MALACHI

(B.C. 420-397).

[NOTE.-"Malachi ('my messenger') is the last of the Old Testament prophets, as Nehemiah is the last of the historians; and the time of his ministry nearly coincides with Nehemiah's administration. The second temple was now built, and the service of the altar, with its offerings and sacrifices, was established; for it is a profane and insincere spirit in that service, especially among the priests, which he labours to correct. He complains also that divorces and intermarriages with idolaters have greatly multiplied the very evils which Nehemiah so earnestly condemns (Mal. ii. 11. Comp. Neh. xiii. 23-27; Mal. ii. 8, iii. 8, 10; Neh. xiii. 10, 11, 29). He lived between the years 436 and 397 B.C."-ANGUS's Bible Handbook.]

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Chapter i. 1-6.

THE BURDEN OF MALACHI.

HO was Malachi? Other prophets give the name of their father, and give some kind of local reference; but Malachi comes upon us absolutely without introduction, and so destitute of nominal claim that we are not sure that "Malachi " was his name at all. Who were his parents? Nobody knows. When was he born? No one can tell. When did he write? Nobody can find out. Yet here is the writing. The word "Malachi" means, The messenger of the Lord. He was a kind of John the Baptist. He was sure that something was coming upon the earth. He did not know what it was; it was something glorious, something such as had never been seen before by eye of man. It is interesting to watch the struggles of the prophets; they want to say what they can never express. There is a spirit within them which testifies that upon the earth there is coming great darkness, great agony, and afterward great joy such as no summer ever brought upon the glowing horizon. Sometimes a broken column is more pathetic than a completed pillar: it means so much. Sometimes the rhetorician is mightiest

when his word quite breaks off, and he himself is stunned by an uncalculated amazement. What the prophets must have felt on this wise! They were always going to say what was in their hearts, but at the last the expressive word failed them. It will always be so in Christian service; we should always be going to do our best, and never be able to satisfy ourselves that nothing further can be done.

There have been ingenious men who have contended that all the prophets were not simple men as we are, but angels, for the time being at least, or incarnations, and that their names are significant of such embodiment and representativeness. "Hosea" = saviour. Why should any man bear that name as an hereditary right or casual custom, as who shall say, This boy shall be called Hosea? Names may thus be fantastically scattered abroad now, but the time was when names were offices, functions, characters, and indicators of destiny. Who knows but that the saviour-angel may have been incarnated in Hosea, and that his name may have been a writing from within rather than a cognomen chosen haphazard by some member of the family? "Joel": was there ever such a name on earth as "Joel"? Meaning no less than, The Lord God: sacredness had no higher sublimity in the imagination of the Jews. Was the boy called "Joel" as he might have been called by any common name in the history of our country? or was there an unconscious inspiration in the very designation of the child? There may be a danger of being fanciful in such interpretations, but there is an infinitely more awful danger of being blasphemous in our painstaking in the matter of excluding God from all our family life and all the details of our personal history. Beware of those people who are always telling you that this is fanciful, and that is unusual, and the other is eccentric; they will torture you with their monotony and propriety and folly. There should in our interpretation of life be a feeling that there is more in life than we have yet discovered. We should be quite willing to believe that when deaf and dumb Zacharias takes the slate, and writes a name upon it, he is but an amanuensis of God. Why not attribute much more to heaven than at present we ascribe to the throne of God? Why give God the oaks and the cedars, and keep back from him the grassblades

and the little flowers that find in them green sanctuary? These prophets may have been angels; they may have been the word of the Lord incarnate. There are other critics who are bold enough to operate critically in this direction. The word of the Lord came to-not a syllable, not a writing, but the Logos, the Essential Speech, the all-creating Word-the fiat came to them, and dwelt in them, and they all heralded and forecast the final and consummate incarnation. There are those of course who say "The word of the Lord" means a verbal message, something to say; on the other hand, there are critics who contend that "The word of the Lord "is personality, not speech; and that such personality embodies itself in human life and human character, and avails itself of human ministry to get at the outlying wondering world.

