX.). His grandson, Zechariah, began to prophesy about two months after Haggai (i. 1; Ezra v. 1; vi. 14; Hag. i. 1), in the second year of Darius Hystaspes, and continued to prophesy for two years (vii. 1). He had the same general object as Haggai, to encourage and urge the Jews to rebuild the temple. The Jews, we are told, prospered through the prophesying' (Ez. vi. 14), and in about six years the temple was finished. Zechariah collected his own prophecies (i. 9; ii. 2), and is very frequently quoted in the New Testament. Indeed, next to Isaiah, Zechariah has the most frequent allusions to the character and coming of our Loid. The genuineness of the closing chapters ix.-xiv. has been doubted. Mede and others refer them to Jeremiah, deeming the reading in Matt. xxvii. 9, 10, and internal evidence, in favour of this view. Jahn, Blayney, Hengstenberg, and others, refer the whole to Zechariah, and suppose the reading to be, as it easily might be, an error of copyists. While the immediate object of Zechariah was to encourage the Jews in the restoration of public worship, he has other objects more remote and important. His prophecies, like those of Daniel, extend to the 'the times of the Gentiles'; but in Zechariah the history of the chosen people occupies the centre of his predictions; and that history is set forth both in direct prophecy and in symbolical acts or visions. . . . It may be added, that, in the version of the LXX., several Psalms are ascribed to Haggai and Zechariah (cxxxviii., cxlvi.cxlviii.); and though nothing can be decided with certainty as to these particular Psalms, it is highly probable that both prophets were concerned in the composition of some of those which were produced after the return from captivity."-ANGUS's Bible Handbook.]

W

Chapter i. 1-9.

SPIRITUAL TIMES AND SEASONS.

E dislike men who know the day upon which they were converted. We have lived, by the temptation of the devil, down to that low point. Our reason for disliking such

men is that we do not know the day of our own conversion; and if we do not know when we were converted, how is it possible for any one else to know when he was converted? All the prophets must go down before this narrow and shallow criticism of ours, because they give the day and the date, and almost the very hour. The difficulty is for a man to forget the day when he first saw the Lord. Why, there is no other day. All the socalled other days are so many nights, or at best twilights. We never saw the true day until we saw the light that is above the brightness of the sun; this day puts out all other light, this incident of conversion puts out all other history, or throws it into its right perspective and relationship. Zechariah was a youth. That is a term which ought to be explained, because it conveyed a meaning in the Hebrew which it does not convey in English. A "youth" does not necessarily mean a child or a boy. Jeremiah said he was a child, "a little child." So are we all in the presence of a century: what must we be in the presence of eternity? Joseph was called a child, or a youth, when he was twenty-eight years of age; the men who mocked Elisha were called little children they may have been forty years old. All these terms are relative, and are not to be understood except by a clear conception of the circumstances under which they were used. The Lord chooseth both old men and young; his message will fit any age sometimes he has a word to us that a boy could not utter; sometimes he has a message to deliver that only a young heart can properly announce, because it alone has the requisite freshness of sympathy and music. The Lord has a word which only men of business can speak; and they will not speak it. There are some sermons that ought never to be preached in the pulpit; they ought to be preached in the market-place, or over the counter, or on high 'Change; and men of business only can speak them with clearness and precision, and moral, because personal, authority. There are some texts that preachers have no business with; they cannot pronounce the words aright; they can utter the individual syllables, but they cannot run them into that persuasive music which belongs only to the tongue of honest

commerce.

"The prophet" (ver. 1). Zechariah is not ashamed of his

function. We are not to read "the son of Iddo the prophet," according to English punctuation; the comma ought to be after the word "Iddo "; and, omitting the intermediate genealogy, the word will then stand-"The word of the Lord unto Zechariah the prophet." How can the Lord send his word to anybody but prophets? Other people could not understand it. Here is a mystery, but it is a mystery of fact rather than of speculation or dream. Some men laugh at the Gospel. Do not mock them; they cannot do aught else. Why I cannot tell, I did not make the universe; the human heart is no construction of ours. There are men to whom there is no Church. Do not reason with them; you cannot put liquid into a vessel that is open at both ends; do not waste your words: the kingdom of heaven is sent to them who can understand it, feel it, catch its music, and answer it with kindred melody. All this involves much questioning; all this indeed supplies the basis upon which angry cross-examination might take place; and we know it. The explanation may come by-and-by, and that explanation will be adequate; meanwhile, there are men to whom sermons cannot be preached because they cannot be heard. There are souls on whom hymns are wasted. How this is we know not.

When the Lord sends his word to his chosen one he will make it easy for that chosen one to deliver it, will he not? No: he sends his servant upon hard work. When did the Lord ever give any servant of his an easy function? When did he say to his Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, or other prophets, Come now; this is easy, this will cost you nothing; you could do this at odd times? Never. There are men who can apparently do the Lord's work without suffering through it; but it is not the Lord's work they are doing, or if it be the Lord's work in any superficial sense it is not done with the Lord's spirit, which is the spirit of the Cross, the spirit of shed blood, the spirit that keeps nothing back. There be those who say that the Lord deceived us by going into a swoon. A poor Lord to follow and unworthy of being followed! If he only swooned in love he is a deceiver. All who teach that dead Christ who lived again must be prepared to carry heavy weights, and run long distances, and say words that scorch their tongues.