Whether this be so or not, here is the writing, the speech that was made to Malachi in the name of the Lord. And that speech is called a "burden." The word of the Lord is always a load upon the soul. There be some who have no Lord in the heart, no Lord that needs carrying otherwhere than on the glib lips. The true prophet has always been a solemn man; he has always been bowed down, his attitude has been an unconscious attestation of his office. He did not know what he meant by that prone look when he seemed always to be looking at the place of graves rather than at the cradles of the stars. But the "burden" was pressing him, the weight gave him to feel his own weakness and littleness, and in his breathing there was a constant sigh, as the breathing of one who saw the world's life as the world itself never saw it. Thus the prophets were distinguished from all other men. The prophets are now seeking perhaps to be too much like other teachers. They have lost their native tongue; they are babbling in a foreign language which they imperfectly understand: when they get back to God's own speech to the heart, and tell the world what God has told them, tone for tone, word for word, the world will say, A new poet hath arisen; the old mantle has been recovered, and is now on the shoulders of a man worthy to bear it. Do not vulgarise your ministry; do not comedise God's gospel. "Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar"; give men to feel that the word has about it an edging and fringing, delicate, yet urgent as fire.

"The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel "-What! to Israel? We have been accustomed to read so much "against Israel." Can there be so much meaning in a change of prepositions? Can the one preposition be a naked sword all edge, and the other a sign of reconciliation, approach, and tenderness? It is even so. We should be careful how we lay too much stress upon little words, especially merely auxiliary words; yet sometimes it is the little word that carries all the meaning. An “if” may keep a man out of heaven. This word is a word of approach; it is God coming to Israel. The prophet has not to announce a great wind rising in the north, and coming down stormily upon the canvas tents of those who seek to shield themselves under such rags against the lightning of God; on the other hand, it is the Father coming towards, and coming more than half-way, and coming with sweet words and musical gospels to end the controversy, and establish the kingdom of peace.

This is proved by the words which immediately follow"I have loved you, saith the Lord." But is not the grammar itself suggestive? Is not this something dead and gone? is not this a perfect tense, more than perfect or pluperfect? Is is not history, hoary, all but forgotten, an old, old love? So it it in English; it was not so as Malachi wrote it, his words are equal to, I have loved you, and do love. Had the words been, "I do love," that would have been weak, because the love might have been born but yesternight; had the words been, "I have loved you," that would have been pensive, sorrowful, and heartbreaking, because it is like reminding the soul of a song dead and lost but seeing that it is "I have loved you, and do love," strength cannot be mightier, for all the past is there and all the urgent present, time and eternity are hand in hand. This is always so in God's relation to his people. His love is eternal, and it is immediate; it is from everlasting, and yet it always seems to be new-born. Where is there any old dew? Show us some dew a year old. It is the dew of the morning, and yet that same dew has been hanging about the altar of God's love ever since God lived. His lovingkindness is from everlasting, thy compassions are new every morning. This is the union of age and immediacy which we must realise in our personal

experience. God's love comes in as our dearest friend, and yet

it always comes in as a perfect surprise.

Here is ingrati

This is the law

"Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us?" tude. Here, however, is our own experience. of the family. You have been supporting some one a long time, and because you do not attend to the very last appeal, all you did in the years that are gone is simply forgotten, and the inquiry is, Wherein have you been so kind? Treacherous is the memory when it has charge of recollections of good and favour and help rendered under circumstances which ought to have made the offering of such assistance an imperishable remembrance. Have we not had familiarity and experience in this matter? All you have done for your friends, let me assure you, is forgotten. They never speak well of you, except it may be in some general sense. Favours are soon forgotten. Yet whoso forgets a favour is no true man; he is a bad man, whatever his doctrinal professions may be. We should keep all our friends' kindnesses as so many evergreens, every kind action kept in the heart like a precious plant and not allowed to die. But God's favours are forgotten principally because they are so numerous. The very circumstance that ought to have made their memory indelible is a circumstance which causes the record to be soon obliterated. We become familiar with God's blessings, and we seem to have established some right in their succession. We expect the sun to rise; we complain to one another if there be anything like disappointment attending the circumstances of his rising; we say, Do you call this April? Why, in April we ought not to have such fog and darkness: where is the sun? What right have you to the sun? Why not rather say, God be praised, here is the sun God might have kept back the light from a world that has forfeited every claim upon his complacency, yet here is the shining sun. Keep your gratitude green. Never let your thankfulness fall into decay. You might thus by keeping a perfect remembrance of favours received multiply those favours tenfold; the assistance that was rendered to you in childhood should be with you as a stimulating memory to old age.

Then the Lord undertakes to answer these people, and says,